Sonny Scott

Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, Tupelo, Ms.

You see them at the grocery, or in a discount store.

It’s a big family by today’s standards – “just like stair steps,” as the old folks say. Freshly scrubbed boys with neatly trimmed hair and girls with braids, in clean but unfashionable clothes follow mom through the store as she fills her no-frills shopping list.

There’s no begging for gimcracks, no fretting, and no threats from mom. The older watch the younger, freeing mom to go peacefully about her task.

You are looking at some of the estimated 2 million children being home schooled in the U.S., and the number is growing. Their reputation for academic achievement has caused colleges to begin aggressively recruiting them. Savings to the taxpayers in instructional costs are conservatively estimated at $4 billion, and some place the figure as high as $9 billion. When you consider that these families pay taxes to support public schools, but demand nothing from them, it seems quite a deal for the public.

Home schooling parents are usually better educated than the norm, and are more likely to attend worship services. Their motives are many and varied. Some fear contagion from the anti-clericalism, coarse speech, suggestive behavior and hedonistic values that characterize secular schools. Others are concerned for their children’s safety. Some want their children to be challenged beyond the minimal competencies of the public schools. Concern for a theistic world view largely permeates the movement.

Indications are that home schooling is working well for the kids, and the parents are pleased with their choice, but the practice is coming under increasing suspicion, and even official attack, as in California.

Why do we hate (or at least distrust) these people so much?

Methinks American middle-class people are uncomfortable around the homeschooled for the same reason the alcoholic is uneasy around the teetotaler.

Their very existence represents a rejection of our values, and an indictment of our lifestyles. Those families are willing to render unto Caesar the things that Caesar’s be, but they draw the line at their children. Those of us who have put our trust in the secular state (and effectively surrendered our children to it) recognize this act of defiance as a rejection of our values, and we reject them in return.

Just as the jealous Chaldeans schemed to bring the wrath of the king upon the Hebrew eunuchs, we are happy to sic the state’s bureaucrats on these “trouble makers.” Their implicit rejection of America’s most venerated idol, Materialism, (a.k.a. “Individualism”) spurs us to heat the furnace and feed the lions.

Young families must make the decision: Will junior go to day care and day school, or will mom stay home and raise him? The rationalizations begin. “A family just can’t make it on one income.” (Our parents did.) “It just costs so much to raise a child nowadays.” (Yeah, if you buy brand-name clothing, pre-prepared food, join every club and activity, and spend half the cost of a house on the daughter’s wedding, it does.) And so, the decision is made. We give up the bulk of our waking hours with our children, as well as the formation of their minds, philosophies, and attitudes, to strangers. We compensate by getting a boat to take them to the river, a van to carry them to Little League, a 2,800-square-foot house, an ATV, a zero-turn Cub Cadet, and a fund to finance a brand-name college education. And most significantly, we claim “our right” to pursue a career for our own “self-fulfillment.”

Deep down, however, we know that our generation has eaten its seed corn. We lack the discipline and the vision to deny ourselves in the hope of something enduring and worthy for our posterity. We are tired from working extra jobs, and the looming depression threatens our 401k’s. Credit cards are nearly maxed, and it costs a $100 to fuel the Suburban.

Now the kid is raising h… again, demanding the latest Play Station as his price for doing his school work … and there goes that modest young woman in the home-made dress with her four bright-eyed, well-behaved home-schooled children in tow. Wouldn’t you just love to wipe that serene look right off her smug face?

Is it any wonder we hate her so?

[…]

http://www.djournal.com/pages/default.asp

And this of course, is why the people at the TES, The Guardian and irrational talking heads like Professor Alan Smithers and all the other imbeciles, child hating teachers and other ignorant, absurd, family hating, liberty destroying anti-education zombies hate home schooling and home schoolers.

They hate our freedom.

They hate anyone that has the freedom they do not have, the success they do not have and the relationships they do not have and are incapable of fostering. Instead of learning from people who are better than they are and who live better lives than they do, and changing their own lives, they want to destroy anyone that does not mindlessly suffer as they do. They hate the fact that the reward for choosing non-conformity is a fast track into university. They hate the fact that home schoolers appear to have their cake and eat it…and not get fat children. They are frightened of difference. They are the same people who were for segregation and every other artificial social barrier enshrined in the law. They are the same people who were for Apartheid, Jim Crow and all those other, nasty, inhuman laws.

Yes indeed, these home school haters are everywhere. You know the type:

• They are officious whilst not having any official capacity.
• They speak with a loud, authoritative voice that leaves no space for rebuttal.
• They have no imagination, no idea of what liberty is and hate all that is not conforming.
• They always say, “but what would happen if……” thinking that only bad things can happen outside of the ‘norm’.
• They don’t know any history, and never look for it before they open their mouths.
• They are creatures of pure bitterness and are driven by pure jealousy.

I pity them as much as I despise them; as much as they hate the home schooler and the world view that they come from.

Home schooling is growing at a fantastic rate. In the end, it will seem as ordinary as rain.

In the meantime, we will have to contend with many ill considered articles written by ignorant self hating pigs. Thankfully, the internets make it possible for each of these articles to be instantly rebutted and shot down. The internets make it possible for home schoolers to connect with one another creating an impenetrable shield of truth that no lying education correspondent can cut through; home schoolers will never be alone, isolated and ripe for attack.

The retards amongst you will require a disclaimer.

If you choose to work and send your child to school are you a bad parent? Does it indicate that you do not love your child as much as a home schooling parent does? Of course not. Sending your child to school is your absolute right, and no one has the right to say to you that you are doing the wrong thing, and you should do what someone else is doing.

That is the difference between US and THEM; WE accept that it is a parent’s right to bring up their children in any way that they see fit, no matter what anyone thinks. THEY believe that there is only ONE good and proper way to rear a child, and that way is THEIR way, and all people who do not accept this must be made to conform to THEIR way of thinking and doing.

We are better than them®

And that is a FACT.

Would you like to know more?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 at 6:24 pm and is filed under Home Schooling, Someone Clever Said.