Surrogate Parents

I came across this post, and it reminded me of why I really began homeschooling in the first place.

It wasn't really because the few public school teachers and administrators I'd had to deal with were incompetent cretins (although they were), or because I knew my kids weren't being appropriately challenged (although they weren't) or because I found the entire curriculum to be tedious, limited, and anti-intellectual (although I certainly did).

No, the real reason I made that drastic plunge was because the whole situation felt very, very wrong to me. Wrong in the same way as sending your 6 week old baby off to be mass-raised by a succession of disinterested strangers getting paid minimum wage. Wrong in the same way as sending 3 of your young children to daycare to be raised by others while you work in the same daycare caring for other people's kids because you "need" the money so you can afford satellite TV for your room-sized plasma. It is flat-out, skin-crawlingly bizzarre to me.

The school my Dodo went to for the first half of first grade locked all doors and covered all windows except near the office, which was policed by 6 (well-meaning but blindly obedient to the satatus quo) office ladies .

I was not even permitted to peek in the windows at my children! If I wanted to observe the teacher I needed a background check, a written request and 30 days notice! So much for seeing what "really" went on in there...so much for being able to discern if the teacher was competent or even nice!

I couldn't even pick her up. In fact, parents were NOT PERMITTED to pick their child up inside the building, we had to use the "drive-thru" loop. We never saw the teacher except for our 15 minute "conference".

The very thought that a mother would be interested enough in the 7 hours a day her 6 year old child spent being raised by 30 random "peers", made her "way too overprotective" or "smothering". It's not like I am talking about a teenager here, but a 6 year old child!

I think that eventually (high-school, most likely) my kids will blend back into the mainstream conveyer belt, but on their timeline, not a random one based on beaurocratic mandate,and until then it is as it should be, with the actual PARENTS doing the actual PARENTING.
~EH