Getting a Slurpee is not a legitimate field trip...part 1

When I was younger, there were two things that I absolutely despized: 1) lima beans and 2) going to school. I don't mind school so much now, but when I was young I absolutely despised going to school. There were times in elementary school when I would actually wake up in the morning, spin around in cirlces in my room before my mom came to wake me up, and then when she came in I would inform her that 'I felt nauseous, dizzy, and my face was burning up!' For some reasons mom never bought my ridiculous schemes, but it tells you how much I hated school I used to sit in class and dream of what it would be like to go to school...but at my own house! I could sleep in, wear PJ's all day, eat lunch whenever I wanted, or even watch TV when the stresses of Mathematics were too much to bear. You name it, if I went to school in my own house, the world would be MY oyster! Heck, I could even get mom to take me to 7-11 to get a Slurpee as a form of field trip. Yep...life would be good if I could just take classes in the living room.

This revolutionary thinking continued well into my high school years. But upon my high school graduation, and thereafter my entrance into college, I made a profound discovery: THERE WERE PEOPLE WHO TOOK CLASSES IN THEIR LIVING ROOM... AND SOMEHOW THIS WAS A LEGITIMATE FORM OF EDUCATION!!!! This rare breed of individual was called (oddly enough) a home schooler , and their entire schooling was done by their mother and father. I couldn't believe my ears! How on earth could someone spend their entire pre-college schooling career in the living room and have it be recognized as a legitimate form of education? Well, ladies and gentlemen, it turns our that homeschooling isn't all that it's cracked up to be, and actually has a number of serious risks. Some of these risks are as follows:

1) Risk of, what I like to call, prolonged mammo-obsessive behavior (don't try to look it up on wikipedia.com, it's not there).
2) Risk of, what I like to call, doucheyism
3) Risk of, what I like to call, academic barbarianism
4) Risk of, what the French like to call, la jupe longue de jean, or le jeans effilé. This is a very serious condition.
5) Risk of, what I like to call, pseudolegimatizing semiacademic pursuits.

Let me explain some of the pitfalls of homeschooling, then propose a solution (which will have to be continued next article) to correct some of these downfalls.

Let's take a look at prolonged mammo-obsessive behavior first. PMOB is behavior that, while appropriate for infants and young toddlers, is not appropriate for adolescents and teenagers. PMOB most directly stems from the fact that homeschoolers most often interact with their mommies (hey, it's true)...not real people. I feel that this close interaction, NAY coddling, of the young child with an overly protective or jealous mother makes some home schooled kids crazy! In many instances, this uber dependency on mother stunts the emergence of complex behavioral schemata like: dressing oneself, feeding oneself, getting hair cuts, interacting with peers, interacting with men, picking up sticks and pretending that they are guns, etc. I've seen many a homeschooled young man crippled by an inability to engage in meaningful conversation with me, even though I'm their peer and I'm also very easy to talk to (and I'm also very handsome...just as an aside). So sometimes this mammo-obsessive behavior stunts the growth of young homeschoolers.

We're going to skip over douchyism for now (take a stab about what douchyism is...it's a new word that I just made up, but chances are you can figure out what it means). Academic Barbarianism is sadly not a phrase that I made up, but one that a very smart man who is not me made up. Picture in your mind a picture of Conan the Barbarian ...or just click on the link and look at a picture. Now imagine that you possessed all of that power and might and strength...but only in your brain. That's kind of what an academic barbarian is like. They have crushing intellects, but terrible social and emotional coping skills. They are like the severed head...they look though but all their toughness is in their head. AB's are wicked smart, but socially retarded. Ok go!

The french stuff...go here , clik on French to English, and you should see what I'm talking about. Ha ha haaaaa it's funny because it's true.

Pseudolegitimizing semiacademic pursuits...what does that mean? It means going to 7-11 to get a Slurpee as a 'field trip'. I see this kind of crap all the time with homeschoolers. They make up names for their school (for their kitchen tables, essentially), for their activities (doll making is not a legitimate social club), their sports (no there's no such thing as One-Person-Soccer as a varsity sport), their interests (who has heard of political campaining anyway? Not THIS kid!). Home schooled kids are great at making up stuff that sounds important, but really isn't. They make up classes to take, they make up math problems to solve, they make up transcipts, they make elf languages (true story, I met a kid doing this). If you go out and ask any homeschooler what interests them, chances are it's something that is fake or made up. Trust me.

SO! This is the plight of the homeschooler: they eschew conentional education, but long for social acceptance and for a society to think their educational system is legitimate. What I once thought was a dream is actually a nightmare, in need of a PR facelift. What is to be done? What can be done to help these hapless, denim-jumper-loving little creatures?

Homeschoolers need acceptance into the mainstream...they need to feel connected to mainstreak academia without embracing mainstream academia. How can we help these people?


I'll tell you how...one sweatshirt at a time!!!!!!!


to be continued!