How come every time homeschooling shows up in the news it is for something undesirable? When I see "homeschool" or "homeschooling" in the headline of an article, I usually fear for the worst. This is truly a sad thing. I find some condolence knowing that I can blame almost everything on the media.
What do I mean?
The media wants homeschooling to stay sensationalized. The media wants homeschooling to be associated with crazy things. That way, when they talk about homeschooling they can overemphasize and bring out all of those 'pop' images.
Under this image, all homeschoolers are super-ultra-conservative Christians who are intolerant and bigoted. Not surprisingly, this story 'sells.'
I watched something very interesting happen today. Watch as the portrayal of this story changes as it passes through different media channels.
This story has been 'selling' during the past 24 hours. It started with a guest submission to HomeschoolBase.com. An author named Sarah submitted an article for re-publication which was accepted - “Mommy, why doesn’t daddy wear makeup?” - Black Friday Events Lead Conservative Mother To Fear The Worst.
I do not respect the author of that article, but I do respect Homeschool Base for standing by its promise to publish community articles. These articles are going to be published anyway around it, and I would prefer to read the homeschooling stories on a homeschooling website first.
No matter what happens, this is the type of story that will start making certain demographics really, really upset. And this means it will get re-published. This is what happened first, a large Patheos blog picked up the article with a spin:
Homeschooling Christian Mother Can’t Handle Her Son Seeing a Male CoverGirl Model on TV
This headline is quite a bit different. Although, if you examine the two headlines together, they are not 'that' different. Seriously, I think this Patheos blog title is perfectly acceptable. Well of course, this is a headline. Go visit the article and see what happened. The article got increasingly opinionated. This is no objective article, definitely a strong opinion on an opinion article. Of course, that is to be expected. But wait, look at the comments. THAT is the real response. Those comments are nasty by all standards.
This is the momentum that powered the second article, and I would imagine it started spilling over into the original and the third.
Here comes a third source:
Homeschool mom crushed by ‘moral dilemma’ after son sees male CoverGirl wearing makeup
This article made the shift from opinionated to pure hate and shaming. The vast majority of the comments shamed homeschoolers. I hate this. This is not okay. Homeschoolers make up a huge population, over 2 million. And, most of us are not homeschooling for religious reasons.
This is what the media does - within two articles, homeschooling becomes a shameful act.
