*"Homeschooler /Anti-School C. R. Thread!"*

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Honestly, I don't think any one has been mean. I think kit had some very valid and well thought through points, and it always worries me when debate is not welcome and things become too one-sided.
That said, I realise this is supposed to be a thread with home schooling advice, and will leave it be.

Apparently you do not believe that each individual parent is in the best position to judge which among the options will best suit their family?

I disagree.

While some parents make poor choices, most do not. When parents are truly in tune with their instincts, and truly listening to their child, I have found them to choose very well. Which is why I suggest to parents to trust their instincts. I aslo always remind them that a child CAN be happy with "school" (including within that concept homeschool as an alternative), and they should settle for nothing less. Who are either of us to tell a different parent what that choice MUST be? Simply because you feel your parents choose wrong for you? Does that mean that all parents will? NO. By coming here and posting, we already know that these parents are very thoughtfully evaluating their children's school situations and trying to improve them. They may well end up making the choice to homeschool. They may not. But if they have been provided with all the proper information, and feel that their final choice is the best possible given the dynamics in their unique family, yes, I feel we both need to support that. I support your choice whole heartedly, and yet you cannot support mine? I find that unfair and unreasonable.

I never said homeschooling was an extra. Simply that I can learn valuable lessons from your experiences. I am sorry if you find that to be a joke. It is not. I will take whatever information I can get from whatever source to do the best by my family that I can. You disagree with that?

Your hatred towards all state supported schools is prejudiced and unfounded. You are free to make choices based on that for yourself, of course, but to speak so negatively to us who disagree is completely unfair. There are wonderful teachers, specialists, and principals among that system. As well as bad ones. Would you like me to judge you by that California family who abused their children and used homeschooling to hide it? I would think not. Everything in this world can be good or can be bad. Generalizing from unit A to unit G is rarely fair or accurate. I am sorry that you believe the institution of school is responsible for some of the gravest ills of our society. I am sorry, but I have not found that to be true. My Aspie father did not consider it true, and my Aspie husband does not, so it just isn't because I am NT that I feel this way. Both good and bad have resulted from public education systems in different countries, states and localities. I refuse to fail to see the good, simply because bad can exist.

I came on this thread in the honest hopes of continuing it within the intent in which you created it. Apparently one cannot support homeschool unless they are willing to throw vitrol against other alternatives. If that is what you wish in this thread, you will get negative responses posted on it. It is an unfair position to take. You cannot expect others to respect your positions, if you offer no respect for theirs.

Funny, I thought I was being helpful and nice. But since I don't homeschool myself, and actually support parent's who both do and don't make that choice, my post was not received as such.

Yes, I'm frustrated.

Some of you are trying harder to push your "anti" position onto me than I would ever, EVER, push ANY position onto ANYone.

Do you have any way of supporting this statement? Because if not it is just your personal belief. Not a fact. What makes you the expert on what the right choices are ? Their conditioned reflexes, socially constructed reactions? Why not their children? I suggest, and believe, that they might be rather more worth listening to in many cases. You conflate homeschooling and school in people's minds. That is a shame. You obscure the crucial differences, and reduce the choices by so doing. Do you really suggest to people that they should settle for "nothing less than happiness" ? Apparently it is to settle for nothing less than happiness. ..... Perhaps, which means that it is even more important not to p**** foot around with faint, tentative, supposedly impartial, ostensibly even-handed references/allusions to options which pretend to be equally good, when they are not. in what way do you do this? How is this support manifested? Why should I? Would you expect me to support the choice someone made to self medicate with some drug, if I thought it was unwise, or even harmful? ! ! Does no one ever disagree with you?

You said" It [homeschooling].. gives me ideas on things my son might do when he is not in formal school."

