Homeschooled kids, I am here to officially announce, are NOT WEIRD! Not bad-weird.
You heard it here, first, folks.
I have been to so many events and organizations with kids from backgrounds quite different from ours. All races, all classes, many religions, spanning the political spectrum from farrr left to farr right. Babies, tots, littles, mediums, teens and I know a few adults now who were homeschooled or unschooled. They really aren't weird!
What is weird? Is it good, like being a free-thinker, someone of strong personal beliefs, not afraid to stand out? Is it a geek, a nerd, a smart person? A lonely loner?
Well, I am writing this post in response to someone who is starting to homeschool her children and has had her mother in law tell her that "all homeschooled kids she ever met were weird", and she said this as a deterrent to undertaking homeschooling. So lets assume, for the sake of this post, that WEIRD means somehow socially messed up, or somehow appearing to be really really odd in a bad way. Its so stupid, even as I type it!
If this is to be the description of WEIRD, then, again, I stand by my proclamation that homeschooled kids are NOT WEIRD. Or, more specifically, the homeschooled kids I have spent significant amounts of time with, and it is in the hundreds of children now, and hundreds if not thousands of hours, have a lower WEIRD ratio than the public at large.
They sure seem much more likely to be able to carry on a conversation with adults, to be open to playing new games, to be polite, to be cheerful and to seem just-nice! Happy! Busy! Curious! 100% less sullen!
Heck yeah these are generalizations, and I am not going to write that all schooled kids are evil and angry and defiant and precocious and messed up. The kids we know personally who go to school are not like this. But the ones we meet on the playgrounds and the restaurants and the beach and the mall and at birthday parties sure seem to be noticably WEIRD to me. You know, bad weird.
Any grandma or grandpa or anyone else who thinks homeschooled kids are weird, should definately take the time to respond to the rebuttal: when is the last time they ACTUALLY hung out with some homeschooled kids? When is the last time they hung out with any kids? (In 2007, not some twisted memory of the 1940's that my own dear gran has in her mind, bless her heart.)
What exactly is coming to their minds, some freakshow thing they saw on TV once? Do these people not get the powers of edited television to paint any picture they want?
Some random family they once met? Could they possibly judge all of the kids who go to school by one family they once met? Of course not.
Go on in peace, everyone-seriously-- and raise your kids, homeschool them if you can or want to. But if you could, any chance you get, please help to get the word out that these kids are really really just kids whose families happen to want to play a major part in their education, and to give them the real oportunity to grow up how they would/could/should as themselves.
Maybe that is weird. But is it bad?
5 comments:
Here! Here!
I agree.
:)
I really want to get some of those tshirts from cafepress.com (type in Homeschool in the search engine and just drool)
But then I want 4 of them and then its to expensive...arg
EXACTLY!!!!!!!
See, I told you that you and I are on the same page.
I have been mightily impressed by most of the home-schooled kids I have met in my life. There is a certain light - a thirst for knowledge and learning - in their eyes that tends to be missing in the eyes of most of the kids in the public school system. I know because I worked in the cafeteria as a lunchroom supervisor at my son's school last year for several months, and had daily contact with all the kids in that school. I saw the lack of that light everyday. Instead of a thirst, often I saw quite the opposite.
Actually, it was partially because of that experience that I pulled my son out. School is, quite frankly, mostly about crowd control. I shuddered to see the crap these kids ate and the crap they ingested in their minds everyday. It wasn't really from the teachers either. The teachers were great. It was the other kids who were the problem. I was astounded at what I saw, and it was an elementary school, for pete's sake! I don't want my children having to be subjected to that all day, everyday. I can certainly do a better job here at home.
Besides, why would I want my children to be socialized to only be comfortable with kids their own ages, only know how to talk in the latest slang, and not have a clue how to truly be themselves and not submit to the box that so many other people live in? I feel like the best way to raise a child is to teach him to get along well in a family, and then take him into the real world and teach him how to get along well there, too. How else should I teach my children to think than by exposing them to the greatest minds in history through those people's writings, art, music, and whatever else there is? How could that possibly make a child wierd? Different? Yes. Peculiar in that they would have a certain poise and confidence unseen in most children? Absolutely!
Hey, if that is what it takes to be wierd, I'm all for it!
(Sorry this has turned into a book!)
Thank you for saying this! Sometimes my own family has implied strongly that I dont kow anything about school-kids and that I have this negative image from "no where". Its so cool that you have recently worked in the schools and can second what I know to be true.
I have alot of exposure to schooled kids. I worked in a private daycare/preschool in 1999 for almost a year when Greta was a tot. I saw the sparkle fade as the kids got older, and I saw the way their older siblings were. I see them when we go places, and in the neighborhood.
It ISNt the teachers, it is the children, raised in a parentless, media saturated angry and shallow society that I worry about. The teachers try their best, and the schools have come a long way on the surface from the little desks in a row and the greenish flourescent lighting and the spanked with a ruler days of my early public school experiences. But it doesnt matter. Because no matter how many colorful rugs they throw down, or how they arrange the desks--its still survival of the coolest, crowd control, standardized testing worship, and "education" comes a distant, distant second, third, fourth, or lower.
You are completely right, and I refuse to subject my children to that anymore. I'm glad that you do, too
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