Notes From Gordon 250108: I Forgot To Socialize The Children!

WARNING: ATTENTION SPAN EXCEEDED!
Reading time: 2,195 words @ 238 wpm = 9 minutes, 25 seconds. Sorry, Magneto, but I couldn’t find any way to shorten this piece. I hope you will forgive me.

TONE: Pensive and reflective, with more than a smidgen of snark.

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Introduction

I wrote the following essay about 20 years ago to compare factory assembly line public school with homeschool for those confused about the differences between the two.

I homeschooled—and grew up with—all three of my amazing children and would do it again in a heartbeat, even if it meant living in an RV down by the river, surviving on food stamps and other kind acts of kind if reluctant taxpayers.

I mention this since the #1 objection to home schooling from many parents is affordability. Really? You would put a large, soul-sucking mortgage, a second giant college loan, a second 401k, a second wardrobe and a second car payment ahead of your children’s future?

You would allow them to be indoctrinated by the Department of Education—riddled with progressives, collectivists and commies—and spend more time each day with their teachers than with their own parents? No kidding…

The Butterfly

MOLLY
It was just before noon and 12-year-old, homeschooling Molly was seated at the kitchen table working on her math.

Her mom was nearby preparing lunch, which today would be a tasty and nutritious salad of fresh, organic vegetables and bean sprouts topped with her special dressing... when a beautiful butterfly flew past the kitchen window.

Her mother spotted it first and called out to Molly who rushed over to look. With hardly a glance exchanged between them, mom and Molly headed out the back door and into the yard to see where the butterfly had gone.

That's when they spotted a half dozen butterflies flitting about the bushes around the house. Molly ran into the garage to get her dad's fishing net and they set off chasing after butterflies.

BRITTNEY
Meanwhile, up the street in a squat and sprawling brick building with small windows and a chain link fence, another 12-year old named Brittney was sitting in a stuffy classroom along with 22 other mostly medicated children at the Barack Hussein Obama Elementary School.

It was time for science class, her third class in a row without an exercise break all morning, and today they had 55 minutes to learn about the life cycle of the butterfly.

Brittney's day had started with a 15-minute ride on a "smelly" school bus during which vulgar swear words rang out constantly from the rear where the older kids always sat.

It wasn't uncommon for Brittney to have a sneaker fly over her head or land on her seat. A few had even hit her more than once, but she didn't dare complain to the bus driver or it would only get worse.

The older kids called them "smell bombs" and delighted in Brittney's disgust which she tried to mask by staring straight ahead.

She wanted badly to listen to music to pass the daily boredom of the bus ride but she never felt secure in doing so since it meant not hearing or knowing what was going on around her.

So every day she just stared out the window to bide the time, trying to be interested in anything that looked different from the day before.

MOLLY
Molly's mom had joined her daughter, laughing and running around together in silly circles in the back yard trying to catch butterflies.

Molly did finally catch one, but felt so sad for the little creature that she turned the net inside out and shook it until the butterfly freed itself and flew away.

It had been a week since Molly and her Mom had gone on a field trip together, although Mom always joked that life itself is a continuous field trip.

Today they would take advantage of Molly's spontaneous new interest in butterflies and learn all they could about them. Math, history, geography and Molly's other subjects could wait.

After all, this was homeschool where there were no forced study periods or ringing bells and Mom and Molly could be as flexible as they liked in crafting each day's curriculum.

So off they went to The Museum of Natural History in the city. This would require a walk to the bus stop, then a streetcar ride downtown.

BRITTNEY
Brittney was now struggling to stay awake. The high-carbohydrate breakfast cereal of processed grains and sugar she had gulped down just in time to meet the school bus had sent her pancreas into overdrive and her glucose levels were plummeting.

It was all she could to do pay attention. Turning to page 83 as instructed, Brittney saw a large color photograph of a Monarch butterfly.

Of course, it wasn't flying or even moving, just sitting there, riveted to the page for all of eternity. But Brittney took a moment to make it fly in her mind, imagining what it would feel like to be a butterfly.

MOLLY
Molly and her Mom had just stepped onto the bus and it was time to pay their fare.

Knowing that the fare would be 50 cents each for her mother and herself and that there would be no change, Molly handed the driver a one dollar bill while being careful not to call it by its proper name, Federal Reserve Note, since she didn't want to make the bus driver feel awkward or uncomfortable.

They took a seat near the middle of the bus and found themselves seated next to a neatly attired man who, from the look of him, must have been in his 80's.

Molly smiled as she sat down. The man took the friendly look as an opportunity to ask very politely, "Going downtown?" Molly glanced at her Mom whose instant smile told her that it was OK to talk to the polite old man.

Molly answered that she and her Mom were heading to The Museum of Natural History to look at butterflies. "Really?”, exclaimed the man. “That's what I did for a living. I am a retired lepidopterist. An entomologist, actually, but lepidoptery was my specialty." 

Molly had no idea what those words meant, although she figured they must have something to do with butterflies and made a mental note to look them up when she got home.

The man explained that he had taught college biology at the local university for forty years and still had a huge collection of moths and butterflies in his basement, all neatly pinned to cork boards and carefully cataloged by species.

