"I Want Serious Subjects!"

Knock me over with a feather!

Today my family was at my brother's house celebrating (mainly) my nephew's 11th birthday and (minorly) my brother's and my husband's. I was looking at a new piece of art made by my seven year old nephew. He has been sporadically doing private art making sessions with a professional artist who lives in his town. The artwork is amazing and completely atypical for young children's, even though it is kind of contrived with general directions due to the material selection and the serious abstract art nature of the works it winds up looking fantastic. Unfortunately the artist does not like to work with many children.

I said to my brother that I wished some time that my kids could go along and make some art. My thirteen year old piped up immediately and said he does enough art classes. I replied immediately that his very first formal art class was just two days ago. (I was thinking art technique not counting the eight session pottery course he took a few years ago.)

We have done plenty of crafts and art here at home but I'm not a professional artist nor did I strictly follow art instruction manuals or art curriculums.

I was surprised when the next words out of my son's mouth were, "Mom what I want is for you to hire teachers to teach me serious topics! Like algebra! Math and Science! I don't want more art classes, I want the serious subjects!"

I repeated, "You want to really work on Algebra and other math courses?"

He stated yes.

Just a few days ago he was negotiating with me on the number of pages in his Algebra lesson that he would have to do (trying to whittle it down to a lower number than I'd asked).

Last fall up through December he was balking at high school level science work being done with popular high school textbooks for Biology and Physics.

The only thing that changed between then and now is he witnessed a grade nine homeschool boy whip out geometry problems off the top of his head while they were reviewing high school level physics optics content in preparation for the Science Olympiad event they are competing in next month. If that played a part in this, I do not know.

Well I'm still reeling from his request, or basking in it, I'm not sure which!

---

So now that he's begging for study of serious subjects does this qualify him/me/us as unschooling? Would some homeschooling parents remove me from the 'school at home' category and into the 'unschooling' category? Have I shifted from evil coercion homeschool mom to enabling providing fun and low pressure homeschool mom?

Just wondering....not that it matters.  I don't really care what others care to label me with, I'm doing what I think is right and best regardless of the label or if others are accepting me with open arms or if they are turning their backs on me.