What Makes People Think They Are Qualified To Teach Their Own Kids?

[JoePhilly]

171. That's fine ... but I did not claim your home schooling was ineffective ...

If you reread what I wrote, I said that your approach to promoting home schooling seemed to be ineffective. Let me explain.

Homeschooling is neither good or bad per se. Some folks are very good at it, some are not so good at it. Some would never want to do it. Some would never do anything else.

In addition to the two examples I gave, I also know a few other families who do it, I just don't know those families as well.

In one case (not one of the two examples I gave earlier), I'm pretty sure that the underlying reason for their doing it is purely religious. At any neighborhood gathering, this couple will bring Jesus into absolutely every discussion. They are very nice people, but its clear that the last thing they want their kids to learn about is evolution. And I'd suggest that they are one of the reasons that home schooling gets a bad rap.

For instance, when I have heard them "promote" home schooling, they reference how the public schools removed prayer and God from school. They brought this up at a backyard BBQ that another neighbor had. Most of the neighbors won't touch this topic, but that night, I did. And so I asked, "Which prayer should be used ... can I be the one to pick?" ... this kind of stopped them cold. In the silence that followed, I asked ... "Would we rotate the prayer so that one day it was from the Catholic tradition, one day Protestant, one day Hebrew, one day Hindu" (we have plenty of families from India here). The discussion remained friendly, but it was clear that they were not in favor of that kind of diversity of prayer.

These folks don't help promote home schooling ... well ... not in the way you would probably want. Other neighbors have said things like "I'm glad they home school, we don't don't need creationism taught in the public school."

I'm not sure how best the "not crazy" home school folks can make themselves more visible ... but the crazy ones tend "stand out" ... Santorum, who recently attacked higher education as elitist had a bunch of home school folks standing behind him.

They make the larger home school community look insane.

In the first example I gave ... the family is so normal that they do not stand out. Which I think is what effective home schooling should be. Home schooling is a simple choice, and its a non-issue.

But there is a segment of the HS community that does "stand out" ... and not in a positive way. IMHO.