My friend Laura over at Homeschooling With Joy found this article about us pesky home schoolers (she's been doing it a LONG time), that I thought I would share...
You see them at the grocery, or in a discount store.
It's a big family by today's standards - "just like stair steps," as the old folks say. Freshly scrubbed boys with neatly trimmed hair and girls with braids, in clean but unfashionable clothes follow mom through the store ass he fills her no-frills shopping list.
There's no begging for gimcracks, no fretting, and no threats from mom. The older watch the younger, freeing mom to go peacefully about her task.
You are looking at some of the estimated 2 million children being home schooled in the U.S., and the number is growing. Their reputation for academic achievement has caused colleges to begin aggressively recruiting them. Savings to the taxpayers in instructional costs are conservatively estimated at $4 billion, and some place the figure as high as $9 billion.When you consider that these families pay taxes to support public schools,but demand nothing from them, it seems quite a deal for the public.
Home schooling parents are usually better educated than the norm, and are more likely to attend worship services. Their motives are many and varied.Some fear contagion from the anti-clericalism, coarse speech, suggestive behavior and hedonistic values that characterize secular schools. Others are concerned for their children's safety. Some want their children to be challenged beyond the minimal competencies of the public schools. Concern for a theistic world view largely permeates the movement.
Indications are that home schooling is working well for the kids, and the parents are pleased with their choice, but the practice is coming under increasing suspicion, and even official attack, as in California.
Why do we hate (or at least distrust) these people so much?
Methinks American middle-class people are uncomfortable around the home schooled for the same reason the alcoholic is uneasy around the teetotaler.
Their very existence represents a rejection of our values, and an indictment of our lifestyles. Those families are willing to render unto Caesar the things that Caesar's be, but they draw the line at their children. Those of us who have put our trust in the secular state (and effectively surrendered our children to it) recognize this act of defiance as a rejection of our values, and we reject them in return.
Just as the jealous Chaldean's schemed to bring the wrath of the king upon the Hebrew eunuchs, we are happy to sic the state's bureaucrats on these"trouble makers." Their implicit rejection of America's most venerated idol,Materialism, (a.k.a. "Individualism") spurs us to heat the furnace and feed the lions.
Young families must make the decision: Will junior go to day care and day school, or will mom stay home and raise him? The rationalizations begin. "A family just can't make it on one income." (Our parents did.) "It just cost so much to raise a child nowadays." (Yeah, if you buy brand-name clothing,pre-prepared food, join every club and activity, and spend half the cost of a house on the daughter's wedding, it does.) And so, the decision is made.We give up the bulk of our waking hours with our children, as well as the formation of their minds, philosophies, and attitudes, to strangers. We compensate by getting a boat to take them to the river, a van to carry them to Little League, a 2,800-square-foot house, an ATV, a zero-turn Cub Cadet,and a fund to finance a brand-name college education. And most significantly, we claim "our right" to pursue a career for our own"self-fulfillment."
Deep down, however, we know that our generation has eaten its seed corn. We lack the discipline and the vision to deny ourselves in the hope of something enduring and worthy for our posterity. We are tired from working extra jobs, and the looming depression threatens our 401K's. Credit cards are nearly maxed, and it costs a $100 to fuel the Suburban. Now the kid is raising hell again, demanding the latest Play Station as his price for doing his school work ... and there goes that modest young woman in the home-made dress with her four bright-eyed, well-behaved home-schooled children in tow.
Wouldn't you just love to wipe that serene look right off her smug face?
Is it any wonder we hate her so?
Sonny Scott a community columnist, lives on Sparta Road in Chickasaw County and his e-mail address is sonnyscott@yahoo.com.
Love you! I envy moms/dads who homeschool their children. I don't feel that I would do a very job homeschooling. But the thought crosses my mind every year that my special needs child starts school and I have to train another group of teachers and support staff on how to handle MY sensory integration disorder child. I want to bang my head on the wall and take him home where I know we won't cause months of set backs by making one wrong move with our child.
ReplyDeleteHate is so the wrong word for how this public school parent views homeschooling moms.
I am finishing my degree so I can substitute teach on days we don't have doctors and therapist appointments this school year. Hopefully this year I won't get called into the school so much to help with my soon to be first grader (his fifth year in pubic schools though)! I am and always have been a SAHM. I'm the one in the grocery store pulling my hair out with two wild boys though.
I wish that everyone could afford to have a stay at home parent, thankfully God has blessed us with the ability/opportunity to have Jenni stay at home with the kids.
ReplyDeleteHomeschooling isn't easy, but it is so worth it, in my opinion. Especially with some of the stuff that goes on at the schools nowadays. Can you say CRAZY?!
I like the idea of home schooling, but the practice made me crazy. My oldest daughter is easily distracted. I spent all my time checking on her to make sure she was doing her work. She had to repeat 10th grade at the public high school, as she didn't finish the work for me.
ReplyDeleteShe will be a senior this year. Last year she got good grades and learned how to apply herself. I think she really does want to get accepted at the community college and then go on to a 4 yr college away from home. She gets tired of being the second mom.