So I don’t believe we really need a shared identity, or recognition as a ‘movement’. What should be acknowledged is that home education, in whatever form it takes, is a viable option based on the fact that the state does not have the power to direct or intervene in the lives of the citizenry until they evidence criminal behavior.

I also don’t have a problem tolerating anyone who is not doing something immoral, unethical, or illegal. I am not suspicious of strangers, corporations, or even gov’t- but I will act accordingly when someone’s behavior indicates that they cannot be trusted.

The idea of being mainstream does not necessarily have to mean that home educators unite in methodology or have a national organization for the purposes of representation. I already have Senators and Representatives elected from my state who are to represent the best interests and wishes of the citizens, and if we are to honor the principles in the Constitution, home education is just one more way that folks employ to enjoy their lives and become the best they can be.

I do like the idea of home education becoming so normal that it isn’t targeted by the media as an ooh-aah to throw in a news story for reaction. They don’t make a big deal if someone in the news is blonde or from Poughkeepsie, KWIM?

. . . the whole PBS series was about “identity” and how different American Jews in different places and times, struggled to both assimilate and advance, AND honor and preserve their own distinct heritage in their own families and neighborhoods, from language to education and music to friends and marriage, food, dress, hairstyles. [To literal names.]

Home education is both radical AND traditional, both private and public, academic and practical, political and principled, etc.

Any kind of education has both individual and institutional effects, both pro and con. Conversations based on that reality therefore, will be the most useful.

Overall their identity struggle was to accommodate any parts of their own Jewishness that were religious, while understanding most or all of it was secular, cultural, family rather than “faith.”

. . .Do we have any Henry Fords in the homeschool community, movers and shakers who despite their larger than life contributions, also play on our suspicion of outsiders, strangers, corporations and government, tell us our basic “character” is being threatened and maybe really believe it, even as they profit from our heightened fears and insecurities?

Is home education turning into a form of sacred secularism . . .? What shared identity do homeschoolers in this schoolish culture really want and need, for survival? Do we need more changing to fit in or changing to stand out, both, neither?
And can we stand each other while we’re doing it?

I agree, I suppose the conversation needs to happen, and this is a better choice than avoiding the issue. Not that I look forward to such a conversation, because sometimes things get worse before they get better.

But there is so much that is so much apart of the school “experience” that we all went through that we think of it as normal. And we begin thinking as if kids are missing out on something, even if it is negative. The system is so much ingrained that it is difficult to think that there could be another way.

Instead, suspicion is cast on all who try.

It is normal to spend time with your children and enjoy your life. Really.

Being a Mom or Dad at home with the kids is a terrific and normal thing to do.

Raising children who think for themselves and may not end up happily plugging away at some job they hate because they figure out something better — that’s normal too.

It’s the other way — shipping them off to be institutionalized and dumbed down — that is unhealthy and abnormal. It’s just that we’ve been told the opposite for so long we doubt ourselves.

Nance

Zayna- I’d say that while I am not afraid of folks being conscious of public education, I am not thrilled with the idea that every time something comes to the attention of legislators, they think they have to form committees and start thinking up rules, regulations, and red tape. They can’t seem to abide the citizenry being independent of gov’t. They’re like an obnoxious mother-in-law who refuses to acknowledge that the apron strings have been CUT.