I got a kick out of The Bitter Homeschooler’s Wish List over at Secular Homeschooling. My favorite ones are:
6. Please stop telling us horror stories about the home schoolers 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.
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 homeschooling.
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.
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.
13. Stop assuming that because the word “home” is right there in “home school,” we never leave the house. We’re the ones who go to the 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.
That last one got me thinking that maybe we should be called self schoolers instead of home schoolers because most people really do think that we never leave the house and that we are raising future anti-social psychos.
That whole list is great. I should make copies and carry them around in my purse. That way, when we are at the grocery store in the middle of the day and a stranger asks Joey why he’s not in school (it happens every time), I can leave them some literature (which I’m sure they wouldn’t read).
[ list by Deborah Markus, from Secular Homeschooling Magazine, Issue #1, Fall 2007 ]
