Posted in Public Schooling
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That was a criticism of homeschooling that I heard levelled against our family recently. It wasn't said maliciously; the woman is a good friend and a lovely person. But I think it reflects something that many people think: if you homeschool, how will you learn to deal with people who are annoying, incompetent, lazy, stupid, add whatever adjective you want. I find this a difficult line of reasoning to address, because it seems so strange to me. Why should we want our children to have to get used to people who are difficult because of character flaws? But even if we're not talking character flaws, but only people who simply have less intellectual capacities, or who are challenged in some way, can actually be more easily accomplished in a church or family setting anyway. When you're trying to learn in a classroom and someone isn't picking it up quickly, it's aggravating. It becomes difficult to like the person, and an antagonistic relationship is set up because they're slowing you down and causing you to become bored. When you're in a church setting or in the family, they're not hurting you in any way, so it's easier to want to be kind to them and bless them. I think this idea that we have people who are difficult to get along with all our lives, so our kids may as well get used to it when they're young, is just strange. As adults, there's no need to hang around unpleasant people if we don't want to. We can circumvent them in our jobs, or avoid them in other social settings. In a classroom you can't. You're stuck with them sitting beside you whether you want them to or not. So school really is a unique situation that has a tendency towards very dysfunctional relationships. My girls are turning out to be very compassionate, and they know several children with learning disabilities (their brother who died had Down's), and they like helping them. I don't think they'll end up with problems at all, and I'm still glad they don't have to put up with a classroom of several rude children just to learn to survive in the "real world". This is the real world, and they're doing just fine. |
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