home boys

let’s talk about high school. or more to the point, home school. there are a lot of people who believe this is the way to go…better student / teacher ratio (unless you’ve birthed twenty-five children), “better” environment, more parental control over lesson content (i think we just nailed the REAL magic in most cases); but what a lot don’t look at is the main negative side…lack of good ol’ “SS” (and i don’t mean soical studies or a nazi lesson..i mean social skills).

sure, the bond between parent and child (since in most cases it’s the parent who does the teaching) is strengthened; but while there’s nobody that’ll ever walk this planet that i’ll love as much as i loved my mom, there is such a thing as TOO much parental/child time. and without the interaction with other kids, it kinda cocoons them and makes them part of the family por vida, with no outside ties. your nuclear family needs to be tight, but not the mafia. i always figured if you took kids out of a schoolroom environment, you would warp them socially and turn them anti-social. who knew i’d get to see prime examples of this within blocks of my own home…

there was this kid named dan who was a year younger than me growing up (technically, i guess he is STILL a year younger than me, except now he looks much, MUCH older than me). dan was a geek (again, still is…or appears to be). and we ALL know what happened to the geeks in high school…they went to college, got CIS degrees, started their own dot coms out of their dorm room, turned them into mega-billion dollar corporations, got lexi (the plural for lexus, right?), trophy wives, big houses, and lots of respect…until the dot com bomb, when they lost everything, moved towns, changed their name, and started managing a denny’s in nebraska.

but not dan.

somehow, someway, freshman year in high school, good ol’ bright-as-hell, national honor society bred, couldn’t get a date after the girl chugged a six pack AND was dared dan got mono…proof that it’s not ONLY transmitted by kissing. well, he was out of school for so long his parents were told that he would have to repeat his freshman year and graduate a year later. no frickin’ way, said his mom….who was an accredited school teacher AND an LISD employee who’s husband had a good job, so it’s not like she worked for financial reasons anyway…so she quit, took dan home, and started home schooling him. his brother, in typical, “but if dan gets to stay home why do i HAVE to get up….” fashion also ended up being pulled out of school (he’s the same age as my sister).

so now they’re BOTH at home. that all happened in 1986. but you’ll notice the first sentence is in present tense…and it’s because they’re STILL there. at ages 30 and 27. and not as tenants. it’s not like they don’t have decent jobs and just live with mom and dad till they get their shit together. they do it ALL as a family unit. i’ve never, EVER seen one of the boys out without one of the parents in tow. they even all grocery shop together.

that is just CREEPY.

public school has it’s advantages (free – cause we all pay for it anyway); private school does, too (those cute lil’ uniforms for the girls)…but home school? someone wanna help me on this one?

Replies: 4 Comments

I am all for every single highschool age kid in Victoria Texas being home schooled! I would be out of a job, but that’s why we have degrees.

jac said @ 08/25/2002 06:58 PM GMT

no, JAB, actually if you have some social interaction with your peers, and one of your peers happens to be JAB, THEN you end up like me…

sean (the doctor is in) said @ 08/23/2002 03:46 AM GMT

I agree home schooling is just not right. you have to have some social interaction with your peers just for sanity’s sake. i mean if you dont you could end up like sean.

JAB said @ 08/22/2002 10:01 PM GMT

Do you honestly want me to get on my soapbox and preach of the pros and cons? That might be better saved for the phone. However, Dan and his family DO seem quite weird. But it IS TX and all…are they ‘close’? (know what I mean? like Deliverance-close……) Maybe the home school was a symptom and not a cause…..

the speech pathologist said @ 08/22/2002 05:02 PM GMT