I've always struggled, when talking to people, with how to get across the "type" of school-free learners/home educators I'm supportive of. I mean yes, I can say unschoolers, but I'm not exactly against relaxed homeschooling (in fact, I'm not really "against" it at all), and even when we're talking school-at-home homeschooling, I don't think what they're doing is necessarily bad, it's just not ideal. What I am against is patriarchal homeschooling, homeschoolers who use homeschooling to isolate and abuse their kids, and similar things. But all that is unwieldy and difficult to say or get across concisely. That's why when reading this post by Pam Laricchia a quote from it really stood out to me:
"there are some homeschooling parents who choose to shelter their children from interacting with the world-at-large, whose goal is to narrow rather than broaden their children’s perspective, but that’s not the kind of home/unschooling we’re discussing here." (emphasis mine)
What an absolutely perfect way to put it. People whose goal it is to narrow rather than broaden their children's perspective.
Problem solved. Now I know how to put things next time I'm trying to clarify the type of home-education I do support, versus those other not-good types!
"there are some homeschooling parents who choose to shelter their children from interacting with the world-at-large, whose goal is to narrow rather than broaden their children’s perspective, but that’s not the kind of home/unschooling we’re discussing here." (emphasis mine)
What an absolutely perfect way to put it. People whose goal it is to narrow rather than broaden their children's perspective.
Problem solved. Now I know how to put things next time I'm trying to clarify the type of home-education I do support, versus those other not-good types!