I worry that if all of the gifted students get fed up with the school system and bail to the safe confines of homeschooling, then things will never change. I'm still in the "up-in-arms" stage of denial. Give me a few months or a year and I will simmer down a bit.
I hear you, but I have to admit that I feel ABSOLUTELY NO GUILT about HSing my son, regardless of what that means for the schools. If they want my son, his scores, the money for his presence, my energy and time, and all that stuff that people (like my mom) say that I "owe" to the system--or even to other GT kids--then they have to EARN it!
If they aren't going to teach him, if they're going to kill the light inside him and make him believe he's a bad kid simply because he's bored--and they did all that last year, for as long as he was in that classroom!--then I'm yanking him out and I'm perfectly fine with that.
My only worry about our choice is that maybe I didn't work hard enough to make it work, but that's still not a concern about what *I* owe *them*, rather a concern about what *we* could have *gotten* from the system if we'd tried harder. Even that's a fleeting worry though. I'm pretty sure this is the best path for us.
Ultimately, my job as a parent is to raise my OWN kids the best way I can. It's all I have the energy for. I'm active in a parent group to try to fix the school system, but I just can't sacrifice my child for the machinery to grind him to a pulp.
...Not that you were suggesting that I should, of course!
