Are Homeschoolers really similar to Islamic Terrorists?

Creative Loafing,Charlotte ^ | BY QUINN COTTON

[Diva Betsy Ross]

Homeschool Horror Divinely ordained education, taught by martyrs

BY QUINN COTTON

You know how there are terrorist cells embedded throughout the world? Well, in my neighborhood we have numerous "homeschool" cells humming in the cul-de-sacs. They're almost as scary as the terrorist ones in some ways -- and they definitely have some traits in common with them.

When we first moved to Charlotte, the houses next to us, behind us, and diagonally across the street all contained children who mysteriously never seemed to leave home, and mothers with glazed expressions on their faces. The whole set-up of moms stuck with their school-age kids 24/7 gave me the willies, and that was before I even had one of my own.

Middle class areas seem to be magnets for little suburban schoolhouses. Even though there must be homeschooling pockets all over Charlotte, somehow I don't picture your basic Ballantyne babe risking breaking a nail on a chalkboard in the bonus room, or skipping a tennis set for an educational excursion to the sewage plant. Likewise, I doubt many Belmont moms miss a beat packing those kids off to public school. It's the middle class that gets suckered into the myth that mothers and older children can survive being together all day without somebody being strangled. The true "haves" and "have-nots" know better.

What's scary is that a lot of the homeschooling faithful are as fueled by a fanatical, religion-based belief in their mission as Islamist terrorists, and seem to be just about as brainwashed. Sometimes I even wonder if they're a manufactured race along the lines of the Stepford wives in Ira Levin's book, but assembled in fundamentalist Christian churches instead of family basements. Like the Stepford robots, they're programmed to fulfill their husbands' fantasies, only in this case it's their role as the Ultimate Selfless Mothers.

Other times I feel like the heroine in another famous horror story by Levin, Rosemary's Baby, at that chilling moment when she puts together the anagram "All of Them Witches" and realizes it refers to her seemingly harmless neighbors. Some of the homeschooling moms (HMs) are kind of witch-y, with the uncut hair and the long skirts because pants on females are unholy, but the description that really applies to this coven is "All of Them Zealots."

They're not only terrorist-like in their conviction that their calling is divinely ordained, homeschoolers also often have a broad martyr streak. Rather than suicide bombings, though, they commit "suicide book-learning," sacrificing their own lives to teach their kids. I've known one or two to get pregnant as an excuse to get out of homeschooling hell, but the true martyrs keep right on instructing, with the newest little pupil glued to their breast.

Beyond a certain age, children and mothers are just not meant to be isolated together. It's unnatural. Keeping the kids at home might have worked back in the Stone Age, but cave women would've at least had each other for company, and I bet they made damn sure the youngsters stayed off in a group together while they grunted gossip and drank their Cro-Magnon coffee.

Kids need their teachers to be adults, separate from their mothers. That way they can idolize or despise them apart from a parent figure, and don't have to depend on one person for everything they require. Did a parent of yours try to teach you to drive? How'd that go? 'Nuff said.

All young animals must be immersed in a mass of their peers so they can figure out what it means to function as a member of the larger group. Believe me, I'm aware that homeschooling families get their children together, since occasionally there'll be a flood of them from next door scrambling over the fence to play uninvited in our yard, but being with maybe a dozen other kids once in a while doesn't do the trick. It takes serious numbers for developing humans to catch on to the nuances of accepted behavior and to have a chance to make enough friends. I just can't see homeschooling providing adequate socialization.

One of my neighboring HMs taught her two kids through eighth grade, then threw them to the wolves in public high school. The boy ended up dropping out and doing jail time, and the girl got pregnant.

Yes, I know that homeschooled kids have won high-profile academic contests, but for every homeschooler who aces a spelling bee, there's some poor child being "instructed" by a parent who's barely literate herself. Teachers in the public school system are required to have certification and college degrees, yet any yahoo can force their kids to stay home as long as they pass an annual test.

What's really scary about homeschooling is what it can do to the sanity of a mother deluded into thinking it's her Christian duty. No woman was ever meant to be trapped in a house all day with children old enough to spell "homicide."

So if new neighbors move in next door and you notice that the kids never leave for school and mom wears her hair in two braids, be afraid. Be very afraid

[tutstar]

yes i have some comments

[Mr. Silverback]

Bump for later reading, dissection and freeping.

"Christophobes of the world unite? You have nothing to lose but...um, er...what was I saying? Oh yeah, Christians are doody-heads!"

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Here's another one.

Homeschoolers keep the faith - Is this education - or indoctrination?

[TontoKowalski]

Want to know who reads it (source rag)? Check out the personals:

Men seeking men
Women seeking women
Wildside
Other

Oh, that explains it. Just another homosexual pissed off because he can't get access to a segment of the child population.

[Ignatz]

This pathetically ignorant slug has obviously not heard that homeschooled kids not only excel academically vs. their public-schooled comrades, but are doing likewise in the workplace. They're the most well-adjusted, productive members of their generation.

Do you mean the author or fml? Your comment applies to both.

