The Dumbest Thing You Ever Heard, Part 2
By Mike Farris, Esq.
Added Sunday, November 05, 2006
My recent column requesting "dumb statements" people had made regarding home schooling yielded a bumper crop of lols (laugh out loud) and a few rofls (rolling on the floor laughing). I got a great number of wonderful entries -- far too many to publish. Today's column is the second of two. Here are the other half of the top entries, this week's winner, and my comments interspersed.
Here come the comments!
From Susan Shay:
"Won't they miss out on learning a lot of important stuff? I mean, how will they ever learn to stand in line?"
Mike: Thank goodness for the rigorous standards of Goals 2000.
From Tracy Pina:
An acquaintance said, "Every kid has to get beat up a few times in public school or they won't be able to cope in the real world."
Mike: Sticks and stones will break my bones or else I won't be well rounded.
From Clarence and Barbara Hawkins:
A home school family in our town took their school days off in the middle of the week to match the father's job schedule. Some nosey neighbors had the family investigated for home schooling on Saturday!
Mike: Reminds me of the social services case I had in Alabama where a mother was hotlined for allowing her children to read books in the back of the van while she drove around town.
From MDT: A friend said, "MY child is being a light in a dark place, but I guess SOME children are not able to do that."
Mike: With that much condescension that lady probably fogs up her own glasses.
From Michelle Nichols:
A woman asked a home school friend of mine, "If you don't send your children to school, who is going to teach them their morals?"
Mike: Yeah, like the moral necessity of beating up other kids on the playground if we are to believe another comment we read.
From Barb Palmer:
Our girls' friends from the neighborhood ask, "If you are home schooled, who teaches you?"
From the Austin family:
A friend said, "Won't your children miss the experience of the goods and bads of dating people from other cultural and religious backgrounds?"
From Char Brady:
A mother from my daughter's former public school class said, "If you were more involved in your child's education, then you wouldn't have to home school."
From MDT:
An acquaintance asked, "How can you possibly give them enough one-on-one time?"
Mike (stolen from MDT): I guess the kids would get more one-on-one time in a classroom of 30.
From "Ozchick":
A friend asked me what we were going to do during a public school snow day. I replied that we were going ahead with school. The friend replied, "That's silly. Why make your kids work since no one will be around to grade their papers?"
Not to be outdone, that same friend heard me describe how I was teaching my children baking from the Colonial period. A recent project was making a cake from scratch. She replied, "Where can I buy a box of scratch, I've never heard of it?"
From Nancy Persaud:
(although this comment is not within the rules of the contest as Nancy recognized, it is too good to pass up):
From a 5th grade geography textbook, "Maps are smaller than the areas they represent."
From Dana Estes: A friend said, "I could NEVER home school my children. I can't imagine spending that much time with them." She is a public school teacher.
AND THIS WEEK'S WINNER:
From Cherie Oliver:
My daughter was born three months early and had severe brain damage. We were told to put her in a home and forget about her. At the age of three the state said that "special" children needed to be sent to the public school system so that they could get the classes they needed. When I told them I was going to home school my daughter, the school worker came unglued. She said, "But the state can make her into a better, more dependent entity."
My daughter is now a first grader who reads, writes, and does all the other first grader things. She is the most independent six year-old I know.
Mike: Incredible. Truly incredible.
"A child is a Gift of Life and Love!
Mike Farris is the president of Patrick Henry College and chairman of Home School Legal Defense Association.