Monday, January 15, 2007

A Homeschooling Pet Peeve...

It absolutely drives me insane when people within the homeschooling communities bereat anyone who disagrees with their views. I'm seeing this more and more in the homeschooling community which is why I refrain from claiming to be anything but a relaxed homeschooler. You won't find a discussion group on the proper way to *relax homeschool* because there aren't any. No board of relaxed home educators who will argue with you telling you that you are not really *relax homeschooling* because you aren't following some big name in the relaxed homeschooling movement. For the most part, I am to each his own, whatever is working for you is great.

2 comments:

Henry Cate said...

It can be frustrating.

As a group homeschoolers tend to be comfortable going against the norm, and fairly self confident. When someone comes along with a different point of view it is easy to say "You must be wrong!" rather than something like "I don't quite understand your claim, could you explain?"

Anonymous said...

I totally agree. A couple of examples are those who are standard curriculum users bashing unschoolers. They think that unschoolers are lazy, irresponsible, etc...despite the fact that unschoolers are getting into college, starting businesses, etc. just like theirs. I personally think people in that situation find it hard to believe that people can and do make it without schooling for 6-8 hours a day, without standardized testing, and without being taught by a parent or tutor.

However, those in the unschooling community are not without their faults either. I've seen numerous happy, enlightened, fun-loving children from families that homeschool with full curricula. They have great relationships with their children, there is trust, etc. Heck, some unschoolers bash other unschoolers because they claim that they aren't really unschooling, lol.

We arm ourselves with knowledge to prepare for those against homeschooling as a whole yet we are quick to criticize others homeschooling choices without checking out the facts...a bit hypocritical in my book.