By JESSE SCACCIA
I’ll say this for homeschooling parents: I’d want them on my side in a fight.
Or if I’m trying to filibuster a bill in the Senate. Y’all are the Kenyans of blog commentors! There were over 25,000 words of comments yesterday. But I guess if you’re used to talking at your kid all day, you wouldn’t know how to cut yourself short.
(Jokes! It’s Sunday… no stones thrown today.)
The comment that resonated with me the most was made by Jerry. He said, “You may be a gifted teacher, but I have seen more than enough well-educated teachers who were totally lost in a classroom. One thing that every home school parent has, that I have witnessed, is total dedication to the education of their children.”
That’s true. But it is within this pedagogical strength that lies my greatest concern for the homeschooled child. Along with total dedication–in any field, from sports to writing to parenting–comes real risks. And, based on the comments, I’ve identified a few true risks of homeschooling.
1. The “Othering” of Public School Students
I was disheartened at the amount of broad criticism pointed at public schools and public school students. Public schools were described as “Where one can find drugs of various types and classifications, alcohol, hard liquor, tobacco, sexual education, pornography, knives, guns, threats, bullying, teachers harassing and name calling (hmm, would that be you), swearing, racial discrimination, gangs, fights.”
Another homeschooler claimed that “it is the public-schooled kids that don’t know how to behave in social settings.” The learning was described as “what clothing you needed to wear to be popular. I learned who was having a party on the weekend when their parents were away. I also learned math and grammar and stuff like that. I did not learn morality…”
Based on some of these comments, it sounds like public school kids are downright feared.
“I would say that kids in public schools these days are less socially ready and definitely more morally corrupt,” said Caroline.
One former school employee had such low esteem for public school students to say, “When I worked in a public school most of the elementary children I worked with thought the world was their state and had no idea about the world.”
And these were just a small sample.
It’s natural for a strict dedication to a semi-separatist way of life to lead to the “othering” of those in mainstream society, and that’s clearly what’s happening here. This almost sounds like the bitterness of a divorced person, attempting to alienate their child from their former spouse out of fear and insecurity. (Sorry… that was a stone.)
This sort of attitude toward the vast majority of mainstream society worries me if it comes just from a parent. But since this comes from the two major authority figures in a child’s life–both parent and teacher– I’m downright terrified myself. How will the child come to learn any different? How can they learn to trust a society their parent and teacher so clearly mistrusts?
2. Too Much Control From One (Or Highly Limited) Information Sources
Mark S made a really intelligent point when he said, “most students, whether homeschooled or mainstreamed, will not make it to an Ivy League college, and learning environments in either situation become acts of behavior modification and cultural assimilation.
“The real question with regards to socialization, I think that this post posits is whether or not I agree with the type of socialization each situation typically brings. The question becomes one of control, really- who controls it- a system that doesn’t value my beliefs or one that does.”
As Mark S sanely implies, homeschooling is no guarentee of success in life. On the flip side, public schools are no ticket to jail or eternal damnation. You can learn everything or learn nothing in either situation, we all have to agree. Pedagogy being equal (for the sake of argument) that leaves us with what moral and social affect the educational environment has on the child.
The problem with homeschooling is that the parents construct the learning environment. By so doing, they hand choose what elements of society their child is exposed to. If you don’t think this is dangerous, I don’t know what to say to you. A child taught by parents– even a group of parents– is being made privy to a paucity of the viewpoints and perspectives out there. Given that the homeschooler is likely to choose like-minded suplementary teachers (morally, ethically), this leaves the child, basically, in a position of being brainwashed.
And while I sincerely applaud your efforts to take your children to Kung Fu and to introduce them to Jewish friends, all dimensions of real life can only be found among the proletariat in public spaces such as schools. Because the Kung Fu fighting Jew you find to socialize with your child is probably a pretty enlightened one… the real bad ass, hate-not-to-hate Kung Fu fighting Jews are at the public schools.
Which leads me to the third point.
3. It Takes A Myriad of Worldviews To Build A True Educational Environment
As Ryan said, “A moral education and a social education are interrelated and to deny your kids the social education of public schools is denying them a moral education.”
Morality is not something that can be taught from a book or through conversation, as some readers suggested. It is learned by doing, by observing. If a parent is worried about teaching their kids about morality, isn’t someone like me (ignorant, childish, stupid, as you’ve said) perfect for being your child’s teacher? Wouldn’t they learn more from my real life, flesh and blood bad example than they could by an indoor conversation? Even more importantly, we all agree that accepting others with different viewpoints is paramount to being a good, well-rounded person. Well, how can a child learn to accept and appreciate others if they aren’t around them?
(Again, a hand-picked cross-section of society doesn’t count.)
I’ll leave the last argument here to Ryan, who I think really hit the nail on the head.
“Practical education takes sides, perspectives and people. Something incredibly challenging to get in a pedagogical environment with a parent and a child.
“To an earlier point about morality and public schooling, social settings are where the rubber meets the road for morality. It is the test. It’s where thou shall not becomes here’s why I shouldn’t do this because of this set of consequences on this set of people. The formal structure of standardized tests, achievement, college pressures makes it difficult to see this in the short term, but one of the most long tail educational imperatives is given students a framework for handling the complicated decisions you’ll have to make as an adult.”
As always–even to you homeschoolers out there–thank you for being a teacher.
Interesting that you would bait- and I would bite on this particular comment. But, let us again visit the idea of the logical fallacy, and let’s take your paragraph and replace “homeschooling” or any word that denotes the practice and replace it with “public school” or “public school teachers.”
The problem with public school is that the school systems construct the learning environment. By so doing, they hand choose what elements of society their child[ren] [are] exposed to. If you don’t think this is dangerous, I don’t know what to say to you. A child taught by NCLB driven teachers– even a group of teachers– is being made privy to a paucity of the viewpoints and perspectives out there. Given that the student’s government (a utilitarian entity) is likely to choose like-minded supplementary teachers (morally, ethically), this leaves the child, basically, in a position of being brainwashed.
Jesse, it works both ways…
Now, it really seems to me that you are trying to argue that quantity of experience automatically equals quality of experience (or you may implicity claim that the quality of NCLB-driven education trumps homeschooling quality- much harder to really prove, outside of pathos driven reaction). Google “NCLB and Leaver Codes” and you may change your mind if you insist on a Utilitarian viewing of education.
I think that the issue of quality vs. quantity is where most homeschoolers may disagree with you. This may be the fundamental pedagogical difference. Read Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed- it may open your eyes a bit.
Mark nailed it with the rewritten paragraph. Most of the so-called problems with homeschooling can actually be turned right around and focused on the public school system.
My now adult children (now 24 and 21) went to school through 4th and 2nd grades. In school they had very little good socialization and a whole lot of bad socialization. They were learning to function only in cliques and to belittle anyone different. As homeschoolers they were exposed to a much wider variety of people and they learned how to relate to everyone. They learned that different could be interesting AWAY from school – they were learning that different was bad in school.
That doesn’t even touch on the education they were getting. The biggest problem with the schools today didn’t effect them as much as it affected my youngest child who is now 17. The problem I refer to is the current educational idea that every child can and should learn the same things at the same age in the same way. This homogenization of the learning process is and will continue to be the reason our schools are failing more ad more every year. The reason this characteristic of the schools would affect my 17 year old more than my older two is simple – while the older two were always at the ‘right’ level or above it educationally, my 17 year old wasn’t. He was naturally a very late reader. His story is repeated hundreds of times int he homeschooling community and it goes like this: at six he couldn’t read, we worked with him and at seven, eight and nine he still could not read. Between nine and a half and ten he went from barely making it through “Go, Dog, Go” to reading high school text books. The schools are plain and simple ill-equipped to educate anyone who does not follow the pre-set learn-by-the-numbers pattern. Oh and by the way, this child who could read at 9 was at the same time doing beginning high school math.
I don’t hate the schools by the way. Some schools are better than others and for some kids they are a good fit. I just realize that that does not mean they are the only way to educate a child. There is no such thing as one ‘best’ way. Each child is different and each child needs different things at different times. The one thing homeschooling is always going to beat the public schools on hands down is the ability to customize the education to fit the individual child’s needs.
Mark,
The switch doesn’t work. Homeschooling is one or two parents, plus (maybe) some other instructors. That is an extremely limited amount of teacher perspectives compared to what a public school student receives. A public school student has something like ten teachers a year. Over a four year high school career that’s about 40 teachers. Among that many educators there is never going to be one learning environment; there will probably be about 40 of them. (Though they might all be in NCLB-bound, all teachers know that when the door is closed, that classroom is yours.)
Why is this critical? Because students have different learning styles; because 40 people have a thousand different views on contemporary issues; because some of those teachers will be unlike anyone the student has ever met before; because teachers all have different discipline/reward systems, and learning how to deal with these prepares the student for the work world; because what if the homeschooled child hates their parents? Who do they have to turn to?
And this isn’t even mentioning the hundreds of classmates that model adult work, peer, and romantic relationships.
And as far as quantity vs. quality… I can’t claim that public school quality is better. It’s too case-by-case for that. But I stand by the quantity argument laid out above.
With all due respect, Jesse, I think you have a somewhat antiquated vision of homeschool students and their parents. I am a college professor of English who homeschools–and there are plenty of educators out there who are doing the same. (In fact, we have our own Yahoo group, lol).
We do not hate the public school system, in fact, many of us believe that such a system is essential, but for various reasons have chosen a different way for our own children. Not all children are best served by the public (or even private) schools.
Do you believe that the education provided by our public schools is superior to every other kind of educational experience available? If so, there’s nothing to discuss. If you admit that the public school system might not be perfect, that it may not be the best answer for every single child, why wouldn’t you consider homeschooling as a viable educational option? Our choice to teach our own kids isn’t meant to be a personal affront to you or any other teacher.
My child is a normal, very sensitive, bright, incredibly friendly and outgoing kid. She has tons of friends, some who homeschool and others who attend the neighborhood school. She tells everyone who asks how much she loves learning at home. She’s a scout, plays on a soccer team, takes art and Spanish classes, is a member of a co-op, takes piano lessons, is learning to play chess–it is actually amazing how many teachers there are in our communities if we are just willing to look around. We pay only for art and piano (and a nominal fee for scouts), so it isn’t as though you need a lot of money to have your kids participate in these groups. Most of the homeschooling families we know are not wealthy, but they are quite resourceful. They barter services (I teach kids to write essays, they teach my kid to speak Spanish. I hold a creative writing workshop and plan a reading for the parents, someone else teaches my child how to use a microscope or make paper).
Most homeschool parents aren’t trying to teach their kids everything. We do teach some things, but we are also facilitators of education. Our job is to find the resources our children need when they need them. Not a bad gig, after all.
I remember very clearly attending a teaching conference where the keynote speaker said “If you took a surgeon from 100 years ago and put him in an operating room today, he wouldn’t know what to do. If you took a teacher out of a classroom 100 years ago and put them in a modern classroom, they’d pick right up where they left off.”
Things are changing now, and the speed at which those changes are occuring is astounding. The coming decades are going to require a lot of educational innovation. We are seeing that already with some schools abolishing grade levels and others offering online coursework. Homeschooling families are simply a part of this cultural revisioning of education, and neither they nor homeschooling is going to go away.
>>>>A public school student has something like ten teachers a year.
True in high school perhaps. But in elementary school, there is one teacher. And we’ve had good ones, and we’ve had bad ones. As you said, public school quality is very case-by-case. And if a family finds themselves in a bad case (like when I lived in a neighborhood where the local public school stats had the median child scoring in the 12th percentile, at a time when my child was scoring in the 90+th), then homeschooling is an option well worth considering.
This is America!!! You have the right to a public education (although that in itself is debatable Constitutionally) Nevertheless, at the moment, our tax dollars support public education.
Non-traditional education is not Constitutionally allowed or granted. If parents want to educate their own children, they may! Of course, it is in their best interest to do so to the best of their ability.
If you like public school, then teach there and send your children there. If you like Religious or Private school, then send your children there. If you want to homeschool, then by all means exercise your right to do so!
I can choose Wal-Mart, or Food Lion. I can even choose the PX/Commissary. Or, I can grow my own. Obviously, if I grow my own, would I not decide to work as hard at it as I can, since I am the one partaking of the bounty? But then, I am also doing this so that the World partakes, which is my final goal! The World gets 4 bright, healthy, balanced, educated, stable, loving, kind, mannered, tempered, mature leaders. That’s my goal.
Public schools can do this. So can private and religious. The point is, that here in our wonderful country, Parents CAN school their own children if they want to.
Thank you for reminding me that there are still some who hold to the closed minded view that public schools are the only way to do it proper. I need to remember that I am being scrutinized and watched. It is good for me, and my children, to stay on my toes! As a public school teacher, you must feel the same way. Together, maybe we can work to make our world safer, better, stronger and highly educated~ but first you must remove yourself from your resentment and arrogance towards non-traditional teaching lifestyles.
Great comment.
As one who was “unschooled” from grades 7-12, and now starting my second year of college, I am now coming to realize the benefits of ALL approaches to education, rather than the “us versus them” mentality my parents have.
I am also realizing what a PRIVILEGE it is to have the freedom to take the approach that works for you, whatever that may be!
“The switch doesn’t work. Homeschooling is one or two parents, plus (maybe) some other instructors. That is an extremely limited amount of teacher perspectives compared to what a public school student receives. ”
Fallacy alert. There is no more insular and cliquish profession than teachers. An education degree consists of four years of intense indoctrination into one narrow leftist worldview, which is pushed in the public schools. Teaching and social work are the only academic fields where students have been expeller from major degree programs for expressing dissenting views on controversial subjects.
Your entire position is also dependent upon the assumption that venues like malls, public parks, commercial martial arts schools, and the like are strictly segregated along public school/homeschool lines. Let me help you out here a little – single gender private schools typically have proms, with high attendance rates, and most students bring dates. Do you think they are all hired escorts?
This conversation has begun to be a waste of quality time. I fear you just don’t get it, but even more disheartening is that I fear you really don’t want to. You have an important role here- you present yourself as the facilitator/agitator of the whole affair, and as a result have increased your blog’s traffic quite extensively, regardless of the tone your fellow blogger took in her post about your real audience (whoever that’s supposed to be- I doubt that there has been this much pedagogical interest generated on this site before this. Don’t blow the chance of reaching a larger audience in the right way by being overly antagonistic- maybe follow the responder Julia’s lead and soften it up a bit).
And, may I suggest you become more educated and articulate with your viewings before you propose that you have some sort of ethos. You see, I too have worked in a National Park (I met my wife there actually), have not engaged in academic incest, and I believe I have experienced a lot- but I would never pretend that these experiences are automatically quality just because there are a lot of them.
Plus, let’s be honest- public school systems are struggling in many areas, including retention of the same groups of underprivileged students you propose to be helping. Minority drop out rates have increased significantly since the implementation of NCLB, and it is the system of standardization that is causing this- not your individual classroom (regardless of your claim that when your classroom door closes it’s your class, you still must teach an approved curriculum, aside from how this content is taught).
Email me (you have my email address) if you want to have a real conversation, otherwise you’ve lost this audience. I would enjoy having a real, meaningful conversation about the plusses and minuses of both practices if you really want to- but right now I have to get ready to teach college students who came out of the public school system how to properly write paragraphs (I, too, am an English professor. I’m also a homeschooling dad, and current Ph.D. candidate in Higher Ed. Administration- my research focuses on the effect of NCLB on minorities- if you’re interested).
I love this reply. Thanks for posting it.
At risk of hitting my head against a brick wall and going against my gut that tells me you can’t possibly be as narrow minded and uneducated as you seem, I cannot resist commenting.
Although you earlier stated that these were just your opinions and based on your experiences, one would hope that studies in journalism (which you claim) would have included instruction on fact finding and research before authoring an article full of sweeping generalizations, sterotypes and misinformation.
You wonder why homerschoolers are passionate and why they care so much? I would think that your liberal open mindedness would have clued you in, but here it is anyway. Minorities of any type don’t like being stereotyped or misrepresented. In this era of acceptance and tolerance it is always disconerting to find someone who claims enlightenment to actually be so fearful, unaccepting and naive of things they do not understand.
Your latest installment further proves the above point. You are so interested in twisting and taking out of context others ideas that you are failing to really educate yourself to something you claim actual little knowledge.
I am a secular homeschooler and belong to a support group of well over 200 families that meet together regularly. None of which were hand picked or quizzed before joining.
My children are exposed to a broader, better articulated set of world views here than they would be in their neighbrhood elementary school full of same race/socioeconomic background children and teachers. The world being what it is I can hardly imagine that this scenario is the exception. In fact reading the comments of others I can see that it is not.
So this leads me to believe that you my friend are no better than those close minded homeschoolers that piss you off. I have a feeling that it is the close mindedness that bothers you most. So why have you joined their ranks
You are still holding forth a stereotypical caricature of the homeschooling community to defend against an equally offensive generalization that all public schools are filled with punks (to put it in the vernacular).