You would like to think so. It is not hatred, but political and parental protest, and is in fact both researched and founded. In what way? I do not criticise the practitioners, but the institution, against which even the best intentioned and most enlightened are helpless, as John Gatto, a brilliant school teacher, discovered. Illich also saw the problem as in the structure and framework of the institution itself. It has taken on an unwieldy and crushing life of its own.Since the french brought in the laws to stamp out sects/cults which have resulted in tests and visits for all homeschoolers not following a correspondence course, , more than 10 years ago, there has been only one case of a family exerting pressure on their children in this way. It is a drop in the ocean compared to the daily damage that the institution school does to millions of children, and at the same time to society all over the world. I would perhaps not have thought so if i had not read some rather amazing thinkers on the subject, ( listed in OP) and thought about it a lot.
I am not interested in uncritical "respect" for my position. i want people to examine it from all angles , to doubt, and to think. There is no point in people agreeing to respect other people's positions on principle. By that argument I should respect the Creationist position on evolution. .

Ouinon, there really isn't any point in discussing this further. You refuse to give me any credit for having a brain or being able to listen to my child. You refuse to understand on any level what I am trying to say. You refuse to believe that "most" parents are capable of making wise decisions, obviously, since you are asking me to "prove" that they are - I ask you to "prove" that they are not. Whose opinion are we using to judge THAT? Yours is better than mine, apparently? BUNK. We're just votes, two of many voices that hopefully can come together to form truth. Yes, at my core, I believe that people are capable of good, despite all the evidence of the contrary we hear in the news daily. I see that good day to day, in my community, in the small things, and all that isn't exciting enough to broadcast.

Yes, I support your choice to homeschool. I support homeschooling as a viable option for many families. I will vote that support if it ever comes up here in California, which it might, and I support it by mentioning it as a consideration in threads where parents talk about school difficulties, when it strikes me as appropriate. But that choice should be made from an informed base of information, not from a rant against those who don't have the same anti-institutional beliefs that you do.

I am very sorry that you absolutely, cannot, refuse, to ever return that favor.

I don't need to read a book by an amazing thinker to know if I have made wise choices for my child. I can see it in his eyes, in his actions, every single day. My job is to allow my son to grow into the "him" he is meant to be. We're succeeding in that, I have the evidence. He isn't me, he isn't my husband, he is HIM, and he is thriving. NOT by conforming to some NT notion of how he should be, either, I promise.

Last edited by DW_a_mom on 20 Mar 2008, 5:08 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Out of line!
This has never been a place of notes and references.
No two families are the same, and respect must be in both directions.
IMO the vigour with which you defend this choice makes me think you are not at peace with it.

I agree.

Perhaps not; so long as you refuse to consider that state education might be inherently harmful to children and society. If that was so i wouldn't even have bothered to reply to your last post after your clear refusal to admit the possibility of another position on state schoolingExactly ! We disagree. Please stop pretending that we have to agree in order to be reasonable adults. Ah, it's a rant now is it? You can't just admit that my position might be as tenable as yours but you disagree with it.

What is out of line here? What notes and refs are you referring to?
Why must respect be in both directions? Of people yes, but not of ideas!! ! Am I to respect the theories of Christian Fundamentalists ?

The atttack which this thread is experiencing might just as reasonably be said to point at a massive insecurity on the part of state-school supporters.

I don't need a book for that either, BUT I needed one to know to breastfeed longer than my mother did me, and to homebirth rather than in hospital, and to avoid early vaccination, and to find out about aspergers/AS. All of these were very helpful to me.

They helped me offer my child other options than he might otherwise have had. The same applies to homeschooling; i would not have dreamed it possible if i had not read about it.

But to know if he is happy i don't need a book for; Did you think i did?

Children are "constructed" , not excavated, and I hope to help him construct a strong self, which state schooling is increasingly clearly not doing anymore, if it ever did.

