Mediocre Education

OH, come on, now. You know most everyone has it, and it doesn't really matter where you go to school. Most of us are just average. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

But it seems when you're reading blogs or news stories, we get the extreme "three-year-old admitted to Harvard University" or "homeschooler, age 17, unable to name alphabet letters despite 4.0 GPA from Mom and diploma printed by Kinko's." Here's a little gem from the comments on this article (my comments are in red):

My poor niece was “homeschooled” by her pathetic mom instead of attending school.

(Are you crying already? It always seems to be someone's niece or cousin when stories like this come up. Or it's a coworker's child. Rarely, if ever, is a family criticised for sending a child to public school; only homeschoolers, somehow, should get criticism for their child's educational skills or lack thereof. And my. Are you not so angry that the "pathetic mom" can just homeschool her own kid? Just like that? Without you and I being able to say, "NO, you can't homeschool your kid. Because you're pathetic!")

My niece has no skills, talents or academic abilities, although she thinks she is above average. (We have a clairvoyant commenter! He must be fun at parties.) She can barely read, and cannot do even the most basic math. At age 18 and a half (I could see 18, but 18 and a half?!! Shocking), she has yet to pass her GED.

She was mostly kept home to keep her mom company. (Mostly. That, and it's hard to watch daytime soap operas when you're at school. Oh, and dang. At school they'd expect you to change your clothes every few weeks or somet'in.

Really, I'm kinda surprised this person didn't state that the mom "mostly" wanted to keep her home to abuse her and/or rent her out as a prostitute to get crack money, because that's one I've heard every now and then, too. Well, ok, maybe this commenter is trying to be unbiased... wait for it... wait for it...)

I imagine they’ll live in their urine-drenched hovel with their ten cats until they die.

GAH!! Commenter was doing so well there for about half a second.

At least in a real school the kids can find out what normal people are like, and can possibly find escape from wretched homes/families.

Because homeschools are fake schools. And you know, the family in question was "pathetic" and not normal in the first place before they homeschooled, so it's probably a good thing they never put their kids into public school. I mean, imagine all the "normal" people, seeing urine-drenched hovel-living opportunities with ten cats. We wouldn't want them to "escape" from that usual sort of everyday averageness for the excitement of cat fur and smelly pee.

(Yes we tried to help her.)

Awwww... I'm snuffling with the commenter's genuine Christian generosity. Is it just me, or do you also think that the "help" entailed telling Pathetic Mama that "you ought to put the kids in school so they can see what normal people are like," and then him wondering why the lady is so stinkin' hostile...?

I'm sure all of us could point to plenty of great public-school-educated kids, and plenty others who are presently incarcerated. The point?

Next time some dad gets a gun and blows up the whole family, I'd like the news media to take a "I can't believe they sent their children to PUBLIC school. Tsk tsk. That's what happens when you isolate your kids from the real world" tack when reporting the series of events and see what happens.

Like they'll really do that. But hey, when Benita Jacks goes nuts and allegedly (covering my butt here for legal purposes) kills her four children who were supposedly being "homeschooled," the media is all over that. And why aren't there tighter controls on homeschooling? And how could this happen? And why this? And why that?

Um, the lady was just nuts? Her kids were technically truant if she didn't follow the basics of the law? Um, more regulation does nothing but make you feel a bit better and add to your tax bill.

But my point being, I'm pretty sure most of us are just plain old average. Can't we just be average? Nothing special either way? Do you feel that homeschoolers should have to be better than public school kids at academics to somehow justify the fact that they're staying home?

Because really? Most of us are pretty boring and have average, boring families. It just doesn't sell a lot of magazines to print that up in an article.