52 Churches

Jesse Scacciawrote:
One attitude among some homeschoolers that I find endlessly frustrating is that, as you say, you “don’t need to know.. how the other half works.” Don’t you think this sounds a little arrogant? Don’t you think you sound like you’re maybe bragging about possible gaps in knowledge/practice in your pedagogy? Even the best in their fields still go out and try to learn from their competitors or people doing it a different way. Why does it need to be such a ‘we know best, leave us alone’ attitude?

Of course it sounds arrogant.
That doesn’t make it untrue.
Most of us have tried the product you’re offering and found it wanting. Many of us used to force feed that same product ourselves.

Jesse, we’ve found something better.

You’re not the competition, you’re the 8-track tape.

We watch the schools. We take notes.
We mostly learn what to avoid doing:

We learn how to make children hate reading.
We learn how to make children despise math.
We learn how to make children loathe their own innate curiosity.
We learn how to stamp out every last spark of creativity and interest and zest for life.

These are not things we want to replicate.

We’ve given up the idea that the earth is the center of the universe; we’ve given up the idea that’s the earth is flat; and we’ve given up the idea that schools are places where young, vibrant people should spend their youth doing time.

We’ve found something better.

We do know better.

Give up the flat earth and chuck the 8 track. The sun doesn’t revolve around the earth, and a full childhood designed to create vibrant, interesting, interested, curious, innovative adults doesn’t revolve around school.

A response to Jesse Scaccia’s assertion that homeschoolers are arrogant in our assertion that we understand how the public school teaching profession works.

This is how public education works:

A bunch of previously ideological “teachers” get a captive audience of “students” (compelled to attend by force of law) to whom they must “teach” a set curriculum that may or may not suit the needs of said incarcerated children, may or may not hold their attention, and generally grinds out any sparks of curiosity and interest in life that the children had.

Said ideologues grow jaded and burned out. Said ideological teachers are so burned out on even the idea of learning that they must, themselves, be forced into “continuing education,” because they wouldn’t otherwise do it. (And, sadly, every continuing ed class I’ve been in that was a subject I wanted to study, was clogged with teachers just grinding out required credits and bogging down those of us who were there by choice).

Said prisoners (both students and teachers) stop yearning to be free.

Bureaucrats and legislators throw more and more money at the “problem” while simultaneously increasing the length of the school day and the length of the sentence. (And, should you think that “doing the time” isn’t the point of this incarceration, let me point you to any number of stories about the inmates having to make up missed time: graduated seniors, doing time in “Attendance school”, new draconian attendance policies, and the school from a few weeks ago whose calendar SNAFU (scheduling too many teacher prep periods) put them over a month behind in attendance).

Like prison, the focus is on doing the time.
It’s no wonder the guards are burned out.

It’s just surprising how few of them see it for what it is.

Worse, still, is how few of the guards or prisoners yearn to be free.  It’s lost.  Stolen.  Gone.

This does explain quite a bit about our society, though.

Our founders would be horrified at our docile acceptance of a childhood stripped of constitutional rights.  They would be repulsed at our destruction of the family.   They would revile us for trading liberty for security.  They would cry out against our training our children to trample the Constitution.