Alternative Education and Adverse Attitudes Regarding It

What is shockingly disheartening is not so much the local bigotry of some of the people in this particular area of Michigan but, rather, that their fetid paranoia and bigotry, prejudice and discriminatory attitudes, could be officially fed by Federal government money; this rather empirically, not just suggestively, means actually that both real and substantial support and encouragement truly exists, at the national level no less, to potentially view certain kinds of marginalized people, hypothetically “radical” homeschoolers, as so being, in pragmatic fact, possible domestic terrorists deserving of true public concern. 

There are, as noted, such warped minds energetically involved in promoting a truly paranoid style of politics in this country, worthy of the Klu Klux Klan, in explicit terms of the observed suspiciousness and vile suggestiveness involved.  Some progressive elitists could ask: Might it be possible that a next door neighbor could, perish the thought, be a… homeschooler?

It is a most dangerous attitude that is not productive of social trust and an appreciation of the respect due to members of civil society who are not ever normally connected to uncivil, radical, extremist, or disreputable behavior; this is as rising to the absurd or ridiculous level of any potential terroristic feelings, much less cognate conduct of such a fanatical, violent nature.  Of course, it is not to be rationally expected that such organizations as, e. g., the American Civil Liberties Union would tend to get involved in this kind of situation.

Regrets and Explanations

As expected, the duly authorized representative of the Muskegon Area Intermediate School District properly gave a full apology that included a complete justification and associated rationalization for what had been done, which, to a rational intellect, logically negates the invented apology; as a fair sort of parallel analogy, it’s quite similar to a criminal’s surely sincere regret and sorrow at having been, thus, caught committing an act of crime, while giving a good justification of the act’s [benevolently projected] cause. The Muskegon Area Intermediate School District, therefore, much regretted getting caught and, thus, gave forth with explanations.

In the meanwhile, however, the damage was done in so wrongfully stigmatizing, nastily singling out, stereotyping an entire class of people for no “crime” greater than wanting to be dedicated homeschoolers for the sake of educating their precious children.  How could they know that such improper thinking was naturally liable to easily lead them into the logical direction of possibly plotting terrorist actions against public school buses?  Could such perverse folks, moreover, be inbred, genetic criminals and not simply realize it?

If this were only an extremely isolated and negligible or exceptional incident, regarding the public perception of homeschoolers by various authorities at large, it could be correctly dismissed as just a quirky matter that had haphazardly both arisen and died in a deserved obscurity; but, regrettably, such is not ever the actual case; rather, it is greatly indicative, publicly informative, of a quite real and disturbing attitude among so many of the academic, cultural, educational, intellectual, and political elites of this nation who, indeed, have clearly and definitely defined hostile thoughts. 

Homeschoolers are, thus, irrationally presumed to be enemies of the (progressively-minded) people who have only the best of intentions in portraying these educational nonconformists negatively as somehow or other, directly or indirectly speaking, truly dangerous dissidents who threaten the status quo; and, therefore, they do properly deserve to be well watched closely, for any (asserted) strange behavior; such antiestablishment, educational rebels might, therefore, be domestic terrorists-in-training, on native soil, just conspiratorially waiting for the wild chance to give ugly vent to their various frustrations and feelings of despair and anger. 

Conclusion

The very kind of suspicious and paranoid opinions, moreover, that progressives or liberals would, axiomatically, condemn as sick McCarthyism is manifested freely, by them, against homeschoolers.  And yet, this disgustingly dangerous and delusional kind of overt paranoid politics ought to really have no legitimate place in America whatsoever or, at least, one might still hope so.  There should be no irrational prejudices, therefore, placed against people who simply wish to have a free choice concerning the education of their own children. 

Increasingly, however, it is no longer the supposed case that “only” White, middle-class Americans are freely and willingly choosing routes of alternative education; year by year, more numbers of inner-city parents, seeing the mounting and documented failures of the public school system, are rationally opting out for something better, which can, of course, include homeschooling.