“Schools, I hear it argued, would make better sense and be better value as nine-to-five operations or even nine-to-nine ones, working year-round. We’re not a farming community anymore, I hear, that we need to give kids time off to tend the crops. This new-world-order schooling would serve dinner, provide evening recreation, offer therapy, medical attention, and a whole range of other services, which would convert the institution into a true synthetic family for children, better than the original one for many poor kids, it is said; and this will level the playing field for the sons and daughters of weak families.
Yet is appears to me as a schoolteacher that schools are already a major cause of weak families and weak communities. They separate parents and children from vital interaction with each other and from true curiosity about each other’s lives. Schools stifle family originality by appropriating the critical time needed for any sound idea of family to develop—then they blame the family for its failure to be a family. It’s like a malicious person lifting a photograph from the developing chemicals too early, then pronouncing the photographer incompetent.” (John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down
Not being separated from vital interaction with my children is one of the things I love most about educating them at home. There are many reasons why I homeschool, but a major factor in the initial decision was how natural it seemed to keep them home and how unnatural to send them away. Homeschooling was simply a logical extension of being a mom at home with my children during their infancy, toddlerhood, and preschool years.
Mary Jo
Eek! John Taylor Gatto’s description of the non-farming-community New World Order school sounds too close to Aldous Huxley’s _Brave New World_ for comfort!
I’m glad we can choose to homeschool. 🙂
In Love,
Katie Barr