Posted on 09/19/2014 7:54:07 AM PDT by Ebenezer
About a year ago, when I first started considering taking my kids out of public school, I wasn’t met with the kind of incredulous questioning that I expected after suggesting something so reckless and foolhardy. For the most part people were excited and supportive and helpful. Many thought we were already homeschooling, in fact. What surprised me most though is that folks who were concerned about the prudence of such a decision weren’t worried that my children might not learn enough or the the right things. They didn’t wonder how my kids would know how to be quiet when they were supposed to or to wait in lines when they have to.
No, the biggest concern among the concerned was: SOCIALIZATION. Ahhhh! Socialize those kids! Learnin’, schmlearning- those kids need to be among herds of other kids their exact age in order to learn how to be normal. In other words: homeschooled kids are annoying and weird, and you don’t want your kids to be annoying and weird, do you?
Annoying and weird.
Well, if someone tries to tell you that their kids are never annoying, they’re lying to you. And if someone else tries to tell you that any child of mine isn’t going to be at least a little weird no matter how they’re educated, they’ve lost their minds.
But I digress.
Why is this perception of the weirdo homeschooler so pervasive? Why is it that despite the clear academic achievement of most homeschooled students, the fear of them “acting like that one weirdo guy I knew when I was a kid” is enough to turn otherwise supportive folks against the idea? I’ve thought about it a lot and the best explanation I can come up with is this: ridicule.
See, everyone is born with a certain temperament. Parents of more than one will all attest to this. Same parents, same environment, same rules….completely different reactions from their children. And some kids- well, some kids are annoying. And what do I mean by “annoying”? I mean what people mean when they say that homeschooled kids are annoying. I mean kids who ask too many questions and know too much information and like certain stuff and refuse to like other things and don’t care what other people think about their silly hobbies and their know-it-all-ness.
When “annoying” kids like this go to a traditional school, they’re ridiculed. They have a hard, or even impossible, time finding their niche. They must either hide their true personality and inclinations in order to be accepted or they’re pushed to the fringes and made to feel abnormal. Not good enough. Made to feel less likable than those who keep their ideas and opinions to themselves or fail to form any to begin with. Made to feel that convictions and fascinations are stupid and that pop culture is the only culture. Not because “normal” kids are mean. They mostly don’t even know they’re doing it, I assure you. They just don’t know what to do with someone who’s so, like, weird. Ya know?
I know. I was one of those weird kids.
My eldest daughter knows. She is one of those weird kids.
But when one of those “annoying” kids is homeschooled, no one makes fun of their outfits that don’t match. Or the fact that they like to memorize things and wish the math assignments were harder. No one looks at them askance when they know every answer to every question and are eager to share their knowledge. When an annoying kid like that finds a new hobby and wants to learn everything they can about it and talk about it incessantly, no one treats them like there’s something wrong with pursuing an interest like that, no matter how dull it may seem to the other members of the homeschool classroom. They are not ridiculed into trying to be who God didn’t create them to be.
“Oh but dweej…that’s real life! You can’t just go around being annoying all the time. Better they learn now than later!”
Better they learn what? That the crowd knows best? That their interests are boring and a waste of time? That they need to wear a certain thing and buy a certain thing in order to be worth people’s time? Better they learn now not to stand up for themselves?
Because that’s the thing. By the time annoying people like that are older, they’re older. They’ve advanced beyond certain stages of childhood and are better able to confidently stand up for what they believe in. The idea of being ostracized by a group of people that they don’t really like anyway no longer sends them into a panic. If they spend their whole childhood trying to be something they’re not or believing that what they are is weird and weird is bad, they’ll enter adulthood with those same perceptions, that same lack of self-confidence.
If, on the other hand, they’re able to cultivate their interests, learn to be comfortable in their own quirky skin, encouraged to achieve as much as their little over-achieving hearts desire, they’ll enter adulthood with the confidence to continue on that path. They won’t automatically wonder if people will disagree or make fun of them when they make assertions or cling to ideals. And if those people do disagree or make fun of them they won’t care. Because they’re not kids anymore. They’re all grown up!
Of course, not every homeschooled kid is like that. Not even every one of the kids who lives in this house is like that. But no one asks the “normal” kids and adults if they were homeschooled. It doesn’t cross their minds. Because they’re so, you know, normal.
But the homeschooled kids who are like that, who are “annoying” are so different, so confident, so willing to allow themselves to be something that the majority of society has labeled as weird, that people can’t help but paint all homeschooled families with the weirdo brush. Because shouldn’t kids like that want to keep their mouths shut and keep their opinions to themselves?
