Julius Blumfeld puts a different slant on why he likes to home educate ...
Mary Whitehouse was a slightly sinister old lady who, until her death at 91, was a ceaseless campaigner for censorship of all the many things she disliked. I always felt she was a jolly bad thing, but I fear I am beginning to turn into her.
The problem is that I really don’t want my children to be exposed to the horrors of the modern world. I include in that category: discoes, crop-tops, any book written after 1950 (except Josie Smith), any word ruder than “silly”, the non-existence of God, the non-existence of fairies, slang, sex (of any kind), computers, most other children, popular music, mobile phones and television.
Please don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind these things for other people’s children. I don’t mind them for me - I write as an internet and TV addicted atheist who makes full use of Anglo-Saxon vocabulary when the need arises. It’s just that when it comes to my children, I make old Mrs. Whitehouse look like a 60’s Liberal.
When we started down the path of home education, my motives were largely educational. I always felt that schools were a wretched way to educate. Even the best schools tend to bore their pupils half to death, teaching irrelevant nonsense, badly (and I was lucky – I went to one of the “best” schools in the country).
But as time has passed, I’ve begun to appreciate more and more one of the indirect benefits of home education. I’m almost embarrassed to admit it, but for me the fact that we control what goes into our children’s minds is a very big plus. There’s always the risk that when they are older they will resent me for it, but I’d rather our children learned their values at home than from the knowing pre-teens who inhabit the modern school playground. And if that means a bit of censorship, I say “tough”.
Julius
Julius:
"for me the fact that we control what goes into our children’s minds is a very big plus."
Of course, parents have a big influence and a lot of power over what happens in children's lives... but to regard this as controlling seems at least a little bit morally dubious, doesn't it?
Don't we have a responsibility to enable children to develop their *own* ideas about what they want in their minds? To discuss things rationally with them, so they can learn to discriminate for themselves (erm, a rather tremendously important thing to know as much as possible about as soon as it is valued/valuable)?
"There’s always the risk that when they are older they will resent me for it, but I’d rather our children learned their values at home than from the knowing pre-teens who inhabit the modern school playground. And if that means a bit of censorship, I say “tough”."
Doesn't it go deeper than this? Surely it is reasonable to expect future resentment from our children where we have done them a disservice? Isn't the point that children really do want to learn decent values, so they can live good, successful lives, wherever those values hail from? How do they know what values are best if they don't get to discuss and compare them because they have been prevented from hearing ideas? Isn't censorship a rather dangerous approach, and doesn't straightforward learning-support do the job just as well and much more safely?
I mean, not many kids *prefer* the school playground to their own homes, do they?
"There’s always the risk that when they are older they will resent me for it"
Well if that's all that happens, Julius, you can relax.
A bigger danger is that they'll be eaten alive by kids who've grown up in the real world.
I think you need to let go a bit. If they hit age twelve or so without any exposure to life with a capital L, you - and they - are going to have problems.
You have to bring them up for the world as it is, not as you would like it to be.
My husband and I never (and I mean NEVER!) thought of home-schooling our kids, but I used to threaten them with homeschooling from time to time and it really put 'the fear of God into them' as they say. We were in no position to follow up on this threat, but the kids didn't know and the thought of being stuck at home with one of us instead of at school often helped 'bring them around'. I didn't remember that until I read your blog!
I don't blame the teachers, just our crazy modern world.
