home-schooling, anyone?
on saturday, i got a phone call from a good friend in philadelphia (or, as a certain favorite professor of mine would say, "philadelphweah"). he caught me up on his life and some of the goings-on in the old group, including some rather unsurprising yet nonetheless frustrating news about a certain ex of mine. it had been entirely too long since i had spoken with him and it was really nice to hear his voice.
and since law school is like living in a bubble, he told me about this interesting little bit of small-town pennsylvania news. the story itself is tragic, no doubt. it's about a teenage girl who got in a fight with her parents over a missed curfew, and her boyfriend (the "ludwig" in the below excerpt) came in and shot both of the parents. but here's the really creepy part:
The Bordens, both 50, were apparently shot once each in the head, authorities said. Mike Borden worked for a printing company, and his children were home-schooled, said neighbor Tod Sherman. Sherman said the family knew Ludwig through a home-schooling network.home schooling! apparently these folks are also fundy-christian types, too. gee willikers, folks! the irony is profound.
posted by emily @ Monday, November 28, 2005
3 comments
3 Comments:
to be fair, there are non-fundies who prefer to home school. i used to have the knee jerk negative response to home schooling i detect here, but under ideal circumstances (short of the availability of an excellent public school), home schooling might be nice. i'm never going to see a school that teaches any children i have as i would like to do, and my feelings are couched not in personal biases, per se, but in epistemological commitments and ideas of the good life dissevered from conventional notions of religion. children can learn ever so much more in eighteen years than even the brightest of them do. i think it would be fun to systematically tap into that.
anyway, i've been chastened to encounter home schoolers, parents and children, whom i deeply admire. and while the fundamentalist subspecies of homeschooler can be a bit scary, i wouldn't deny anyone the prerogative to educate his child as he or she prefers, nor would i denigrate out of hand someone who exercises that prerogative.
oh, moony... i know that i tend to err on the side of the knee-jerk reaction far too often. i have these family members who are all home-schooled and i can see that they're going to have some difficulty w/r/t social skills when it comes time for college. these kids may be rather extreme cases, however, because they only associate with each other (there are six of them, all siblings). they don't have other kids in the neighborhood or other kids on sports teams or anything with whom to work out the kinks of interacting with other folks. i dunno. i know that home-schooling has its merits, and public education certainly has its downfalls (i heard from a friend today -- a public school teacher -- who had to testify as a witness in a disciplinary hearing about a kid who attacked a teacher).
so, thank you for putting me in my place a bit. it's one of the reasons i like having you around.
why is the irony profound? Because Christians are supposed to be perfect and sinless? I don't know where this perception comes from but many do hold it. Its really not profound or ironic at all though. Its tragic yes. Terrible certainly. But surprising . . . not really. Christians are still humans. The sin nature doesn't change even when the creature acknowledges his Creator.
May God bless you and keep you and may He shine His light upon you.
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