The upper-crust schools at home

Hessisches Landesmuseum

Dana commented on an article about QED -- Quality Education by Design. The company provides tutors to families, and the misnomer, 'homeschooling' is applied.  I realize that, as Helen notes:

I think this argument may very well be just an academic exercise at this point. I fear the autonomy we enjoyed while homeschooling our kids may be a thing of the past, as homeschools are driven toward acting more and more like schools.

 

Canal in Bruges, Belgium

Some people may point out that insisting on correct terminology makes homeschool advocates look ... I don't know ... defensive, or doggedly fringey, but it is by clearly stating who, what, when, etc., that we keep miscommunication from clouding discussions.

 

View from the Atomium

Tutors are a long-standing mode of education, so I don't see why marketers don't capitalize on the cachet of private at-home tutoring instead of hopping on the coattails of homeschooling, but maybe that's just me.

 

Butte de Lion, Waterloo, Belgium

The other items that caught my eye are the opinions that homeschooling parents teach only "hippie spawn" (yes, I see the tongue in the cheek), and that they are unable to manage a "last minute field trip to the Louvre in Paris." (and darling, saying "the Louvre in Paris" is like saying, "the Tower of London in London") My eye was caught because I managed to fit in the Louvre for the younger three kids, and my military brats were far from "hippie spawn." And we homeschooled only in Europe. (see my tongue?)

 

View from atop Munich's city hall

In any case, it's amusing, in a faux-shepherdess way, that rock band managers and catalog founders seek to invoke the cachet of a trend practiced by the less well-heeled, but don't seem to quite pull off the authentic article -- at least not in the articles heralding the new availability of high class homeschooling.

(Some parents apparently take the homeschooling concept so seriously that they insist that their children wear uniforms with school logos on them while studying at home.)

 

(I looked up from reading something aloud to see that looking at me.  I suppose our uniform could have been sweatshirts, and our logo was Christopher Robin marching off to the Hundred Acre Wood.)

That last quotation above is why I don't believe even half of what I read in magazines and newspapers, and even some books.  I've read so much misinformation about homeschooling that now when I read any article (homeschooling, or not), one of my first thoughts is how much of the article is skewed, and why.

Comments

[Obi-Mom Kenobi]

Oh, thank you for the picture of Bruges. I miss that city!

[Valerie]

I wish I had better pictures. The images I put on the post were 1st-generation digital snaps that I had handy on the hard drive.

I haven't yet scanned the film images from that time as (if I'm remembering correctly) we only had a hand scanner at the time, and that one was very iffy. I'm always behind on images.