'Last Week Tonight with John Oliver' covers homeschooling

While I wrote "I've missed Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Kimmel, and especially John Oliver" in Writers Guild reaches tentative agreement with studios and repeated in 'Stephen Colbert Recaps A Crazy Summer' as he returns from the writers strike, I haven't featured any of John Oliver's monologues since the end of the WGA strike. Sorry, his guest appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers in Meyers' and Colbert's guests on strikes and labor issues doesn't count. Fortunately, he covered a topic I care about in Homeschooling: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) this Sunday.

John Oliver discusses homeschooling, its surprising lack of regulation in many states, and, crucially, Darth Vader’s parenting skills.

I agree with Oliver that the ceiling for homeschooling can be very high. My experience with home-schooled students is that they are much nicer and get along with adults better than children who went to public and private schools; I like them better as people. That's my positive observation about the results of homeschooling. My negative comment is that they often have noticeable holes in their education, knowledge that students who actually went to school learned from their teachers. I'm seeing a little of that even with students remotely educated during the pandemic; some skills just can't be taught over a Zoom call.

I also agree with Oliver that the floor for homeschooling can be so low as to be subterranean and the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), which Oliver describes as "the homeschooling equivalent of the NRA," is enabling that. The HSLDA might enjoy that comparison, but Oliver makes sure that it's not flattering, calling each "an extremely powerful organization that...represents a large number of people, [but] pursues an outermost fringe version of their agenda." With friends like that, the homeschooling movement hardly needs enemies — and it has those, too.

I'll get to Last Week Tonight with John Oliver's Emmy nomination that I didn't cover in Nixon saying 'Sock it to me' and Outstanding Talk Series Emmy nominees for Presidential Joke Day when Saturday Night Live returns, since the two are competing against each other for Outstanding Scripted Variety Series. In the meantime, stay tuned for a joint observation of National Coming Out Day and National Fossil Day tomorrow. I've actually found a video that works for both.