Eclectic Muddlehood

Why I am choosing to homeschool isn’t even the right question some days. During my short drive home from the grocery store this afternoon, the right question for me was who in their right mind would trust the physical, moral, ethical and spiritual development of their precious children to the public school system? Five miles of stopping and going was enough to confirm a personal commitment to hopefully never, ever place my children in an institutional school system of any kind. Was it the boy stretching his arm out from the back window of the bus to repeatedly protrude his middle finger and shake it gleefully at those of us trapped momentarily behind the insipid yellow vehicle that really inspired me to offer a prayer for the strength to engage in at least 20 years of homeschooling? Or was it the two girls who straggled off the bus at one stop to readjust their clothing by rolling down their barely crotch-length skirts and buttoning up their low-cut blouses, thereby changing their current appearances to ones that might actually be mother-approved? It wasn’t any particular one of the handful of disturbing events I saw take place while winding my car towards home through the neighborhood. It was the fact that this bus was dropping off students from the very same elementary school that my eldest child would be slated to begin attending in only two and a half short years. These were not unruly teenagers displaying this kind of concerning behavior, but children ranging from about six to ten years old. If this is what being stuck behind the elementary school bus is like, let the goddess of home education never allow me to plan a trip to the store around the time the high-schoolers get out!