For one example you said:
“The problem with homeschooling is that the parents construct the learning environment. By so doing, they hand choose what elements of society their child is exposed to. If you don’t think this is dangerous, I don’t know what to say to you. A child taught by parents– even a group of parents– is being made privy to a paucity of the viewpoints and perspectives out there. Given that the homeschooler is likely to choose like-minded suplementary teachers (morally, ethically), this leaves the child, basically, in a position of being brainwashed.”
This happens in public and private schools as well. It happens all over the place – in neighborhoods, churches, clubs, corporations, different government agencies. Its human nature to gravitate toward familiarity. The fail safe is that these smaller groups ultimately interact with the larger society as a whole. The same thing applies in the homeschool community.
Who are you talking about? We are a very divers community, homeschoolers. Perhaps some folks do this, but as a general rule, we do not live in communes or caves or isolate ourselves from the society at large. Just like in some school districts there are schools in which the PTA ( or its equivalent) controls the curriculum, buildings, admissions and hiring practices with an iron grip. Maybe not thru policy but thru social pressure. This happens, but it is not the norm.
Are you for real??? So far all you have really done, in my opinion, is to prove that there truly are those among us who are educated beyond their intelligence (not that I doubted this, but reassurance of ones beliefs is always encouraging). You do, however, do an excellent job of shooting yourself in the foot: “If a parent is worried about teaching their kids about morality, isn’t someone like me (ignorant, childish, stupid, as you’ve said) perfect for being your child’s teacher? Wouldn’t they learn more from my real life, flesh and blood bad example than they could by an indoor conversation?” What, exactly, do you think we want to teach our kids? I’m sure the “ignorant, childish, stupid” part was included pretty much tongue in cheek, but yes, if I wanted my children to be ignorant, childish, and stupid (and, I might add, completely stubborn with regard to hanging on to an indefensible point) I would send them to someone like you in order that those goals could be accomplished. Finding a bad example for our children to follow should be our highest aim in life. Right???
Our goals as parents should not be to raise (perpetual) children, but to raise our children to be responsible adults and productive members of society. As adults we should be concerned with the way children are raised because they are our future. With that in mind you should just stop talking now. People who have been homeschooled are far more productive in society. Get out there, read something other than USA Today articles. Get the facts. Read the studies done that show that those that are homeschooled are less likely to be unemployed, less likely to get into trouble with the law, more apt to be active in their communities and churches, and a much greater percentage of homeschoolers end up being self employed. This does not sound like a group that has problems interacting with society. Nor are they a group that exhibits the rampant irresponsibility in evidence in our society today. What we really need are a whole bunch more parents willing to sacrifice their time and maybe both of those brand spanking new SUV’s (or that mini van for your family of 3-4), and truly take an intense interest in their kids for both their childrens’ sake and the long term betterment of society. Now that would be selflessness at it’s best.
Oh and yes, I forgot, you would most definately want us on your side in a fight.
Are you saying the needs of my child would have been best served had I left him in public schools? That locking autistic kids in closets is good educational practice? That that’s defensible at all?
You’ve never answered my point about abuse in public schools in your last post. It does happen there, you know. It can happen anywhere, but thankfully for Elf it does not happen in my home.
I don’t remember ever saying anything to the effect that all public schools are filled with ruffian, drug-toting sex fiends, etc. My older children do attend public schools and for the present, their needs are being met there. If I were to do things over, however, I would at least have seriously considered homeschooling or moving into another school district.
I have to wonder if you know what brainwashing really is… how severe it is and what it entails. I’d like to be able to kid around about this and tell you to check out the NEA website for more detailed information, but I just don’t have the heart. You wrote an angry post, got some angry comments back and you’re still angry. I wish we could start over and exchange real information. I’m willing to listen to the good things public schools are doing for your students. Are you willing to listen to the good things that my homeschoolers are able to do?
Mrs. C
http://www.homeschoolnetc.blogspot.com
PS. I will be sending my tiny “Woodjie” to special-needs preschool through the same district soon. I have great faith in those teachers, and if *only* all teachers were just like this, I’d vote yes on every bond issue. My almost eight-year-old cried when he heard his old preschool teacher was going to work somewhere else so that she could train other teachers to be great teachers. But I was *very happy.* We need more great teachers, no matter where they’re teaching. :]
Dearest Jesse,
Its very difficult to have a coherent debate with someone who makes perfect nonsense. Thanks for the fun but I grow fatigued at your uniformed worries. But I did realize that one of the reasons I homeschool is that it limits my contact with idiots like you. ( sorry – that was a stone, too)
“The problem with homeschooling is that the parents construct the learning nvironment.”
I’m not sure why I am wasting my time but “parents construct the learning environment,” is the real issue, isn’t it. Remember Skinner? That is what this is really all about isn’t it. It is all about social engineering and behavior modification.
Most parents would be horrified if they researched Skinner’s presuppositions and world views. If they knew how controlled the “learning environment” of today’s classrooms are designed according to Skinner and all who followed him. They would understand why so many of today’s kids are frustrated and are unable to think for themselves.
“leaves the child, basically, in a position of being brainwashed.”
Basically you want control over the “learning environment,” so you can control the “brainwashing. ”
Sorry, I meant to say learning.
Jesse, as I read some of the comments, I have to admit to getting angry and insulted, too. My older children attend public schools and are not anything like the bad descriptions thrown about.
I think some of the nasty comments about public schools are unfair. One of my sons is in a gifted/AP program and one is also autistic, but his needs are being met by staff at his present school. The school is providing a wonderful opportunity to do just the things you were discussing.
However…
You wrote the first post with a hostile tone, and you got a hostile tone back. It’s really too bad, too, because I think that we have a lot to teach each other.
The fact remains that my son Elf WAS locked in a closet in public school, and on several occasions. You haven’t acknowledged that abuse can and does happen at school. Sure, it can and does happen in private homes as well. But don’t you think that children like Elf deserve to be safe when schools abuse their power? Don’t you think that sometimes, just sometimes, there are students who are unable to cope with the demands of public school and need a more sheltered environment?
You seem to think that all children can be best served by public education, and I don’t think that that’s the case. It does not stand to reason, however, that all public education must be bad or inferior. It’s just different. We can do all kinds of fun things during your school day, but my children miss out on the cute Valentine’s day parties and the like. It’s a tradeoff.
Mrs. C
http://www.homeschoolnetc.blogspot.com
I keep submitting comments, but they’re not publishing…
This one did.
Yeah, I’m wondering why this one did and the others didn’t. Jesse, please check your spam filters in there and see if there are two comments from me. They both pretty much say the same thing.
Let’s face the big ol’ stinky dead elephant in the room. Many if not most homeschoolers do it so they can give their kids a religious education — and avoid having them come into contact with the real world. “Eeek! Johnny learned today that evolution is a fact, and he has to sit next to a black kid on the bus! I thought moving out to this suburb would save him from that! EEEEEK!”
I hope none of these kids ever try for a career in the sciences, especially one that involves biology in any way, shape or form — because they are going to be disappointed when they can’t get into any legitimate colleges. Of course, they could always go into the quack-medicine fields, but then they’d have to jettison any principles they might possess.
Your ignorance is almost funny, especially since my 9th grader just sat and read over 1/2 of the previous post and comments, just because she was interested.
…..and you don’t know anything about how homeschoolers teach science, or what they do with it later, including the large number who do go into scientific fields…..
……and you clearly haven’t read the recent national study (put out by the Dept. of Education) showing that only 36% of homeschoolers consider religion a major reason for what they are doing….
…and you obviously did not read or understand the many comments on the previous post from people either married to or having chosen to parent minorities…..
Ridiculous comment. Should have thought that one out a little better before posting. Shows you really have no interest in the topic, just a desire to promote an agenda. Useless!
Wow. So all traditionally schooled Johnny’s believe evolution is a fact? Most of them don’t really care, and a real science teacher would never teach a theory as fact. My 2 oldest are now in higher education, and neither have the faith to believe that evolution is fact, although they were taught the theory by evolution believers.
You have no idea about our race. We could be black. Or mixed. Who cares? But, we did take a 10 day field trip to Philadelphia (the place where the first separatists signed an important document), walked out of our hotel room, straight thru a school yard, and passed nary a “white”. I wonder if those children would be scared of diversity?
Lots of traditional schooled kids live in suburbs, or so I hear. We make ours work hard out in the country. One graduated Cum Laude and is a teacher in a refugee camp 10 hours away. The other feeds the family “green and clean” (ie, hunts) while winning state fitness titles and tuning jet engines (you may want to consider that next time you fly) The next built and started his own recording business at age 14, will finish high school in 3 years instead of 4 (already accepted at a major accredited, and secular, University), and serves as a page for our state government. The last is a precious teenage girl who loves her family, is developing her arts talents on the community level and has a great attitude towards authority. So far there is no trouble with “getting into” any legitimate college. In fact, although they do not shine as academics, they are being regularly recruited by colleges.
If they were to attend traditional or public school, they would not ride the bus anyway. I attended public school, and hated the bus I had to ride. So, I’d correct that too.
We homeschool because of all the PROS. A lot of the comments in this blog are based on the cons, the negatives of traditional schools, of which even public school advocates cannot deny. Personally, that’s just not a strong enough reason to homeschool for me. There must be “pro” reasons.
My kids are not geniuses, but they love and serve each other. And their grandparents. And their neighbors. We have the time to pursue what we love, read what we want, visit the sites and historical places and museums as often as we can, develop our passions and follow our bliss. Yes, this means that we are in control of what we learn, and don’t learn. But this is the American way. We can be whatever we want to be, if we work hard and believe that we can. Even if that means overcoming obstacles, such as moving out of the ghetto or the boonies.
As a Mom, and as teacher I am working hard to provide a peaceful environment for my family, and a home that encourages love, loyalty and academic adventure. Those are real pros, yet you choose to hate on us by your sarcasm and disrespect for those who are different from you. Things I correct in my classroom.
We homeschool because we can. It is a fundamental right. I’m very sorry that you don’t value that although I can understand that you don’t like it. I don’t like it that the public schools take my money and spend it on teaching evolution, but for now, that is their right. Your tax dollars isn’t being used to supplement my lifestyle in the least, so I really do not understand your ridicule.
Phoenix Woman, do not, for one second, assume that religious homeschoolers do not also have a strong focus on academic excellence. I’ve BTDT, and my exposure to religious homeschoolers did not bear out the hypothesis. I could share horror stories (we all could), but many, many religious homeschoolers could wipe the floor with many, if not most, of their public school peers.
Wow, that is the stupidest comment of all! Most homeschoolers do not homeschool for religious reasons. I’m a pagan, how about that! And I have a PhD in Molecular Virology (do you even know what that is?) and teach college level science. I also homeschool my 9 year old son. He listens to me practice all my lectures and asks more intelligent questions than most of my college students. He easily has the science background of an advanced high school student at this point in his life. And I should know because I spent 3 years teaching high school science, including the advanced sciences.
Your ignorance about homeschoolers is astounding. Many of us teach our children the theory of evolution. We are also a very diverse bunch, their are African American homeschoolers, Pagan homeschoolers, Native American Homeschoolers etc. there are also INCLUSIVE homeschool groups.
And you totally ignore everyone who listed all the homeschooled people they know who are doctors…
I know one, too. Another? A vet!
Many, many are in engineering. Of course, my college Thermodynamics textbook flatly stated that the current biological theory of the creation of life is nonsensical and defies the laws of, yes, thermodynamics. I guess you want those professors kicked out, too. (They probably weren’t homeschooled. Oh, and I went to Purdue.)
Actually if this weren’t so sad, it would be kind of amusing.
Since,
1. We homeschool so that our kids learn about science without having to worry about which way the political climate swings. (And yes, that means they learn about evolution. We discuss creation stories as a part of studying about religion.)
2. We homeschool so our kids are out in the world, actually experiencing it and learning to navigate their way through it.
The whole sheltered homeschooler myth is just that – a myth.
Look up “secular homeschoolers”. Clearly, you are ignorant on the subject. I happen to be a homeschooling mom who does NOT do it for reasons that have anything at all to do with religion. There are a ton of us out there.
Also, I live in a very “white” community (getting more integrated all the time, but it’s a region pretty much known for not having much diversity), and my kids get tons of interraction with our neighbors who are black and from africa, and brown who are from colombia and afghanistan. We interact with these families on a daily basis. My brother-in-law is black, so obviously my family is pretty integrated. And homeschooling has nothing to do with any of that, nor does it affect any of that. Maybe there are those who homeschool for reasons of religion or to have their children surrounded only by people who are most like them, but it’s SO insulting to the rest of us who do no such thing, to constantly hear these blanket assumptions. The ones who homeschool simply to shove a religious agenda down their kids’ throats bug ME just as much as they bug YOU.
But none of that has ANYTHING to do with my children’s academic education, does it?
Are you serious? What a narrow-minded view of someone else’s belief!!! That’s like me saying that you are pathetic for believing that we came from monkeys!!! Tolerance is so important in our world right now…elevate yourself…it feels better to do so. I send you positive energy, that you may heal yourself.
I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else, because the LAST thing I possess is a narrow-minded view of other peoples’ belief. Also, I don’t know why you decided that I must believe we all came from monkeys, because, lol, I don’t.
And personally, I think fundamentalist Christians are the ones who have trouble with tolerance…just saying.
Just because I am secular in my homeschooling approach, does not mean I’m not Christian. I am Christian, I just don’t see the validity (for my own family) in restricting my childrens’ educational material to only that which serves a Christian agenda.
phoenix woman, how dare you judge familys you do not even know of? my family or atheists and keen on all that science has to tell us. my child loves to know how things work and why things happen and becourse she is educated at home she can ask the same question as many times as she likes, to anyone that she likes, on the bus, in the shop at the park. and whos to say she is not asking a doctor, dentist, pilot ect. but she will ask and ask until she is sure she has an answer that makes sence to her, is this not how science begins. and if some familys educate there own children for religeus resons good for them, better that then have them bullied by children with your belifes. Maybe next time you need to see a proffesinol you will ask them if they have any religiuse convictions and if so you may want to find an alterative.
A non-trivial chunk of homeschooled kids can’t partake of this discussion. Why? Because either they can’t read and thus can’t surf the internet (see also: Daniel Hauser) or their parents won’t let them near the internet.
TROLL
Notice her blog.
Another left-wing extremist for LIBERTY!
Yeah. Those liberals. ALL about personal freedoms.
Yet more dim-witted stereotyping, I see.
I’m a homeschooler. I’m also a liberal, and an atheist at at that. (I couldn’t care less what anyone’s god thinks of my parenting).
As it happens I run an online Secular Homeschooling group with a membership approaching 300. We’re a diverse group including, interestingly enough, some Christians who are uninterested in mixing dogma with their children’s education. Many of us are liberal.
Phoenixwoman, I hold a similar level of contempt for your presumptions. Perhaps you’d care to be held accountable for the shortcomings of those who share your choice of educational system? To answer for, for example, every public school girl who has such unrestricted internet access that she is able to post pornographic pictures of herself online?
“Christians who are uninterested in mixing dogma with their children’s education. Many of us are liberal.”
That’s me!
Hmmm…I checked the link you provided, supposedly in support of the claim that a “non-trivial chunk of homeschooled kids” can’t read. Your example is one extreme case. I would say it’s a dangerous game to assume that one person is representative of an entire group of people. That can go both ways. I’m sure I could do a Google search & find many examples of public school kids & families “gone bad”. Do you actually have some evidence to back up your claim that a substantial number of home educated children are illiterate?
I’m waiting.
I, on the other hand, can give you some statistical proof of the quality of home education (http://www.hslda.org/docs/nche/000010/200410250.asp). I can also provide some evidence of the decline of public education in the USA (http://4brevard.com/choice/international-test-scores.htm). Why don’t you start doing some research, instead of just buying into the stereotypes? And as for an individual example, such as you gave, I offer the example of my home educated son, who has scored at or above the 96th percentile on standardized tests the last two years.
As for your other claim, that they wouldn’t be allowed online, again I’ll point out that you are making an assumption. Have you done a poll? How many homeschoolers do you know? If you knew the homeschooling community, you would find that the people in it don’t fit in one mold, but are rather somewhere on a spectrum. From my own experience in the public school system, I would say it is the same there. Some families are more conservative, some are more liberal. There are parents who restrict or monitor their children’s internet access, and there are those who don’t. What does that have to do with education?
If this isn’t about education (which is what the purpose of public education ought to be), what is it about?
Phoenix Woman said, “A non-trivial chunk of homeschooled kids can’t partake of this discussion. Why? Because either they can’t read and thus can’t surf the internet” — but, there are a significant number of children who that could be said about who are in the public school system, as well.
You see, there is a wide spectrum of people, regardless of educational approach.
The use of Daniel Hauser as and example of a child who can’t read — is a classic example of cherry-picking your data points. Let’s group ALL LD children, and see whether all the public schooled LD students (especially severe ones, MR and such, too, for kicks) can read.
Obviously, there are children who are deemed unable to read by the schools. I remember when I lived in FL, one parent was told that her child would never read at a particular grade level. Not ever.
She opted to homeschool this “hopeless case” of a child. Within ONE year, the child had reached the unattainable level. That would not have happened without that intense attention and willingness to find an approach that would work for that child.
