Anon, I'm not saying it's
exactly the same. Obviously, it's not. I think Todd nails it; it's the Program® Light. And I think the Program grew naturally and almost organically out of the blowback. Kids who resist the mainstream brainwashing
and who's parents are, themselves, brainwashed enough to view that as evidence of a problem in their kid are the ones who wind up getting the intensive version of it.
As to homeschooling, it really doesn't take a lot of dedicated time. If you don't send your kids to school, they never learn to hate books and learning. They just continue on their curious ways and learn everything they find interesting, useful, fun or otherwise worthwhile. I think my littlest one has gotten more reading profficiency by looking up song lyrics online than anything else. She'll get fascinated w/ one band or artist or another, play their CDs over and over, find and print the lyrics and memorize them all. Then onto the fan trivia.
Right now, the biggest obstacle to most people breaking out of the system is its momentum. Everybody's at work or school all day. So there are no babysitters except for the public schools unless you're wealthy enough to hire them. Most of us are not. And there's the pervasive but totally unfounded belief that school is the only or best way for kids to learn basic literacy, numeracy and socialization. It simply isn't.
Webcrawler, in
no way am I my kids' only educator. That would be awful for them and for me. They learn all the time from everyone and everything around them, just like toddlers and adults do.
Faith, as well intentioned as it may be, must be built on facts, not fiction- faith in fiction is a damnable false hope.
--Thomas Edison, American inventor