an admission

This may be a bit shocking. Maitresse has something to say.

Some homeschooling parents really have no business homeschooling their little ones.

Yesterday I received an e-mail from the founding parent of a homeschooling group, via a listserv on yahoo. What I read made me want to leap through cyberspace, flip the parent onto my lap, and spank her. Alexander viewed it, as well. "That is depressing," he said, "Are they really teaching their kids?"

The parent's e-mail was jam-packed full of run-ons, spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors, with "Curriculum's" (plural) and "semenar" and "over protective Mom's" (plural) and perhaps 20 LOLs to finish it off. Woman, stop laughing, and clean up your English. The parent also signs each e-mail with a mention about her "playful" husband. Which to me, begged the Question: How playful? I want pictures.

Methinks I think too loud. Ly.

Yet that is not what really irked me. The parent went into a rather lengthy explanation about how wonderful it is that her child has been learning X for the last five years. The parent nowhere seemed to understand that with X, are joined Y and Z. For example, the child loves Harry Potter (not the case here). The child thus has spent most of his time learning everything about quidditch: the rules, the stadium specifications, the equipment, the speed of the quidditch ball, what Hogwarts house has won how many times, etc.

We all know that Harry Potter is not about quidditch. There is a bigger picture - a message - that J.K. Rowling wished to impart to her readers. As educators, to allow a child learning about X to miss the message, and just let the Y and Z fall by the wayside, is shoddy educating.

So, get to it.

LOL.