A child who would have been left, languishing, in the school system, otherwise. Hopeless.
Amen. Think “Thomas Edison.”
I have a non-verbal autistic child. I hope to eventually teach him to dress himself and say a few key words. I suppose he’d be “behind” if we enrolled him in public school. Your point?
Yes, I homeschool some of my children. I also have older ones in public school. I am the parent and every single assignment I don’t feel fits our religious paradigm, my kids get opted out of. I remain the parent no matter where my children are educated.
In fact, it may be in the public school’s best interest to get rid of parents like me if they have an agenda to foist. So far, however, the staff at the middle and junior high buildings have been wonderful and (dare I say it?) tolerant of my religious beliefs.
It’s only the elementary school we’ve had a problem with. Hopefully in several more years and a few staff changes, it can be a good school again.
Another ignorant post. Please address the issues you might have with homeschooling in a logical, intelligent fashion if you want to be taken seriously. Such outlandish, unsubstantiated statements aren’t helping your argument.
One child with learning disabilities equals a non-trivial chunk?
There are a lot of people in the government school system who can not read. One reason is that despite the fact that phonics is proven more effective, especially for low economic children, the school press on with whole language. 25% of our graduating seniors every year are functionally illiterate. 50% of kids in inner cities drop out before they graduate (almost all of these illiterate).
I only know one homeschool family with no tv but they do have a computer. I know many public school families with no computer. I know homeschoolers who do all their school on the computer.
Really? Because my 6th grade homeschooled son uses the Internet every single day, and even has his own MySpace (that I monitor, obviously, but he’s still allowed to have it). So clearly, we’re not all hiding our kids in a basement. Know what you’re talking about before you speak. It just makes you look stupid.
Hey Jesse,
Your rant about homeschoolers reflects a fundamental unfamiliarity with the reasons why many parents homeschool: the schools -refuse- to serve the needs of our children. Ask for more, if you are open to this information — I suspect that your mind is simply closed. I’m disappointed — this is not what I would expect from a diversity champion from NYU.
When you said:
“Poorer students with less literate parents are more reliant on peer support and motivation, and they greatly benefit from the focus and commitment of their richer and higher achieving classmates.”
you hit a homerun. This is exactly why our schools need reform. Because those of us whose children are -refused- appropriate placement by schools, and who can afford to homeschool — by the skin of our teeth — are doing so. It’s the underprivileged bright students who are getting left out. That is a problem created by schools.
I have worked and taught and volunteered in public schools since 1978. I continue to tutor and support students who are in the public schools. I have served as an active advocate in various positions of responsibility including curricular advisory committees and local school advisory council. I have personally raised funds for underprivileged children — including funds to feed them, not just to educate them; I have personally developed outreach programs to assist underprivileged students.
I homeschool my daughter because although the public school resources to educate her are available, and the thoroughly validated justifications for doing so are also available, and our various colleagues recognize and acknowledge the reality of her needs, and the various educational psychologists who have tested her have advocated on her behalf, nevertheless, the schools persist in denying her an appropriate education.
Your comments about diversity are offensive. My homeschooling group is far more diverse than most public schools, in every metric. Our groups are ethnically and culturally colorful, socio-economically diverse, and cover the range of religious beliefs and non-belief. Most of us left the public schools because of this inflexible adherence to damaging educational practices which your writing completely ignores.
I speak first-hand about my own, real experiences. You are judging us based on statements which reflect the most outrageously biased (and mistaken) assumptions. Is this really the position that you, Jesse, wish to take? Please consider who you are, and what you are saying.
Regards,
Marynna
More comments from you equals more comments from us.
“I was disheartened at the amount of broad criticism pointed at public schools and public school students.”
…and what, exactly, were we supposed to be by your criticism of homeschooling?
“Another homeschooler claimed ….. The learning was described as “what clothing you needed to wear to be popular. I learned who was having a party on the weekend when their parents were away. I also learned math and grammar and stuff like that. I did not learn morality…”
This comment was the poster’s own experience–that is what she learned. If that is negative towards “all” public schoolers, it is what has come out of her own public school. Most of the comments expressed were “what *I* learned….”
” ‘I would say that kids in public schools these days are less socially ready and definitely more morally corrupt,’ said Caroline.”
Lest you forget, and for those who didn’t read the other thread, Caroline is NOT a homeschooler. This is an opinion formed exclusively by her own experiences with public school, as well. Such a comment coming from one of your own might give you pause to think. It is dishonest to use it in a follow-up as if it came from a homeschooler.
“One former school employee had such low esteem for public school students to say, ‘When I worked in a public school most of the elementary children I worked with thought the world was their state and had no idea about the world.’”
Again, this commentator is giving his/her own experience. This is what he/she saw. This is not an uninformed, off the cuff, discriminatory remark (unlike, I might add, most of yours). It might also be pointed out that this was elementary students, who typically do not have geography courses.
” Because the Kung Fu fighting Jew you find to socialize with your child is probably a pretty enlightened one… the real bad ass, hate-not-to-hate Kung Fu fighting Jews are at the public schools.”
Um…..I thought we weren’t supposed to be making generalizations about public school students?
“Morality is not something that can be taught from a book or through conversation, as some readers suggested. It is learned by doing, by observing”
Of course, this is true. This is why homeschoolers put such emphasis on opportunities to DO moral things.
“Practical education takes sides, perspectives and people.”
…which is why I encouraged my 15yo to read this whole thread, and why we frequently do such things.
I’m laughing so hard at the absurdity of this, I’m almost falling off my chair!! How in the world were you able to type the words ” Kung Fu fighting Jew” without having a stroke from laughing?
What is a Kung Fu fighting Jew? What does a Jewish person who practices martial arts have to do with anything? We must not have any here where we live. None of my PS friends have ever mentioned them.
LOL!
I applaud you, Melinda, for being able to type thru the tears.
K.T.-
Melinda was quoting Mr. Scaccia, who was commenting on a post by Tara B.
Melinda,
It’s very, very cool and open-minded of you to encourage your child/student to read this thread.
What did he or she have to say about it?
- J
My homeschooled children have often read internet discussions exactly like this one. Honestly? They always come away shaking their heads at the uninformed, inaccurate, and clueless characterizations of homeschoolers.
Sometimes I come across these discussions and point them out to my children, and other times they have come across them and pointed them out to me- because we don’t filter internet access for them after about 16 years of age or so (some were as young as 13 when we quit keeping a gimlet eye on their internet explorations, some were older, it depended on the child).
I have been homeschooling since 1988. I do not know a single home-schooler who would not permit her child to read this thread- that’s actually quite typical and normal among the homeschoolers I know, yet it is apparently something you think something is ‘very cool and open-minded.’ It’s kind of like complimenting a black person on being articulate. Or clean.
You might want to stop for a minute and consider the implications of that.
Phoenixwoman, please see my comments regarding biology on the original list. You are wrong that homeschoolers do not excel in science and don’t accept evolution – except for the ones in your mind, formed from stereotypes.
“The problem with homeschooling is that the parents construct the learning environment. … If you don’t think this is dangerous, I don’t know what to say to you.”
Dangerous? Jesse, have you actually been in a public school? A large proportion of the teachers I had during my time there (K-12) were unintelligent, small-minded, racist, sexist, and even sadistic. That’s not counting the ones who let kids get high in their rooms during lunch and slept with their 14-year-old students. And the administrators who let bullies go about their business unimpeded. Not the kind of “learning environment” I’d construct for any child.
Why do you, and teachers in general, find homeschoolers so threatening? Are you so defensive because education degree programs have been proven to be worthless, and it’s well known that education majors are the least capable students? Or are you just pissed that you and other public school teachers are easily shown up by amateurs with a library card and a high-speed Internet connection and a deep understanding of their own kids’ learning styles?
While I got a huge laugh off of K.T.’s response from Melinda’s comments, I was nearly in the floor with your last paragraph. I just love it. I do believe you have hit the nail on the head here. I hope you don’t mind if I share that last sentence with absolutely everyone I know.
Hi Homeschooler/journalist,
I’m finding it ironic how commentors are assuming I teach in public schools (I haven’t for some time), or that I believe education school is worth a damn (I think it’s worth a damn, but not a whole lot more… in fact, I think teachers are more or less born, not made.)
I fully acknowledge that many ‘uneducated’ parents are better teachers than me. For the record.
See, you say that public school teachers can be “unintelligent, small-minded, racist, sexist, and even sadistic.” You act like that’s a bad thing. I think our kids need to be exposed to all types while they’re young and have parents there to help them learn positive communication skills and empathy for even the worst of us.
And yes, I admit: public school teachers can certainly be the worst of us.
What makes you think that home schooled kids aren’t exposed to all types?
THIS IS THE REAL PROBLEM HERE:
“I think our kids need to be exposed to all types while they’re young and have parents there to help them learn positive communication skills and empathy for even the worst of us.”
Couldn’t you just have said this in the beginning so we could have all just ignored you and been done with it?
No parent can undo the harm of a truly “unintelligent, small-minded, racist, sexist, and even sadistic” teacher with “positive communication skills and empathy.” What you propose here is child abuse and many have been jailed for it. It IS a bad thing and I am surprised that someone as well educated, seemingly caring, and well traveled as you are can actually propose such a thing. Have you never seen a truly broken person? Worse, a broken child twisted by a “teacher”?
Of course you have. You’ve seen people die from poor choices. You’ve seen children who won’t ever make it to school. You’ve seen people waste away from preventable diseases. Can “positive communication” cure the child who saw her father killed and got HIV from being raped by her neighbor? Then how can you say that the child bullied in the halls of a public school who then hangs himself at age 12, 10 miles from my house, could have been saved by a parent who taught empathy? Are you going to tell that mother that she was at fault? What about all the other not as extreme cases? What about all those adults who can tell you how they were hurt at a young age by someone at school, because of the failed system? You should be thanking those parents who take the time to raise kids outside of negative environments. Those kids will have plenty of time to experience the horrors of the world after they have become well-adjusted teenagers.
Reading this line of yours made me sick to my stomach. Throw the lamb to the wolves and then have a therapy session to make the world a better place? Excuse me while I go throw up now.
“See, you say that public school teachers can be “unintelligent, small-minded, racist, sexist, and even sadistic.” You act like that’s a bad thing. I think our kids need to be exposed to all types while they’re young and have parents there to help them learn positive communication skills and empathy for even the worst of us.”
Now I’m sure you’re just a troll. No one who cares for children would believe this. There are plenty of opportunities to wallow with the small-minded and sadistic after you’ve grown strong and sure of yourself.
Thank you, “The Glaring Flaw”, for that response. It’s what I thought, when I read that post of Jesse’s.
It really does sound like he is advocating deliberately placing small children in the clutches of dangerous, harmful, cruel adults for a large part of each day. Perhaps that was done to him, and he was led to believe that it was all “for his own good”, and that’s how children should be treated.
I, as a child, found it unbearable merely to be subjected to ordinary teachers who were of the simple disrespecting-children-because-they-are-children type! I would certainly have been “broken” by being forced to endure teachers who were genuinely bad, sadistic people! I would have ended up suicidal or homicidal, or both.
“or that I believe education school is worth a damn (I think it’s worth a damn, but not a whole lot more…”
Remember this?
“in the frothy passion of your responses I get hints of the arrogance it takes to believe one is a better teacher than the combined skill of the dozens of ***trained*** educators”
Apparently, logic isn’t included in that vaunted training.
Own your words, or they’ll own you.
>I think our kids need to be exposed to all types while they’re young and have parents there to help them learn positive communication skills and empathy for even the worst of us.
Um. That’s what HOMESCHOOLING is. In public school, the parents aren’t there to help them learn positive communication skills. Instead, they are left to their from other children. And that’s a good thing, in your mind…
…why?
See, you say that public school teachers can be “unintelligent, small-minded, racist, sexist, and even sadistic.” You act like that’s a bad thing. I think our kids need to be exposed to all types while they’re young and have parents there to help them learn positive communication skills and empathy for even the worst of us.
This is truly appalling.
It is a bad thing to place children under the authority of racist, sexist, sadists. What you suggest is excellent training for a liftime of victim-hood, not for success.
It is also a bad thing to place children under the authority of racist, sexist sadists within the confines of a classroom where no other adults are present. How are parents supposed to help their children learn positive communication skills when they are not even allowed to witness the interactions in order to properly assess and address the situation?
And what sort of sadist thinks it’s beneficial for small children to be exposed- for hours at a time with no recourse for escape, to racist, sexist sadists at all? And how are they supposed to learn anything beneficial from this exposure when they are denied the tools and options that adults have available to them in the real world to deal with this?
If my husband, employer, co-worker, professor, or neighbor behaves in a racist, sexist, or sadistic fashion, I have several options denied to children. I can leave. I can hit back. I can call the police. I can pack up and leave the state if I like. I can also generally hold my own because these people are my peers in general. You are advocating it as a benefit to leave 40 pound children with undeveloped understanding at the mercy of adults who weigh three times as much as they do and tower over them by twice the height, because it will help them learn ‘empathy?’
Are you paying attention to the comments you’re getting? The most negative comments about public school come from people who spent their entire childhoods in those public schools and had really bad experiences. Did they learn ‘empathy for the worst of us?’ Clearly there is a flaw with your theory that abuse is good for children.
Um, no, actually. I don’t think my kids should be continually exposed to someone like, say, the coach at our school who was allowed for DECADES to sleep with female students as young as 14 or 15 (Coach Kochel, Ventura High, Ventura, California). We all KNEW he was doing it, the faculty KNEW he was doing it. Parents KNEW he was doing it. Yet it took years and years for the S.O.B. to actually be stopped. At that school, anyway. Who knows where he is now.
My kids are obviously exposed to dysfunctional people, both adults and children…I mean, we DO live on planet Earth. But no, I don’t think it would do them any good to sit in a classroom for 4-7 hours per day with a racist, or a sexist, or an individual who was sadistic, or really really stupid. They live each day in our society, so they know these types exist. What a dumbass thing for you to imply that somehow spending dozens of hours per week isolated in a classroom with any of these types of people could benefit a young, naive, impressionable mind and soul. Do you even get how stupid that sounds?
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Teachers like YOU are part of the reason I homeschool!
I can understand not agreeing with me, but don’t you want your child to have real world experience with the full array of temperaments and convictions?
Please explain, LK.
Again – why your conviction that the ONLY place this can happen is a classroom setting?
Again, I am going to throw up.
OK, but Jesse, honestly, do you really think public schools constitute a real-world environment? They’re contrived. Any institutional environment is contrived. In the real world, we encounter people of all ages, ethnicities, faiths and sexual orientations throughout the day. Everything one learns about in school, we encounter in reality. I’m nearly always able to take any learning my children do to the synthesis level. We almost never use textbooks; instead, we read various trade books and articles, learn in the field whenever possible, and constantly revise our conclusions. I’m able to talk much more openly about racism and other forms of discrimination than I’d ever be able to do as a public school teacher. I can correct historical inaccuracies perpetuated in textbooks. I can teach world history and read diverse global literature with my kids without having to get permission from an administrator. I can provide instruction in foreign languages not taught in public school at all, certainly not in the elementary grades. We usually complete around three service projects per quarter. We campaigned for Obama in two states, and on election day, my kids were knocking on doors, hanging out at campaign headquarters, and watching live results come in as the polls closed. They own that election. They didn’t learn about it, they lived it. How can you possibly tell me that they’d be better off in a classroom from 8-3?
Allow me to explain – there is no shortage of fools in the world, so your temperament and convictions are amply represented.
You don’t need to send your kids to public schools to expose them to adult idiots (but it helps.)
omg. i can’t drill through the wood.
classrooms try to artificially emulate real world situations. not the other way around.
As a college instructor (English Literature) and homeschooling father, I find your comments about homeschooling barely on the border of reality, Jesse.
Review the statistics. There just aren’t any serious thinkers or serious studies that support the overall direction of public schools, either educationally or as a constructive environment, against homeschooling.
Furthermore, it’s philosophically chaotic. You seem deeply worried about pluralism, but you don’t seem to have the first idea about how it’s authentically cultivated. Hint: it’s not a matter of letting you lecture to my children about diversity in a hothouse environment.
As for the anecdotal evidence, my homeschooled autistic spectrum fourteen year old can write a better essay than most of my “normal” college freshman who had public school educations. I regularly have the end of term talk with my students: I’m sorry they’re losing their state-sponsored scholarships, but their work that was evidently good enough for high school teachers (that is, for you) isn’t college standard.
Does homeschooling have some problems? Sure (though almost none of the ones on your long list are the real ones). For starters, many of my homeschooled freshmen and sophomores do have some blindspots in their education: but what’s interesting is that they know how to correct this, unlike the students who have grown up dependent on the products of education departments.
Sorry, Jesse: I’ll take those problems over the ones you want to inflict on my children any day of the week.
James,
Thank you for your response.
I’m curious, what do you think is the best way to authentically cultivate pluralism?
Gladly.
Above you write, “I can understand not agreeing with me, but don’t you want your child to have real world experience with the full array of temperaments and convictions?”
