BY LINDA DeNICOLA
Staff Writer
Home schooling will be the subject of a conference to be held at Brookdale Community College, Lincroft, on Sept. 18.
The conference will be held in the Student Life Center. Registration will start at 8 a.m. and the conference will end at 5 p.m.
Farmingdale resident Nancy Plent is the force behind the conference. She is eager to share her experiences in home schooling her son, who is now 33. She has invited a number of other people who are experts in matters pertaining to home schooling, or “unschooling” as they refer to it.
Plent said there will be a session for parents on making it on one income that debunks the concept that children have to be taught for six hours a day. She said a day in school is less than six hours when one considers time spent on breaks, lining up for one thing or another, going to the bathroom, eating lunch or waiting for the class clown to settle down.
“You spend much of your time talking to the ones that are acting up. I know [because] I taught third and fourth grade for a while,” she said.
According to Plent, the keynote speaker for the conference will be a person who has worked with John Holt’s organization. In the 1960s and 1970s, Holt was a leading spokesperson for self-directed learning. He has written a number of books, such as “How Children Learn” and “How Children Fail,” on education and opportunities to learn things elsewhere, she said.
There will also be a discussion on educating special needs children and on opportunities for children through volunteering. The conference will include information on how home-schooled children can get into college and what a home-schooled child can do if he decides not to go to college.
The conference will feature a demonstration on martial arts and information about 4-H groups that can be built around any interest.
“A lot of 4-H groups are home-schoolers,” she added.
Plent, who grew up in Freehold, explained how she got involved in the home schooling movement.
“I did fine in school, but I hated it with a passion and my husband, who went to school in England, said he was caned every time he opened his mouth. We traded horror stories,” she said.
When her son was about ready to start school she put a classified ad in the magazine Mother Earth News requesting information about home schooling.
“I got letters and phone calls from around the country. John Holt has a newsletter on that subject. Every time someone from New Jersey wrote to him he sent their address to me. It just sort of took off from there,” she said. “As our children came of school age, we would write to the school and say we were not registered our kids, we were home schooling them.”
She explained that the law in New Jersey is that every child has to go to public or private school, or receive equivalent instruction elsewhere.
“You don’t have to know everything to teach a subject. You just have to know where to find the information,” Plent said.
She explained that her son was adept in computers, but she is not.
“I found him a computer club. Now he works in the computer department for a large company. He took a few courses but does not have a degree. It’s amazing how many of the big companies will hire someone from within to do a job because they know that person can do the job,” she said. “The whole idea that everybody has to go to college isn’t
true. In the early 1990s there was a report issued [which stated] that most of the jobs of the 1990s would require some training but not college.”
Plent said her husband owns his own business and she inherited a business from her father.
“When you home school, you don’t have to divide your life into 9-3,” she said.
Plent said she and her husband have self-published a book called “A in Life” about famous people who were home-schooled.
She explained that home-schoolers develop their strengths.
“At some point, if a child decides he wants to become a veterinarian or something like that, he can learn it. If it’s something that a child wants and that makes sense for him, he will work hard to learn it,” Plent said.
Her advice for parents who are interested in home schooling is to read a book on the subject and come to the conference.
“Find out how other people are handling it,” Plent said, adding, “In 2000, we got some clear guidelines from the state Department of Education. On their Web site, www.state.nj.us/education/, there is a question and answer document for home-schoolers.”
Plent said the Internet has many Web sites that offer information and curriculum for people who are interested in home schooling. Many of those Web sites have a Christian component. According to Plent, people who are interested in home schooling with a religious foundation have their own conference.