Saturday, November 10, 2007

The Bitter Homeschooler

This list has been making the rounds of homeschooling e-mail lists. I think it's pretty funny. It's getting a lot of good responses -- most homeschoolers seem to agree this is pretty right-on.

My personal favorite is number 16:
16. Don't ask my kid if she wouldn't rather go to school unless you don't mind if I ask your kid if he wouldn't rather stay home and get some sleep now and then.

Secular Homeschooling Magazine

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5 Comments:

Blogger Lesley said...

Thanks for posting this... I love it.
And I'm sorry if I ever said any of it. I'm sure I've said, "I could never home school!" And when I did say that, what I really meant was "I don't want to home school." I'm entirely too greedy with my time. (How sad is that?) Also...I think home schooling must be expensive. So again, what I'm really saying is, "I'm cheap too."

Lately, I have found myself in the position of defending homeschoolers. Just recently I was talking with a group of moms, and I can't remember how it came up, but someone made the "lack of socialization" comment, and I jumped right in said, "No, that's a huge misconception."

If you don't mind, I think I should post this list on my blog. Some of my readers, who never comment, could benefit.

12:40 PM  
Blogger Sarah said...

In fact, I'm sure I speak for all homeschoolers when I say we would thank you for posting this on your blog. And thank you for sticking up for us.

Another misconception is that homeschoolers think everyone should homeschool. They don't. They just think everyone should be able to choose for themselves what works best for their families.

I personally don't think you're either cheap or greedy with your time.

12:44 PM  
Blogger Vivian said...

I'm sure I've asked more than my share of these questions. Funny how people think they know what YOU are doing and feel entitled to judge you based on their own (twisted) opnion. It's sad that the homeschool community as a whole and each homeschooler as an individual has to spend so much energy defending yourself for the decisions you make, just like stay-at-home moms, or working moms. We seem to have to have enough reasons to "justify" what we do. It's not good enough for others that we want the best for our children and our families (and ultimately, for the society), they all have to have a say in it.

2:43 PM  
Blogger Z said...

Very nice! A few comments:

Homeschooling is a huge investment of time. Huge.

It is not a huge monetary investment unless you want it to be. In fact, compared to what I spent in an average public school year on donations and uniforms and teacher's gifts and such...I could homeschool for less. So much depends upon your method, ability put free resources (library, internet etc) to use and planning ahead.

Here's another comment that rankles: "Good for you for doing that!" I really have no idea how to respond to that. I usually default to, "Uhhhhh". There's nothing to say that isn't self-congratulatory or falsely self-deprecating.

But other than that I've been fortunate than the person that wrote that piece. People generally haven't commented much on our decision.

Thanks, Leseley, fight the good fight.

6:27 PM  
Blogger Z said...

Lesley, too.

6:28 PM  

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