Yesterday the New York Times ran an article entitled Why I Am Homeschooling This Fall by Chandra Hoffman. First of all, most people could predict the type of comments a positive article about homeschooling would generate when published in the New York Times. The commenters did not disappoint; the insults to those that homeschool surfaced again and again. So, I am going to assume this article was written in good faith – and is not merely a ploy to generate controversy - and offer Chandra my support.
Chandra,
I wish you much success in your homeschooling endeavor. As someone who has homeschooled her 14.5 year old since the beginning, I admire your enthusiasm; I thank God for mine. As for your travel plans, I believe that we can read about China and volcanoes all we want, but there is no substitute for seeing the real thing. I say this as a New Englander living on one income who has never taken her son west of the Mississippi.
To your naysayers:
When a superintendent in our area recently retired, he identified the Bible as the most important book of all. Christians, in the form of students, teachers and administrators are in our schools along with the liberals, conservatives, atheists, and so on.
If you think the homeschool community is a homogeneous group, then you have never homeschooled in New England.
Whenever a parent reads to their children or takes them to the zoo or helps them with their homework, they are homeschooling. When Michelle Obama took her daughter to Spain, she was not spitting in the eye of the unemployed; she was homeschooling. I hope you are not freaked out by that.
Somewhere in this country is a child spending her lunch break in the rest room, because the two friends she has amongst the thousand or so students that attend her high school do not share her lunch period. You can offer your child many opportunities to socialize but that does not mean he or she will become a social butterfly.
Somewhere in this country is a child who has no clue what his algebra teacher is talking about.
Somewhere in this country is an algebra teacher that would like to reach out to all her clueless students, but there just is not enough time in a day.
Somewhere in this country is an algebra teacher that does not give a rat’s behind if his students understand the lesson of the day and that teacher has tenure.
I pray you never feel less qualified than the teacher that has labeled your child a failure.
There is no such thing as a perfect school, a perfect teacher, a perfect homeschool, a perfect parent, a perfect student or a perfect curriculum. We all must deal with these realities.
My success is your proof that smaller classes are needed.
I am not a liberal, a conservative, a Republican or a Democrat. The George Bushes and the Barack Obamas of this world do not care about the education of your child; they have one purpose - to keep the people of this country divided so that their party can be in power. The only person that truly cares about your child’s long term education is YOU!
Chandra, best of luck. May your good days always outnumber your bad.
