The Idiocy

Oh the silly things people say. We have a number of people in our life who do not agree with our decision to homeschool. I respect their right to an opinion, but not when it is an uninformed one. Regardless, when I let myself cool down from the fumes of frustration, I find the comments kind of funny.
One of them was, "Dante is an agressive, active boy- he needs to be in school". Now if you are a fellow homeschooler and are reading this, you are already laughing. If you are not, let me explain; it is funny because this person was suggesting that my agressive, active son would benefit from the traditional school day where he would sit(in an active way?) at a desk. This same friend also said that school is good because he thinks kids should be free to be who they are and what they want to be. Uh- huh...how is that exactly? Oh that's right...because in school they would be free to learn at their own pace, to delve deeply into pyramids if their interests took them there, to alter their curriculum if their needs weren't being met by current methods, and to 'find themselves' as they would certainly be free from socially- constructed peer group expectations.

Yes, I am being sarcastic.

Another amusing comment was the concern about the ability of homeschoolers to solve problems. The specific examples of such problems were how to fill out a fundraiser form and what to do if bullied. They've got me on the fundraiser form; we won't be covering that this year. However, we purposely gave our children siblings because we were very concerned they have at least a reasonable amount of bullying on their transcripts. Finally, there was worry expressed over a homeschooler's ability to dress for work. "If they do math in their pajamas, how will they learn to get dressed for work?" I guess I'm just not sure about that. I do know that I went to college with almost all public schoolers...and we went to math in our pajamas.