Hip Family Homeschooling

1.No one, and I mean no one, has the right to teach my son how to square dance.

2.Summer vacation can begin in January and end in March.

3.While I agree with the ACLU that religion has no place in public education, I don't think you can teach "character education" without it. I don't think you should teach sex education without it. And anyone who thinks you can give a child a complete education in science without discussing God doesn't know enough about the history of science. But I also believe God invented evolution, so my ideas aren't real popular among most homeschoolers either.

4.Waffle Stix, despite their standing on school lunch menus, are not food.

5.Public schools won't teach Latin to second-graders.

6.No Child Left Behind.

7.I believe history is linear.

8.I believe spelling, grammar and math have rules.

9.We know a lot of teachers, and long before we had kids we heard several earfuls about the wretched state of public education. It seems every attempt to spark a child's love of learning is beaten down by bureaucratic nonsense and disciplinary nightmares. Most teachers are saints, and it's a tragedy more parents don't acknowledge that.

10.No Child Left Behind.

11.Not every teacher is a saint. One told my niece many years ago that if a gay man sneezes on you, you die of AIDS. How's that for sex education?

12.I get to go on the field trips.

13.The public refuses to adequately support public schools. Kids should go to school to learn, not to hawk candy bars so they can buy textbooks.

14.A better student-teacher ratio.

15.No Child Left Behind. And how exactly does learning to take a test contribute to my child's education?

16.We have religious objections to waking up before dawn.

17.We can slow down and spend as much time as The Boy needs working on double-digit subtraction.

18.We can speed up and rip through spelling as fast as The Boy wants.

19.We can't afford back-to-school clothes.

20.To be ready for first grade, you have to excel at kindergarten. To be ready for kindergarten, you have to go to a good preschool. To be ready for preschool, you have to go to day care. At what point do we teach a fetus to square dance?

21.Socialization is overrated. If the socialization you get in public schools is so gosh-awful important, how did modern humanity survive its first 4,850 years without it?

22.Our complete K-12 Star Wars Curriculum. Did you know that the rise of Octavian to Augustus Caesar, Rome's first emperor, is actually based on "Star Wars," wherein Senator Palpatine twisted the Galactic Republic into an empire? Et tu, Darth Vader?

23.Watching the light bulb go on in your child's eyes when he figures out the concept of division.

24.It's not necessary to have sheriff's deputies roaming the hallways of my home.

25.Learning never ends — not at 3 p.m., not after homework is done, not on weekends and not on vacation.

I don't think homeschooling is for everyone. Heck, lots of parents welcome that 9 to 3 break from their kids. And many parents are so devoted and involved, they make public schools better for everybody, and I admire that.

But I'm not that patient.

No, until our society can stop the violence, pay teachers what they deserve, fund superior classroom technology, get past the arguments about religion, tailor education to individual children, abolish the bureaucracy and define "Waffle Stix," I'd just as soon do this myself.

Besides, we enjoy teaching our children. And that's reason enough.