A Day Without Dudgeon......
is like a day without sunshine. The Chicago Tribune Magazine devotes the bulk of today’s issue to homeschooling. It is generally positive.......

Whether the school is an academic powerhouse with state-of-the art facilities and well-credentialed teachers or an overcrowded, underfunded relic with high teacher turnover, chances are that, at some point, parents will become frustrated with how their children are being educated and wonder if they can do the job better.

.........though their choice of ‘religious’ homeschoolers struck me as a little flaky. I’ve already written my letter to the Trib:


As a mother in her sixth year of homeschooling, I am writing to thank you for the generally positive and fair assessment of the practice of homeschooling in the present day, drawing from a variety of schooling situations. (Home Rooms by Grant Pick, Tribune Magazine, 1/19/03)`

While we would statistically fall into the 40% category of those homeschooling for religious reasons, I feel that your choice of religious homeschooling family plays into a stereotype of regressive, insular Christian homeschooling that is so often demonized by the media.

The statement by Pat Inyart that college is not the goal for her daughter because "it's not the role of a woman to go out and support the family," flies in the face of everything I believe about education. As a mother of some 24 years, few spent in any remunerative employment, I intend for my daughters to be every bit as educated as my sons. If not more so. In most homes - regardless of the educational paths taken for the children - the mother is the first and primary educator of the children. To skimp in the education of girls is to cheat all children of the best possible mothering.