Salon: Home-schooled and illiterate - for some kids it means isolation with little education

[bvar22]

33. All in all,

I am profoundly grateful that my parents were NOT my school teachers.
I have had many, many different teachers, some good, some bad,
some excellent mentors, and some that I stayed as far away from as possible.
I've also had many different disciplinarians and Principals at several different schools throughout my youth.
This large base of experience in our Education System has served me well.

My parents were loving and helpful, but they were my Parents,
and that IS a different relationship than the one I had with my teachers.
It frightens me to imagine my parents devoting that much of their life trying to control all of those different aspects of mine.


School was not easy for me.
I was not one of the popular, good looking, athletic kids with wealthy parents to whom everything comes easily.
I was a ragged eccentric, long before that was cool.
My grades were good, and I was barely OK at most sports.
I DO know what it is like to be chosen last.
But I learned a great deal about different people, and learned the skills to deal with the wide variety of experiences, challenges, and adventures life throws at us all without my parents riding in the back seat.
The way to learn about different people is to spend a lot of time with a lot of different people,
friends, acquaintances, team mates, class mates, teachers, principles, mentors, and parents.
Having a parent trying to wear all those different hats seems frightfully limiting.

I DO understand why some are attracted to being all those things to their children,
but I AM grateful that my Parents stuck to Parenting,
and left the rest up to me and the World.
Thank You, Mom.
Thank You, Dad.

BTW: My mother was a high school math teacher in the Public School system.