I’m glad to be reminded that they’re not always bad. You see, when I left my asshole husband last year, I had a choice: Try to keep homeschooling, now on top of working outside of the home, full-time, and trying to pay bills and do and be everything else, or put them in school. And while some may have said I was crazy (they were smart enough to not say in within earshot 
), I figured there was enough upset going on in my children’s lives and being homeless and then a new place to live in a new town and everything else, that I wanted to keep as much consistent as I could. Since they had never been to school before, I would not throw that burden of adjustment on them as well. We would continue homeschooling. At least until they were used to our new life and ready for that change.
While safety was never a reason for me wanting or deciding to homeschool, it does make me glad every time I hear of a school shooting/stabbing/etc that I don’t even have to think about it. I’m not the least bit phased. I’m not in denial when I think “it won’t happen to me”… it really won’t! And I’m so grateful that I don’t have that burden, even in the back of my mind. As for socialization… maybe I’ll turn my kids over to the system when the system starts showing me that it’s doing an adequate job at teaching those socialization skills! But I digress…
So after being homeless for a couple weeks, we find an apartment in a nearby town. And decide to homeschool. And today, while sick and home from work, I stumble onto a blog on complete accident. I was looking at online calendars, and not even anything to do with kids or teaching or anything! At the bottom of the calendar I decided to try out there is a link to a Twitter account. And from there, the Twitterer’s full information and a link to her blog.
So what is the blog that I find? It’s the blog of a local middle school teacher. And what does she have? A couple useful ditties, but more than anything: slideshows of pictures of the kids in the school!
That’s right. While parents are hard at work trying to police the internet at home, and libraries do so both publicly and in schools, this teacher singlehandedly thwarts all those protections by posting the name of the school, town, her name, and class right with the pictures of the kids for the whole world to see. Without even a protection for members-only to see (which she could easily do if it were of benefit to specific people like the parents)!
Now, you might be able to convince me that she got approval from all of the parents of all the kids that are in her classes, or refrained from posting pics that included kids whose parents did not sign a release form. But there are also pics of kids throughout the whole school at a school dance! (I won’t even ‘go there’ about oversexualizing 11 year old kids! Is that what they mean by “socialization”?)
Clearly, yes I am biased. But I hope that fact does not detract from another completely relevant, and unbiased fact that exists: schools are dangerous to your children in countless ways, most of which you may never even realize, like these unsuspecting parents. I found this information on a complete fluke! Because somehow (I know how) the calendar figured out where I was and used that information to provide me with something that might interest me because it was local. Wow, they had no idea! LOL. But I found it. And who knows who else has as well. So while all of these parents are worried about what they know to be worried about, and trying to keep information about their children off the internet, and teaching their kids how to be safe online, they are being undermined all the while by a teacher who is giving out detailed information about their kids, in places the parents will never know to look, yet still out in the open for all the wrong people, like the sex offenders who are registered here, to find. Maybe that is what they mean by “socialization”?
And my children were close to being two of them (so far). Now THAT is scary. I’ll choose “unsocialized” and uncompromised children, thank you!
That teacher should be fired for being so reckless. She clearly is not capable of making sound decisions.
