Commercial and Celebrity Worship Holidays

Do some folks worry your homeschooled child isn't learning? Especially learning about things they think are relevant in today's world? Take, for instance, the recent Martin Luther King, Jr. Day celebrated this year on January 21. Is it so important a child know and celebrate this date? Why? So what if a homeschooled child doesn't know the significance of this date or who King was? Is that an indication that homeschoolers are not learning?

My homeschooled children learned all about Martin Luther King, Jr. and what that included was he was a law breaking womanizer who was selfish when it came to being a parent to his children and husband to his wife. The same goes for that self-absorbed womanizer John F. Kennedy. So what, really, is the point of asking if a homeschooler is learning if they don't know the meaning of January 21st? To us it's just another contrived celebrity worship holiday.

Others are concerned when they find out many homeschoolers do not use textbooks. Textbooks?! Textbooks are bland and devoid of anything worth knowing. Much of the information in them is totally out of context with life and historical fact. We never used textbooks because they are worthless for educational purposes.

Many people do not understand there is a difference between 'schooling' and 'education'. Homeschoolers (a totally inappropriate word to describe children who are learning free of forced public schooling) learn from living life. Many have family centered lives. Schooled children (those in public or private schools) live school centered lives and are force fed totally worthless experiences revolving around pagan and commercial holidays such as Halloween, Valentine's Day (although I kind of like this commercial holiday--a woman can never have enough dark chocolate around the house), Columbus Day, Thanksgiving, etc.

People need to chill and stop worrying about homeschoolers and their education. We're actually amused that public and private schools make such a fuss over these holidays and month long unit studies, year after year, after year, after year, of the same ol' same ol'. Better to make a fuss if your child doesn't know the meaning and significance of her own or her grandmother's birthday.