Homeschooling

"A hobby for the scared and selfish, most of the time."

I grew up homeschooled by conservative Christian parents, and my mother runs a homeschooling business revolving around the curriculum she initially created for my siblings and I, so I've ended up being exposed to lots of homeschooling families as a result.

My opinions of it are now... extremely low.

I've come to think of homeschooling parents with that adage about how the best leaders are people who didn't want to lead. It typically takes a narcissistic personality to even consider, despite being aware of all the money and labor that goes into a nation's education system, that they could raise the experienceless human they now find themselves with all on their own, without screwing anything up and therefore setting them back for life, and as a result homeschooling feels to me like it's perpetually gonna be skewed towards abusers in the same way that most government seems to be.

And yes, there's plenty of people with much better intentions, but I've heard enough of my mom at the dinner table, roasting the parents in her customer support email for their ill-preparedness, to know that those who truly know the seriousness of what they've taken on are so, so rare.

Links

Coalition for Responsible Home Education
r/HomeschoolRecovery
List of books commonly read by high school students
Vice: Inside a US Neo-Nazi Homeschool Network With Thousands of Members

Art

ballad of a homeschooled girl by Olivia Rodrigo (Youtube)