You have to go to school....

Over the weekend, we were at the park, and the boys went off by themselves to play for a while. When they came back to the blanket, Andy asked me if you had to go to high school to go to college (he's recently decided he wants to go to college). I told him no, that I know of many homeschooled kids who have either finished or are enrolled in college. Why did he ask?

They ran into a woman at the park, and like virtually all adults, she asked them where they go to school, what grade, something like that. Andy said "we don't go to school."

"Oh, you're homeschooled."

"No. We don't do school at all."

"But you have to go to school. You can't go to college without high school, and you have to go to middle school to get into high school, and you have to go to elementary school to get into middle school. If your parents don't send you to school, they could get in trouble and even be arrested."
I said he could have saved himself -- and her -- all that worry if he'd just said, "yeah, we homeschool" and she'd probably have dropped it there.

When I told this story to the tribe today, Susan said the next logical step in that woman's story was "I mean, you have to go to preschool to get into elementary, and before that, Mommy has to listen to Bach when she's pregnant, or you'll never get anywhere!"

In the time that woman at the park spent trying to convince the boys they had to go to school, she could have had a real conversation with them. I guess they didn't teach those conversation skills in her college studies.....