Homeschooling... Not Just for Nut Jobs Anymore

Okay, I actually never really believed homeschooling was for nut jobs. But the only reason I could ever figure for homeschooling was to keep the nice, Christian kids away from the dirty-minded, regular kids. My parents sent me and my sister to a Lutheran school to keep us from being tainted, but little did they know that all the delinquent kids who got kicked out of public school ended up there too! So homeschooling really is the only way to protect your kids from that sort of thing.

But that is not why I do it. I am not really afraid of my precious darlings mingling with other kids. Yet. My oldest is 6 and all the other 6 year olds he plays with are public-schooled and delightful. I don't even do it because I think I am better than his teachers. I loved his Kindergarten teacher, and so far the teachers I have met at our public school seem perfectly nice and competent.

What I don't like is the system. That nebulous, big, bad system. Much like "the man", the system is hard to pin down, hard to understand, and hard to hold accountable. And I think our country could use a little less of that right now, and a little more simplicity and transparency.

So what's my point? My point is that I think schools really only adequately serve the top 20% (and maybe not even that many... I was #1 and look how I turned out). Parents are starting to realize this, so to make sure their kids make it into the top 20 they are acting crazier and crazier. The pressure on kids these days is enormous. And even if the kids manage to perform like good little circus monkeys and get the grades and the awards, they still often wind up living in their parents' basements with minimum wage jobs. Because all they know how to do is perform. They did not learn to think for themselves, and they sure as hell did not learn how to be ambitious or think outside the box.

Now I haven't even begun to make my case yet, so don't bother to nitpick everything I just said. Like clean-eating, considering homeschooling is a process. I didn't make my decision in one day, and I am not going to try and explain it in one post either.

We live in a nation that decides its elected officials based on 15 second sound bites. Well how's that working out for us? You're not going to get anything good from me in less than 15 seconds either, so if that's what you want, let me recommend my favorite short, funny, blogs right now!