One of the common criticisms of homeschooling is that it supposedly allows parents to “brainwash” their kids in their own narrow ways of thinking. Maybe that’s true in some families but there is a huge community of progressive home educating families that is focused on exactly the opposite. And one of the foundations of my own parenting style – and, in fact, one of the top reasons for not sending our daughters to school – was  preserving and nurturing their ability to think for themselves. We wanted them to be able to make their own decisions, to develop their own personal autonomy and authority. We wanted them to trust themselves, to have the confidence to listen to their own gut feelings. We wanted to help them develop and have confidence in their intuition. School, on the other hand, trains children to accept the opinions of others – in this case, teachers and peers. Their own voices are drowned out by the chaos of the school experience and they learn to acquiesce, not to trust their own understanding of the world. Even if you don’t agree with John Taylor Gatto’s belief that school is a conspiracy to dumb people down and make them happy little participants in the corporate agenda, you have to agree that thinking for oneself is a useful tool these days. Of course, people who think for themselves have a hard time buying into what’s going on – for example – in the UK right now. (See post below.) Hmmmm.