Putting it simply, the classroom is not a “real world experience.” It’s a hothouse environment, an artificial microcosm.
Are homeschooled kids being raised intolerant? Sure. Do worst cases make good policy? Almost never.
HS kids are also growing up with a stronger-than-average sense of themselves. They do not see themselves as primarily agents of diversity. Acceptance? I hope so as fervently as you do. Pluralism? I hope so more fervently than you do, I think (and I have excellent reasons for that).
But you attain pluralism by having several strong, coherent, intelligent points of view. Where you seem to see such coherence as resistant to pluralism, I insist that pluralism depends on it.
To say “I know exactly what I think” is not the same as saying “I hate anyone who thinks differently.” But a robust diversity allows students to be who and what they are in their engagements with others.
Or did you think that HS’ers are generally not taught the basic courtesy of pluralism, the simple acceptance of other points of view at the table? I’m sure in some cases they aren’t: in all the ones I’m familiar with, it’s a point of pride to make sure that “This is who you are: rational, freethinking, beholden to the evidence and reason wherever it leads and nothing else,” but also that “There are those who believe in God. You must always presume they have their reasons, even if you do not understand them. They are as entitled to their point of view about the world as you are, but you must always know it is within your rights to ask for persuasive reasons from them before you adapt their point of view.”
See, Jesse, our kids are in constant contact with people whose worldview I find frankly appalling. And yet we are in co-ops with some of them. We fence with them, play football with them, have picnics with them, do charity work with them. They know who we are. We know who they are. It can be frankly uncomfortable, but in a way that most public schoolers are totally unfamiliar with: there is no principal to complain to if we’re called “godless atheists” or if we call someone a “superstitious yahoo.” We have to teach (and often learn) the basics of pluralism without a safety net.
We learn in the real world far more than your students do, I would argue.
If that’s not pluralistic, Jesse, I really don’t know what you want. But my experience suggests that the carefully calibrated laboratory version that schools turn out is just as often false tolerance that lasts only until kids get out of school and back on the streets. It’s “official” tolerance, and therefore generally very thin.
Excellent presentation of the case, and as one of those crazy Bible-believing fundamentalist types, I completely understand with your presentation and agree with it
James, this is EXACTLY our experience as homeschoolers. Thanks for presenting our case so well!
Jesse, early elementary school sucked all the joy in learning and confidence in himself out of my son. He suffered from Post-Traumatice Stress Disorder – migraines, weight loss, constant night terrors, tantrums, the whole nine yards – because of the academic pressure in FIRST GRADE. I cannot describe the fear, worry, and sadness in our home during that time in a way that might convey the true awfulness of it; imagine a bright, articulate, social child who falls down a well in slow motion, getting further and further away from light and happiness, and you might have some idea.
Anyway, the day he became a homeschooler was the day this stopped – and now, nearly 9, he is part of a diverse (in age, politics, religion, and finances) community of homeschoolers, excelling in the areas that matter to him. I’m nowhere near his only teacher; he learns from his friends, librarians, neighbors, physical therapist, grandparents, there is a nearly endless list of people with whom he exchanges information and truly learns from.
To imagine us homeschoolers as somehow absent from society is really, really wrong-headed.
I know you asked James, but I would like to tell you about two very different approaches to cultivating pluralism, both of which have worked.
First, there was my upbringing.
I attended an Orthodox Jewish private school, through 12th grade. Everyone I went to school with was Jewish (although from a variety of economic backgrounds, including students whose families were impoverished and attended the school on scholarships; I know this much is true at Catholic schools, too).
What we were taught was that all people are children of the same God, deserving of respect and equality, and that there are many paths to God. (Admittedly, the Orthodox don’t accept that there are many *Jewish* paths to God, but I can tell you now that the general values for pluralism and diversity that I was taught won out over the Orthodox dogma in terms of my feelings about Jewish pluralism.)
We were taught to value equality, freedom, social justice, giving to the community and to those in need, (“tzedaka”), and the importance of learning about and from all the world’s cultures. (I guess, in short, we were educated to be “bleeding heart liberals”, and I think that’s a good thing. It all comes down to “do unto others as you would have done unto you”, and *I* would have others treat *me* with respect, acceptance, and compassion.)
When I was in 8th grade, we had a year-long social studies class called “Prejudice and Discrimination”, in which we studied world and American cultures and religions, and the history of racial/ethnic discrimination in America, and how to fight it. (In high school, we had regular world history.)
Then I went to college in New York City, and became a citizen of the world, feeling comfortable with (and interested in) all kinds of people from all kinds of backgrounds – even though (or maybe because) I had not gone to school with them. I did hear, while I was in high school, that at the local public high school there were big problems with kids self-segregating, and claiming various parts of the school grounds as “their turf”. I’m glad I didn’t go to a school like that. As a very shy teen, I am not likely to have been able to have any sort of positive influence on the racial tensions in that school. I would simply have been negatively affected, myself.
Now, jumping forward about 2o-something years, I was a newly homeschooling mom of two kids, ages 9 and 11. (They are currently 16 and 18.) When we started homeschooling, we lived in an apartment complex that I thought of as the “model U.N.” The families in the complex whose kids were my kids’ friends were from Africa, Mexico, South America, India, Egypt, Viet Nam, and Russia, as well as from our own state and other parts of the U.S. Those kids mostly attended the local public school that my kids had attended until we started homeschooling.
Then there was the homeschool group we joined. The members of that group were just about as diverse as our neighborhood. They were from all religious backgrounds (including no religion); they were lesbian/gay and straight; they were wealthy and poor and in-between; they were American-born and immigrants; they were white, black, Asian, Arab, and Hispanic. Some had started homeschooling as a result of dissatisfaction with the schools. Others had homeschooled all along. Some families used packaged curricula, and did “school at home” (in addition to taking some classes with the homeschool group). Others were of the “unschool” variety, saw the whole world and all of life’s activities as learning experiences, and never did anything schoolish at home.
My children are of two very different temperaments. My son always had (and still has) dozens of friends. His best friend, since he was 9, is Vietnamese. One of his other best friends, until their family moved away, was Egyptian. (It gave me hope for the world to know that one of my Jewish son’s best friends was a Muslim Arab. I think that boy’s mother felt the same way.)
My daughter is very shy and introverted, just like her [public-schooled] dad. She didn’t have more than one friend when she was in school. She never had more than two friends when she was homeschooled – but certainly not for lack of opportunity. Remember my neighborhood, and the homeschool group? She did/does “socialize” with other kids, in scouts and various classes. She just doesn’t make friends easily. Her current best friend is African-American. Her other best friend ( a Scientologist – how’s that for diversity?) moved away. They keep in touch via the internet and phone.
My kids didn’t need public school to experience/live-with pluralism and diversity. I didn’t need public school to teach me to value pluralism and diversity. We live in the real world!
(I suppose it helps that we are financially “distressed”. The wealthier people live in less racially/culturally diverse neighborhoods. Their schools are less integrated/diverse, too. The wealthy families who homeschool – at least, those who are not religious fundamentalists – get more exposure to a diverse group by homeschooling than they would in their neighborhood schools.)
Wow. Yesterday, I thought you were uneducated and disrespectful. Today, I think you are uneducated, disrespectful, and willing to make yourself look stupid in order to get ahead.
I’m glad that the teachers of this country value stupidity over research, because that is a great thing to build in our children.
Oh, and I do suppose you would want homeschoolers on your side in case of a fight. We’d be the ones who’d have to rescue you from yourself, since you can’t seem to come up with an arguement without contradicting yourself. It’s pretty sad when the guy who hates homeschoolers needs them to help defend him.
Hmmmm. . . .
What do you expect, he’s a public school teacher…. probably a union member as well….
The bozo has degrees in English (wonder if he had to read Shakespeare?), journalism (a nonsense degree) and education (completely worthless). No serious academic substance. My guess is that he went to East Pottawottomee State Teachers Normal School (or equivalent) and never to a single class that required even the lowest level of numeracy, knowledge of the scientific method, actual history or philosophy — you know, the stuff we learned in high school before 1975 or so.
Monica,
Believe it or not, I don’t hate home schoolers. The concept frustrates me, and I think it isn’t the best choice for most young people. But that’s all. No hate. I admire homeschoolers passion, dedication, and confidence. If those traits are passed on to the child, that child is off to a great start in life.
You say you don’t hate homeschoolers.
We’re the self-agrandizing, socially phobic, wealthy whites, according to you. What we do ‘pisses you off’ in point number 5.
Sorry but I don’t believe you. You do hate us, you’re just sorry that you were caught out, and in such a big way….now you’re trying to worm out of it. Won’t work.
“Believe it or not, I don’t hate home schoolers.”
Number 10 on your list is an implicit endorsement of hateful stigmatizing of homeschooled kids
Number 7 equates hatred of homeschooling with holiness. If you understood the Scriptures you claim to interpret,
you’d know they command people to hate everything God hates.
Number 5 speaks for itself.
Own your words.
This is interesting because its a direct quote from this blog’s main page (About).
But it’s also more than that. As teachers, we are in a state of perpetual revision. We revise our lesson plans, our classroom management strategies, our seating charts, and our teaching philosophy. The ability to do this with sincerity and courage—often in the moment—is essential to a teacher’s shelf life. Without that, we “go bad.” Undoubtedly you are familiar with the stench of teachers who have reached their expiration date. It ain’t pretty. To avoid this, we must make a life partner of revision. It is the natural preservative that keeps us fresh. This means looking inward and outward—reflecting on our own practice, and keeping an ear to the ground for what’s new (or old) in the world of education.
Looks like Ol’ Jesse needs to update his CV and get some more degrees. He’s gone stinky.
K.T.,
What elements of homeschooling would do the most to better the public school classroom?
(And I thought your joke was funny, by the way.)
Jesse
Truthfully, if you really want to know I will set joking aside and tell you.
1) Every human being, including children, wants to be heard. This is one thing that generally happens in a homeschool setting. The people in the child’s life are genuinely interested in what the child thinks and how that child is perceiving the world around them. This is generally the exception rather than the rule in a classroom. There are those teachers who have a natural talent for what they do, but they are rare.
2) Children probably don’t care where they are as long as they feel safe. Sadly, with the restrictions in many school districts as to what kinds of discipline ( and I mean discipline not punishments) and standards of conduct that the teachers can require of their students, their ( the teachers’) hands are pretty much tied and the kids know it. A parent can require these things of their children without having to consult the district counsel first. Again, there are those teachers who can command respect from their students but they are rare. I think there are a lot of teachers out there who would enjoy teaching if they were allowed to employ some disciplinary methods to address problem behavior immediately rather than having to convene a committee. Around here, anyway, the best they can do is send the child “to the office” for any infraction.
3) Kids can smell whether you care about them or don’t like them a mile away. And lets face it – there are teachers out there who have no business teaching. They plain don’t like kids. They need to go.
4) There seems to be an idea that has taken hold in the last 40 years or so – that people must be treated as individuals. I’m not speaking of taking personal responsibility for one’s deeds, but of a general perception of people. The school systems need to stop looking at children as individuals and start looking at them as persons. What do I mean by this, you ask? Individuals stand alone. And while school districts are willing to accept that chaos in the home life affects a student, they are less willing to accept that kids learning potential in a classroom is also affected by the relationships they have and others around them have within the classroom. Persons grow, develop their world view and accept what they learn as relevant thru their relationships with other persons. The quality of our relationships, in large part, define who we are and who we become. If a child is going to school every morning in survival mode because of bullying, the kid’s not going to learn no matter how many IEPs or Title 1 tutors you throw at him. If the teacher’s pet always gets praised for the right opinion, either the other kids will mimic him/her or resent him/her, but either way, they aren’t voicing their own opinions. A teacher who doesn’t ‘get’ that dynamic is fighting a losing battle.
5) Public school curricula have become too bloody politicized. There is too much fluff. Every lesson has to have a dog and pony show with it. The schools are so bent on making sure that Suzie in Iowa knows what a tamale is that she’s given beginning readers in kindergarten about a kid named Guillermo who lives in Tiajuana whose mother makes the best arepas in town. This would be great to read OUT LOUD to a kid, but for a child whose native language is English, who is trying to learn to read in English, now trying to apply English phonetics to Spanish words – its just ridiculous. Schools need to meet the children where they are. They don’t need to defend their doctoral thesis on social injustice at the end of 1st grade. Give them some time! Just lay a good foundation of reading proficiency and basic mathematics. Leave the social agenda for later when their world view has expanded. But don’t force it. You can’t make grass grow by pulling on it
6) my last thing. Children need to be allowed to fail. Yes, you heard me right. I meet so many adults who are so scared of failure they are paralyzed to inaction. A child must be taught to fail and recover. That might mean redoing a paper, facing a group after an embarrassment or repeating a grade. There is so much lip service to building self-esteem. It seems to be attempted by either blowing off the failure or by someone stepping in to bail the kid out or by EVERYBODY getting an award ( even if they have to make one up for nose picking). This doesn’t build confidence. It reinforces the fact when you screw up, you can’t help yourself. Falling on your face and getting back up, on your own, with encouragement, builds confidence.
Well said, K.T. .
Thank you.
Hear, hear! I would add that more project-based learning is essential at every grade level. If you think we’re not doing dissections and blowing things up in my kitchen, you are mistaken. (Okay, usually we blow things up in the driveway.)
I would also like to eradicate the notion that treating everyone identically is the same as treating everyone equally. Ignoring differences is not the same as “celebrating” them. Differentiation and ability grouping (as opposed to tracking) are methods you will find being used successfully in every homeschool.
I would add to this that curricular goals have been dumbed down to an alarming degree in order to make them (at least in theory) quantifiably measurable. As a result, we have what looks like an enormously over-inflated curriculum, which is why so many teachers moan that there aren’t enough hours in the day to teach what they’re required to teach. However, in reality, there’s just not that much meat there.
Many of each state’s benchmarks and objectives are what I call “collateral learning”. They reflect attitude formation and extremely basic understandings of the underpinnings of each subject. I recall clearly teaching lessons that addressed these individually. However, as a homeschooling parent, it continually astounds me how many of these are satisfied naturally by talking about them briefly (in seconds) while doing something more challenging, something other teachers would have told me a kid that age couldn’t do/wouldn’t be interested in.
Which brings me to another point. My kids have a lot more grey area when it comes to “academics” vs. “personal interests”. Things have never been divided up and categorized for them in that way. As a result, they do a lot of learning on their own, and they bring it to the (figurative) table when we sit down to work together. They’re also quite likely to extend our activities through play and additional reading. Public school has a long history of killing that impulse. Not that they’d have time for it, by the time they’d gone from school to enrichment activities, eaten and done their homework. Unstructured free time is very hard to come by if you’re a public school kid. I wire it in.
I’m just not sure how public school could ever provide these things for my kids.
“What elements of homeschooling would do the most to better the public school classroom? ”
None that are compatible with the Consitutional principle of freedom of conscience. The key problem is that it is impossible to educate without to some extent indoctrinating, and in a free society, there is no room for government or its agents to engage indoctrination. This tension is evident in the way most curriculum elements from whole language/phonics, standard algorithms versus constructivist math to evolution versus creationism and abstinence versus condoms become such political footballs – the public school curriculum is effectively an official orthodoxy, something anathema to a free society.
Now *that* is a genuinely good question!
Here are some elements of the types of *classes* for homeschoolers that my kids have taken that would make public school classes better:
1) Fewer kids per class
2) Choice! Choice of what class to take and which teacher to take it from. Many more choices of curricular materials, time of day, and educational approach.)
3) No emphasis on grades or testing. The classes are process-oriented, not results oriented.
4) Integration of theoretical/book learning with real-life activities.
5) A greater emphasis on the arts!
6) Classes and classrooms oriented towards kids with specific learning styles. For example, predominantly kinesthetic learners would benefit from being taught certain subjects, such as math, spelling, and grammar, through rhythmic movement combined with repetition of rules and facts aloud. When the kids do need to be seated, they could sit in chairs that rock or bounce. When they need to listen, they could be encouraged to play with play-dough to keep their hands occupied.
Maybe you should get to know some of us “geeks” before you judge us so harshly. Who knows, we might even help you with your grammer if you remember to say “please”.
I am unimpressed with the (many) public schoolers I know. They cannot do simple math in their heads, their grasp of the English language is worse than your’s, their spelling is atrocious, and I was amazed to find that they only read and write in manuscript (I know this because I have had to translate cursive for one of them). Of the ones I’ve met, they’re unable to debate, think for themselves, or talk about anything of importance. Frankly, I don’t care who is dating who, what store in the mall is having a sale, about their newest cell phone, or that their parents are “so unfair”. The other thing that strikes me the most about them, is that if you’ve spoken to one of them, you might as well have spoken to them all. They all have the same basic vague ambitions – if you can call them ambitions – with regard to their future. A house, 2-3 children, a five day a week job and a hobby on the weekend. In fact most don’t even have a clue as to what they want their hobby to be. But you can be sure it will take them away from that home they’re never in.
Why do you bother to spout the Bible to us if you don’t even believe in God? Maybe if you read it, you would know in what context to use those verses.
