For example. I am a homeschooler. This doesn't mean that I trap my kids in the house and hope that no one ever speaks to them, that I make them so weird that they are incapable of thinking for themselves, or that I have classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays called: "America: Yours for the Taking." If I were to believe the rumors, I would wonder if my kids are even able to mingle in normal society or add 2+2 let alone read and extrapolate complex information and engage in critical thinking.
I read an article recently where homeschool debate groups, which specifically teach critical thinking skills, are being called training camps for world domination by brainwashing teenagers to spout the parent's agenda, and teaching them how to argue it most effectively. Ummmm....have they ever even met a teenager who has been taught to think and examine information? They think what they want to think and have their own opinions and once they find out how to think for themselves they do. Trust me; I have 5 teenagers as I write this! Just trust me on this one. Oh wait...maybe you are one of those people who can think for yourself.
I am a homeschooler, and yet, oddly enough, I have never in my life owned a denim jumper. Weird.
Now see, here is the thing. I am certain that there are crazy people out there. In fact I have met more than a few. I am also sure that there are some people who put their agenda above the welfare and well being and lifelong happiness of their kids. I am certain of it. But just because some crazy people and some homeschool parents do some crazy things doesn't mean *I* do them too! I mean I know for a fact that every murderer in the history of the world has been a food eater. So am I. Does that make me inherently a murderer? Or let's take a closer look at fundamentalist type of people. Just because the news shows you pictures of prairie dress wearing girls, and boys in suspenders doesn't mean that they are all Amish, any more than there is a correlation between homeschooling and being an overbearing, abusive, brainwashing, crazy person.
Yeah, I know it is more fun to think of those of us who have taken a different approach to raising our kids as crazy. I get the entertainment value in it. I do. It is always more fun to think about the scandalous, titillating, and bizarre, otherwise circus sideshows and internet porn wouldn't have been the huge hits they have historically been. But to make my point again, I can use the internet without looking at porn, just as I can homeschool without brainwashing, doing a lousy job of educating them, or abusing them. I know, hard to believe, and yet true. I don't even call my home a compound for pity sakes.
If it were true, I sure wouldn't hang out with me, because I would not be a very nice person, let alone any kind of loving parent.
She actually did have a denim jumper once during one of her pregnancies. She looked pretty cute in it too! I had a pair of silk suspenders once, I absolutely love Shoo Fly Pie, and I was born and raised in PA. Guess that makes me Amish.
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