A friend of mine once confided in me, embarrassed, AMy 6-year still can=t tie his own shoes. Can yours?@ She had just recently come from the doctor=s office and sheepishly admitted that the doctor had lectured her for not teaching her son age-appropriately. Tying shoes, it seems, has been deemed a A5-year-old skill,@ and woe to the youngster still clad in velcro on his sixth birthday or beyond.

The catchy bumper sticker says, AEvery home is a school . . . what are you teaching?@

Apparently, by the experts, parents have the knowledge required to teach shoe tying, but not reading, math, or other Aacademics.@ Those on the outside looking in may ask, AWhat makes a home a school? When are you doing school, anyway?@

Is setting the table Aschool@ if you are five years old? Learning to count how many place settings are necessary for the expected number of diners requires a number of math and thinking skills as well as focus and dedication to the task until completion. If you doubt, just ask a five-year-old to set the table.

What about grocery shopping? Meal planning? Laundry sorting? What about messing around in the dirt, throwing rocks in the creek, picking flowers, and climbing trees? Are those activities part of schoolwork?

Probably not, most would say, as there aren=t formal curricula out there with fill-in-the-blank forms testing knowledge of detergents and water temperature, price comparison technique short essays, or tree climbing assessments tests..

Too many folks new to homeschooling, both on the outside and the inside, ask, AHow many pages did you complete in your workbooks today? How many subjects did you cover this morning? Are all the boxes checked on your To Do list? And those boxes for grade appropriate skill mastery, you are checking all those off, aren=t you?@

Have we gone mad as a society to stress out over shoe-tying? Can the erratic progress children make as individuals journeying toward adulthood really be quantified and packaged, given in universal doses and universally sucked up and spit back at out at the same rate for all children? Why do we accept this idea as Aeducation?@

All the pop psychological and educational jargon thrown around these days has parents bantering like graduate students. Parents have become very passive and Aneutered@ to a certain extent, sitting back and assessing the skill-levels and masteries of their children, simultaneously blamed for deficiencies and belittled as incapable. Videos, software, classes, and school make up the expert arsenal.

Dare to ask, AIf I am unable to teach my child, and thus I hand him over to the experts, then why is it my fault when he can=t read, tie his shoes, pass Algebra I . . .? I thought that was your job?@

Think again.