Juxtapose

So, sometimes it gets a little tough up here in the liberal, smarmy, stuffy, Democrat northeast to explain my schooling history. Now that I've been in college for a considerable number of years (6, to be precise), the subject doesn't come up nearly as much as it used to at one point, but still, every so often, it rears its ugly head.

Now, understand, I'm a huuuuuge proponent of homeschooling. I am never ashamed to tell people about it, and I'm never afraid to challenge people's arguments against it. I'm a machine when it comes to these things, really. It's, "Wham, bam, boom," and they're off whimpering with their red New England Communist Youth waist sashes flapping along behind them in the tailwind of their retreat. Trust me on this. However, if hostility doesn't arise, I see no need to arouse it on my part, so I usually try to explain things to people the way I would explain them to someone who is completely new to a subject - slow, to the point, and using pertinent illustrations. For a few years, when people would ask where I went to school, I would tell them, in abbreviated form, my schooling history, and every time, they would ask "how my parents dealt with this terrible, awful burden of raising children AND schooling them." I could settle this in one of two ways. If the person asking was a Christian (and it's amazing how many Christians who claim children to be "Gifts of God" actually believe they are "Only gifts of God when they're in school and out of the house five days a week"), I would throw out the old, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and in the end he will not turn from it!!!" argument, resplendent with bells and whistles of, "We can't have the STATE raising our children, now CAN WE?!?!" and "You know, many of this country's forefathers were likely homeschooled...," just to keep their faces frozen in a suitably shocked state, usually followed by some wholly unnecessary and ambiguous defensive statement about how Christian private schooling shouldn't be neglected as a viable option. As if I even wanted to bring THAT issue onto the table. Psht.

However, if the person asking all the questions was not a Christian, and especially if I did not know them well, I'd take it a little easier on them. After all, what about the world says that people should really take responsibility for their kids' upbringing? Nothing. So, how should they know? Most often, people are just ignorant. They can become non-ignorant and hostile, which then turns it into idiocy in place of that ignorance, but still. I like to assume the best in people. Anyhow, I'd try to explain things a little more carefully with all the lines: My parents knew they could give me at least as good an education as the schools could, but hopefully better... My parents, at the time, only had to deal teaching a four-year-old, and they were learning as they went along... I was the guinea pig... Homeschooling did me a world of good and let me expand my world considerably.. All those lines. However, I still found, after long strings of verbiage, that I was getting little to no response, until I used the magic explanation to all things homeschooling, "Yes, well, my parents were kinda like educational hippies. Not ACTUAL hippies, because they are really too young to have been, but, speaking figuratively here. They just wanted to make a change and raise their kids the way they wanted them to be raised."

Suddenly, people's faces lit up - ah, a hippie. Now THAT they definitely understood.

However, time has gone by, and I've become dissatisfied with the hippie moniker. As it stands, and for the record, my parents are a bit young to have ever been genuine hippies. To be sure, my parents know their Grateful Dead (and you'd better believe it), but the term 'hippie' is never one I've been very fond of. As a teaching construct, it's useful, but beyond that, I mean, they're just dirty hippies. So I devised a new plan of attack. While fending off the demons of ignorance the other day, I was furiously groping for the hippie line but couldn't remember it, and instead said something to the effect of:

"Yeah, well. Let me explain it to you this way.. My parents were the anarchists of the educational world. In fact, let's call them 'Educational Anarchists,' for the time being. While everyone else was dressing the educational world up with lots of big hair, stirrup pants, neons, and listening to Madonna, my parents were sticking the metaphorical safety pins of the educational world through their earlobes and eyebrows. They were mohawking it. They were in the Underground. They were Scene before Scene was. They listened to the Talking Heads (which are not even close to being punk, but I digress...). My parents, you see, were Schooling Punks - the proverbial squatters in London, looking for revolution in a region overrun by people still spending their time skwawking about the school district not having enough money to buy new uniforms for the cheerleaders. ... Uhm... Are you with me here?"

At which point, the party being addressed nodded to me knowingly, and with the most deeply respectful and reverent tone I have ever heard from anyone in her position before, she said, "Wow. Your parents must be pretty awesome." And I agreed. Yes I did.