By the way, you might want to learn to proof read your posts. If I had turned in an essay with the grammatical errors you made, Mom would have failed me and made me re-do it. So much for all those degrees, it didn’t help you much in practical appilcation.
Oh, and as a final thought – now I know why all public schoolers are prejudiced against homeschoolers. You must be brainwashing them.
After the reference to helping correct grammar and admonition to proofread, I resepectfully submit the following:
http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/13625/yours-vs-yours
And yes, I DO realize the post to which I responded is from 2009.
Grrrr…*respectfully* :0/
“Jokes! It’s Sunday… no stones thrown today”
But as you already pointed out – you’re agnostic so I say everybody, she moved find a rock.
So when public schools refused to teach the history of the Civil Rights movement that would be a myrid of world views? When all the “power” rests in standardized tests and one teacher with 32 kids – that equals better.
I standby my previous post. Just take it down and apologize. Your post assumes all homeschooler are characters from Wife Swap – let me guess you think all people of color hit a KFC tonight too?
I’d like to quote SNL with a Jesse you ignorant… intolerlant moron. We could mock you more but you need to stop reading our posts and learn to you this thingie even PC users have called grammar check.
A public school parent.
Carol
Jesse,
You speak with all the conviction and world experience of a young man. You make assumptions about all homeschoolers based on the comments that you have received from a small fraction of a large, and growing population.
Some of us have kids in private, public, and homeschool. We make these choices based on what our children need in any given year. It doesn’t have to be an either/or situation.
For example, my children have been schooled in a variety of settings. My daughter attends a private middle school, but she attended public school K-5. My son also attended that public school K-1, but is now homeschooled because our school district does not have adequate resources for gifted students. However, we are in and out of our public school for various events. And, most his friends, and mine, are from that school.
Over the past eight years, I’ve compared our school experience in Upstate NY to that of friends whose children attend schools in NYC, southern CA, Florida, and Bethesda, MD. Personally, I’ve attended schools in MD, Buenos Aires, VA, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. I’ve gone on to College of the Virgin Islands, University of Delaware, and Columbia University.
Even that small sampling reveals huge differences in academic and cultural experience. I wouldn’t presume to make judgments about public schools based on this tiny crack into the window of public education.
Why do you think you’re qualified to make sweeping judgments about homeschool education?
Sandra,
Thank you for writing.
I don’t think I’m qualified to make sweeping judgments about homeschool education. Homeschool situations are too diverse for that. The crux of today’s argument focused on a learning environment with limited perspectives.
Jesse,
When I posted earlier, I hadn’t read your previous article, The Case Against Homeschooling. I’m going to assume, and we all know what happens when you assume, that your previous article was written as a a joke. Perhaps you wrote it while watching David Letterman.
Perhaps, you never meant any of what you wrote in that article.
Just so we’re clear, are you or are you not stating that you believe that all homeschool learning environments provide a limited perspective?
No, not all homeschooling environments. I was generalizing… which was and is tricky, given how varied homeschooling environments can be.
In other words, you were WRONG!
When are you going to admit it?
You mean, you were WRONG!
When are you going to admit it?
You have NO IDEA WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT.
None!
How on earth can you generalize from ignorance?
We are focusing on “A learning environment with limited perspectives”?
Oh, you mean now we are going to talk about Public Schools. I’m sure you do the best you can with the state-mandated curriculum homogenizing what you teach.
You just can’t seem to get past the idea that each and every homeschooler is chained to the kitchen table doing book work. Please reflect a bit on what you have been told about homeschooling this week – not a single person who responded to you has indicated that their children are cloistered. In fact many, many people have explained to you how our kids get MORE socialization and it is often more varied and more positive than the socialization found in schools. That kind of variety exposes our kids to a wide variety of opinions and beliefs.
“I don’t think”
If you stopped right there, at three words, you’d accurately describe the process that led to your original post. If you owned up to that, it would go a long way to changing the tone of the conversation.
“….I’m qualified to make sweeping judgments about homeschool education.”
And yet, you made 10, all of them whoppers.
Do you begin to see the problem now?
>The crux of today’s argument focused on a learning environment with limited perspectives.
Oh, you mean the public schools, right? With the state-mandated curriculum and the narrow areas in which a teacher is permitted to express an opinion?
I submit that your school system prosteletizes their own agenda. Every public school class should begin with these words from the Nobel Prize winner, Doris Lessing.
“You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others, will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself – educating your own judgment. Those that stay must remember, always and all the time, that they are being molded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this society.” ~ Doris Lessing
Jesse, honesty, you can’t possibly believe that in this day of Internet, television, iPhones and gadgets that parents can possibly control what the children think to the extreme that you are trying to portray. We do not live in horse and buggy days. We do get out. We do drive to public places and meet with people of different faiths, ethnicities and veiws.
It seems to me that you can’t see the truth because you can’t see what is going on past the tip of your nose.
Hi Shelly,
To truly understand someone different than oneself, I believe you must live among them. Information about another culture or worldview gathered through the media or in brief encounters just doesn’t do enough. Our public school students spend hundreds of hours every year living their days with a cross-section of their communities. This is an experience that simply cannot be replicated in the homeschool environment.
In my mostly white community, it is the homeschoolers with their adoptive multi-ethnic families that are more diverse.
Just because a child sits next to another child in a class room, or at lunch time, does not mean that they have learned a single thing about each other. It is very hard for PS kids to get past peer pressure in order to forge new friendships. Children of this age are so into acceptance that stepping outside the box (in PS) is very rare. They children that do step outside the box are usually ridiculed.
USUALLY homeschool Co-ops do not have this peer pressure of conformation. With this atmospher it is much easier for children to ask the non-politically correct questions. These are the questions that let you truly understand cultural and personal differences.
We live in a very white community (in the Pacific NW), with much outright racism. If my children were to attend the local public schools (or the local private schools), they would definitely NOT be living their days with a cross-section of society (our community doesn’t have much of a cross-section).
However, because we homeschool, we have been able to provide a myriad of opportunities for our 13 children (yes, thirteen, not a typo). We have done 2 cross-country road trips, and have visited 35 states with our children. We have taken our children to Mexico and Canada numerous times. We have taken our children to work in inner-city Los Angeles, and New Orleans (for 10-14 days each). Our older children have traveled the world (and paid their own way through hard work and financial savvy). Eldest daughter has spent time working in Haiti, Senegal, the Gambia, and India. Next daughter has worked in Mexico, Costa Rica, and is now in Argentina for 2 1/2 years. (She’s only 20.) Next daughter has worked in Mexico, Costa Rica, Germany, India & Bangledesh. (She, too, is just 20.) 2nd son just spent a year working with Iraqi refugees in Amman, Jordan, while attending Arabic Language school full-time. (He is 22 and completed 3 years of college prior to heading to the Middle East.)
We have 3 children adopted from Africa, so our homeschool is much more diverse than the local public school.
My husband is a public school teacher, so we provide for our 13 children on a tight budget, but have been able to give them an abundance of educational opportunities.
5 of my 6 older children (ages 18, 20, 20, 22, 23, 24) have attended community college at age 16 or 17. They have gotten their AA degrees by age 18 or 19 and are traveling the world before they are 20 (while many of their public school peers are just beginning to think about “what to do when I grow up”.) The 6th (and eldest) chose to go directly in to the U.S. Army upon turning 18, and served 4 1/2 years, with 2 1/2 years spent in Iraq.
We are so thankful that our children have truly had the opportunities to experience the world … and not just learn about it through text books from the public school system.
Laurel
mama of 13
Ma’am, I want to salute you. No matter what environment, you and your husband are true examples of exemplary human beings. Raising 13 children, home schooling on top of that, exposing them all to such diverse cultures and people, then instilling in them the desire to do good in the world. That deserves a standing ovation. Bravo to you all.
You’re right. I can’t replicate it and I don’t want to replicate it. I want to do better. Those hundreds of hours of sitting beside someone in class don’t make a person informed or even caring about another race. I know in the government school my kids attended, you were either poor, black and low achieving or you were upper middle class, white and gifted. When the schools opened to ESL, the Hispanic kids just became a third group that stayed together. They don’t play together and each year that they are in school, the two groups grow farther and farther apart. It was two schools in one. The administration had seperate rules for each race and a whole curriculum built around one race (and called multi-cultural lol). It was really like being in the Twilight Zone. Our school was trying to prove they were not racist by going too far in one extreme. The reality was they were covering for actual racist feelings for the race they were pretending to care about.
Homeschoolers that I know just don’t read about another race and call it a day. They usually get out and live it: Volunteer work in the city, missions trips to other countries, going out to different ethnic festivals, restaurants, hosting exchange students, boarding university students overt the holidays, going out to plays, playing sports, etc. To say that there is no regular interaction between the races outside of the school settings, assumes that businesses, church, sports teams, scouts, clubs, etc are all racially exclusive.
It is my opinion (and I have seen studies to support this theory) is that the best way to overcome racism is to share joy together. When you meet someone via a shared passion or fun event, you bond. When you meet people by force and coercion in an artificial environment that you don’t enjoy, you are not likely to interact with someone different, you are going to seek someone familiar (or that least looks like them).
Yes, it can, and yes it absolutely is. And here’s a new wrinkle: my kids are just as likely to educate adults as adults are to educate them. They don’t see it as a one-way street.
>>Our public school students spend hundreds of hours every year living their days with a cross-section of their communities.
Which in my case means exclusively white, exclusively blue-collar, exclusively suburban, economically similar, of the same age, with religious differences ignored. Compare that to my homeschooling community, which draws from a larger geographic area. It is racially diverse, economically diverse, rural/urban/suburban, of a variety of ages, with religious differences respected and discussed. There is no question in my mind that my children are exposed to a much wider cross-section of people when they are homeschooling then when they have been in public or private school. We’ve done all three at one time or another, and each has its pros and cons. But diversity-wise, homeschooling wins hands down.
But we DO live among them! There is more diversity – in political opinion, in household finances, in religious belief – in our local homeschooling community than in all the public schools in the same area!
Just off the top of my head, we spend time, every week, with:
A Dad whose weekend business is giving tours along the Freedom Trail – his knowledge and excitement about early American history has been passed on to his kids, who pass it on to mine in play.
A family who knows so much about their local green space, they were able to take our Scouting group on a tour a few weeks ago.
A 9-year-old who knows so much about geography that he’s planning to compete in next year’s National Geography Bee – and that’s only his second passion, his first is WWII history.
A 3-year-old mountain biker – I kid you not – and his big sister, a 7-year-old who loves acting and has been involved in the community theater for years. Also, this family makes their own maple syrup – it is AWESOME – and are raising chickens this spring for the eggs.
I started a neighborhood baseball group, we get together every week and play a couple hours of pick-up baseball, just because it’s fun… there are about 40 kids in the group, ages 3-ish to 15, and you’d be amazed at how well they play together.
Shall I go on? This is the real world, we are in it every day. Can you say the same about schooled kids?
“To truly understand someone different than oneself, I believe you must live among them.”
Then the study of history would be pointless, since one cannot live among previous generations.
“Information about another culture or worldview gathered through the media or in brief encounters just doesn’t do enough.”
So Thoreau was an idiot?
“Our public school students spend hundreds of hours every year living their days with a cross-section of their communities.
This is an experience that simply cannot be replicated in the homeschool environment.”
What a load of crap. Sorry to shatter your elaborately constructed fantasy, but Americans self segregate geographically along cultural,
religious, ethnic, economic, and ideological lines. That’s why drawing legislative district boundaries is such a contentious
exercise. Public schools draw their enrollment from their immediate vicinity and are thus subject to the same clustering.
Homeschoolers are free to take their students anywhere they wish among the larger population.
Our public school students spend hundreds of hours every year living their days with a cross-section of their communities.
No, they don’t. I do not think that word cross-section means what you think it means.
They spend most of their days with people whose birth-years fall within 9 months of their own and who live within the tightly proscribed boundaries of the school district and for the most part ONE adult (until they get to high school, and then it’s a few more adults), who will also not be younger than, probably 22 or so, and not usually older than 65. Nor will they spend any time with adults who lack college degrees or who do not speak English (unless they have a foreign language class in high school and that teacher struggles with English). A cross section would include people more than a year older or younger than you. It would include the non-college educated adults from the community. It would include adults who do not speak English. It would include people who live in the other school districts. It would include adults who have not been brainwashed and indoctrinated by their state teacher training. And it would include adults who work in fields other than education- it would include entrepreneurs, the unemployed, bankers, grocery store clerks, cashiers from the thrift shop, the special needs adults who work there, the severely retarded, military members, mail carriers, fire fighters, artists, business people, and more.
When they get to highschool those tight boundaries broaden a wee bit as the school district is usually a little bigger, and the age spread is a breathlessly adventurous four years.
I have two best friends- I would never have attended school with either of them as one is six years older and one six years younger than I.
Public schooled students spend hundreds of hours every year living their days isolated from their community and socialized by a very narrowly proscribed peer group of children who are mostly the same age, and never more than five or six years older or younger.
The type of “living among them” that helps you truly understand another culture doesn’t happen in public schools. The kids all have a shared culture while at school. Nobody asks the Jewish kids, the Mexican kids, the Indian kids about their holidays, customs, and beliefs. The kids focus on what they have in common – which, these days, is generally very superficial and materialistic. And they only learn what the teachers tell them to learn.
The only times they ever really learn about each other’s varied home cultures are:
A) when it becomes a subject of study for the class (in which case, classes for homeschoolers, or home-study using t.v., videos and the internet serve the same purpose), or visiting each others’ homes – which then has nothing to do with school!
See my post above about the multi-cultural neighborhood we used to live in. We really did live among “them”. It’s a neighborhood thing, not a school thing.
Homeschoolers have more time and opportunities to visit other neighborhoods, get together with (and *socialize with* – in small groups, where they can really get to know each other!) different people on a regular basis, and travel to distant and different places than schooled kids, too.
“1. The “Othering” of Public School Students
I was disheartened at the amount of broad criticism pointed at public schools and public school students.
. . .
Based on some of these comments, it sounds like public school kids are downright feared.”
This is a valid point. I have seen both broad-based criticism of public schools, teachers and students. Similarly, I’ve seen parents choose to homeschool based on “fear.”
And yet. . . criticism of the public schools isn’t unfounded. Many schools are failing their students, communities, and yes, their teachers. It is a failing system, yet the public school system is currently the default. Homeschooling is one just one way to address how the system is failing so many. Charter schools, co-op schools, private schools, vouchers, virtual schools. . . none of these options are the ideal for every child, but they open up many more possibilities to tailor education to the needs of an individual child, her family, and the surrounding community.
As far as fear. . . Well. . . fear is more often a factor in a homeschool decision in separatist homeschoolers. As others have pointed out, that portion of homeschoolers is continually smaller. I don’t value fear as a good basis for choosing to homeschool, and yet I do respect the freedoms and liberties we have in this country which do include choosing the best schooling option for our families.
Mrs. Public School Teacher,
Thank you for writing.
I’ve mentioned this elsewhere, but it bears repeating: the right to homeschool is one that I fully support. I believe we would live in a better society if everyone was forced to attend public schools, but that is not a society I would want to live in.
You believe our society would be better if the state forced everyone to accept the same course of indoctrination?
Well, of course! What could possibly go wrong?
-jcr
“You believe our society would be better if the state forced everyone to accept the same course of indoctrination?”
Sort of wraps up Jesse’s problem quite nicely, doesn’t it.
Jesse, it’s been tried before – it was called the Hitler Youth.
But it would make us all accepting of diversity!!!! Don’t you UNDERSTAND???????
*snort*
Jesse, if you REALLY believed it would be a “better” society, then you *would* want to live in it!
How could it possibly be a better society???
Post after post after post has done nothing to show you that homeschool families ARE diverse and ARE productive members of society???
You’re not a fool. You’re not stupid.
You’re proud. You are too proud to admit that maybe you are wrong.
And that is what is wrong with public schools.
For 7 long years fear kept us locked in public schools. Our children were being abused, mis-educated and neglected, but we feared accepting total responsibility for educating them. We didn’t realize that our attachment to the illusion that the school was responsible for our kid’s education was an emotional crutch. We lied to ourselves, because we were desperately sad about our children’s lousy educations, but terrified of taking charge of the growing disaster.
Then we realized that placing the kids at the mercy of the public school year after year was a decision. It was a poor decision based on fear and self deception, but a decision nonetheless. As long as we were too cowardly to take decisive, responsible action, we were contributing to our children’s educational neglect and abuse.
We were scared, but we took the plunge. The realization that we could not do worse than our local public elementary if we tried helped to steady our nerves.
Fear keeps people locked into public schools. People tell me time and time again that they’ve dreamed of home schooling, but they’re afraid.
I was afraid to home school, but I’m not any more. I’m free from that. Fear no longer dictates our choices with regard to education. We can send our kids back to public school, knowing that if the school fouls up we can bring them home again. We can keep them at home, knowing that home schooling is easy and fun. We won’t foul up. We love our children, we love education, we are living our dreams. Our kids are thriving.
