Hogsback Homeschool

I realize, having now spent some time in the village of Hogsback, that many of the children here are not attending School. They are attending that awful monster, Hogsback Homeschool.Their precocity not withstanding it seems a damned shame that an entire generation of children should be educationally neglected simply to serve the egoism of their parents who appear to have decided that the knowledge gained during their 10-year long trance rave party is sufficient to enable them to educate their own children.

Do these people think that learning how to bake a loaf of bread and having some vague understanding of character analysis because someone’s parent once attended a literature class is going to stand their offspring in good stead in the labour market of the future? I have often heard criticisms of the homeschooling idea voiced by members of my family who have taken education as their profession and become teachers or lecturers. Here let me add my voice to these criticisms. It is unbelievably arrogant to decide that you are capable of educating your own child. A geographer needs to teach geography a linguist to teach whichever language. A mathematician teaches maths. An artist can teach art. All of our teachers growing up had degrees in their subject and shared knowledge. To imagine that 12 years of spending a bit of time each day helping your child learn something replaces what was on offer from all of those professionals is insane. It is one thing to criticize a system that is in place it is quite another to attempt to replace it with nothing at all. That is what I have seen in this village of Higsback or Humpback or whatever! Children whose parents are barely competent themselves due to their drug and alcohol problems. Parents who do not realise that their own hypersexualisation has contaminated the fears they have taught their children to live with. Sure, children should be wary of strangers. It is only natural to fear the unknown until it becomes known, but Hogsback Homeschool is one place where it would be better advice for children to be wary of their own parents. The village labours under a demented narcissism. A delusion that those who live in Hogsback are a chosen few who are to survive the fall of humanity and make life anew. The parents of this tribe of semi literates believe in bizarre conspiracy theories and mad myths rather than the cautious but assiduous knowledge that come from real study and earnest critical thinking.