Home schooling the new Hollywood substitute for ignorant hillbillies

The O’Keefes, a midseason replacement on WB, portrays homeschooled
children as weirdos who’ve sacrified social interaction for unwholesome braininess.
So they go to public school to learn how to be real kids.

Home schooling is not only getting out of the house, it’s
getting on the air. Warner Brothers will be airing a half-hour sitcom, "The
O’Keefes," in which, according to the television treatment, two parents
(played by Judge Reinhold and Kirsten Nelson) home school their three gifted
and multilingual kids in order to protect them from a materialistic society.

According to the WB, the O’Keefe siblings can speak six languages, "but
have no idea how to talk to kids their own age." An air date for the sitcom
has yet to be scheduled, but the proposed show has already stirred commotion
among the home-schooling community.
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Now Hollywood has added to it’s arsenal of stereotypes. The ignorant
self righteous anti-science fundamentalist has long been used but now they
want to perpetuate the urban
myth of the home school family with a fortress mentality where the kids never
leave the house or interact with people their own age. I am surprised that
the parents aren’t being portrayed as religious nuts.