Posted on 06/26/2009 1:08:36 PM PDT by Chickensoup
“I could never homeschool my kids”
Whenever someone says that to me (and it happens...a lot), I always tell them my personal philosophy. “I either can, don’t want to, or someone won’t let me.” If I want to do something bad enough, I can.
But there are some things I just can’t do. For example, I’m a 46 year old woman with extremely high blood pressure and no matter how much I may want to, the Marines won’t let me join up. Heh heh!!
Obviously, you ran into a drone that didn't need to immediately meet a quota.
For my part, if one of the fascists showed up at my door, I'd be on the phone to the HSLDA and my attorneys while denying the creature any entry.
sitetest
The problem is that you're interpreting the rant as a product of a long-term, stable attribute of the particular homeschooler who wrote it.
Rather, I think that the homeschooler is trying to communicate that at the moment of writing the rant, he or she was bitter.
Certainly, when I think of the pricks in my neighborhood who made veiled threats against my family, it makes me feel bitterness.
But I'd hardly describe myself as bitter, or think of the bitterness that I might feel from time to time as a long-term, stable attribute of my personality.
Nonetheless, everything the author pointed out, I've seen or experienced first-hand.
sitetest
My daughter turns a year and a half tommorow and because I've merely made my intentions of homeschooling known, I've heard a lot of this stuff already from friends and family members alike. It's a strange dynamic that I wasn't ready for.
At times, with certain people, their reaction to knowing your preference for homeschooling is like showing garlic to vampires. It's downright screwy.
When we started homeschooling nine years ago, it was still a off-beat enough, quirky enough, that we encountered a lot of resistance. But in the last nine years, the attitudes of many folks have changed.
We still run into troglodytes who ask us stupid questions that reveal their glorious and complete ignorance. But more now, we run into folks who say, "That's wonderful! Your sons are very fortunate."
Of course, they almost always add, "I could never do that, I just don't have the patience."
I used to answer, "Nonsense, you'd surprise yourself!"
But now I'm more likely to be a little mischevious and say, "You know, you could be right. Maybe it's best that you didn't homeschool your own."
In part those changes in attitude that we see are due very much to the pioneering that folks like you did, and for that, we thank you.
I remember when we first told my mother we'd be homeschooling. She raised about two out of every three topics on the list presented by the author of this article, LOL. She was quite strongly against it. Afraid her grandsons would grow up to be social freaks.
She only lived a few years longer to see any results, but even by then, she'd become one of the loudest and strongest defenders of our decision to homeschool. She could see, even by the time my older son was in third or fourth grade, the results of our decision.
For us, the choice to homeschool has been a good one.
But so far, so has the decision to permit our older son to attend a local Catholic high school.
What homeschooling is about is choices, options, fitting the education to the child, not the child to the education.
sitetest
What homeschooling is about is choices, options, fitting the education to the child, not the child to the education.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I absolutely agree.
No, I just wondered if you had been a more recent convert to the homeschool lifestyle. Things are a lot more friendly in the last decade than they were twenty years ago. I thought perhaps newer homeschoolers hadn’t had as many nasty experiences with stuid people asking these questions.
Good for you, your daughters will be grateful to you!
Thank you for that!
I’ve always known that I have been and continue to do what’s best for my kids.
Other parents are coming around to know this as well. New HS-ers are off the charts in our area. I assume in other areas as well.
The same is happening in our area.
Not for a nanosecond do I believe the official government numbers on homeschooling. If they say 3 million, the true number is likely 9 million.
Stuff it lady. You and your moral superiority make me sick.
You ASSUME you know all there is to know about public schools and you haven’t set foot in one!
Don’t bother replying, I’m not interested.
You have raised a point and others may be interested. If you don't want discussion or replies to your comments, then don't participate in a public forum.
I am not superior, but homeschooling **is** the superior, most healthy, and most natural way to rear a child. If some children must be institutionalized, yes, it is necessary. It is like orphanages. We need them, but these institutions are not ideal.
I do know that **all** government K-12 schools are godless in their worldview. This has non-neutral religious, political, and cultural consequences for our children and our nation. This is not an assumption. It is a fact.
We homeschooling advocates indeed know much about “public schools”, as government schools are called. http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html
Blah, blah, blah. Heard it before.
You wish to extol the virtures of homeschool be my guest. However when you start the crap about public school teachers be sure you add the parents into the mix. The parents are as much at fault as any teacher. I’d be willing to bet you wouldn’t or couldn’t put up with what many teachers have to put up with.
I know good teachers and I know bad teachers. Met a public school teacher who I would never let my children as she complained the whole time about her students and that some people should never reproduce. On the other hand, I have a friend who is a fourth grade teacher and has been giving me wonderful tips and a few of his lesson plan ideas to help my son improve his reading skills.
Should have read “...I would never let near my children”.
ping
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