I don’t value fear as a good basis for choosing to send my children to public school. I served in the U.S. Marines to defend liberties we enjoy in this country. As I grow too old for that kind of vigorous lifestyle, I find myself hoping to share an entirely new kind of freedom. Freedom from fear is a wonderful liberty.
Freedom from fear allows us to fully appreciate people who are different from us. We don’t have to feel threatened when people choose a different way of life from ours. We can simply build bridges of understanding, and grow from the experiences they share with us. Freedom of fear allows us to take financial, emotional and educational risks, occasionally encountering failure in a public sense, but always coming out of the experience wiser and more capable of meeting the next challenge. Freedom from fear protects our health, because it prevents unproductive anger, hatred, pain and despair.
People homeschool when the hope of a good education for their children outweighs the fear of the road less traveled.
Don’t fear us because we’re different; resign yourself to the fact that we’re not afraid to be different. Our children will be well educated.
Substandard educations are simply not an option. Having public school teachers decry our differences is a small price to pay for the joy of seeing our children do well.
Good heavens, who pissed in your corn flakes of life?
Life is about choices and if some parent choose to homeschool their children, what’s the problem.
Some parents choose to kill their children in the womb.
It’s all about choice, isn’t it?
Frankly I am shocked at the double standard. You can’t possibly be disheartened at the broad criticism at public schools when you published a piece called “The Case Against Homeschooling”. Are.you.for.real!? These were the first 2 posts I have read… and they will undoubtedly be the last. My best to you and your students.
If homeschooling was a brand new concept, and no one had ever been a successful graduate from a homeschool before, then your argument might be a little more valid.
There are homeschool grads at almost every college in the nation, there are successful, world-travelling, adventure seeking, well spoken, rounded, intelligent, thoughtful homeschool grads who would not recognize what you are describing as homeschooling.
The problem is that what you envision homeschools and homeschoolers to be is just wrong because your whole premise is based on stereotypes.
There are so many possible points to argue with in your posts – but the one that strikes me as the most important would be that, since you are NOT a homeschooler, you have absolutely no access to what life is actually like when homeschooling – either for parent or child. You may as well have written a post on what it’s like to be made of green cheese, and inhabit the moon.
Homeschooling comes in so many different styles and flavors -because after all, it is designed around how a particular child learns – that no one outside of any given family would have an inkling of what it is like to homeschool any particular child.
That leads to society’s loss of control and oversight over individuals, something obviously to be feared from where you sit.
The flip side of this is that almost all parents have the knowledge of what public school is like since almost all of them had direct exposure to it. Apparently they weren’t that impressed.
Yeah – for your “High education” that you say you have, you really need to work on your grammar! To quote Mariah: “Maybe you should get to know some of us “geeks” before you judge us so harshly. Who knows, we might even help you with your grammar if you remember to say “please”.
If anyone is brainwashing anyone, it would be YOU brainwashing the kids in your school!
I know many public schooled people. Can you explain why they don’t know how to read or write in script? Probably not, seeing as how you were the one who did the teaching…or the lack there of. Can you explain why most of the teenage high school students don’t even know how to spell simple words?? Here again: Probably not. There are so many young people who now use the new language called “txt (text) or IM (instant massage), and soon forget how to use real words.
How many teens do you know that would rather read a good book than sit and watch T.V.? Not many I’m sure.
I am not saying that all teachers are ill-equipped (how many of your students even know what that word means, let alone spell it?), just the ones like you. People who have the nerve to bash homeschooling, and other peoples beliefs shouldn’t be able to teach…excuse me…BRAINWASH public schooled kids. Maybe if you actually got out of YOUR box of “public school is the only way” then maybe you would come to realize that homeschoolers are not at all how you have written them up the be, but better.
If public school is so great, then explain why the kids have to meet other people’s standards to fit in?
What are the kids learning other than having parties, who’s clothes are better, or even who has the better looks? Does it really matter if someone got dumped by the football star, or who he went out with next? No! What counts is a good education! Why the drama? What’s so good about pressure kids are putting on each other? Do tell.
If parents send their kids to a public/private school, or home school, it is according to the needs of that family.
You surprise me… for someone who claims to not believe in God, you refer to His Word quite often. You should read it before you use it. Maybe then you will get some sort of an idea of what the verses mean.
Here’s something for you to think about…
If everyone in public school is trying to measure up to other’s standards, and be just like someone else, then how can they have their own view points/opinions?
Bravo! You’ve discovered that taking cheap shots at homeschoolers will get you loads to traffic and lots of comments! Maybe tomorrow’s post will be about how homeschool parents are in violation of child labor laws by requiring their kids to do chores around the house.
My husband and I both attended private school for our early elementary education and public schools for the rest of it. We both agree that our children are much better served in a homeschool environment. That’s called freedom of choice in a society with diverse options. Ain’t it great?
The main thought I have in response to your “risks” theory is that all homeschoolers have plenty of time to encounter the things that they did not encounter after the graduating age of the typical homeschooler (typically around 16 years old).
And many public schools do not give a great “real world” experience anyway. With all your world travels and experience I would have thought you would have given a case for international travel as part of the typical teenage education to give students some real experience, not just throw them in a building called a school and let them go at each other.
As for being afraid of public school kids, unfortunately there is plenty to be afraid of. And the teachers are often those with the worst opinions of those in the hallways. Its so screwed up! The whole system. I don’t agree with your idea of a better society being one where everyone is in public schools, but I do think that if all government officials were forced to send their kids to public schools the schools would be so much better! They just don’t have a clue!
I tried to not reply, but just couldn’t help myself.
Jesse talks about his amazing qualifications:
“Homeschooling parent/teachers are arrogant to the point of lunacy. For real! My qualifications to teach English include a double major in English and education, two master’s degrees (education and journalism), a student teaching semester and multiple internship terms, real world experience as a writer, and years in the classroom dealing with different learning styles. So, first of all, homeschooling parent, you think you can teach English as well as me? Well, maybe you can. ”
Juxtapose his own self aggrandizement with the following from his own commentary (ostensibly by an English major and Journalist major!):
“Pedagogy being equal (for the sake of argument) that leaves us with what moral and social affect the educational environment has on the child.”
Um, Dr. English, you see the problem?
That should be “EFFECT” and not “AFFECT.”
And above we have this:
“My qualifications to teach English include a double major in English and education, two master’s degrees (education and journalism), a student teaching semester and multiple internship terms, real world experience as a writer, and years in the classroom dealing with different learning styles.”
That would be, “real-world” not “real world” experience, sir.
The first is non-trivial and dramatically affects[sic] the meaning of the sentence.
The second is more mundane, but surely somebody who has two degrees in subjects directly related to the written word would be able to distinguish when it’s necessary to indicate a compound adjective with dashes?
So, in answer to your question: “Yes, I can teach English to my children more effectively than you.”
-Jolly1
I’d like to know what college handed that clown an English degree.
-jcr
John,
You strike me as a little sad. What’s going on, buddy?
His undergraduate English and education degrees, and his graduate education degree are from the University of Connecticut (at Storrs or at a regional campus?) and his journalism degree is from NYU. It is unclear just what the requirements for the major were, but it looks like there is a path for those with an emphasis on education, which I suspect covers our Mr. Scaccia.
Better known for its sports teams, UConn has never been considered academically serious in the humanities, let alone a powerhouse. At our suburban Connecticut high school, virtually none of the better (let alone the best) students even consider UConn.
Don’t overdo it, please. UConn is not a bad or disrespected university. And even well-qualified people are entitled to argue at the level of their ideas.
Furthermore it’s not uncommon in this medium to lose your grammar in the middle of a sentence: it values speed over accuracy. And if we’re judging by that standard, some of my fellow homeschooling parents will come off poorly above: I think it a bad idea in cyberspace to be petty about grammar. Glass houses and all that.
There’s plenty to argue about without resorting to childish misdirection and ad hominem attacks like these.
Try to be a credit to The Resistance, alright?
I said nothing about Mr. Scaccia’s grammar. I am well aware that grammar in cyberspace is more akin to the spoken language than to the formal prose of the essay. Perhaps the earlier writer who did was being ironic – after all, if Mr. Scaccia holds himself out as expert in teaching English (indeed, as more expert than anyone without his particular credentials), does he not make his own usage fair game?
As to UConn, I am perhaps a bit harsh, but I live in Connecticut and see how it is regarded here. At our local high school, academically superior students with any options virtually never choose UConn.
My lack of respect for UConn also stems from the apparent preeminent emphasis on athletics — substitute basketball for football and you could imagine its president hoping, like the president of the University of Oklahoma quoted in Richard Hofstadter’s Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, that he could build a university of which the football team could be proud.
Wow, Cato. UConn typically has a top-25 education school in the country, and is almost always rated as the best in New England. (For whatever ratings are worth.)
If you read my post carefully, I said that I would grant that sure, the homeschooling parent might be a better English teacher than me. So your point doesn’t exactly make sense. Indeed.
That got your attention….
There is virtually no such thing as a worthwhile school of education, saving only Columbia Teachers College when Jacques Barzun taught there.
The “best in New England”?
The best what? The best teacher’s college? The best State U? Something else?
Rated by whom? According to what criteria?
This comment, in addition to your latter one that dismisses schools of education outright “except for Columbia” is just stupid, period.
We aren’t here to attack each other’s credentials, just to debate each other’s viewpoints. There are plenty of schools of education that are quite well respected and offer excellent, well rounded and/or well focused, research based educations in both the practice and theories of multiple pedagogies, including various forms of alternative schooling methods. Don’t make homeschoolers look like hypocrites, please.
“This comment, in addition to your latter one that dismisses schools of education outright “except for Columbia” is just stupid, period.”
Hardly, when you consider that the students at schools of education have some of the lowest average test scores in the University student body. Education schools long ago devolved into leftist indoctrination centers that are one of the favorite choices of people who go to college to hang out for 4 years.
About the only fault I can find with his comment is differentiating Teachers’ College, which has the distinction of being the first to eject a student for expressing a view dissenting from the institutional orthodoxy.
I didn’t know that the typical homeschool parent found test scores to even be a valid measurement of intelligence or educational achievement- maybe I’m wrong. I actually homeschool my children because of the tendency of public schools to measure success based on test scores, so in my humble opinion your response using test scores as your logos doesn’t convince me of the lack of worth for a degree in education, since I’m of the camp that tends to find quantitative and qualitative issues with instituional testing in the first place.
Agreed, James. In this format the exchange of ideas is the important thing.
Hey, let’s not judge people for going to a state school. It is petty and, let’s face it, somewhat classist. Not everyone can afford private universities.
No-one is criticizing state universities in general; all I saw was one poster critical of a specific school, UCONN. There are plenty of state universities which have a great reputation, such as UCLA and the University of Michigan.
Oh, I don’t know, I graduated from UConn with a BS in Human Development. Perhaps it has “never been considered academically serious in the humanities,” but it was good enough for me, and also for the friends I made there, many of whom have gone on to be successful in their chosen fields.
My UConn education eventually led me to homeschooling, so it taught me to ask the right questions, I guess!
THIS IS THE REAL PROBLEM HERE:
“I think our kids need to be exposed to all types while they’re young and have parents there to help them learn positive communication skills and empathy for even the worst of us.”
Couldn’t you just have said this in the beginning so we could have all just ignored you and been done with it?
No parent can undo the harm of a truly “unintelligent, small-minded, racist, sexist, and even sadistic” teacher with “positive communication skills and empathy.” What you propose here is child abuse and many have been jailed for it. It IS a bad thing and I am surprised that someone as well educated, seemingly caring, and well traveled as you are can actually propose such a thing. Have you never seen a truly broken person? Worse, a broken child twisted by a “teacher”?
Of course you have. You’ve seen people die from poor choices. You’ve seen children who won’t ever make it to school. You’ve seen people waste away from preventable diseases. Can “positive communication” cure the child who saw her father killed and got HIV from being raped by her neighbor? Then how can you say that the child bullied in the halls of a public school who then hangs himself at age 12, 10 miles from my house, could have been saved by a parent who taught empathy? Are you going to tell that mother that she was at fault? What about all the other not as extreme cases? What about all those adults who can tell you how they were hurt at a young age by someone at school, because of the failed system? You should be thanking those parents who take the time to raise kids outside of negative environments. Those kids will have plenty of time to experience the horrors of the world after they have become well-adjusted teenagers.
Reading this line of yours made me sick to my stomach. Throw the lamb to the wolves and then have a therapy session to make the world a better place? Excuse me while I go throw up now.
Did you miss the homeschool tolerance day at school? They lock you in a closet, close the door, and slide food under the door, and tell you to memorize 1+1=3, and the sky is green. Then at the end of the day, they give you a test, where you are to write an essay on what being homeschooled is like, and how homeschooled kids, even though they might be at a disadvantage, shouldn’t be shunned. Well, unless they are weird, in which case, they should get a pat on the back and a lollipop, and be told, “Well, you’re a good homeschooler. It’s the rest of the homeschoolers I’m worried about.”
Oh, and then there’s “befriend a homeschooler” day, where kids go on a field trip and knock on homeschoolers’ doors, and offer themselves as “friend for a day.” The parents are thrilled that a live child is willing to be together with their family! And they all sing happy songs together, and the new “wordly” child tells the homeschooler all about what it’s like outside their house.
Ya, those homeschoolers have no idea what they are missing. If they came to school we could show them what it’s really like to be free and tolerant. We can even take them to homeschool tolerance day so they can remember what it was like before they came to school.
heeheehee! You are TOO funny!
let’s have “befriend a public schooled kid” day – and we show them what being out in the world is REALLY like: learning at museums (not just rushing through so you get back to the bus on time), playing at the park with your many, MANY friends – (ALL DAY), heading to Disneyland because you know all of the educational opportunities that there are *while* having FUN, learning about the Renaissance – not just out of a book, but while walking amongst actors just waiting to tell you everything they know about the period and their characters, being excited about time to go to the library and just hang out, learning math facts because you *want* to learn them – not because some suit in some office said you should know them at “this” age. Getting to socialize out in the real world, not just with one teacher who may, or may not, like you. Meeting and getting to know the mailman, the dentist, the store clerk – seeing interesting people in the store who you aren’t afraid to ask questions of (like, why is that man in TJ’s wearing a “skirt” – to which the friendly stranger was more than willing to explain to the child, his “kilt”).
Hmm, given a week of the “befriend a public schooled kid” – I have a feeling, that ps kid, just may go AWOL from ps school!
“It Takes A Myriad of Worldviews To Build A True Educational Environment”
You’re not going to find a myriad of world-views in an NEA union shop, you incompetent, condescending hypocrite.
-jcr
Yes, forty teachers all spouting the NEA mantras is not diversity.
I would respectfully submit that the ‘socialization’ so promoted by members of the government education establishment has both positives and negatives and the true net effect is never discussed. As soon as you leave high school you have to ‘unlearn’ that so-called socialization and learn how to deal with *adults* instead of kids.
My observations have shown that homeschooled children can deal with adults far more effectively than government-schooled children, who so often see adults as “the other”.
When you guys shake off the corrupt Bolshevik labor unions and their net negative impact on education, and when the standards are tightened (e.g. High School math and science teachers should be required to have a degree in that subject, not a worthless Education degree) then perhaps we can talk.
I am too busy to read all of the comments and apologize if I am being redundant, but don’t the results speak for themselves when government schoolers go head-to-head with home schoolers?
When we were faced with homeschooling I needed to learn about our options and figure out our methods. I found these books and authors very helpful (as have other homeschoolers):
John Holt (http://www.holtgws.com/), Alfie Kohn (http://www.alfiekohn.org/index.html), “Deschooling Society” by Ivan Illich, and “In the Mind’s Eye: Visual Thinkers, Gifted People With Dyslexia and Other Learning Difficulties, Computer Images and the Ironies of Creativity” by Thomas G. West.
A quote from “Deschooling Society”–
Universal education through schooling is not feasible. It would be no more feasible if it were attempted by means of alternative institutions built on the style of present schools. Neither new attitudes of teachers toward their pupils nor the proliferation of educational hardware or software (in classroom or bedroom), nor finally the attempt to expand the pedagogue’s responsibility until it engulfs his pupils’ lifetimes will deliver universal education. The current search for new educational funnels must be reversed into the search for their institutional inverse: educational webs which heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his living into one of learning, sharing, and caring.
“Educational web” much more accurately labels our educational approach than “homeschool.”
Take a look, sometime, at a list of successful people who have been homeschooled. Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Alva Edison, to start you off.
If it is really the case that some of our brightest students are homeschooled, then perhaps schools need to figure out why these kids feel the need to flee school?
