Homeschooling Questions

This is just something I seen on another blog that I got a laugh out of. Enjoy!

The Bitter Homeschoolers Wish List


by Deborah Markus

1. Please stop asking us if it’s legal. If it is-and it is- it’s insulting to imply that we’re criminals. And if we are criminals, would we admit it?

2. Learn what the words "socialize" and "socialization" mean, and use the one you really mean instead of mixing them up the way you do now. Socializing means hanging out with other people for fun. Socialization means have the acquired skills to do so successfully and pleasantly. If you’re talking to me and my kids, that means that we do in fact go outside now and then to visit the other human beings on the planet, and you can safely assume we have a decent grasp of both concepts.

3. Quit interrupting my kid at her piano lesson, scout meeting, choir practice, baseball game, art class, field trip, park day, music class, 4H club, or soccer lesson and ask her as a homeschooler she ever gets to socialize.

4. Don’t assume that every homeschooler you meet is homeschooling for the same reasons and in the same way as that one homeschooler you know.

5. If that homeschooler you know is actually one you saw on TV, either on the news or on a "reality" show, the above goes double.

6. Please stop telling us horror stories about the homeschoolers you know, know of, or think you might know who ruined their lives by homeschooling. You’re probably the same little bluebird of happiness whose hobby is running up to pregnant women and inducing premature labor by telling them every ghastly birth story you’ve ever heard. Please go away.

7. We don’t look horrified and start quizzing your kids when we hear they’re in public school. Please stop drilling our children like potential oil fields to see if we’re doing what you consider an adequate job of homeschoooling.

8. Stop assuming that all homeschoolers are religious.

9. Stop assuming that if we’re religious, we must be homeschooling for religious reasons.

10. We didn’t go through all the reading, learning, thinking, weighing of options, experiementing, and worrying that goes into homeschooling just to annoy you. Really. This was a deeply personal decision, tailored to the specifics of our family. Stop taking the bare fact of us homeschooling as either an affront or a judgement of your own educational decisions.

11. Please stop questioning my competency and demanding to see my credentials. I didn’t have to complete a course in catering to successfully cook dinner for my family. I don’t need a degree in teaching to educate my children. If spending at least twelve years in the kind of chew-it-up and spit-it-out educational facility we call public school left me with so little information in my memory banks that I can’t teach the basics of an elementary education to my nearest and dearest, maybe there’s a reason I’m so reluctant to send my child to school.

12. If my kid’s only six, and you can ask me with a straight face how I can possibly teach him what he’d learn in school, please understand you’re calling me an idiot. Don’t act shocked if I decide to act in kind.

13. Stop assuming that because the word "home" is right there in the word "homeschool," we never leave the house. We’re the ones who go to amusement parks, museums, and zoos in the middle of the week and in the off-season and laugh at you because you have to go on weekends and holidays when it’s crowded and icky.

14. Stop assuming that because the word "school" is right there in homeschool, we must sit around a desk for six or eight hours every day, just like your kid does. Even if we’re into the "school" side of education- and many of us perfer an organic approach- we can burn through a lot of material a lot more efficiently, because we don’t have to gear our lessons to the lowest common denominator.

15. Stop asking, "But what about Prom?" Even if the idea that my kid may not be able to indulge in a night of over-hyped, over-priced revelry was enough to break my heart, plenty of kids who do go to school do not go to the Prom. For all you know, I’m one of them. I might still be bitter about it. So go be shallow somewhere else.

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 would n’t rather stay home and get some sleep now and then.

17. Stop saying, "Oh, I could never homeschool!" Even if you think it’s some kind of compliment, it sounds more like your horrified. One of these days, I won’t bother disagreeing with you anymore.

18. If you can remember anything from chemistry or calculus class, you’re allowed to ask how we’ll teach these subjects to our kids. If you can’t, thank you for the reassurance that we couldn’t possibly do a worse job than your teachers did, and might even do a better one.

19. Stop asking about how hard it must be to be my child’s teacher as well as her parent. I don’t see much difference between bossing my child around academically and bossing him around the way I do about everything else.

20. Stop saying that my kid is shy, outgoing, aggressive, anxious, quiet, boisterous, argumentive, pouty, fidgety, chatty, whiny, or loud because he’s homeschooled. It’s not fair that all the kids who go to school can be as annoying as they want to without be branded as representative of anything but childhood.

21. Quit assuming that my kid must be some kind of prodigy because she’s homeschooled.

22. Quit assuming that I must be some kind of prodigy because I homeschool my kids.

23. Quit assuming that I must be some kind of saint because I homeschool my kids.

24. Stop talking about all the great childhood memories my kids won’t get because they don’t go to school, unless you want me to start asking about all the not-so-great childhood memories you have because you went to school.

25. Here’s a thought: If you can’t say anything nice about homeschooling, shup up!