And more people are realizing that, according to the poll. And feeling free to say so. Whatever social network held them in place before isn’t working now. Which may be a good thing, in several ways.

JJ:
“The problem for the group isn’t so much the uncommitted but the committed who insist on seeing the same thing differently?”

And who insist that their way is the ONLY way. Committed and exclusionist — great combination.

Nance

That’s where I think it all breaks down. The problem for the group isn’t so much the uncommitted but the committed who insist on seeing the same thing differently?

And then there’s the fellow on our state’s test reform list asking me to explain (I heard “justify” unschooling.

Now, he’s on the list as someone working to get away from abuse of/by standardized testing.

So am I.

And he saw a friendly face to ask about something that’s been bothering him — what’s with this “unschooling?”

My polite social impulse was to explain, in boring detail, how we live as unschoolers. But I then felt put upon that he was asking me to justify my choice (whether he was or not). So I gave him some links, hiding behind the social nicety that it wasn’t really the topic of that list to discuss unschooling.

You’d think we’d be on the same side in any discussion about unschooling. I would think so, anyway. But maybe not. Maybe his level of threat is set at “tests are bad for kids in school but, darn it, they should be in school” and mine is set at “not mine.”

A stranger would see potential allies but we could easily get diverted from our test reform task with a disagreement about schools and schooling.

It’s the point where “more freedom for everyone” becomes “too much freedom for the other guy” where we would butt heads. And our little social network would stop producing good results.

Nance

(You’re right about the baby shower not being the same magnitude of pressure or problem, of course. But the same basic social-network mechanism is what’s creating both the reality and the perceptions we all have to live with.)

*********

But wasn’t the thrust of the anti-hsing argument that it was for our own good?

Much like some pro-ps arguments.

And like some definers of hsing.

I wish people would stop trying to save me.

Nance

***********

I always wonder about that. Of course. Picturing the young wife who wonders what the heck the doofus she married thinks he is doing. And he’s in charge?

Maybe those are the ones who leave. Or quietly do go insane until they start enjoying their 2nd Amendment freedom.

Nance

*******

And she’s not actually under any sort of threat of physical violence. Or any other kind — unless her tender psyche can’t survive a bow covered plate hat.

Unlike the kid trapped in a damaging school situation.

And, if she were somehow being threatened, she could leave.

Nance

Until disability rights issues are raised, and it’s like … whoa, is this the twilight zone? What’s with the casual bigotry? the inability - the refusal? - to listen to the voices of people who are closest to the issues?

The information-to-static ratio is all out of whack, with commenters I would like to call my allies not just implying but in some cases saying that I - and my clients, and my friends - are not fully human.

It’s like there’s this seemy underbelly of disability-based prejudice lurking within a good percentage of the commenters at these blogs. And, having read Lindsay’s take on the Ashley X case (as well as Amanda’s) - well, the folks writing the posts aren’t always so prejudice-free themselves.

Which is exactly how I see their belligerent and self-righteous “feminist” prejudice against homeschool moms, especially those of us who are in fact just as feminist and humanist as they consider themselves (if not more so) and have been at it a lot longer! That’s a disabling blind spot even the above poster seems “unable” to see.

This same thread about disability choice had a trackback from the same feminist (pronouncing why “we” needed compulsory public education) who took offense when I retorted “who’s we, kemosabe?” Apparently she is “brown” (her word, not mine) and thus felt justified in changing the subject to her outrage over my free word choice, from my outrage over her government-backed overreach into my child’s mind, values and future. . .