Doing a quick search, and choosing the first one (’cause I just ain’t gonna waste time on this…) here is a list of homeschooled people you’ve heard of: http://www.homeschoolacademy.com/famoushomeschoolers.htm
Homeschoolers are also accepted and often welcomed at a wide range of colleges and universities: http://learninfreedom.org/colleges_4_hmsc.html
MIT: http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/apply/homeschooled_applicants_helpful_tips/homeschooled_applicants.shtml
Stanford: http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2000/novdec/articles/homeschooling.html
Chelsea Link:
http://justenough.wordpress.com/2008/04/30/chelsea-link-18-homeschooled-accepted-to-yale-harvard-princeton-columbia-stanford-u-of-chicago-and-northwestern/
People who have children will be very passionate about them and anything partaining to them. Thats why the steam rises from the screen on your site. I’ve said before I’m a member of both camps. I’m sure glad that my seven year old homeschooled daughter hasn’t learned about french kissing like her older brother did in Public kindergarden when he was six. My son said the other day after public school in 8th grade that a boy at school was carrying 900 dollars in cash in his wallet from selling drugs. He’s in my son’s class.
The world is becomming more and more dangerous for all of us. I’m sure we all care whats happening to and around our children. Some of us are in a position that enables us to teach our own. For me there are too many moments when the children are not supervised in a public school setting, for example, any thing can happen on a bus with one adult who is also concentrating on the road. My son told me he was going to need to file a complaint with the principle because he was tired of seeing a 13 year old girl being fondled by her 16 year old boyfriend on the bus. He said it was disgusting and he couldn’t stand it anymore.
Some parents have no choice – Single parents, those who must work full time. Public school is there and that is a wonderful thing because they need it. It is an option in education and that is all – an option.
Homeschooling can be good or bad, but at least parents have some control.
This is not true in schools.
I’ve grown tired of teachers who do not know basic math facts, fundamental grammar or spelling, or who just plain ol’ don’t think science, history or Shakespeare are worth teaching.
I’m fed up with teachers who are morally corrupt — yes, they exist — such as the one my eldest had at Illinois Math and Science who put Miss Kitty posters on his door and when we asked him about them, told us he likes little p*ssies. Ha ha.
Then there are the wannabe teachers of teachers who abhor teaching who waste our children’s education by largely ignoring teaching while they hurry up and finish their PhD at night. So they can teach the teachers. Or, move on to Washington, D.C to create policies.
Ah, and let’s not forget bullying. How many bullied kids, like those loathsome geeks, are honestly protected by the schools? A friend of mine who teaches commented that several teachers in the lounge made comments about kids who are bullied and that they deserve it. It happens to often for her to even be shocked. Who wants to subject their child to students who bully and apathetic teachers who agree it’s okay?
These are just some of the reasons parents homeschool. Or, in my case, send them off to private schools and supplement.
We still have the liberty to do so.
But, to answer your question, I think you should blame Marcus Aurelius.
For the most part, I believe your concerns can be valid. There are a few parents out there who choose to homeschool their children in a commune-like society. There is always a possibility of a parent doing damage to their child’s psyche or fail to actually teach their child enough to survive.
HOWEVER, our concerns regarding the possible dangers of public school are also valid. How many school shootings have there been in the news in the last few years? If you watch the news at all, you can’t possibly overlook the fact that educationally, our public schools ARE failing.
Of COURSE this isn’t necessarily the mainstream of public schools. Of COURSE there are fantastic success stories in this system.
BUT, the commune style of teaching for homeschoolers, and the idea that we never let our children see the light of day is not mainstream, either. In fact, this idea, although possible, is just as fiction as assuming that children of public school learn nothing more than popularity and how to be a criminal.
As far as your “view” (and I’m assuming you’re really just playing devil’s advocate here–you seem very level headed and intelligent, afterall) that “your” bad example would be beneficial to our children as what NOT to do…. Okay. Except, by that same example, parents that hit each other, do drugs, or expose their children to porn could easily be said to be providing the same “beneficial” exposure to what NOT to do as well–except CPS, judges, and psychologists don’t agree with that at all. While, “your” bad example is not nearly as extreme as all of this, it stands to reason that expecting children to logically determine by themselves what is and is not appropriate is quite difficult for a child. I could be off the mark here, and children do indeed have well developed logic, though if true, I doubt CPS would care regarding the more extreme situations.
BUT, logic and reason is developed over time and with maturity. Therefore, wouldn’t it be better to teach and model for a child correct behavior to begin with and limit exposure to bad examples? If not, why is it so important to provide positive reinforcement to correct bad behavior and encourage good behavior in children? If this were NOT true, why would positive reinforcement be necessary at all? Afterall, hasn’t it been shown time and time again, it’s much easier to show a child what they SHOULD do, than what they SHOULDN’T?
It would stand to reason then, that what you are REALLY concerned about is our ability to teach our children tolerance for others who do not believe as we do, or to expose them to bad behavior so that as an adult, should they be confronted with such an irrational and ill-behaved individual that it will not cause trauma to their “over-protected” pysche?
BUT, most of us aren’t really trying to teach our children to bring about the next Spanish Inquisition. We just want to share our faith and beliefs with our children–much like those parents who send their children to Christian, Buddists, and Catholic schools–for example–do.
As far as exposure–well, desensitizing is not necessarily the best way to train anyone. Otherwise, why would violent video games be such a hot topic? Wouldn’t we just consider it training for military combat and ultimately beneficial?
Which brings about my next point. This isn’t really about our narrow-mindedness as much as it’s about forced acceptance. It is entirely possible to be tolerant without accepting. In fact, our country was founded on tolerance—NOT blind acceptance.
Remember the saying: I don’t agree with what you’re saying, but I’ll defend your right to say it?
That’s tolerance without acceptance right there. And, it’s also something we as a country have gotten away from.
It’s funny that a mainstream society so bent on being the defenders of the individuals right to choose for themselves would be so dictative of individuals choosing in which way they will educate their children. Because of this, the concern doesn’t seem to be about teaching tolerance at all and forces many homeschoolers to re-examine and ponder the saying “The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.” We can’t help be suspicious when any large entity–government or societal sect–feels the need to boast that they can do a better job of raising and educating our children than we can.
Paranoid? Maybe, but not anymore paranoid than the thought that homeschoolers are out to destroy the world.
It’s kind of funny, really. Those who doubt homeschoolers tend to do so for the sake of society, while many homeschoolers actually homeschool–ultimately–for the sake of society. Afterall, it is just as important to the homeschooled family that our children contribute positively to society as it is to public schools. It’s important to us that our children be good influences and can provide for themselves.
But, this isn’t really any different than any other large ideals in history–for example, Communism and Capitalism. At the core, each believes they have the best answer. And, ultimately, we fight for that belief. You, for public school, and us, for homeschool.
Jesse, public schools are a social experiment. Since the days of Thomas Jefferson, they were intended to glean out the best minds and throw away the “rubbish” (serious quote from good ole Tom, don’t stone me). They are used to advance certain ideas and mindsets. They are to promote cultural norms.
Why is it ok for the government to make all these decisions but not a parent?
And I repeat myself as far as diversity goes: most neighborhoods, and therefore schools, are not nearly as diverse as we in our little white washed middle class houses may think. Minorities are frequently subjected to institutional racism, low income people are often caught in a cycle of poverty, and the school system, until it is massively overhauled, contributes to this problem, possibly moreso than any other system.
A 5 year old, with average intelligence, average parents, trotting off to his first day of kindergarten, in a middle class white school is liable to do just fine. The same 5 yo trotting off to class in an inner city, gang-infested, virtually segregated school, is liable to encounter serious adversity, likely not to graduate, likely to never climb out of poverty, likely to just rot on the vine.
Rather than continuing to damn home schooling parents who opt out of the system, why not point the finger of blame at our government who is more interested in pushing ideologies and useless “reforms” (which are generally more of the same) than in providing each and every child in this country with an equal, and equally-funded, education provided by equally well-qualified teachers.
And my above comment is why I always hesitate to correct someone’s grammar online, lol. I should have ended it with a question mark. *blushes*
I’ve been thinking some more about this, in particular, about the idea that kids need to be exposed to a wide variety of viewpoints. I have only read about 1/3 the comments on this post, though I read most on the previous one.
One comment made early on here discussed the role of a religious motivation for many homeschoolers. I previously responded that only 36% of homeschoolers said this was a primary motivation. Yet I’ve been thinking more about this–
What if it were true that homeschoolers were trying to teach their kids their own religious viewpoints? Why would that be a bad thing? Why should parents, who have found joy and fulfillment in God have to hide that? Why should people who firmly believe something be “supposed to” turn their kids over to those who deliberately teach the opposite? Why would “exposure to many viewpoints” necessarily be more valuable than fully understanding one viewpoint?
We have an idea in our culture that the quick, broad answer is more important than the deep, well-thought-out one. Yet is that really the case?
Could it be that one would be better able to understand the world thoroughly, if they first understood their own viewpoint thoroughly? Could it be that depth of thought is more important than variety of thoughts?
But even beyond that, why should a parent, who has given birth to, gotten up at 3am with, and sacrificed in a myriad of small and large ways for a child be forced to give over their training to someone with a different agenda, who does not know and love that child?
Really, what kind of society would that be? Honestly, I doubt many of us (whether atheist, religious, or anywhere in between), would appreciate that for our own children. We love them more than that.
You scare me.
Really? It scares you that a parent would choose to teach their child their own viewpoint and worldview rather than turn them over to the government school system to be taught the “consensus” viewpoint? Where is your alleged appreciation, or at least acceptance of diversity? Or did you only mean acceptance/appreciation of different skin tones or sexual orientation, not the diversity of ideas? A parent can teach a child according to their own worldview while also teaching the child that not everyone will have the same views. As the above poster said, “I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend your right to say it”. You have a strange idea of diversity if your idea of it is that everyone must conform to the same worldview. They must accept that others are entitled to their own views, not necessarily accept those views themselves.
And I would no more believe that my child must be exposed to the seamier side of things, or beliefs which I abhor, than I would believe that he must be exposed to drugs or pornography in order to be “inoculated” against them. He will inevitably come into contact with these things. I intend that it will be at a time later in life when he is equipped by the firm foundation which his parents gave him, to deal with these things from an informed position of strength. Would you teach your children to swim by throwing them in the deep end?
“Where is your alleged appreciation, or at least acceptance of diversity?”
Jesse meant the leftist definition of diversity, where everyone looks and loves different, but thinks the same.
She scares you? Why? Because she can think? And not just spout?
That’s just it. Diversity scares you. You cannot tolerate it. It must be destroyed.
What a horrible person you are.
My 6-y-o wanted to know what I was responding to. I translated your article as best as I could. He looked at me with clear brown eyes, shook his head, and said, “He’s wrong.”
Yes, my love. There is right and wrong. And the writer? He is very, very wrong.
http://www.globecampus.ca/blogs/parents-view/
Thank you, Jesse, for reinforcing my decision to homeschool my children.
I don’t understand? Hasn’t the biggest teacher complaint been that parents are the problem? They don’t help enough; they don’t care enough… now, they care too much? Is this your argument seriously?
You said,
“”The formal structure of standardized tests, achievement, college pressures makes it difficult to see this in the short term, but one of the most long tail educational imperatives is given students a framework for handling the complicated decisions you’ll have to make as an adult.””"
Standardized tests now, not parents, prepare students for adult stresses? Should we then consult the creator of standardized tests Henry Goddard on the Subject?
Henry H. Goddard, former head of the Psychology Department at Princeton and father of standardized testing, said in his book, Human Eficiency(Old English Spelling) (1920) that government schooling was about “the perfect organization of the hive.” He said standardized testing was a way to make lower classes recognize their own inferiority. Like wearing a dunce cap, it would discourage them from breeding and having ambition.
Interesting conclusions. Not surprising coming from a teacher. You obviously haven’t read the studies down on home schooled children. By every standard they are better educated and better socialized than public school students. Low SES kids make HUGE improvements in scores when home schooled; so much so that the achievement gap almost disappears.
Your argument that these kids don’t have enough contact with the “other” sounds like you just read a paper by Apple or Lubienski who can only whine about what home schooled kids MAY be learning about gays or other races.
The idea that home schooling parents are arrogant is laughable as you proceed to tell us how only a trained educator can teach children. The fact that the difference between credentialed teachers who home school and normal parents who do has been found to be exactly THREE percentile points on SAT’s shows how unimportant all those degrees really are.
Do you actually believe that parents should willingly allow their kids to receive a sub par education simply to comfort children of people who are willing to settle?
The studies are clear: home schooling works extremely well. Since you are so clearly against it, why are you even a teacher if you don’t want kids to learn as much as they can?
DD
I didn’t mean that as angrily as it may appear.
DD
Oh you have me pegged now.
We live on a huge farm in the middle of nowhere and it’s a day’s treck to our nearest neighbor. At least we think it’s a day’s trek. We’ve never actually gone over there. I don’t even know their names.
The kids are not allowed to go outside in our yard without me right by their side. We never go to parks, museums, grocery shopping, or anywhere someone might talk to them. Not even church! Some people say that everyone that goes to a particular church has all the same viewpoints but I am not buying it. We will stay home just to be sure.
We don’t own a television, a radio, computer or telephone. I screen all mail that is received to make sure nothing is addressed to my children. My kids have never seen a book, magazine, or newspaper.
They are not allowed to keep a journal. They are not allowed to ask questions. Everything they learn was written completely by me.
We don’t see anyone outside of our immediate family. Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, sometimes have a view of which I disapprove. Friends? No, thank you.
Hey, I think we live in the same general area – but I’m not sure, since I utterly restrict my family’s access to the outside world, as well.
You may have seen the helicopters overhead, during our monthly ‘food-and-Ensure’ drop?
Thanks for this Aunt Pol, I will be smiling all day
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The bigger words are borrowed. He can’t use them and may not ever fully understand them.
You know, he hasn’t called for some reason. I told him that I’d be thrilled to have him come see a homeschool day at our house and left my phone numbers. I live within a day’s drive.
I don’t think he really meant it.
Jesus, Mimi. Chill.
So far you’re all ad hominem, insult and bile.
Speak to the ideas or stop trolling. Homeschooling has a reputation to uphold here. You’re not helping.
My five children all are allowed to choose how they school. One of my daughters went to public school for 5th-10th grade. I would say that her peers brainwashed her, much as you accuse us parents of brainwashing our homeschooled children. She fit in very well, was part of the popular crowd (this despite the supposed social disadvantage of being homeschooled through 4th grade). What that entailed, however, was dressing and acting exactly like every other girl in the popular crowd. I literally could not tell the girls apart. Towards the end of the 10th grade, she began to hang out with a different crowd of kids, who are into the “scene” lifestyle (excuse me if I use the term “scene” incorrectly, my daughter tells me that I am clueless in regards to such subjects). This group is not the most popular, some are even geeks and some are most certainly misfits, but at least you can tell them all apart. Of course, a lot of them attend various schooling situations, since they are square pegs that do not fit into the round holes of public school. Ironically, you talk about us homeschoolers needing more diversity, but what happens to the public school kids who just can’t seem to fit into the system? The system does not change to accommodate them. Instead, they are shuttled off to various special schools. Thus, public schools are not quite as diverse as you would have us all believe. As my daughter started spending more time with kids from outside her school, she began to feel very disillusioned with the public school system and decided to homeschool again. She will be doing some subjects at home, some at a co-op and some at the local community college. As far as me hand picking her teachers, I have no control, whatsoever, over the community college teachers and the teachers at the co-op are hired by a team of parents, myself NOT included, from the community at large.
I could say a lot but will react to one statement–your concluding thought.
(I have not read the comments and am not reacting to them.)
You said, “one of the most long tail educational imperatives is given students a framework for handling the complicated decisions you’ll have to make as an adult”.
Jesse this is a main reason why our family homeschools and we feel that homeschooling, at least in our family, is preparing our children to ‘handle the complicated decisions’.
Actually I think the close relationship we have allows our children to work through making complicated decisions NOW–they seek our guidance to work through their thoughts and emotions for things happening in this moment. I certainly hope all this practice at logical thinking, critical thinking and weighing consequences of one’s actions now will help them become independent thinkers who can make good decisions in their adult years.
(My children have never been enrolled in daycare, preschool, elementary or middle school. My boys are aged 9 and 11 and they are thriving with homeschooling. They do attend some formal classes for group learning and have been exposed to good and bad social situations with schooled kids and homeschooled kids both. My kids are not isolated either, physically. Some of their best friends are schooled.)
This is my first visit to your blog, I found it through a Twitter post by a homeschool mom.
You asked us what from home education would most benefit public schools. I’d say allowing the teachers to make the judgments about curricula and readiness. Back when I was in school there was no NCLB telling a teacher that little Johnnie, the late bloomer, must read this year. Teachers could use the judgment, say Johnnie was not ready, and let him learn at his own pace. Kids were also held back if they were not ready and it was not such a big deal. I’d like to see control and judgment in the classroom with the teacher and not within government agencies and with theoreticians who do not know the children.
As for sheltering and exposing, my kdis must have done ok because they entered community college in West LA at 14 and 15 years old. The have attended class with students from all over the world, former gang members who flunked otu and started over and an Iraqi vet who got a brain injury and had to go back and start over with basic academics. Although I did shelter them when they were little because I think there is a time and a place just as I would not drop off an infant with strangers, I would challenge anyone to find a more diverse environment than Santa Monica College. My kids have friends from all ages and backgrounds. Most of their public school friends are more sheltered and most of the local public schools here are very affluent and very white, University High excepted. Few local parents send their kids to Uni, most are bussed in and the local parents send the kids to private schools to shelter them from the bussed in kids.
