Somehow I’ve gotten myself entangled in an interesting conversation about homeschooling in the education forums over at the national advertising/discussion site known as craigslist. The gist of the current thread of conversation is whether homeschooling is hard work or, as a poster just accused me of labeling it, a cakewalk.
Many of the posters seem to be school teachers, so I should know better, but it’s still interesting to see the ferocity brought to this discussion. Several posters have insisted that parenting is quite difficult as well, leading me to wonder if perhaps my definitions are just a tad off. I always thought hard work was, like, digging ditches or framing houses or rebuilding engines… I never equated it with feeding my family or washing their clothes or teaching my kids how to read. I thought that was just filed under Life in General?
[...] Is home education hard work? Enquiring minds want to know. [...]
I wish they did want to know, Daryl, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. These “inquiring minds” only seem to want to argue about how difficult it is to raise children, and how deciding to homeschool your kids only makes it much more difficult. Any comment about it not being particularly difficult at all is met with accusations of “ruining your children” and worse. Sometimes I really wonder about the increasingly odd beliefs and perceptions of the general populace. Is this a result of the dependency on experts and authority learned in school? Or is there something else going on…
Update: There’s a good discussion of this whole idea going on over at Daryl’s Home Education and Other Stuff blog, in the comments area.