Monday, June 01, 2009

there are some pretty mean people out there

Yeah, I was out of the loop this weekend with 3 Boy scout activities, a trip to the NRA range, extra piano practice for the upcoming recital, cleaning my house for company, and a trip to the thrift shop to restock Julia Ellen's wardrobe. While perusing my favorite blogs Sunday evening, I read great rebuttals to this anti-homeschooling post by Michelle and Spunky.

Apparently we homeschoolers are selfish, going against God's wishes, arrogant, intolerant, racist, and raising geeks. I can say with my whole heart that none of these things are true of any homeschooler I know. We see a broken system that doesn't care about children, is atheist in teaching, and is supremely arrogant and we don't want to sacrifice the gifts we have been entrusted with on the altar of government education. We can do a better job teaching our children, even if we don't have multiple degrees after our name because we want these children to succeed much more than any paid stranger and will do everything we can to train them to be good people.

Then poor Tim had to put all the little ones to bed while I was immersed in the saga posted by Milehimamma after she was attacked for not properly feeding or educating her 7 (soon to be 8) children. After reading her blog for over a year now I can say that she feeds her kids a lot more nutritious diet than I ever could and I think I'm doing a better job than the average. Her kids eat lentils and brussel sprouts for crying out loud!

"If you loved them, you would want them to have the attention and time it takes to make them the best they can be. Good schools limit the number of children in a classroom. Why? Because teachers need time to teach and care for each child. Good mothers are the same way. And special needs children need even more time."

Guess what? Most teachers have classes of 28-35 kids in their class, down to 12 in a special education room. That is far more than Milehimamma has in her "school." She blows me out of the water with her highly organized Montessori style toys in her living room, her training the kids to save $$ by using dry-erase markers in workbooks, and the obvious patience she exhibits with her kids. Some mothers are called to raise children with more needs than others and I have all the respect in the world for them.

In the slightly modified words of Dr. Laura, "Which of you would want to be homeschooled by your loving mother or sent away to the local public school?" I would definitely want to be in one of these Mommy's homes being taught my ABCs.

3 comments:

Milehimama @ Mama Says said...

Aw, thanks for the support!

I am always stumped when people say that a public school teacher will have more time to devote to a student in their classroom 6-8 hours a day (with 25 other kids) than a mother who's there 24 hours a day.

My oldest was in special ed. for 2 years, and there were 6-8 kids in his classroom (which was set aside solely for his particularly type of disability - the other sp. ed. rooms for physically disabled children had many more students!)

Milehimama @ Mama Says said...

OMGoodness, I just read the anti-homeschooling post and couldn't stop laughing.

Are you sure that wasn't posted by The Onion or a spoof site? It can't possibly be serious.

Her reasons against homeschooling is that college kids insult people and that you can't learn anything in a place where you eat Fruit Loops?

Thanks for the giggle!

Dawn said...

Wait a minute! Some of us ARE raising geeks and are quite proud of that fact! :D