Border Guards and Basements:
How a Library Was Born
By Michelle Miller
78;March;2013;•;Great;Literature
. . . I started picking up book treasures at yard sales.
. . . These books were older than our public library’s
offerings and so much more wholesome.
It’s not everyone who has a moun- tain named for them . . . in their living room, but there loomed Mt. Michelle. My longsuffering family
navigated the narrow paths around it,
hoping to preserve their illustrious basketball careers by avoiding injury. This
mountain was not composed of the usual
soil, granite, ice . . . or laundry, but was
composed of books!
How could one woman go so far over
the edge, you ask? If you knew what
an ubër-proper schoolgirl I was, how
I lapped up my textbooks hoping for a
star atop each assignment, you would
be shocked to learn that I now have
25,000 “living” books, because when I
began homeschooling, I duplicated my
own school experience, even to displaying the “phonics train” on the wall and
accumulating a two-ton stack of workbooks. When my son completed his entire mainline curriculum in October and
then asked me what to do next, I said,
“You’re a second-grader and, as far as I
know, international law allows you to
touch only work that is labeled ‘Second
Grade.’ ” So, he did the entire curriculum again. In January, he began his third
round. Was he ever glad when June made
him a third-grader!
I sincerely believed that my son was
“not allowed” to do work above the sec-
ond-grade level; I simply didn’t know any
better. At that point in our homeschool-
ing adventure, I needed an “expert” to
scientifically manufacture and label ma-
terials for me, which I could then quasi-
confidently dispense to my sons. It was
just too bad for me that they grew unim-
pressed with most topics as we covered
them (even though begging to learn at
the beginning). My children’s retention
of information (limited to what seemed
important or real to them) was thus un-
impressive, even after scoring 100% on
tests. I may have yearned for more but
instead declared completion of the “sup-
posed-to stuff” as good enough. It was all
I could let myself consider.
