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| Photo by a lazy homeschooler |
You have enjoyed the freedom to homeschool that previous generations have worked so hard to earn and have forgotten the price they have paid for your freedom.
With freedom comes responsibility.
We were expected to outshine our public-schooled peers, and we did.All this said with that pious, 'purer than thou,' accusatory, judgemental attitude ("we are superior") masquerading as concern. Oh soooo concerned is Lisa Luper, the conscientious and well-schooled author of An Open Letter to Lazy Homeschoolers. She is so worried that homeschooling will get a bad reputation because of those lazy-ass, no good, homeschooling parents. You know the kind she's talking about. Go on Lisa -you can say it: Unschoolers.
She's so anxious about what the neighbours will say. She's afraid people might paint all homeschoolers with the same scruffy brush. So like a prim and proper schoolmarm, Lisa Luper casts about, wagging her finger at what she doesn't understand; that terrifying but awesome and invigorating thing called freedom. That which nurtures intrinsic motivation and delight.
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| A lazy homeschooler having too much fun |
How do you know what those who "worked so hard" so that we could home educate our kids today would have wanted for us?
Maybe they had a grander vision than your narrow, self-conscious, and fearful position on education. Maybe they dreamed that future generations would push against those boundaries, ever more strongly and more forcefully than their own times would have allowed them to.
Maybe they would have hoped that their actions would inspire future home educators to tread where they could not; go beyond the confines of learning and education as an exercise in completing curriculum.
Maybe their dream for us was that one day, all children would be valued as they are, and their interests - no matter what they be - accorded respect.
They might have longed for the days when the importance of some topic, French or Math, would be just as important and valuable to society as knowing how to Grow and Can Vegetables- everything being equally as fascinating and intriguing as any other area of human endeavour.
They might have wished for freedom in learning.
Your misguided platitudes, your simple take on the subject of home education are outdated.
Lisa, my hope for you is that one day, you'll come to see the ignorance and paucity of your thoughts.
You might also like:
http://radiofreeschool.blogspot.ca/2011/09/idle-unschooling.html
5 comments:
I was glad you posted this. Her letter made me mad, but I guess it is good to hear how some people think about things.
@It is our normal-her letter was incredibly self-centred and frankly, super ignorant. Had to respond! And yeah, it's good and shocking to read about what others are thinking on the issue.
Oh my word you cannot get more anti-intellectual than Luper's open letter. She fallaciously places herself upon her moral high horse (which in reality is nothing more than a stick toy with a paper horse head) by opening with this huge bout of collectivist rhetoric: how hard "we" worked to win freedom, "we" need to prove ourselves, "we" need to show the government, etc. What an utter load of crap. She keeps throwing up her arms and saying "We must please our masters!" as if that long battle for educational freedom is somehow respected by backing down and worshiping government bureaucracy. It's quite apparent Luper was never a child. She was once a baby, then a student, then an "adult," but what adult is complete without a real childhood? You've got to hand it to her, though. It's quite amazing for someone to write about homeschooling and not focus on the actual children until close to the end, as if she wrote it, said "oops, forgot the kids," and hastily edited in blithely uninformed, sweeping generalizations about unschooled kids. An entire letter about homeschooling and all she has to say about kids is that they are too lazy to do anything useful or good without being coerced into doing it? Seriously? By the sheer distrust she has in children, I'd say Luper needs to occupy a library for more than just a couple hours.
@jkpinaz- thanks for this! Hilarious observations. She would do well running a boot camp or something.
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