Homeschool type rant

OK so like I was saying, my friend disapproves of me homeschooling Boss.

She will argue no end that state education is a good thing yet undo her own arguments in the next sentence if/when, for example, I have to spell something over the phone to her so that Boss won't twig, and I have to wait five minutes while she blends the consonants and vowels (audibly I may add) into a word. The last two notable examples being, "T-R-A-I-N" and "C-H-I-P-S". Which no joke, took so long I had to just tell her what it was. So.

Then on top of that, we have an altogether different understanding of what education really is. For her it is simply the acquisition of facts in case you are ever called upon to be a contestant on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" thus, like the over-grown lab. rat you really are, allowing yourself to cleverly press the lever which sends more food into your in-tray. For her "education" is simply the filling of a bucket. Now, for me education is a stepping stone for self-actualisation and human dignity whereby one can find communion with Allah, living a truly dignified life fulfilling their destiny and what they were created for. Education is not information. Education is more than carrying facts around like a donkey carries books. In Islam knowledge that doesn't change you isn't knowledge. True knowledge affects your inner state.

So. Then we have moved on to how deprived homeschooled children are, how they miss out socially etc. A good rant on that can be found here. So we are in a head-lock and I'm trying to convince her that state education is actually double-speak and what it isn't about is "education", but "control" and "normalisation" and "herd mentality". Which she gets uppity about like I am undermining everything she is.

Just to convince her that homeschooled people are actually better educated, smarter, socially more well-adjusted and can think outside the box more than the herded masses I gave her a few examples of people who have been HE-ed. Here, below is the list:

Authors:
William Blake,
Charles Dickens,
Pearl Buck,
Agatha Christie
Margaret Atwood;

social and political figures:
Benjamin Franklin,
Winston Churchill,
Samuel Gompers,
Charles Lindberg,
Florence Nightingale;

artists:
Andrew Wyeth,
Yehudi Menuhin,
Sean O'Casey,
Charlie Chaplin,
Claude Monet
Noel Coward;




Inventors:
Alexander Graham Bell
Thomas Edison
Alec Issigonis
Cyrus McCormick
The Wright Brothers
One of the world's richest men, Andrew Carnegie, was homeschooled until he was nine. He was coaxed into attending school after that, but by the age of thirteen Carnegie left school and never went back. School attendance is not the only way to become a successful, sociable adult.


Scientists:
Blaise Pascal
Pierre Curie
Albert Einstein
Booker T. Washington
George Washington Carver


American Presidents:
George Washington
Thomas Jefferson
John Quincy Adams
James Madison
William Henry Harrison
John Tyler
Abraham Lincoln
Theordore Roosevelt
Woodrow Wilson
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Senator William Johnson George Wythe



And do you know what she said when I'd finished? Huh? She said...













.... "Well, who wants to be like them anyway".