You Are So Strange

PART ONE

By Linda Dobson

Some say I’ve lost my mind and others think I’m crazy!
While some suggest I stay at home because I’m lazy.
I’m happy to tell them, “This is most untrue.”
I just changed my career When I answered the ad…
Wanted: Housewife/Mother of two.
– Barbara Beckett

No  doubt  about  it.  When  you  start  announcing  to  the  world  that  you
want to stay home with the kids, when you declare their learning experience
is more important than the salary you’re giving up, when you proclaim that
you’re actually enjoying it all, somebody, somewhere is going to say, “You
are  soooo  strange.”  (Or s/he  will  just  think  it  and  verbalize  it  to a  friend
later!)
The potential list includes, but is not limited to, friends, fellow workers,
clients,  neighbors,  relatives  near  and  far,  grocery  store  clerks,  your
children’s  current  teachers,  pediatrician,  orthodontist,  football  coach  and,
perhaps, even your spouse.
Since  practically  everyone  has  experienced  public  school  classes  or
conventional schooling of some sort, our mutual experience is an unofficial
group  consensus  of  “normal.”  When  you  compare  family  centered
education  to  “normal,”  it  sticks  out  like  a  sore  thumb.  Neither  schooling
nor  society-at-large  provides  a  handy  yardstick  by  which  home  education
can be  measured. Neither schooling  nor society-at-large leaves many with
the  ability  to  successfully  imagine  an  alternative  to  institutionalized,
classroom experiences.
The  art  of  education,  like  all  art,  is  basically  a  private  affair. This
concept  of  privacy  appears  alien  in  a  social  climate  where  kids  are
encouraged  to  turn  to  in-the-same-throes-of-adolescence  peers  for  advice
instead of inward for wisdom, where a quick turn of T.V. or radio dial puts
you  and  millions  of  other  viewers  in  the  middle  of  marital  and  family
dilemmas  via  “talk shows,” and  where  increasing numbers of parents who
attempt legitimate discipline face threats of being turned in to “authorities”
for child abuse by children who “know their rights.” (These are children
receiving  the  same  conditioning  as  those  we  met  earlier  who  know  they
have  a  “right  to  be  told  what  to  do.”)  In any  comparison  to  public  school
relatively  little  is  known  about  home  education.  Even  less  is  totally
understood. (A well-schooled person who gets paid for doling out advice to
others  in  the  role  of  therapist  told  me  homeschooling  was  merely  a  cover
for  child  abuse,  representing  the  most  extreme  lack  of  understanding  I’ve
personally encountered.)
Most pioneers find that their “march to the beat of a different drummer”
is  often  misconstrued  as  strange  when  they  set  out following  their  hearts
instead of the herd. People laughed as the Wright Brothers worked on their
flying machine. Thomas Edison’s teacher told his mother he was a dim bulb.
Few fellow scientists believed  in  Albert Einstein’s  work until  enough time
passed for his theories to be tested and proved.
Though  large  numbers  of  family  centered  educators  have  yet  to  be
“tested  and  proved,”  University  of  Michigan assistant  professor  of
education  J.  Gary  Knowles  was  eager  to  find  out  if  homeschool  critics’
major concerns held any water. He set off to ascertain if homeschooled kids
could  become  “productive,  participating  members  of  a  diverse  and
democratic  society”  or  were  deprived  of  “normal  social  development”  by
studying grown homeschoolers.

Part 2 arrives tomorrow.

From The Art of Education: Reclaiming Your Family, Community and Self by Linda Dobson

(You can win a free copy of the 15th Anniversary Edition of Linda’s book by visiting Parent at the Helm. Click on the book cover, and follow registration instructions for a chance to win.)

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