Thursday, May 25, 2006

Stale Air

Did anyone else catch NPR's Fresh Air interview of Michael Farris, founder of the HSLDA, yesterday? It was breathtaking to hear how, within a space of about fifteen minutes, Farris and Terri Gross managed between them to commit all of the Forbidden Phrases of homeschooling. It went something like this:

Terri: So what do you say to the well-founded concern many people have that homeschooled children are unsocialized, isolated sociopaths and probable future domestic terrorists, whose parents are obviously unqualified to teach?

Michael: Maybe we should talk instead about the socialization of institutionalized children who are locked into prison-schools and forced to hate Christianity.

I was ready to rip the radio out of the wall.

3 Comments:

Blogger Hanley Family said...

um, ok. No, I didn't catch that one. So that the concert that our children are going to be sociopathic terrorists is well-founded? She could have dropped the "well-founded" or stooped at "socialization."

An argument really should be answered directly at its flaw rather than with a "well, at least were not as bad as the alternative."

9:10 AM  
Blogger The Opinionated Homeschooler said...

Well, I'm not sure I got it verbatim; but I think I pretty much captured the tenor of the conversation.

11:15 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well, then, I completely retract anything I said in your "cliches about homeschooling" post earlier.

7:21 AM  

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