Last edited by ouinon on 20 Mar 2008, 5:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I cannot ever consider something as broad and diverse as "state education" as inherently harmful. That is the equivalent of saying "religion" is inherently harmful, as some believe. And, if you can be that broad, why not say "being NT is inherently inferior." Get what I'm saying? If you INSIST on lumping together huge volumes of disparate people or institutions, I am going to rebel. Very little is "inherently evil," across the board, all the time. Very precious little. I cannot stand prejudice in any form, and such a broad statement, to me MUST be prejudice, because you cannot have visited and studied every last state school in this broad world of ours, nor can the authors of which you so highly speak.

To me, to take the position you wrote above, to be so sweeping, is extremist, and I admit to being unable to find extremist positions, that have zero room for individuality, tenable. Guilty as charged on that one, lol, sorry. But can you see WHY?

Tell you what, I am willing to agree that the institution of state school is more likely than not to have some harmful elements, that arise simply because of how the insititution is formed. Just, well, when I look at OUR school, I believe those problems are being effectively counteracted by the teachers, parents, and leadership. If our school can weight the evil away, I believe others can, also. Would that be a concept you can accept? Middle ground for us, perhaps?

Time to get my daughter to ballet. ANOTHER day I didn't do my work - I MUST stop this!

Take care.

Well spoken.

Well, count me in...I agree 100% with homeschooling. Again, maybe not for everyone...but I will reserve my comments on why I don't think it's for everyone. It is definitely for my child and I wish I had been homeschooled as well.

i was thinking some more about this. And I really think this might be true. It is people in the state school system who need the support.
It is state controlled school which causes so many problems for people. Homeschoolers are happy in comparison. They've found the solution, half of the griefs disappear.

The state finds our contentment and success threatening, ( because it makes school look so ineffective; all that structure, all that time spent, and yet so much failure), hence the recent implementation of increasingly repressive laws to regulate it, (homeschooling), as if it were homeschoolers producing the delinquents and illiterate and oppressed people in our society!

The horrible thing is that the "failure" isn't an acccident. It is what the school system does, produce people for the bottom of the heap, and lots of "good" (obedient, constant) consumers, people who no longer know what they want or like or believe, and don't want to know either because it will probably just get them into trouble.

State education is a sorting machine, and the "winners" in this system are those who submit; those who comply with its idiotic rituals, its timewasting activities, its pointless restrictions, so that the nation's leaders, lawyers, doctors, accountants, policy makers, etc, will very largely be hollow men/women, "good pupils" who won't rock the boat, because they stopped thinking for themselves years before.

Much of western society's wealth depends on the results of state schooling ; the large numbers of docile desperate/compulsive consumers, the widespread boredom and passivity needing entertainment/distraction. Homeschooling risks ( perhaps) to topple that social engineering system of great power which is school.

oh please.....grow up......what rubbish!.....the last time i checked, we live in a democratic nation that prides itself on letting people make their own choices. just because my choice is not your choice does not make it wrong. just because your choice is not my choice does not make it wrong..............for cryin out loud,can't we all just get along ??????????????

You simply disagree with me, that's all!! I don't understand why so many people on the Parents forum seem to think that my criticising their ideas means I do not respect them as people. It's very odd.

And demanding that i agree with them, otherwise "it's not fair", or it's " unreasonable". I hadn't noticed anyone thinking that they had better agree with me if they didn't want to be disrespectful!!

Imagine if everybody agreed that everybody's choices and beliefs were equally valid. ...Idi Amin, Gaddafi, Stalin; their ideas are all equally valid?... Creationism, Flat Earth , Muslim Fundamentalism, Fascism? You really respect those ideas? Or do you "just" disrespect/dismiss the people who hold such beliefs instead?


Yes, this is what I think, and I don't see why I should stop believing this out of "respect" for other people. Can you imagine the Suffragettes getting very far if they had agreed with men saying that patriachal rule was much more reasonable? ( you know, that men would rule the outdoors public part, but that they wholehearted supported the little woman's activities in the home.)

Last edited by ouinon on 22 Mar 2008, 3:04 am, edited 1 time in total.