Annette Naake

> I'm afraid this was my first contact with a rabid
> anti-homeschooler.
>
> Anyone else met up with the likes of that?
>
> Shelly

Yes, unfortunately, the people I work with are rabid anti-homeschoolers.
First off, they associate homeschooling with Christian fundamentalism --
narrow-minded, isolationist, Bible-thumper types. Then, all of them were
highly successful in school (I remember a particularlly nauseating
discussion where they sat around for an hour or so talking about their
stratospheric SAT scores) so they simply can't imagine why school wouldn't
be a good thing for someone else, as long as you had "good teachers" and
"applied yourself." Meanwhile, we live in a city where the school system is
a gigantic failure -- kids can't read, they beat each other up in the
hallways, the teachers vanish mid-semester, etc.

My own kids are in school, because I do work fulltime. The newspaper here
did a big story on homeschooling recently, and my coworkers all said they
didn't even bother to read it because it was just such an idiotic notion.
They all declared they could never keep their kids home, and would I? I said
well, yes, I'd thought about it, but that at this point in my life I am
working. They were *stunned*. It shut them up for a while though.

I think they are reacting in self-defense. Someone else on the list pointed
this out. People always say, "I did it, and I turned out fine." NOT.

Annette




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