Replies

There are some that home school because their view on the world is so rigid and narrow that they try to create a perfectly protected and isolated environment for their children, and fear the slightest unscreened influence on their children will upset the delicate artificial dreamworld they have created.

I imagine there are some like this...I have met very few even here in Poh-dunk Oklahoma. I have met several Mennonite families where they are almost as odd as Amish, but they were courteous and friendly. I am sure they do just fine in their self-imposed "isolated environments"

It is those rigid extremists that I used to associate with homeschooling. How do those kids cope with the world when they find out that it contains a whole lot of stuff their parents never talked about?

First off, I am very careful about labeling anyone an extremist. In my left wing liberal brother-in-law's eyes, this slightly pudgy S. Baptist housewife is an extremist. If a person isn't breaking any laws, they ought to be able to do anything they want and raise their kids any way they want. For example:

A homeschooling Wiccan believes that their child doesn't need to know anything other than when to plant their completely organic garden by the phases of the moon. More power to them. A resourceful homeschooled wiccan could live on the income of organic veggies.

I mean to say this...it is highly unlikely that the children of most (even what you would consider extremist) homeschoolers are going to be beating a path to the welfare office. Homeschoolers, although perhaps considered rigid and "extreme" are usually quite resourceful and if they don't want to fit into society, nobody should try to make them.

I am considered rigid in some areas, and overly flexible in some areas, depending upon who I'm with at the time.

As far as high school goes, there are a ton of resources out there for homeschooling high-schoolers. And by that time, they seem to be totally prepared to go out and find those resources. There are courses at our local junior college that allow homeschoolers to attend. There are co-ops (Matthew is attending one this next fall, already...music) where professionals are hired by a group of homeschooling parents to teach a course in a particular subject...like chemistry and calculus.

Heh - so you know what it's like to be the rabid fanatic in one group and the "dissolute liberal" in another, huh? I've met a few of Hair's homeschooling wackoes - my sisters and I call them the 'Gettysburg' homeschoolers, because they don't let their kids read anything but biographies and history books, usually saying either that imagination is evil and will cause their kids to fall into sin (hmmm... I think we have some of those at FR) or that there's 'too much violence' in novels. Our point is that there's more violence and vile-ness in history than in most of the books I read.

Anyway, I don't approve of those types either. But they're free to be that way, and it's probably better to have them alone than to have them around other people.... in all my life I've met only two homeschool familes who I felt would be better off in public school. Sadly, one of those were my cousins.