He would love to have Molly and her Mom come over and see the collection sometime. Molly's mom interrupted to introduce herself and soon found herself jotting down the man's name and phone number on the back of a napkin she found in her purse.

BRITTNEY
Brittney jerked suddenly and reddened upon discovering that her teacher was looking right at her and the other kids were too.

She wasn't sure what had just happened but from the annoyed look on Ms. Krachnik's face, she could only guess that she had nodded off. The teacher broke eye contact with Brittney in a way that made her feel very small and went on to call on another student.

Brittney would give anything at this moment to vanish from this overcrowded, overheated classroom and magically appear somewhere else, but all she could do was stare down at that Monarch butterfly that still wasn't moving.

MOLLY
Mollie and her Mom got to the museum and Molly presented the attendant with a five-dollar bill (the one with the picture of that dreadful tyrant, Abraham Lincoln, who was anything but honest!) for an afternoon pass.

Molly dragged her Mom by the hand to the insect wing where she was astonished to see a model butterfly that was twenty feet long.

Her mother laughed and said it looked like a prop from Mothra, which she explained was a cheesy science fiction movie from the 1950's.

They spent the next two hours looking at moth eggs under microscopes and studying displays and exhibits on the life cycle of a butterfly.

After returning home Molly went to Wikipedia and looked up butterflies, learning all about the cocoon, chrysalis, pupa, antennae and so much more. That evening they drove across town to the home of Mr. Johnson, the older gentleman whom they had met on the subway.

To have such an enthusiastic youngster in his home—and so polite and well-behaved!—take such an interest in his own lifelong passion made Mr. Johnson's day.

Mr. Johnson patiently explained so much about butterflies that Molly couldn't believe it. At this point it would be fair to say that Molly probably knew more about butterflies than any public school teacher in America.

As for being insufficiently “socialized” (the usual criticism that advocates of public schooling direct against those weird homeschoolers), aside from being active in a thriving local network of home educators and their families who got together several times each week for sports, to write and produce their own plays and for numerous other fun activities—over just the past few days alone Molly had interacted with a friendly bus driver, chatted with a nice lady at the museum and made friends with an amiable octogenarian, two new words that Molly now added to her large and still growing vocabulary.

BRITTNEY
It was time for lunch now. Brittney knew this instantly because the bell was ringing again, plus the voice of the school principal booming from the loudspeaker mounted high on the classroom wall next to the clock was telling them all to walk, not run to the lunchroom—that today's special was pizza from Domino's and chocolate milk, and that no food throwing would be tolerated in the cafeteria.

Brittney hated how she was surrounded by other kids at her school all day long, yet never got to spend any real time with any of them. All they did was march from room to room every time the bell rang.

She didn't even get to walk home with her friends since her family lived too far away from the school for that.

Brittney never did learn very much about butterflies that day. There wasn't enough time in a 55-minute segment to spend more than a few minutes on any one topic. They would proceed to the next page in their biology textbook tomorrow, with no more mention of butterflies.

She would, however, be tested on all that she would be taught this week—including butterflies—on a multiple choice quiz that would require her to correctly regurgitate the names of the various butterfly parts she had seen printed in bold text in her textbook.

Brittney knew that these were special words that she was expected to remember. This always made her nervous, because without at least a ‘B’ grade her father was not going to allow her to upgrade her X-Box in time for the summer break.

MOLLY
The next day Molly spent a little more time looking up “more cool stuff” about butterflies on Google, with her mom's close supervision of course.

She had now caught—and freed!—a butterfly, been to the butterfly exhibit at a museum, been schooled by a retired lepidopterist, studied butterflies under a microscope and was getting tired of butterflies.

Her Mom suggested that she now spend some time on geography—that Molly might want to tie the two subjects together and look up the names of rivers, mountains and other natural features in those areas of the world to which certain butterflies were indigenous.

This fascinated Molly who looked up “indigenous” in the big, fat family Webster’s Dictionary, then dove into her geography book with enthusiasm.

Being a kinetic learner, Molly liked to be moving while she read—today while hanging upside down off the end of the living room sofa, still in her pajamas, where she would remain until she was hungry again.

BRITTNEY
It was now bedtime for Brittney. Her father was downstairs in the living room, nursing a beer and watching a reality TV show rerun, and her mother was just getting home from another “girls night out.”

Brittney brushed her teeth, took her evening ADHD medication, got into bed and turned out the light. The walls in her room fell dark and she could no longer make out the butterflies within the pattern on her bedroom wallpaper.

Brittney never would connect the butterflies that lived on her bedroom walls with page 83 in her school book. Butterflies weren't something that a girl who dreamed of being a teenage pop star ever thought about.

Besides, at the moment she was too worried about that quiz tomorrow. Plus, she had no idea what she was going to wear to school the next day that her rich friends with their designer clothes wouldn't laugh about.

Brittney knew that the girls she hung out with kept careful tabs on things like that. Thank God she wasn’t, like, so totally fashion unconscious that you'd think she was homeschooled or something.

Brittney had no idea what homeschooling even looked like, but she was sure that it had to be beyond uncool.

And those were her last thoughts before the alarm clock went off and she raced to grab an instant breakfast bar and get ready to meet the bus.