That Steve!
[Rod Dreher  03/19 11:30 AM]

Man oh man, did Steve's post fire up the base. Here's one of the e-mails, this one from Rebecca (who, incidentally, blogs here):

I'm willing to bet the last five bucks in my bank account that that Steve whose letter you printed has met all of 3 homeschooled kids. Has it ever occurred to him that the lack of discipline and expectations from schools and kid's parents accounts for a huge part of the reason homeschool parents don't want to put their kids in the public schools to begin with? How lovely that his wife works with Asian high school kids whose parents have high expectations of them - I don't live there! I live in a suburb where they're more likely to indoctrinate my sons with "sensitivity training" than any sort of real discipline which will help them succeed in life. So, yes I took my kids out - in large part BECAUSE I have high expectations for them, expect them to be well behaved and follow instructions from those in charge. Even more than that, I want to train them to BE the ones in charge, not just act as cannon fodder for whatever instit utionalized setting the system wants to funnel them into. And yes, we enjoy the close relationship which comes from being with each other most of the time. I'm just thrilled to little bitty pieces that Steve can develop a close relationship with his son in the time available to them, but that doesn't have howdy-who to do with our family. I don't know who this guy thinks he is, but I can 100% guarantee that he knows as much about homeschoolers, their kids, families, motivations and methods as I know about underwater basket weaving. Which of course is virtually nothing. Funny how these "little hot-housed flowers" Steve knows so much about turn into productive citizens who are successful in college, the work place and far and away more likely to be civically active and politically astute than their peers. Perhaps Steve should open his brain and learn something new before running his yapper about a topic he is obviously so ill-informed about. But of course, they didn't have homeschooling in the good old days when Steve was growing up, so it must be a bunch of hooey!