It's Just the Same Old Song

When my parents decided to send me to a private school, they were told multiple times by some of their acquaintances that they were doing a horrible thing. The local public schools, they were told, needed me as a student, and needed my parents as involved parents. The local schools would benefit so much from our presence! How could my parents choose to spend so much money on their own child, and not try to enhance the community school?

Nowhere in their reasons, of course, was mention made of how going to the local public school would benefit me. I was a typically nerdy child, if one can say there is a typically nerdy five year old. I asked my preschool teacher (we didn't call it "pre-kindergarten" or "pre-K" back then) for homework. I read early. I memorized the states & capitals at age four because I wanted to do so. I also memorized "The Star-Spangled Banner." I could tell time on an analog clock. I had a whole host of strange behaviors and even the most dedicated defendant of the public schools never tried to suggest I should attend them because of what the local school could offer me.

So, you see, it's no surprise to me to read an article detailing why gifted children shouldn't be homeschooled. The article is a list of how the public schools lose out when gifted children are homeschooled. That's it. The community loses. The school loses. There's no argument that the child loses by being homeschooled, though, and I suspect that's because the author is intellectually honest enough not to argue that!

So I wish I could say that this article is surprising to me, but it's not. I wish I could say that the sentiments that attacked my parents were less common or less voiced, but they are not. For whatever reason, in a country that subscribes to an ideal of individualism, when it comes to gifted children and their education, we're suddenly supposed to idealize Spock, and let the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or one.