What if the phobia towards home schooling amounted to nothing more than the deeply felt belief that we, as products of the educational establishment, are pretending to have been educated, but would be the last people we would trust with educating another. It is not the hippie radical or the fringe religious adherent we distrust with secession, but ourselves and our own educational outcome. We want professionals in charge because we must believe that someone is better suited than ourselves.
Our own slipping through the system surely was a fluke. But, for my children—that is to say, for all children, lest I be forced to see it as a personal risk—I will wish for them the education that somehow I have been credited for, and whether I received it or not, has made me who I am.
Or, at the very least, let them too get the credit.
The problem with home schooling is that there is no credit. It stands or fails on its outcome. Which should be terrifying to anyone who knows first hand what a sham the outcomes of education can be.
But what if the phobia towards institutional schooling lies in the very same fear?
Can I tell you, the more I learn about where education is at, the more I see the point of home schooling? And for precisely the reasons you outline. Most of what seems to be out there in terms of schooling is a horror show. It teaches neither facts nor skills and socializes kids into consumerism and detachment. Unless I could get my kids into my old school. Cuz I seem to be the only person I know at TC who loved school and learnt useful things there…