The case against homeschooling

Don’t look for statistics or anything other than anecdotal evidence to support this teacher’s “case.”

In response to his top ten list, here is my rebuttal:

(aka: Why I am so glad my kids won’t have a teacher like him):

#10: If your kid is geeky, he will be mocked, whether he was homeschooled or not. There are geeks in public schools. There are non-geeks in homeschools. Oh, and in MY school, I do not tolerate mocking. So, that would be the public school kids doing the mocking, and I’d rather not send my kids off there to learn how (thankyouverymuch).

#9: Funny thing, I attended an elementary school where we ate lunch at our desks. I really don’t think it is unusual for schools to do this. Why you can’t eat and learn in the same place is beyond my understanding. Why a home can’t be a learning centered environment is beyond me too. Really, all learning takes is books, and most homeschoolers have those lying about (one or two or…five hundred). Oh, and every elementary aged public school kid I’ve ever known has attended a “pajama day” where everybody dresses in jammies and they watch movies. And they call that school?

#8: It is not my child’s responsibility to teach other children. That’s why we hire teachers. Is it selfish for me to care more about my own child’s education than another child’s? I can’t raise the world. I pay my excessively high property taxes and expect the state to educate the poor. If the state can’t do it, give me my money back, and I’ll “adopt” a few kids and send them to a decent private school (NJ property taxes on my bitty home are over $4000 a year, enough for 2 kids at an inner city Catholic school). And another thing, the rich and the poor don’t really mix. Rich people live in nice neighborhoods in good school districts. The only peers that most poor kids have are other poor kids.

#7: Really, should a self-proclaimed agnostic dare speak for God? Amazing. Anyway, there are plenty of ways to evangelize, and since they can’t pray in school, I hardly think that would be the accepted venue for preaching the Word of God. They might get expelled. So, really, I’m saving everybody a lot of paperwork by just keeping them home in the first place.

#6: Whatever did we do before our best and brightest became public school teachers? Scary thought: by high school age, most kids are self-taught. Or they go to community college. Or they go to a co-op where the mom with a Master’s in English Lit teaches the kids with a mom who has a Master’s in Chemistry. Homeschoolers are resourceful and not limited to the talent found within the local school.

#5: As a mother, the NEA kind of pisses me off. When we got married, my husband and I included “not putting our kids in public schools” in our vows (I omitted “obey” and put this in instead).

#4: I hardly think the college students mocking homeschoolers (see #1) is a fine example of tolerance and acceptance of alternative lifestyles. It’s safe to say that less than 5% of the people in this country were homeschooled, and yet bigotry is still prevalent. Seems to me like brick-and-mortar schools are doing a piss-poor job of teaching tolerance. Of course, I also think it isn’t their job to do that. I have this crazy idea that schools are for learning things like how to read and write, not having somebody else’s values taught.

#3: You are so right. My kids are totally missing out on learning curse words, how to talk back to their parents and be disrespectful of other adults, how funny toilet humor is, what websites contain free porn, three dozen different slang terms for blowjob, what drugstores will sell cigarettes to minors, who sells marijuana, and which girls are putting out. The poor dears. It worries me how they will ever function in an office environment when they’re grownups.

#2: I have no idea what Henry’s full quote was or what he meant by it. I do not see homeschooling as risky. I definitely see public schools as risky. And no, I will not gamble with my child’s education. That is why I homeschool.

#1: Name calling, intolerance. Really, you need to examine your prejudices. Maybe get away from the school building for a little while and experience real life and real people outside of an institutional setting. Being with like-minded people so much really skews your perspective on life. Maybe you need to meet some real homeschoolers and get to know them a bit before judging. Don’t let their geekiness turn you away. Try to see past the way they don’t seem to care much what you think about them and get to know how their minds operate.

Study: Average Family Pays $1G a Year to Cover the Uninsured

This article’s main point is that when people receive health care, somebody has to pay. And if someone without insurance receives health care, those of us with insurance pay a “hidden tax” in the form of higher medical costs and therefore higher premiums.

Horrible.

So, naturally, the solution is to get everybody some health insurance, right?

Except that a lot of people who don’t have insurance, do not have it because they are unemployed and could not afford it. Or they are employed, but their employer (who may be themself) doesn’t offer it, and they themselves can’t afford it, so they go without.

So, if they can’t afford it, but we make them get it, who is going to pay for it?

Yeah, basically the same folks paying for it now. It just won’t be a hidden tax.