Earlier this week, Redsy pondered the bias against homeschool. While her idea for a money-making video with a mudpit and provocative questions is pure genius, she also discussed why public-schoolers and home-schoolers have a hard time getting along.
Personally, I couldn't care less how you choose to educate your children, as long as you actually teach them stuff. But this post about the Creationist Homeschool Science Fair by the Utne Reader's Bennett Gordon goes a long way toward explaining why all homeschoolers are viewed with suspicion.
"The
children’s gangly limbs and bad acne reminded me how vulnerable I was
at their age and how easily someone could have brainwashed me," Gordon writes. It's that vulnerability that makes most parents a little leery of educational systems that don't expose kids to a multitude of ideas and contain some oversight.
Yes, yes, most folks who choose to nontraditional educational methods aren't "weird right-wing Christian types whose children lack social skills." Still, many of them are. More than anything else, that image problem may be what makes nonhomeschoolers raise their eyebrows clean off of their heads.
Photo credit: Bennett Gordon
