One of the things homeschooled kids miss out on is being criticized by teachers for their personal beliefs.

I don’t think it’s bad to miss out on such experiences, but it does get me thinking about how to prepare (or whether it’s possible to prepare) our college-bound homeschooled offspring for that kind of situation, which is becoming increasingly common.  

Not that it never happened in the past, of course. I recall being graded down in Biology 100 back at the good old U of I for refusing to accept the theory of evolution as a valid one. And as recently as last fall, my teenage daughter took some flak from her community college professor (in a graphic arts class, no less) for commenting that she liked Sarah Palin.

But it appears that the teachers are becoming more vehement and profane:

Jonathan Lopez, who is working on his associate of arts degree at Los Angeles City College, quoted a dictionary definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman and cited several Bible verses during a public speaking class in late November, his suit says. His professor, John Matteson, interrupted, called Lopez a “fascist bastard” and refused to let him finish his address, according to the suit.

Nice, huh? We don’t have to worry about Jonathan, who has since sued the college district with the help of the Alliance Defense Fund. But what about our kids? John Matteson isn’t the only idiot professor out there. Can we prepare our kids for this kind of attack, and if so, how?

I think we should warn them that this happens, and discuss ways they can deal with it. In the case of my daughter, we discussed the inappropriateness of her teacher’s remarks (which I won’t go into here), especially since her dad and I were paying $400 for graphic design instruction, not misguided knee-jerk political philosophy. We also talked about what she wished she would have said, and what she’ll do when (not if) it happens again. We talked about knowing what you believe and why you believe it. And I told her I was proud of her for politely standing up for herself when verbally attacked by an authority figure.

Did I leave anything out? What else can we do?