Homeschoolers Disrespected on Ebert & Roeper

Ebert & Roeper ^ | 6/18/07

[LibertyRocks]

I was just watching Ebert & Roeper and would like to report to my fellow homeschoolers that the guest host taking Roger Ebert's place tonight, Robert Wilonsky, made a very disrespectful and rude comment in relation to homeschoolers...

While reviewing the upcoming movie "Nancy Drew" Roeper made a comment that Nancy was a 1950's girl in relation to what she thought constituted a birthday party. When Roeper said that this would be a good movie that would be liked by 12-year-old girls, Wilonsky replied, "Maybe Homeschooled 12-year-olds"...

I found this to be a very ignorant and disrespectful comment, and I am left wondering what Mr. Wilonsky thinks would be better suited for 12-year-old Public Schooled/Private Schooled students to be watching (Sex, Drinking & Drugs???)?

I would like to ask my fellow homeschool parents to write to both Ebert & Roeper (Buena Vista Entertainment) as well as Mr. Wilonsky himself, and express your displeasure with this disrespectful comment.

Here is how to contact the show & Mr. Wilonsky...

Ebert & Roeper Show: http://bventertainment.go.com/tv/buenavista/ebertandroeper/ Use the "Feedback" link at the top navigation bar to submit a comment.

Mr. Wilonsky: I could only find one email address online for Mr. Wilonsky (he also writes at RottenTomatoes.com, as well as the Village Voice, L.A. Weekly, and the Phoenix New Times). Here is his email address through his employer the Dallas Observer:

Robert.Wilonsky@dallasobserver.com

In my comment to the Ebert & Roeper show I requested not only that they do not bring Mr. Wilonsky back for any more co-hosting gigs, but also that they issue an on-air apology to all homeschooled students.

[Gabz]

Jen, I respect your position and your decisions, I would hope that by now you understood that. All I’m asking for is the same courtesy in return.

My husband reads here on a regular basis, but rarely posts, he is no where near as quick tempered as I am, but now refuses to read any of the education threads because he has this very protective streak and will not tolerate insult to me or our family. He doesn’t care about his posting priveleges, he chooses not to jeapordize mine. He feels that strongly about the derison shown to those who choose public schools by some of those who choose to homeschool.

Insult is insult, Jen, whether intended or not.

[SoftballMominVA]

One of the reason folks like you are the most insulted ones are that you know that you could homeschool and probably do as good a job in most areas and maybe even better in some. For folks like your self the decision in that area was fairly close (compared to others) So to be told (or implied) that the only thing that put you to the public school side was lack of enough love for your kid is extremely insulting.

I agree that I could have done just as good of a job with the academics for my girls up through elementary school and somewhat into middle school. I flat out, could not, 100% no way, have taught them into high school. They both would have ended up being taught by someone else long before 9th grade. The work I've seen come out of their English experience alone is beyond my ability to teach - and I am a middle school English teacher (granted, a special education teacher, but still). My younger was in Calc before she was 16 - that is several steps removed from my level and a couple beyond my husband's. I'm not bothered or ashamed by the fact that I could not have taught them high school subjects. It would have been foolish for me to try and a mistake.

I do not agree that naturally bright children 'teach themselves.' That is false. Smart kids need guidance and structured education just as much as the special ed kids need it.

We moved to a good district, and chose the public high school as the BEST option, not just the most convienient one. My younger was offered a full 4 year scholarship to a very prestigious private school and she turned it down in favor of the high school. It was a choice made with knowledge and an understanding of the implications.

There are some here who are very hard on public school parents, even slipping into the hyperbole of equating sending your kids to public schools as the equivalent of feeding them poison. I've never seen a public school parent make the same claim about a homeschooled student and if I did, I would be one of the first to publically shun and condemn that poster. With a couple of exceptions, JenB being one of them, home schooled proponents do not condemn this type of hyperbole, but instead jump on the bandwagon of 'public school evil, home school perfect.'

[TalonDJ]

You are of course correct. I was chiming in originally against what looked like something I have seem in other posts. That is an attitude like this:
"I will lock my daughter in the highest tower and blow away any that come near. My sons? Drunk and womanizing? Boys will be boys. Just look how macho and manly they are. Way to go boys!"

I see now that is not you, still, I have seen that sort of thing here on FR. I was rather disgusted.

[SoftballMominVA]

My apologies JenB. I mentioned you and neglected to ping.

[TalonDJ]

My wife, JenB, had a mom in a similar situation. Her mother with just a highschool education, sent them off to the local community college around 15-16 depending on the child. I was lucky to have a mom with a high level of education. Instead she spent a lot of time going to homeschool conventions teaching mothers how to do college preparatory science classes at home. Also she spent about 10 years running a consulting service to help mothers with very smart children keep them challenged. No it is not easy, and a wise parent like yourself judges the options and their own ability levels.

