Homeschoolers suck and more falsehoods...
I saw a post on homeschooling today. I responded. I sensed an argument was about to start, so I bailed. I don't need to waste my time with that, right? I've been drawn into too much of that before.
Later, I saw this article had been posted.
( I think you can see where I'm going...so I'm letting it out here. )
Later, I saw this article had been posted.
( I think you can see where I'm going...so I'm letting it out here. )
Sometimes the homeschooled kids are great. They're sharp, articulate, above "grade level," and very personable.
Sometimes they are seriously and ferociously dumb, but egged on by their parents who believe that I should be pandering to their child's brilliance.
Sometimes they come in with huge families where the mother is absent-minded and it's the oldest child (99 times out of 100 said child is a girl) who is making sure everyone has a pencil and the younger ones are participating. Often in these cases, they are all wearing skirts and at least one of them asks about the religious leanings of our hero (and of yours truly) and stops listening when they don't get the answer they were looking for.
Sometimes the kid is smart enough but absolutely obnoxious -- a combination of any number of traits, including completely lacking in social skills, overprecocious, condescending, completely spoiled, babied, or overstimulated.
Sometimes the kid is fine and it's the parents -- overbearing, crazed people who have to turn everything into a teachable moment and who take every advantage to brag up how above average their child is -- who I want to discipline.
All or any of the above -- and I can't really tell you precisely what holds any of these categories apart from regular stage moms or large families, for instance -- but we can always tell.
Now, I'm not saying I think homeschooling is a bad idea. It's completely a decision that should be made by parents based on what they believe is best for their child. But I definitely understand why people think it's a bad idea, based on a lot of the homeschooled families I've met in my seven and a half years in historic sites and the three and a half years I spent in college admissions.
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See, that would have been Korwynn and myself. :-D
And this:
Sometimes the kid is fine and it's the parents -- overbearing, crazed people who have to turn everything into a teachable moment and who take every advantage to brag up how above average their child is -- who I want to discipline.
would be my ex's family.
I guess I've never run into as much of this sort of thing myself. I did know one family who was convinced that I was going to hell in a handbasket for my "satanism" (because, you know, Quakers actually perform satanic rituals without knowing it). On the other hand, I knew someone else from the same religious denomination who said exactly the same thing but had gone to public school. So my thought is that the wackos have more to do with where they go to church than anything.
I guess what really gets me is that while there are certainly wacky people who homeschool, I do think there are a lot of good things about it. And I don't see that the distribution of homeschool wackies is greatly excessive of the wackies who public school (keeping in mind that I worked in a juvenile hall in Los Angeles County and saw plenty of wackies from the public schools there). But as noted in a later post, I'm extremely bitter about my own public school experience. My son's elementary school experience didn't do much to change it, but his middle school teachers seem a lot better. So perhaps there's hope. :-)
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But I do have to say from experience that homeschooled families LOVE National Parks. And there is nothing crazy about that. :-D
Anyway, my favorite cultural reference to homeschooling is at the beginning of Mean Girls where the religious zealot homeschool kid says, "And on the third day, God created the Remington bolt-action rifle so that Man could fight the dinosaurs. And the homosexuals." I crack up every single time. (If you haven't seen Mean Girls, please do. You can get over the fact that Lindsay Lohan stars in it by the fact that Tina Fey wrote it, right?)
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I think people meet a couple crazy homeschoolers, usually the ones who love to brag about the fact that they homeschool and how devoted the mother is for doing this (you know, like she should be canonized or something), and they get "the label". From then on, any homeschooler this person meets gets "the label". On the other hand, people may not realize that they know other, perfectly normal, homeschoolers because they aren't obnoxious about it.
But then again, that's true of anyone. Except people who graduated from Harvard. They're only too happy to mention it three or four times in a single conversation. Not a single one will let an opportunity to mention it just pass by. :-) (That came from a movie as well, but it escapes me which one.)
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