home schooling
Over the break, I spent the entire week at my aunt and uncle’s house in Bristol, Virginia. If you have never heard of Bristol, that is because it is basically like Bedford City, just with a Nascar raceway and a lot of crack heads. Great place. My Uncle’s family consists of him, my aunt Kim, and my cousins, Elisabeth who is 7, Elise who is 11, and Ian who is 13. All of them are home schooled and are deeply religious. Needless to say, there are some interesting conflicts that spur up when I visit, but for the most part, it’s all good. Being home schooled and never having set foot into a publicly owned learning institution, the only opinions that they can have of it are those of their parents, which are very negative and they also have severely stunted social skills due to the fact that they only spend time with their parents, me, and one or two friends. I talked to my uncle Mike about the decision to home school and he said that he didn’t want his kids to be brought up around the negative aspects of socialized schools like the temptation of drugs, alcohol, atheism (probably thrown in their as an attempt to get at me) and other things he considers to be negative.
He asked me how often I am exposed to drugs, alcohol and so on and told him almost daily. Almost every day, I hear someone talking about that crazy party with booze galore and a white haze about the house from marijuana smoke and incestuous sex that no one remembers because of the inebriation. Obviously, that didn’t help my cousins’ chances of every going to a public school, not they ever would, but I told him that’s life. People do bad and stupid stuff and the world isn’t made of the Christianity and grape juice for wine. I told him it makes you stronger in resisting those things. My parents have spoken to me about such things and I have made decisions to abstain from things like drugs and tobacco. Offer your kids some reinforcement and they will listen.
My cousin Ian looks up to me a lot. He asks me about life and different things and I will have to admit, it is so hard not to break down and tell him what a lie his parents are raising him and his sisters in. My fear is that when he does experience the so called real world, that he is going to wild and not know how to resist the negative temptations of this world of ours. I am afraid that he is going to be a like a person who has no immune system and just catch every virus that comes his way. He asked me something about if I had ever heard anything about pre-marital temptations (I believe that is how he worded it) at school. I nodded and said that there are more than temptations that goes on. He then asked me a question that I myself had had for the longest of times. He asked why the human body is censored when in an unsexual context. He said that doing so raised children in a bubble. Don’t get me wrong, my aunt and uncle censor those things more strictly than most parents. It hurt me inside to hear him say that others were being raised in a bubble. His entire life so far has been a padded cell filled with Jesus, lies, and facades.
My aunt and uncle have done a wonderful job of alienating and shielding their children from reality, but they cannot stay in there unicultural world forever. One day they are going to have to go to college, probably through the military. Hopefully they will get enough of a culture shock and real world exposure and discipline with the military to succeed. I hope everything turns out for them and if it doesn’t, then there is no one to blame but the parents in this case.
He asked me how often I am exposed to drugs, alcohol and so on and told him almost daily. Almost every day, I hear someone talking about that crazy party with booze galore and a white haze about the house from marijuana smoke and incestuous sex that no one remembers because of the inebriation. Obviously, that didn’t help my cousins’ chances of every going to a public school, not they ever would, but I told him that’s life. People do bad and stupid stuff and the world isn’t made of the Christianity and grape juice for wine. I told him it makes you stronger in resisting those things. My parents have spoken to me about such things and I have made decisions to abstain from things like drugs and tobacco. Offer your kids some reinforcement and they will listen.
My cousin Ian looks up to me a lot. He asks me about life and different things and I will have to admit, it is so hard not to break down and tell him what a lie his parents are raising him and his sisters in. My fear is that when he does experience the so called real world, that he is going to wild and not know how to resist the negative temptations of this world of ours. I am afraid that he is going to be a like a person who has no immune system and just catch every virus that comes his way. He asked me something about if I had ever heard anything about pre-marital temptations (I believe that is how he worded it) at school. I nodded and said that there are more than temptations that goes on. He then asked me a question that I myself had had for the longest of times. He asked why the human body is censored when in an unsexual context. He said that doing so raised children in a bubble. Don’t get me wrong, my aunt and uncle censor those things more strictly than most parents. It hurt me inside to hear him say that others were being raised in a bubble. His entire life so far has been a padded cell filled with Jesus, lies, and facades.
My aunt and uncle have done a wonderful job of alienating and shielding their children from reality, but they cannot stay in there unicultural world forever. One day they are going to have to go to college, probably through the military. Hopefully they will get enough of a culture shock and real world exposure and discipline with the military to succeed. I hope everything turns out for them and if it doesn’t, then there is no one to blame but the parents in this case.