[SoftballMominVA]

You and JenB will have some lucky kids. You both seem to have strengths in a wide variety of areas.

You are right about something else, whether you realized it or not - it's not easy to raise kids these days - period. No matter how they are educated, that is only a fraction of the work needed to produce adults ready to take their place in society and carry on for the next generation. Their academic education is only part of what is needed.

Now that I'm at the end, looking back there are times I wish I had made a different decision in several areas - especially with my older one. We tried to push her in the academics and we played down her art and music ability. But she 'wins' in the end as she is majoring in graphic design and is writing a novel. I've told my husband, one day she is going to accept some major award for her art or music or writing and her first words will be "I do NOT wish to thank my parents who tried to re-direct me at every turn." :)

Kids are just going to be who they truly are no matter what the parents try to do.

[JenB]

I appreciate the “catch up ping”. I don’t mind people speaking of me unless they’re attacking me behind my back, which of course you aren’t.

I’ve never been to a public school so I admit to not knowing what goes on, but I do know my mother graduated from a rich Northern Virginia school twenty five years ago, having spent her entire education in an elite gifted and talented program, with no ability to do math beyond second year algebra, no knowledge of history, and a head full of skewy liberal ideas. She had multiple years of French and German, which she can’t speak today, and an excellent grounding in English but no knowledge of actual classic literature.

She says she learned more educating us than she ever did in school, and she was very studious.

If a kid knows what she wants to do and what classes to take, I can see advanced coursework and extracurricular activities being good. If he’s unmotivated, thinks education is boring, or labelled, I don’t know that the school is equipped to help him achieve. Homeschool parents can know more intimately where their child is, academically speaking, and play to strengths and weaknesses. It’s like having your teacher be guidance counselor and personal advisor all in one, and not just for one year but for 12. To me it sounds like a big challenge and a bit daunting but also an amazing opportunity.

[ChocChipCookie]

So what’s so great about a prom?? Once you’re past, say 19 or so, it becomes less than meaningless.

[BlackElk]

Fremont Lives: 1. 13-year-old gummint skeweled Jezebel would have no way of getting an abortion before next month's really big party without her parents' knowing if she had been homeschooled by her own parents. She also probably would not be at the party. She probably wouldn't even have become pregnant? No fun of any kind and she would have to learn actual academic subjects as well. Jezzy, at the gummint skewel, got an A in "health" for her technique in covering cucumbers in latex when not sharing herself with the other girls. Horrors, her parents would have taught her theology and morality instead.

2. Jezzie's gummint skeweled, ummmm, "partner", Casanova Crackpipe might have been limited to Pepsi Cola instead of free market pharmaceuticals if he had been home schooled. C. C. would not even know advanced fisting techniques or how lavender hoopla is the ultimate birth control.

3. Socialization???? SOCIALIZATION???? As Tonto Kowalski has posted on several occasions, homeschooling parents can socialize their own kids gummint-skewel style by taking them into the lavatory at home, beating the snot out of them and taking their lunch money or sneakers or whatever.

4. To whom do you pray as to the properly raised children of homeschoolers? To the shade of Margaret Sanger???? To the ancestral ape-god??? To the chairthing of your local skewel board or the corporate directors of the National Misedjumakashun Association? To satan himself?

[Tax-chick]

We all have far bigger things to worry about than a snide remark by some two-bit movie critic

Bump that! I care less than zero what these people think (including what they think about movies!).

[Gabz]

I appreciate your starightforward honesty. My husband and I are “older” parents, he’s 52 and I’ll be 47, and our only child will be 9 next month. A great deal of thought went into and goes into our decisions about her based on our own life experiences.

Jax (our daughter) resists the idea of being “taught” by mom or dad and so doesn’t yet understand that all the academic awards she has received in school are, in part, because she is “taught” at home by mom and dad. Yes, our school district does single out students for academic achievements, although I do realize many districts elsewhere don’t.

I joked a lot last week about enjoying my last few hours of solitude before summer vacation, but the truth of the matter is I have been looking forward to it.

Today was a total goof off day because my husband was headed out of town for a business class for the week, but tomorrow morning we start our summer “work.” We’re headed for the nursery first thing, then we will plant everything we bought, then we are making peanutbutter fudge for the woman who gave her 2 kittens yesterday.............then we start making strawberry jam. By weeks end we will be selling that jam, along with all the other jams and jellies she has been helping make for the past few months.

[FremontLives]

Huh?

[TalonDJ]

I've never seen a public school parent make the same claim about a homeschooled student and if I did, I would be one of the first to publically shun and condemn that poster.