And that’s why homeschooled kids are so annoying. Because no one tells them that the way God made them isn’t cool enough.
A huge number of students in the public school arena had a single mom parent and she was probably, at best, a high school graduate.
The people who make me grind my teeth are the “conservatives” who have swallowed the leftist propaganda that government schooling is the backbone of America, and all we need to do is make sure the kids can “pray” and “recite the Pledge.”
(Never mind that “the Pledge” denies a natural right that is enumerated in the Declaration: the right of secession.)
These “conservatives” believe you can build a building with public money (communism), and staff it with teachers paid with public money (communism), and send children there seven hours a day for twelve years (communism), and not have the children emerge from this experience as little communists.
I tend to agree with you. !st let me introduce myself. I am a conservaative Christian that believes in the entire book of the Bible. I believe holiness and righteousness are a trademark ofthe true spirit-filled Christian. Members of my extended family were involved in the aboriginal days of the homeschooling movement. Having said that, I have seen a lot of products of homeschooling that are intellectually and socially starved. I believe God has given us both special and general revelation about the world around us and many homeschoolers with the “dugger” mentality seemed skewed in some way. Both of my girls were public-school educated and are fine Christians today. I believe some of the strongest Christians come through the fires and temptations of public education and can adapt to an ever changing world. Flame away you Bob Jonesers!
In the Catholic school I attended, one child was identified as the “class goat,” early in First Grade. His life was a living hell for eight years. Teachers did nothing. His parents did nothing.
It was attitudes like yours—trivializing what was going on—that made this possible.
In my experience, children who have learned how to ask “Why?” don’t learn how to listen to an answer for another ten to twenty years.
I agree, although there are times when the Rabid Conformists come out of the woodwork and swarm. I’m thinking threads about the Pledge of Allegiance, Spanking, or a new Republican war.
A parochial school education incorporating Common(communist)Core will also accomplish that for you. Amazing that anyone would willingly pay tuition to send their kids to Catholic schools such as those in the Archdiocese of Boston, where the Cardinal and his education minions have implemented Common Core.
“People say, ‘How will your son be socialized if he doesn’t go to school?’ I tell them, ‘That’s easy. Every morning, I take him in the bathroom, beat him up, and take his lunch money.”
Thanks for proving the stereotype and painting with the broad brush.
If I lived in certain areas of this country I might homeschool too. My 3 kids attended public school, no bullying, never got in a fight, never had their lunch money stolen.
If you are willing to condemn in broad strokes are you willing to accept it in return. Would it be fair to claim that all homeschooled kids are possible maladjusted psycho spree shooters like homeschoolers Adam Lanza (albeit briefly homeschooled) and Colorado church shooter Matthew Murray?
That's not fair to all the good homeschoolers, neither is condemning all public schools, teachers, and parents who send their kids there.
I hear you but you have to learn to be true to your beliefs and not let mobs affect your thinking one way or the other. I have no use myself for home schooling. If public schools were unacceptable I would put my children in a private school. But that is me. To each his/her own
Saying it’s unfair to condemn all government school teachers and parents is like saying it’s unfair to condemn all ax murderers. After all, there must be some good ax murderers among the bad ones.
Government school is evil. It was created for evil purposes. It was imposed on America through bribes, propaganda, and brute force. All people who send their children to government school are failing their children in a serious way.
Should be non home schooled cop etc.
I’ll tell my son who’s about to get an undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from one of the best schools in the country, and happens to be a fine Christian young man that i’ve failed him and he’ll never succeed. Thanks for enlightening me.
I believe in most urban areas that is called "acting white"?
It never was. Government schools were an idea brought to America from Prussia in the 1830s. There is nothing American about government schooling. It was, from the beginning, part of the Left’s effort to destroy the U.S. Constitution.
I see that you were a public school teacher. Maybe you should consider how you had to hide your faith from the children that were left in your care 7hr a day for most of the young life. Never in God's Word are parents told to send their kids into battle. We need to train them and protect them and when they are ready we send them out.
I have taught many kids throughout my years as a youth Sunday School teacher, including public, private and home schooled kids. The home schooled kids are uniformly intelligent, independent and polite, even the ones that were homeschooled because they are a bit ADHD and their parents feared mandatory zombification.
That's a very perceptive observation.
Caution for Home Schoolers...Be very careful if choosing "on line" curricula.
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