Here is an article by a woman who tries to justify her decision not to homeschool her kids. All of us homeschoolers have had to put up with the demands of ignorant meddlers who want to know how we can justify not putting our kids into traditional school. It is kind of nice that a few people are starting to get that it is traditional (and especially government) school that needs justification. Still this woman really demonstrated she has not given homeschool a fair shake nor even any depth of thought when she said:
What we’re doing here is hard. Most conservative parents want to raise kids who can live in the world without being fully assimilated to it. This is a daunting project, and there are many ways to go wrong. You can overprotect your kids. You can underprotect your kids. Some parents blight their children’s futures by monitoring them too closely, never allowing them to develop the emotional maturity needed to cope with disappointment and failure. Other parents will look back in 20 years and wonder, “Why didn’t I intervene before that problem became serious?”
Homeschooling is becoming more popular because it gives parents more control over the various stages of their children’s development. That’s readily understandable, but homeschooling can’t be a magic bullet, because kids do eventually need to learn how to navigate an unsympathetic world where most people do not love them. This is the grain of truth in the often-lazy “socialization” argument against homeschooling, and parents who reply “I wish to socialize my children myself” are missing the point. Your kids cannot spend their whole lives in the bosom of their natal family.
The socialization, overprotection, “need to learn hot to navigate an unsympathetic world” memes display profound ignorance of how most homeschools actually work. No thoughtful homeschool program leaves kids to “spend their whole lives in the bosom of their natal family,” nor is that an aim of any homeschool parents of my acquaintance. Actually, it is the traditional school students who wallow in the bosom of teachers inculcated with hard left political correctness by the mind numbing deweyite teacher education programs that are the order of the day.
So, while we are quite pleased that you feel the need to justify the dumping of your kids into these cesspools of progressivism, your justification and arguments are not well served by holding up straw men.
Betty Blonde #409 – 02/09/2010
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