Inconsistent

I didn’t write this. I saved it in my drafts file back in 2009, and I don’t remember who wrote it. If you know, let me know so I can credit him or her:

Fact: Only 3.5% of Arizona High School students were able to pass (get 6 out of
10) the citizenship test to become a naturalized U.S. citizen:
http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/article/3211

Fact: Almost 2/3rd of public high school students do not participate in
activities such as band, choir, sports–so much for ‘social activities.’

Fact: U. S. High School students are graduating with a 4th grade reading level
and consistently place on the lower tier in academics compared to other nations,
including Slovenia.

(Among the many places for public school stats one can go to the gov’t's
National Center for Education Statistics [http://nces.ed.gov] or google results
from various institutes and think tanks.)

Public School solutions to routine under-performance? Demand more tax dollars
(The U.S. already spends 5x as much per student as Slovenia, yet their students
out-perform ours on math, science, and reading–but then, they actually study
math, science, and reading, not self-esteem stuff). Blame parents for not
supporting their children (by voting more tax dollars, seeing homework gets done
if any is actually assigned, joining PTA, etc.).

And who never gets blamed? The public school system.

I teach the teen class at church. My kids alone are homeschooled. The rest are
public school products. None of them read well. Few of them think well. Many
have developmental and social problems. Easier on the parents, though, to fob
them off on the public school counseling programs and let them deal with the
kids than have to do it themselves.

But as has been noted, did any of my children manifest these challenges, the
concept of homeschooling would get the blame.

Ultimately, whatever school choice you make, the outcome is the parents’ responsibility because you’re in charge of that choice. Even if you choose public school and you’re lied to, deceived, and defrauded, and so are your kids- the outcome is your responsibility because it’s your job as the parent not to let that happen to your kids. So this really isn’t, for me, about ‘blaming’ public schools.

It’s about that double standard noted in the last sentence. I’ve known of a four year child who was painfully shy, and people told his parents it’s because they were going to homeschool. The parents tried to point out that even if they weren’t, their kid wouldn’t be in school yet (this was some twenty years ago), but it didn’t even phase them.

Every socially awkward hsed kid is blamed on hsing, as though there are no socially awkward kids in public schools anywhere. And sometimes, what is seen as socially immature is simply not socially brash.