This list is more funny and pathetic every time I read it. Let’s see.
I am a homeschool graduate, future homeschool mom (I think my daughter has to be more than six weeks old before I can claim to be homeschooling her), married to a homeschool graduate.
Homeschoolers come in every flavor. Some of us are proud to claim the title of “geeky”. We make silly comments even more than a decade after graduating about how this or that is because we were homeschooled. Regardless, our friends and colleagues don’t tend to know we were homeschooled until after we tell them, putting the lie to the idea that being homeschooled is a stigma you will never lose.
Some of us are arrogant. Homeschoolers draw disproportionally from the upper brackets of intelligence and that tends to bring in arrogance. Most of us have seen first hand that it doesn’t take advanced degrees in education to provide an education and that comes off as snobbery when we’re talking to defensive “educators”. My own mother has a high school diploma, couldn’t help me with my advanced math courses, and yet has managed to educate (so far) two engineers, a journalist, and a history Ph.D candidate, with between two and five more children to go.
I personally will take the not-so-risky gamble that my husband and I can educate our children. We have three degrees between us in mechanical engineering and computer science, more math than you can shake a stick at, and interests that cover most of the rest of the spectrum. Based on my college experiences I know my English, history, and general education is superior to most ed majors’ (since I used to have to help tutor them for the tests in those classes). And I can write better sentences than the author of that screed can.
My daughter is not a pawn for a political game, to be sacrificed for the improved education of other children or to be martyred as a witness for them. She can choose to help others as she likes once she is an adult. Until then it is my job to protect, educate, and nourish her. Everyone else’s children are not my responsibility.
In conclusion, until I see a “case” that uses facts and figures instead of some idiot’s postulates, I will not be in the least shaken from my conviction that homeschooling is the way to go.
Ping for a fun thread.
It’s fun to hear from the homeschool graduates who are planning to homeschool their own kids. I am schooling my last of four and am happy with the results with the other three.