Put the Blame on Homeschooler

We started homeschooling as a need rather than as a way to criticize present schools or to withdraw ourselves from mainstream society or worse to create a super kid. We have always been great with the decision. We feel liberated from poor system and experience freedom in learning. But then come along the hazels. We always believe that some people can be rude to homeschooler or anybody without any particular reasons or intentions but to a new homeschooling family it can create a shaky ground, doubts and frustration.

Here are some things that we have experienced concerning this issue. Hope it is useful for homeschooling families to be:
- When my kid was engaged in particular books for hours, people said that she was diluted.
- When she spent the whole day (or many days sometimes) playing with friends, biking, going outside exploring the bushes and the meadows, people said that homeschooler didn’t study anything.
- When she said that she didn’t like playing piano and violin, people said that her brain would not develop properly and they didn’t consider ‘angklung’ as instrument worth learning. To them angklung sounded ‘kampungan’.
- When she spent the whole morning busy with her pottery and clay work, people said ‘uuuhh..look at you, you are so dirty’. They didn’t know that she tried to make dishes replicating those from the Ming dynasty.
- When she was feeling unwell, sad, tired, angry or bored, people would directly associate those feelings with homeschooling, like homeschooler is not a normal human being with all sorts of feeling.
- When she refused to play with friends at certain time, it was a bad score but people didn’t score her for spending an afternoon chatting with a lonely elderly living few blocks from us or from reading for and taking care of toddlers in our neighborhood.
- When she was just busy with her cat and dog, sometimes people said “you will smell like a dog”. They were not interested in her knowledge about dog or cat breeds and their characteristics.
- When she spent days (because she was too excited so once was not enough) going to nearby ‘city farm’ learning stuffs and harvesting vegetables, people said “why do you spend the whole hot day in the farm when you can buy vegetables in supermarket”
- When she was so involved in electricity tools, people said “how come you let girls play with those stuffs. Anyway, she can be electrocuted.”
- When she was not interested in ‘counting fast’, people said that homeschoolers needed to be drilled. They didn’t think that she being responsible with her own financial budget as math, measuring materials for her baking projects was not considered math too. They thought math merely as an entertainment, not a problem solving, math as a way to ‘show off’ not as a tool to solve everyday problem from cooking to building space station.
- When she inspired other neighboring kids to catch insect specimens for preservation, people said that she was a bad influence making the kids refuse to do their home works.
- When she learnt about Indonesian spices and herbs, people mockingly said to me “why is she doing house maid job?” little did they know that we are rich in spices but never have power in spice world trade. How can we, as a country ever win? More and more children don’t even know the difference between ginger and turmeric.
- When she did chores like throwing garbage, or folding clothes, etc, people seriously advised me not to make her as a closed minded woman. They thought that I have put her in danger of being an uneducated woman, that now more than ever woman had unlimited opportunity. However when there was a butterfly from the bird-winged type fluttering and she shouted to me “mommy…papilio memnon...it’s papilio memnon I know it” They still didn’t think that she was educated. Instead they thought that she was weird. The reason: they didn’t even know that papilio memnon was a latin name for a certain species of butterfly. The fact that she by herself started to put interest in latin name when she was barely seven years old didn’t mean anything. - ETC

Bottom line, people rarely applaud us for homeschooling. In most of the time, they tend to put us under an electron microscope to find any possible spot like we were not just an ordinary people. People bombarded us with tons of destructive questions to satisfy their own insecurity about their children’s education. Anyway above of all, we are doing fine. Good Luck!