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Homeschooling and being a misfit
Posted by Tim on Monday, September 06, 2004 | Permalink
My wife has recently started a homeschooling blog (here if you're interested).
Although most people don't realise that educating your kids at home is actually legal, it's becoming more and more common, with over 100 people a month choosing to do this (see this Guardian report).
Despite having done this for nearly three years, the opinions of family and friends remain negative, varying from ignorant concern to downright hostility. The fact that our daughter is happily learning in freedom (without having to sit behind a desk wearing a uniform and having to ask permission to go and perform basic bodily functions) doesn't seem to matter. My mother-in-law even went as far as phoning the social services! Quite what she was hoping to achieve I'm not sure - perhaps she thought that someone would come along and drag our daughter off to school "where she belongs". As this didn't happen (we were visited by a man from the educational authority who was suprisingly supportive) she phoned the social services again - anonymously - this time saying that our daughter had been seen covered in bruises. Needless to say, we no longer have anything to do with the EVIL FUCKED UP BITCH. Luckily the person who visited us from the social services realised that it was a hoax call.
My point is that all the arguments people use against homeschooling turn out to be a disguised version of "it's not normal", as if that in itself is a reason for not doing something.
Even my mother - the most "genuine" person I know - has called me a "misfit". What she has difficulty in understanding is that I am not a jigsaw piece. I mean, why the hell would I want to do things for no other reason than it's what other people do?
Although most people don't realise that educating your kids at home is actually legal, it's becoming more and more common, with over 100 people a month choosing to do this (see this Guardian report).
Despite having done this for nearly three years, the opinions of family and friends remain negative, varying from ignorant concern to downright hostility. The fact that our daughter is happily learning in freedom (without having to sit behind a desk wearing a uniform and having to ask permission to go and perform basic bodily functions) doesn't seem to matter. My mother-in-law even went as far as phoning the social services! Quite what she was hoping to achieve I'm not sure - perhaps she thought that someone would come along and drag our daughter off to school "where she belongs". As this didn't happen (we were visited by a man from the educational authority who was suprisingly supportive) she phoned the social services again - anonymously - this time saying that our daughter had been seen covered in bruises. Needless to say, we no longer have anything to do with the EVIL FUCKED UP BITCH. Luckily the person who visited us from the social services realised that it was a hoax call.
My point is that all the arguments people use against homeschooling turn out to be a disguised version of "it's not normal", as if that in itself is a reason for not doing something.
Even my mother - the most "genuine" person I know - has called me a "misfit". What she has difficulty in understanding is that I am not a jigsaw piece. I mean, why the hell would I want to do things for no other reason than it's what other people do?
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