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<< From the
beginning, I thought that I would see such a difference in children who were
homeschooled from those that went to school. And even though I know
homeschooled doesn't always mean a great difference from being in school, I
still thought I would see the children behave differently. I don't and I
must say I'm a bit surprised. >>

Extremely sheltered kids seem different, but sometimes they seem just
extremely sheltered.

I know two sheltering homeschooling families here. One was La Leche League,
but the mom was blind and the oldest girl did most of the housework and
childcare, and the family was full of rules. (I haven't been counting them
in the four homeschooling families I knew, because they weren't in my
babysitting co-op, and I mostly knew the girl from her babysitting another
family I know; they weren't homeschoolers.) The girl married as a
teenager. She hadn't dated at all, as far as I could see, so it seems to me
(I'm not sure) that she found someone at church and married him as that was
her only real escape from her house. She was "a good kid" and things were
peaceful at home as far as I ever knew, but marrying someone was her
"success."

Another family lives very rurally and they use correspondence school for
their kids. Other than the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) their kids
didn't have much "educational exposure" (not a good term, but good enough for
this story) because the parents figured the correspondence school would be
their education. Period. So the kids are not very broadly exposed to
things. The oldest married at 16 or 17 and moved to England. The second is
an irritating punk macho boy (Kirby says he's better lately, but I don't care
enough to find out, personally). The third lived for years babysitting for a
very schoolish family, but at least it got her away from the boring rural
correspondence school life and around people who listened to musicals, read
books, played games and talked. Even though they badmouthed homeschooling.
And she's always had Kirby and Marty to lean toward or stand next to if
anyone badmouthed homeschooling too much.

But neither of those stories involves unschooling families. They both
involve early marriage/escape.

When people have tried to associate me with school-at-home families, I've
always resisted, from the very beginning, when Kirby was five. In person, I
indicate with a drawing or an object "Here is school. On this side are the
conservative homeschoolers who homeschool because they think school is
teaching their children too much, and they want to shelter them. Here (on
the opposite side of my "school") we are, and other families who homeschool
because they think school is too narrow and too limiting. We want our kids
to know MORE than school was going to teach them. We think school is too
limiting. They think school isn't limiting enough. They're on the far other
side of school from us."

Since my homeschooling has always been based on Kirby himself (since he
wasn't going to do well in a school situation when he was little) and on my
philosophies about how learning best works, I was never in it for the
political-statement or social-statement reasons that would cause people to
say "Homeschoolers need to all band together."

I know that over the years I've irritated people who were trying to
accomplish political action of one sort or another, or to get a numbers-base.
I didn't want to be counted with people whose kids are home because they
don't want them to meet people of other religions or beliefs, or they don't
want their kids being with people of other races or cultures, or they don't
want anyone suggesting to their children that homosexuality is anything
except sinful depravity, and that maybe people are somehow related to apes
and monkeys. I don't want to help them homeschool. I don't even really
want to help them preserve their right to isolate their children and lie to
them and make them read books which are fantasy-based or Bible-based
reconstructed history and science. I think it's stupid.

What they prove when their kids get good test scores is that one-on-one
forced education works better than mass forced education. I don't care to
contribute to the proving of that. It makes me sick to think about those
poor kids with noplace to go after "school" when school's at home.

Where their advantage does lie is that a child who is dorky or awkward, or
has a speech impediment, or is funny looking and who would have been chewed
up and spit out at school can, by being homeschooled, be confident and calm,
and that often shows in speech and movement. I've met a couple of young
adolescent boys and I knew they were homeschooled right away, because even
though they were the kind of boys who would have had the gloss of shame and
fear on them in school, they were bright-eyed and direct even though their
clothes and haircuts were not nearly stylish, or would have been downright
unacceptable in a school setting.

So preventing overt bully-damage and teacher-shame is the best I see those
families doing.

That, and if you LIKE that sort of thing, they're raising kids who are
unaware of the diversity of the world around them. As fantasy life goes,
some people DO like that. And I think some new-age families end up doing the
same thing to an extent, if their kids are around pagans and wiccans and
celebrate the neo-pagan equinox and solstice holidays, and they aren't made
aware that in some parts of the country that could get them really shunned
bigtime.

Sandra, just rambling now, but onto something, maybe