Homeschooling and Idiots

I have been researching homeschooling off and on for years. Now that we have a little one, the possibility of homeschooling has become more real to us. We've ruled out public school completely. I know that probably sounds funny coming from a teacher who has only been in the public schools, but we just don't like the environment. Public schools are so unfriendly to Christians. Some say that Christian children should be in public schools, because they are then able to witness to nonchristian children. While this may be true in some instances, that reasoning has never settled well with me, and I just recently read something which helped to articulate my thoughts.

They asked if you would send your, lets say, 11 year old off to war. Of course not! No 11 year old is ready to do combat in a war. Then they explained that there is a very real war going on in public schools, a spiritual war. Will our Christian children be expected to take part in this war as adults? You bet. They will be called and demanded by our Lord to be on the front lines. But, just like a child is not ready to go off to a physical war, they are not yet ready to face a spiritual war. They do not yet have the training and foundation built up to hold steady against the onslaught.

So, anyway, today I was doing research on socialization and homeschooled kids since that's the number one argument against homeschooling. I've already heard that from certain family members, followed by, "That's just not right." I'm married to a research scientist and I'm an educator, so we're both big into...research ;-) I came cross a blog that had a post titled, "The Case Against Homeschooling." It's interesting to read the wide variety of opinions on the subject, but to be honest, most of this person's ramblings were idiotic.

Case in point: Reason number 8 was the following:

"Homeschooling is selfish. According to this article in USA Today, students who get homeschooled are increasingly from wealthy and well-educated families. To take these (I’m assuming) high achieving students out of our schools is a disservice to our less fortunate public school kids. Poorer students with less literate parents are more reliant on peer support and motivation, and they greatly benefit from the focus and commitment of their richer and higher achieving classmates."

I mean, come on! Seriously??? One of their arguments is that people who take their high achieving students out of school and homeschool them hurts less fortunate public school kids? So, I should not act on the best interests of MY child, because they are doing the teacher's job in the public school?

This blogger also listed "God hates homeschooling" and "As a teacher, homeschooling kind of pisses me off. (That’s good enough for #5.)" as reasons not to homeschool. So obviously, I'm not putting a lot of stock on this blogger's opinion on homeschooling. But, I do find it interesting, idiotic, and kind of funny.

So, we're trying to decide between private school or private school (one way we look at it, since homeschooling is private). There's a homeschooling co-op in Wisconsin with a chapter near us. There is a homeschooling P.E. class offered at our Y. And there are a host of classes and activities open to our children outside a traditional school setting. We have a little bit of time to decide, but for now, I'm off to do a little more research...