Anyone who has read this blog for any time at all knows I am skeptical of government school systems’ ability to provide consistently adequate education. I know it is possible to get a great teacher or two who can beat the system into submission well enough to teach kids what they need to move on to the next grade but that is rare enough that some never get a great teacher. A lot of people get that. So, there is a phenomenon that occurs when those who believe homeschooling is better, but for whatever reason cannot or do not do it meet those who do. We all know there are a LOT of good reasons to have your kid in government or private school. You are better at knowing your own kids needs and your own family situation than anyone else. There is a blog post that describes the phenomenon that was on Luke’s aggregator a couple of days ago titled Quit Judging Me for Judging You. The money quote from the article is this:
…I’m not judging you for making different choices. I’m just trying to keep my own Crazy Train on the tracks.
Betty Blonde #147 – 02/06/2009
Click here or on the image to see full size strip.
Eric
We actually do! I hate to say it so boldly, but in our family you are essentially viewed as either lazy or consumer-driven (or both) peasants if you don’t home school your children.
(Of course, you can assign all sorts of religious causation to our children’s malfunction due to the Leftist social onslaught against them, but you can’t assign academic malfunction to our children when they fail spiritually. Spirituality is a choice of the child. A home school education is the choice of the parent. Studies have shown that children do not adopt their parents beliefs, but they do adopt their parents mental models toward life.)
In our family we attribute “self-judgement” to the insecurity that the non-homeschoolers feel because they have sacrificed their children and their education at the alter of consumerism and consequently feel guilty about it. We have this little family joke … when the kids see the neighbors upgrading their boat/car/lifestyle, the kids say “Yup, their mom works!” In other words, they realize that those kids’ parents both work so the parents can attain either social status or immediate gratification … and thus sacrificing their children’s education at the alter of consumerism.
Man Eric, you are going to make me work on this one. As you stated, “I hate to say it so boldly, but…” I definitely part ways with you on this one. I would venture to guess that the percentage of government school proponents who self-righteously tell us we are damaging our kids by homeschooling is not a whole lot different than the homeschoolers who don’t know our kids as well as us but are willing to tell us we are somehow doing it wrong or that our kids have somehow fallen short in some area we missed.
I attribute the bulk of the government school proponents willingness to opine about other peoples’ children to ignorance and fear. In some ways, the self-righteousness of homeschoolers can be even less benign and it is something to which I do not claim to be innocent: pride. It is a topic with which we have struggled and I have written about it here fairly often. Here is an example of a post where I address my misgivings about this trap into which homeschoolers can fall. We have talked to many parents who have their children in government school and feel guilty for it, but manifest none of the symptoms of rampant consumerism whether they are rich or poor, but for feelings of inadequacy or some other unknown reason, choose not to homeschool.
I completely agree that your judgment rings true in many if not most cases, but certainly not even remotely close to all of them. I know that you have experienced pretty harsh judgment for the path you and your family have taken as have we and most other homeschoolers. The experience of that harsh judgment has motivated my dedication to support of the idea that parents, even if they do not know what is best for their kids, need to be supported in their parenting decisions unless they are so extreme as to endanger the kids health and/or sanity. The government has done a great job of trying to take over for us in that regard and I am constantly reminded of how poorly that worked out so I am going to support other parents decisions for their own kids in any way possible in all but the extreme cases. Who knows whether we did what was right. Our kids have moved out of homeschool and on to other things–time will tell whether we made the right choices, but I am thankful we had the backbone to do it the way we thought was right in spite of sometimes extreme criticism from both homeschoolers and government school proponents.
I don’t, but oh, do many others. I guess I don’t because I had 2 kids rather successfully complete public/private traditional schools. One I took out at 10th grade due to the school in our area not being to my or my daughter’s liking. However, I believe ‘after-schooling’ has assisted many kids in success. Not only that it all depends on the school. Not all public/private traditional schools are bad – neither are all homeschool teachers good. It’s about the individual needs of the specific child and IF the parent is able, willing and capable of teaching them.
Nita, I am completely on the same page with you on this and believe the whole “after-schooling” thing can play a huge, positive role in any school setting. No one understands other people’s situations, especially with regard to something like schooling and so many things enter into it, judging someone else’s choice can be problematic.