Maybe not poison, but I have seem quite a few that are like post 10 on this thread and are basically trying to tell me that my upbringing left me underdeveloped or deranged in some way.

But let me clarify why you run into those comments from homeschoolers. It goes something like this:

Article: Someone in public school got shot, or raped, or killed themself.

HS poster: See? Homeschooling is the way to go.
Troll: No way, homeschoolers are repressed weirdos. Public school is the only way kids develop!
HS poster: No way! PS sucks. Homeschooling is the only way!
Moderate public schooler: Public school is not that bad! We send our kids there and they are fine.
- at this point the last poster is chiming into an argument were they HSer can't back down. What do you expect them to say?
"Oh yeah you are right. Public school is not that bad, but homeshooling does not scare kids too much."
Heck no! For one thing the don't really believe that and for another they are trying to defend themselves to someone hostile and hence can't seek the middle ground for civility. This is what I mean by stepping in the way of a bullet (insult) not really aimed at you.

How can home schoolers fend off the accusation that kids NEED to be in a big school setting? By saying 'homeschooling is just as good'? No, they go for the 'homeschooling is much better' angle. And then you are jumping in there saying, 'homeschooling is nice and all but not the only way.' How exactly can they be civil with you and say things they might not fully believe while still fending off a troll telling them they are abusers and socially undeveloped religions nuts. We really can't do both at once. And since we usually believe, deep down, that homeschooling is the best thing for just about everyone, we are unlikely to back off that while under attack (not from you, but there are ALWAYS hardcore anti HS types on these threads).

[SoftballMominVA]

Oddly enough, not all of those things happen to every child in every school, or even at the majority of schools. My girls attended prom and remained virgins and certainly weren't pregant. Neither were ever roughed up for their lunch money and neither were ever ridiculed, with one exception. When my younger was 12, she had a facial melanoma cancer and needed surgery. She was ridiculed by a group of kids in her Sunday School class. They told her that she had sinned badly to have such a condition and that her sin was catching. They threw things at her in Sunday School and refused to sit near her. One posted on her myspace account that everyone should pray for her that she would turn from her sin and be as pure as others were. They also emailed her and called and left phone messages asking if she was counting up her sins because if they got to be too many, the cancer would kill her. 2 girls were schooled at a Christian school and 2 were home schooled. I had to go to the minister of our church and the pastor of the school to get the teasing to stop. Speaking to the parents did nothing but make it worse. I never knew what the men said, but the teasing stopped and they all wrote letters of apology. The kids at her school? They either ignored the situation or called to find out how she was.

That's my experience with her in terms of teasing. Maybe it doesn't fit in with what you think should have happened, but it was real enough for us.

[PayNoAttentionManBehindCurtain]

People get their boxers in a bunch over the slightest things these days! Save your wrath for local governments that want to infringe on home schooling.

But not responding to the little stuff is what gives the governments what they need too infringe on our rights to home school, you know the frog in the pot theory. Stop the little stuff and you won't have to deal with it when it's bigger.

Becky

[SoftballMominVA]

How can home schoolers fend off the accusation that kids NEED to be in a big school setting?

I don't know. How can public school parents fend off the accusations that sending your kids to public school is the equivalent of feeding them poison?

Here's the problem - on any issue, education, immigration, WOT, etc, when either side slips into hyperbole, the statement ends up offending even those that are favorably disposed. So perhaps the onus falls upon the moderates to police their own? It's something to ponder on, and I shall.

[Badeye]

I’m surprised anyone bothers to watch that show in the first place....

[PayNoAttentionManBehindCurtain]

You might think years of well adjusted homeschoolers quietly slipping into the adult workforce without incident would make an impact.

My daughter was telling me the other day how when her customers find out she was homeschooled they are always amazed because she "seems so normal, and has such good people skills, I thought homeschooled kids would be backwards" :), or something to that effect.

Becky

[Gabz]

In my own (albeit limited) experience, the vitriol has been disproportionately from homeschoolers who call public schools "child abuse," or who take isolated abuses and extrapolate them to all public schools. Certainly homeschoolers get their own share of flack from ignorant idiots - but, certainly on this board, a lot of the flack is brought on by the stridency of the homeschoolers themselves.

That, unfortuantely has been much of my experience here as well. Not all the time and not from all homeschoolers, but from a goodly protion of them. Thankfully my personal experience with homeschoolers has been the total opposite.

[TalonDJ]

Here's the problem - on any issue, education, immigration, WOT, etc, when either side slips into hyperbole, the statement ends up offending even those that are favorably disposed.

The difference here is that homeschool has been and is under real attack legislatively in various states. Bills randomly sprout up that would add all kinds of new regulator stress of roadblocks to us. We have to be vigilant.