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Homeschooling Experts

>Seriously, though, I have met people who have never hsed who *do* give advice
>about hsing at seminars and workshops! Some are women who have never even had
>children! But many are men, who advise us ladies how to keep house, run a
>household, and teach our children. Blehh.

One of my pet peeves!

And what really irks me is when people don't even bother to do much research about homeschooling before venturing forth to teach everyone to do it. They'll pass along the most ridiculous stuff. A common misperception, for example, is that homeschooling is supposed to mimic institutional schools as much as possible. One speaker actually said---I kid you not!---that you were supposed to begin your day with prayer, roll call, flag salute, etc. I started laughing loud at the roll call part. Yes, our family may be large, but I haven't yet had to call roll just to make sure everyone is there! Another guy suggested that we send our children out the back door right before school so that they could walk around the outside of the house, ring the front doorbell, and have us welcome them in. From then on, I'd cease being "Mama" and would become "Mrs. Prewett". Supposedly my children would respect me much more in my teacher role. When school was over, they'd leave by the front door and come in the back door, finding me transformed back into "Mama".

Another couple that never homeschooled still took it upon themselves to teach at a homeschooling conference what is a blueprint for disaster, exhaustion, and burnout: that mothers should keep on doing everything they used to do before starting homeschooling---lunch and shopping trips with friends, volunteer work, hobbies, church work, gardening, keeping the house up to "House Beautiful" standards, etc. In fact, they urge that the mother take on *more* stuff, if she doesn't already have a weekly date night with hubby and other time spent with him away from the children. How she's supposed to work homeschooling into this busy schedule is a mystery to me.

Then there was the guy at a homeschooling conference who was trying to sell me some sort of teacher's lesson plan/organizer thing. One of its selling features---and I'm not making this up!---was the included sample letters I could send home to parents. "Why would I want to send myself a letter?" I asked him and he looked completely baffled.

copyright 1999 by Rebecca Prewett

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