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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I wasn’t going to respond to this same old, lame old argument, but it kept me awake last night, so I’ve changed my mind.
To get personal, I read this woman’s article. The most ignorant line for me was where she stated that you can’t wrap your child in bubble wrap as they navigate the rocks of a modern society. My question is, Why not? If you sent your 5 year old child through a construction sight without a hard hat, that would be neglect. If you threw your child in the river without first teaching them to swim, that would be neglect. I think any parent who uses a public school to socialize their child should be held guilty of neglect. Beside the demoralizing, destructive socialization by most teachers in the public school system, the majority of students experience negative socialization at the hands of their peers. (Every public schooling parent who’s ever asked me the socialization question has readily admitted they don’t care for the socialization their child is receiving in school.) If I am counted among the sheltering, helicopter parents who spare their children the debilitating effects of public school socialization, then so be it.
For example, here is a list of things I experienced that my children have never had to:
Ostracized for helping younger children learn.
Exposed to lunchroom theatrics including regurgitating food by 7th grade boys.
Firecrackers set off on bus.
Negative pressure about weight/size inducing 10 year long struggle with anorexia.
Spit upon on bus because of dressing differently.
Vicious name calling on bus because of different religion.
Used c*nd*m hanging on my locker while football team stands laughing down the hall.
Observing a group of students huddled around 2 fighting teenage males chanting, “fight, fight” on a weekly basis.
Exposure to hall s*x between classes.
Concepts of homos*xuality, abortion, and birth control introduced in vulgar terms by peers.
Peer pressure to treat others the way I was being treated to be accepted. Deep regret and guilt if I indulged.
These are only some of the things I experienced as “socialization” from my peers in my public school experience over 20 years ago. I cannot imagine how it made me a better person, and sometimes wonder what kind of woman I might have blossomed into if I had not experienced this negative socialization. I do get a glimpse of that woman in my developing children. I see in them a purity, an innocence, a beauty that I was robbed of at a very early age. Not because they are being sheltered from the evil of the world, but because they are experiencing it in the presence of their loving parents. Our children are being given tools to love a world that does not love them, to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.
I simply cannot imagine expecting a child to navigate the evils public school socialization produces alone. I have personally visited with two publicly educated girls in the past year who have had their names added to a death list simply because they are Christian. Shudders of horror went up my spine when I heard the recent Oregon shooter asked his fellow students if they were Christian before shooting them.
Last year, a boy my family was personally acquainted with, committed suicide the first day of high school rather than face the bullying he had been experiencing in middle school.
Perhaps it would never had been so extreme for my children, but I thank the Lord often that I will never have to find out. While my husband and I are not reactionary home educators, keeping our children at home because of (fill in the blank) negative reason, there is plenty of reason to do exactly that! Instead, we are home educating our children because we are able to control (yes, CONTROL!) the quality of the education they are receiving, and we’ve chosen to give them the very best.
Precisely right Audry! Thank you for this. It is crazy to think almost ANYTHING that happens at a government school or even a traditional private school is anywhere remotely related to the real world. You said it very well and I thank you.
To Ann,
You left a pejorative comment here about the quality of Dewey’s ideas on education and made some ignorant statements about what I know and don’t know about what he proposed, suggesting that Noam Chomsky advocates for such a system. I note those statements could only be made by someone who either does not understand what these two small men wrote or wants to impose their own will on others without their consent. It is most likely a little of both.
If you want to do a search on Chomsky on this site, you will see we hold him and his ideas at about the same level of regard as we hold Dewey and his ideas. It gratifies us greatly that Tom Wolfe has called Chomsky out in his latest book, The Kingdom of Speech. Dewey and our deep knowledge of what he proposed for public education in America played a big role in our family’s decision to homeschool our children. I retract nothing and reaffirm the positions I have taken on both Chomsky’s and Dewey’s work.
I also want to note this site is not a debate site and I am not interested in flame wars, trolls or this kind of discussion.
Dad