Freedom to Learn Who You Are
BevK November 29th, 2005
http://www.homeeducator.c…3-6article1.htm
You’ll want to read this entire article by a homeschooler who graduated after twelve years of homeschooling and thinks her homeschool education is an advantage to her.
Was it a protected one? In a way, yes. I was not hidden away from the world, sheltered from all cruelty, but I was kept out of the harsh social scene in which kids, especially high-schoolers, must either sink or swim. School kids’ social lives are centralized, and so popularity is essential: if you are rejected in school, you have nowhere else to go. This gives the in-crowd tremendous power. Since I made my friends here and there instead of having to fight for survival in that one setting, I was never at risk for the level of teasing and exclusion that takes place in schools. Some would say that this freedom from the in-crowd’s power must harm a child by failing to prepare them for the harsh realities of life. I disagree. Making children face relentless, inescapable peer pressure does not prepare them to face adult life: more often, it weakens and confuses them and teaches them to judge themselves by the opinions of others.
