I apologize for rewinding back to the source of this conversation, but it hits pretty close to home.
Just to set some background... I grew up in the shadow of Philadelphia, right smack between Swarthmore College and Widener. Everyone had their perfect little houses, and perfect little lawns. It was laughable to think anyone would even try keeping livestock on their own property (The Man would surely put a stop to that right quick). I went to a high school that was rated really well (Strath Haven HS). No agricultural classes were taught there, nothing in the way of simple living and old fashioned skills. Heck, they even got rid of the cooking class in my freshman year.
Teachers didn't know what to make of me. My science teachers all called me a genius and wanted me in advanced classes. Math teachers thought me a moron and put me in the "slow classes". Imagine the emotional conflict that ensued trying to sort that one out! I slept through most of my classes. Some out of boredom due to already covering the stuff in my spare time reading. Others because the pace of the class catered to the slower kids and it was a waste of time to move that slowly. I was understanding the math concepts with the help of a tutor that presented things to me differently than the teachers. The math teachers knew this and could not change their teaching style for me when they had ~25 other kids in the class to teach.
After surviving public education there was no way I'd go to college for more of the same (with even BIGGER classes). These days I make more money alone than your average combined family income, enjoy the work that I do, have NO student loans to pay off, and I'm entirely self-taught.
Homeschooling is a concept I have put a lot of thought into over the years. My
web site deals with a lot of issues relevant to rural families (who tend to homeschool quite often) and others interested in preserving the basic living skills that have been burned out of our collective minds via public education. I have my first child on the way, due in December, and I'm pretty sure we're going to homeschool.
Let me be blunt. I think public school is a blight on our society. I honestly believe we are stunting the development of our children by pushing them through a cookie cutter education system that cares more about bell curves and numbers than the personal enrichment of individual children. The closest thing to public school that can possibly work is a mentoring program where no more than 3 or 4 kids are coupled with a mentor who is an expert in their respective field of study. As the children grow older and their studies are greater in depth, that ratio should go down to 1 or 2 students per mentor.
Breaking down the real world into subjects is also a big mistake, at least later in life. It is okay to say "okay, Johnny, we're going to do basic addition today" when you are dealing with a 5 year old. But when you're teaching a 15 year old, the only way to teach math concepts is in its proper context. I remember in high school we were learning about non-base 10 numbering systems and how I struggled so much with it. But in my computer studies I had to learn the interrelationships between binary, octal, hex, and base 10. And it all
clicked.
I applaud this young lady, and her parents for having the testicular fortitude to try something different. She has a brighter future because of her homeschooling that she may not have had if put through a mentally crippling public school. I do think that if medicine is her calling, her work with small mammals will be an assett to her. She already has years of practice behind her doing surgical incisions and understanding the basic anatomy of a mammal.
If anyone is still reading this far, I'd like to extend an invitation to this young lady to write for yonderway.com. This is a non-profit web site that would love to have some articles online about animal skinning and any other subjects she'd like to cover.