[GOPrincess]

It strikes me that this author doesn't like kids, period. School vs. homeschool perhaps only comes up as a topic to "rant" about in the first place because school is where he/she can send kids to get away from them...

[concerned about politics]

some do however isolate their kids from the real world a bit too much IMO

On the contrary. The entire world is their class room.
Public school kids are stuck in a box every day with the same kids they've been stuck with for years. It goes on day after day, on and on. The same old thing.
Breaking away from the "block mentality" is a freedom public school kids will never be able to experience. They'll go out in the real world and get crushed. Home schoolers have always been in the real world. They're all set!

[Critter]

"Yeah, so many husbands have fantasies about a woman with scruffy hair, frumpy clothes, no makeup, and wild eyes..."

I know I did, but my ex would have none of it. She preferred sitting in her bathrobe til 2 in the afternoon, talking long distance on the phone while our 2 year old destroyed the house and then complained about how over worked she was while I did the dishes and cooked dinner for us, gave the kid a bath and tucked her into bed. Then I'd have to go back to work, to make enough to pay the $600 a month phone bill. :)

[Eastbound]

That's exactly what the stupid article reeks of. Written by a chicken hawk.

[TontoKowalski]

Well, at least you're not bitter.

: )

[Valpal1]

This piece shows that the Left is fundamentally all about indoctrination and control over other people's children. What frightens this woman is that there are people who are out of her control. Leftists are ultimately control freaks.

Yeah, AND we have more children than "they" do. Every anti home schooler I have ever met has made her disdain of her own children obvious. When they say that they could never spend so much time with their own children, how do expect their kids will interpret that?

[EternalVigilance]

This crap really amounts to what the left would call 'hatespeech', if it weren't Christians being attacked.

You see, they believe, rightly, that it is wrong to attack someone because of the color of their skin. But they can't seem to understand that it is wrong to attack someone for the condition of their heart.

More proof that the Left simply hates freedom.

[TontoKowalski]

RE: Chickenhawk:

I'd bet money we're right.

[GOPrincess]

"In the real world, people work with and become friends with other people of all different ages, rather than being segregated into age-specific groups.

In the real world, assault is punished, not ignored."

Amen. I have often mused that children are expected to put up with the kind of harrassment in schools which we would never accept as adults. We would either get another job, make the person knock off the behavior somehow, or sue (grin). Yet young, helpless children are supposed to "take it" and this will help them "grow" and "learn how to cope."

[Boot Hill]

• "I just can't see homeschooling providing adequate socialization."

I wonder just what kind of "socialization" she wishes to twist their little minds with.

• "Sometimes I even wonder if they're a manufactured race along the lines of the Stepford wives in Ira Levin's book..."

And I wonder just what kind of "Stepford wives" her brand of "socialization" is intended to create.

--Boot Hill

[mvpel]

And I wonder just what kind of "Stepford wives" her brand of "socialization" is intended to create.

Stepford Taxpayers!

[Critter]

"Other than my disgust at their lack of consideration for the education of their children and the resultant harm to the republic, I don't have a problem with people who dump their children in public school. "

I am resenting this part of this thread...

I'd love to home school my kid, but as a single, child support paying, custody sharing parent, I don't have much choice but to work my ass off, and do my best to counter the marxist propaganda that my kid is fed in the public school.

I do a fair job of it, I must say. I'm raising a rabid little libertarian, who knows about the Constitution and the founding of this country... about the way our government is supposed to work, and not work... about how to look at news, politics and even teaching in school with a critical eye... knows that zoning is bad, seat belt laws are bad, eviro-naziism is bad, socialism is bad, and why all of the above are bad.

She has standing permission to disagree with her teachers in class, if she knows she is being told a pack of lies, and my promise that if she gets in trouble for speaking out, that I will back her 100% AND buy her and ice cream sundae for the trouble. :)

So lay off us will ya?

[Ignatz]

What on earth is Creative Loafing, and do they have advertisers?!

"Creative Pant-loading" is more accurate.

[Esther Ruth]

"It strikes me that this author doesn't like kids, period"

Some of these women REALLY do NOT like children. I'm in stores once in awhile during "typical school hours" with the kids and women will hear their dear sweet melodic voices and their heads will turn like that girl in the Carry flick to see where the wretched sound came from, then she will shriek, "what is this? a holiday? what are THEY doing out of school?" and look at them like spiders that have crawled through the store - You talk and get to "visit" and tell her all she will allow you to, and the kids will be as sweet as can be, but all along you can see the look in her face, she is shaking and getting hives being around THEM, and worrying what dreadful conversation she may be dragged into. Funny funny! Like the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, those women in Vulgaria - they would lock the kids up in caves under the city and faint if one snuck out and they saw IT.

[Critter]

" have often mused that children are expected to put up with the kind of harrassment in schools which we would never accept as adults."

There's another area where my kid has my permission to act. If someone bugs her in school, she is to follow channels and report it to the teacher. If the teacher does not act and the problem persists, she has my permission to punch the offender in the nose. If she gets in trouble for that, I will back her 100% and buy her and ice cream sundae for her troubles.