All of my kids home schooled friends here start taking community college classes between ages 14 and 15 and all have done extremely well there socially and academically.
As for demographics, west Los Angeles is very liberal and most home shcoolers here are as well, we reflect our communities. Home schooling was also traditionally practiced among the radical left and some of the early home school literature is written by left wing agitators who found public schools too conservative for their tastes. At this point it has gone very main stream and left its mroe radical roots.
Jesse Scaccia,
The choice to leave the public schools was largely forced upon us. I spent untold hours volunteering at their elementary, desperately trying to make public education work. I was educated to teach Mathematics in the public schools. I went through teacher “indoctrination”, I believed public schools were the only place for my children. I had to watch my children flounder for years in public school before I accepted that they were slipping through the cracks. I had to take action.
My children are home schooled because public schools did not work for them. They were badly educated, and I found this unacceptable.
We have spent the last two years correcting the shortcomings of their public school educations. Now we can finally focus on the joy of learning, because our remediation days are over.
I was educated in public schools. My husband was educated in public schools. As a result, we’re largely self-educated. We’ve spent untold hours studying on our own, working overtime to repair the gaps in our early education.
We will be sending our children back to public school in 9th grade, knowing that they have good foundations. Hopefully this will give them access to the best a public education has to offer. We know it’s not all bad, that’s why we’re willing to send them back.
As long as you continue to spout bigotry and hatred, it’s hard for me to be comfortable with the idea of allowing my children to see you as a mentor or role model. Are all of my children’s teachers going to be so supercilious? I hope not. By 9th grade, I hope they’ll be ready to put your brand of bigotry in perspective.
Some of the teachers in my children’s public elementary were very badly behaved. The children found this more than a little confusing. I thought they were a bit young to be at the mercy of a pathological narcissist or histrionic all day. It certainly got in the way of education.
Teachers are not parents, Jesse Scaccia. You are not responsible for deciding how other people’s children will be educated. The parents are. We decide what is appropriate, and what is not. We have the right to chose our children’s educations because we are responsible for the outcome.
I have chosen to home school my children through the late elementary and middle school years because I am responsible for the outcome, and failure is not an option.
If the local high school doesn’t do a much better job than the local elementary school did, I’ll home school them until they leave for college.
If public school teachers want home schooling parents to consider sending their kids to public school, then showering home schooling families with contempt is counter-productive.
I challenge you to prove to me that you have something to offer other than bigotry. Are you and educator, or simply a put-down artist?
Can you teach? Will you teach? Will the public school let you teach? If they won’t, what do you plan to do about it?
My daughter goes to public high school in September of 2010. She’ll stay one year, barring catastrophe. She doesn’t know we’ll let her come back home if public high school doesn’t work. She thinks she’s stuck no matter what. She’ll be trying her best. Will her teachers waste time insulting her and her family over home schooling, or will they do their jobs?
What would you do? Could you stop your supercilious ranting long enough to teach?
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Your words:
“The problem with homeschooling is that the parents construct the learning environment. By so doing, they hand choose what elements of society their child is exposed to. If you don’t think this is dangerous, I don’t know what to say to you.”
And in the public school system, the teachers and administrators construct a learning environment. How is it any different? Regardless of whether you agree with those of us who homeschool or not, your opinions are insulting.
But I do not need to justify my reasoning to you. I homeschool one child because he does better educationally in that environment. My other 2 are in public school. Both were homeschooled for many years, and had no problems adjusting or socializing in the public school setting. My son, who is in 6th grade does very well in public school, just as my other son, who is homeschooled does very well.
In the public school there are amazing teachers, and there are horrible teachers. Inevitably though, the environment is not one of individuality, but having to fit a mold of all sorts. I rather my children be who they were meant to be, not what someone tells them to be.
Excuse me?! Before you start slamming homeschooling up one end and down the other, perhaps you should have done some research, or perhaps been one. I was homeschooled all the way up, graduated with honors, straight A student, and went to college early. I went to Sophomore classes and did BETTER than most of the people there. I didn’t have to deal with peer pressure, or be ridiculed. I didn’t have any socialization issues, and I learned to count money back in my head, before I turned 13. That’s more that the average kid.
The comment – “God hates homeschooling,” ticked me off. Did He tell you that He hates it? Not to mention, God is LOVE!!! You took those scriptures out of context. If you don’t believe in God then you should not be quoting the Word to prove a point.
Public school may be fine for you, but let me tell you that I had family time in the afternoon and evenings…which is more than I can say for the public school kid. We did school in the mornings, and had the afternoons to play.
You guys pile on so much homework that these kids have hardly any family time, let alone play time. Let them be kids. All of this extra busy work is burning them out…no wonder we have so many highschool drop-outs..
Also, I was able to be raised by my parents, and NOT by a teacher. I became my own person, and didn’t rely on “friends” to make me who I am today.
Next time when you write an article, don’t be so prejudiced and definitely back up your articles with facts.
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The goal of education should be to teach one to think for themselves. Not as Scaccia believes to ram beliefs down a students throat. Scaccia’s real problem with homeschooling seems to be that he will miss the opportunity to “brainwash” some students who are lucky enough not to wind up in his classroom because they were homeschooled.
My full response can be found here.
http://alasandras.blogspot.com/2009/06/who-does-brainwashing-parents-or-public.html
So many words and so little insight. Jesse… I think you need another hobby.
I am so glad my children will never have you as a teacher.
In our homeschool group we have just graduated 4 amazing students. One received a full scholarship based on her outstanding community outreach during high school (including traveling to Mexico to teach music to kids who would have never even seen a violin..oh and by the way she raised enough money to buy them violins). Two other received academic scholarships to prestigious universities, another is taking a year off to pursue his very active music career before going off to college.
My own sons are in 3 bands (they play weddings, birthdays, retreats, and weekly Masses), working toward a magna cum laude diploma, in classical studies, have an extremely active social life including girlfriends, guy friends, parties, dances, etc. They dress like normal teens in baggy clothes, rock band t-shirts, shaggy hair, they love movies, tv, video games, etc. They get along with ALL age groups, look people in the eye, shake hands, open doors for women, laugh easily and often, play classical guitar, lead guitar, rhythm guitar, and bass guitar. One is a photographer, the other is gifted at anything technical.
Oh and our 3 daughters attended school. For our sons, however, it wasn’t working. One was depressed, the other one couldn’t read. We brought them home and within a year one had skipped a grade, the other was reading flawlessly, out loud. Our depressed son made friends for the first time in his life, real friends. I wouldn’t change this decision for a million bucks.
When folks ask us if Socialization is a problem, I say “Yes, but we’re trying to cut back”.
Have a heart. What works for one doesn’t work for another. Thank God we have choices and can search for solutions for our own families.
JESSE SCACCIA you have not made your case in this article.
mistake 1: You have made claims about the risks of homeschooling based only on the comments of some people who claim to be homeschoolers. These “risks” are not based on facts, but instead based on (fill in the blank)..
Your points as follows.
1.” The “Othering” of Public School Students-”
You claim that growing up without exposure to this “othering”, is damaging. You never support this claim. You also claim that its damaging not to “trust” society. You never support that claim. What do you mean by “trust”? Who do you claim to be society? What exactly is the homeschooled child going to distrust that is going to harm them? Are you trying to procure images of Waco Texas? Is it healthy to trust everything one is exposed to in society? Who better than the parents to help a child determine what is trustworthy and what is not. Which leads to the next point.
“2. Too Much Control From One (Or Highly Limited) Information Sources”
You wrote “The problem with homeschooling is that the parents construct the learning environment. By so doing, they hand choose what elements of society their child is exposed to. If you don’t think this is dangerous, I don’t know what to say to you.”
Well, you could start by telling me exactly what is dangerous about being selective about what your child is taught or exposed to. Who do you think should make those decisions? The state? NAMBLA? You know NAMBLA is part of society too.
“3. It Takes A Myriad of Worldviews To Build A True Educational Environment”
Morality is not something that can be taught from a book or through conversation, as some readers suggested. It is learned by doing, by observing. If a parent is worried about teaching their kids about morality, isn’t someone like me (ignorant, childish, stupid, as you’ve said) perfect for being your child’s teacher?”
Actually, if you believe that children learn by example, then you would be the worse person in the world to teach a child. Anyway, how does exposing your child to danger, to misguided yet harmful people, to harmful and malignant views teach them to appreciate or understand others.
What you have written here does not illuminate. You are ignorant, silly and extremely dangerous to young minds.
“The problem with homeschooling is that the parents construct the learning environment. By so doing, they hand choose what elements of society their child is exposed to. If you don’t think this is dangerous, I don’t know what to say to you. A child taught by parents– even a group of parents– is being made privy to a paucity of the viewpoints and perspectives out there. Given that the homeschooler is likely to choose like-minded suplementary teachers (morally, ethically), this leaves the child, basically, in a position of being brainwashed.”
Here’s the ideological foundation of your belief. But what you fail to point out is that teachers are perfectly capable of “brainwashing” students. Let’s face it- someone is going to form strong impressions on the children. It will either be you as the teacher, their peers, or their parents- and I feel quite strongly for the latter in ordinary circumstances. You are quite distrustful of parents and assume a rather arrogant that you (and presumably your licensed colleagues) know children best. From experience in grad school, I find the academy to be amazingly intolerant of those who might criticize its positions- their lofty expressions of tolerance are targeted at one side of the spectrum. For a man who holds advanced degrees, I expected better writing and arguments than what you have provided.
I was homeschooled through 12th grade, graduated college at age 20, and am now finishing a Masters degree (and expect to start a second). I have a solid job and any of my colleagues will tell you that I can socialize well. This idea that homeschoolers can’t socialize is ridiculous; in fact some kids who attend school find it harder to deal with a variety of ages than I do.
I currently live in Miami. I don’t berate public schoolers- I treat the same as anyone else. But, I feel sad that some of these students are trapped in some terrible environments. You are quick to criticize homeschooling- an admittedly small group. This is most interesting because we haven’t hurt you. Maybe something is goading you about them; perhaps our success is opening people’s eyes (along with international test scores) that many of our public schools are failing. I don’t want public schools to fail; nor do I think every child should homeschool. The option, however, should be there for the parents- the people (in almost all instances) that are best suited to look after the child’s interests.
I have not read all 700+ comments, so pardon the inevitable redundancy. I couldn’t resist responding. My children are all under 5, so my opinions re: Homeschooling are all limited to what I’ve witnessed and what I plan on doing. My opinions re: private and public schools are based on experience (I attended both and taught in public). I have a similar education background to you. I double majored in at a top university and stayed on the get a Master’s in Teaching. What I learned during the history of education classes and saw in my classrooms as student and teacher made me excited to work with the kids, but certain I didn’t want to subject my own children to the public institution.
The factory school model, designed to assimilate thousands of immigrant kids into a thoroughly Americanized cookie cutter product horrified and offended me. The idea of grading children like eggs, labeling them on an increasingly regular basis with state mandated tests, and having faceless “experts” decide what they all should learn when also bothered me. I believe that the public schools try to take on way too much information and set themselves up to fail (World History in a year? Please!).
Let me say I love my country and the ideals it was founded on. I also love that education here is free (though not to me, the tax paying citizen who “selfishly” plans to provide other children with free education while teaching my own via the library and my very limited pocket money) and available to all. But the amount of power the state and beurocrats wielded in the past, the amount of power the state holds now, and the continuing decline in the quality of education greatly disturb me. If you consider these things with the increase in time that education takes from the child and his/her family has made me anything but a big fan – it’s not the teachers or the children who I strongly oppose, but the system.
I applaud the individual teachers who knock themselves out to serve the community. There are many, but I feel too often their contributions are swallowed up by all they have to fight against. How would I fix it? I don’t know, but until we figure it out, I’m trying homeschooling.
You seem to teach high school. I attended my last two years at a public high school and taught at another. I also had a few (only a few, so the experience is limited) substitute classes with high school kids. You seem very hung up on the “geek” factor of homeschoolers. I can understand your criticism and I am not blind to the fact that there are drawbacks to homeschooling, but I guess for us it’s a question of priorities.
Some of my goals for my children (the result of “caring too much” is that I do actually journal my goals for my teaching and child rearing) are that they become mature young women and men. Mature emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually, I want them to be able to think independently, have a strong burden to serve society, and to take initiative. I do not want them to be passive. I find that in our age of consumerism, multi-media entertainment, and technology, kids are increasingly passive, lazy, and aimless.
I do want them to get along well with others and to be comfortable socially. But I’m not so intent on them being the life of the party. As lovely as it could be, not everyone is the homecoming king or queen. There are plenty of odd kids at public high schools and a few of those have terrorized their peers (I do not choose to homeschool because of fear). Others just don’t feel like they fit in and spend years in a sea of strangers. Besides, most of the relationships you refer to (college and high school friends) are somewhat transient. Not that those relationships don’t matter, but I feel that what I most care that they learn is to be a loving spouse, parent, sibling, child, and friend. Their ability to function healthily in a family unit is imperative to their well-being and I believe that the inefficiency of public (and private) schooling make this an almost insurmountable challenge. I resent the large chunk of time school, extra-curricular activities, and homework take. So, if I have to sacrifice “cool” and settle for socially pleasant (I think that as they serve in the community and work they will learn to socialize at least “well enough” with people) to ensure an emotionally healthy, intellectually vital, and enthusiastic worker, I will. Again, I’m not saying this is not possible for the public school parent, but children’s time has increasing demands and at younger ages. As a side note, if might not have been your reply, but someone mentioned that they need other kids to “model” romantic relationships. Oh, I wanted to throw up.
Further more, you are concerned with the lack of diversity. All the potential for diversity and interaction that you imply is abundant at the public schools hasn’t been tapped in my experience. When I attended a private school for the first ten years of my life, I was always attracted to the handful of kids from other walks of life. So much so my brother jokingly called my friends and I the United Nations. I was friends with the one Persian girl, the one Mexican girl, the one Korean girl, and the one Indian girl. When I burned out academically and went to the public school, I naively thought in this enlightened age no peers would be bigoted. Was I wrong! While the numbers of minorities were greater, there I witnessed racial jokes, willful segregation, and cliques running amuck. There were some kindred spirits, but they were few and far between. My teaching experience proved much the same. Once, while substituting a public school class at a different high school, the right side was full of Caucasian kids and the left with the African American students. They divided themselves right down the middle! I asked the kids if the teacher had assigned their seats and they laughingly said no.
So, perhaps my kids may not have as many opportunities, but I’m not convinced that their experiences socializing in diverse settings will be all that different from the average kid’s. I find that literature and travel can do great things for opening the mind and exposing you to other cultures and philosophies. No child with a library card and the ability to read can be THAT sheltered, so calm your fears on that point. And with the rate homeschooling is growing, children have a sizable group of friends with shared experiences to choose from. There are opportunities to know people from other walks of life, but they are not so limited to children of your own age. They are neighbors, teachers, peers at your activities and places of worship, people you encounter in your work. Many older homeschoolers take junior college classes where they can meet other young adults. We just don’t worry whether or not their friends were born the same year.
As for the little ones, I feel the current practices (parental practices, not just state) rob many of our kids of their childhood. The move towards earlier and earlier schooling, initially intended to help those whose parents were either unable or refused to provide the proper nurturing, is institutionalizing them and over scheduling them WAY too soon. Young children need to discover the world through their senses – watch butterflies, play with mud, and just find ways to fill up time. They can learn to help mommy and daddy b/c when they’re little and doing it with you, it’s fun! And they need a “safe” place to learn to socialize. First they need the safety of a primary care taker – not one that changes annually. They need to be utterly special and not compete with lots of other kids for attention. They need freedom to explore and tons of time outside. I don’t believe public schools are able to provide any of this.
We’re shoving ABC’s and 123’s in preschool and kindergardeners’ faces and they just want to know why water does that funny thing when they throw a rock in it. This desperate push for early education is harming them, not helping. We are not raising readers. We’re communicating that learning is boring and tedious.
The worst offense in this area was that in my high school AP English classes, we never even read a complete book!!! My husband had the same experience at a different public high school. How can a child learn to love books when he is assigned to read two chapters of Dante, one act of Shakespeare, and a few bits of Dickens and Austin? How does one grow to love History when you spend EVERY SINGLE CLASS copying an outline from the board without any discussion of what you are copying? I had such a teacher the year after I transferred from my private school where my previous History teacher was a professor who spent afternoons teaching at a top university. Without that fabulous class, I’d have never learned to love history and wouldn’t have thought to take a course in college which would become my second major and my area of focus as a teacher.
You talk about diversity of thought, but most (not all) public high school students I encountered were far more interested in celebrity gossip than Noam Chomsky’s ideas. Their curiosity has been killed by the institutionalization of a beautiful thing. I pray your work in the class room does wonders to wake your bunch up.
I guess my main question is this: Do you just disapprove of our educational choice or do you think our choice should be made illegal? If you just disagree with me, so be it. But if it’s the latter, I think it arrogant to suggest that I should have to turn over to the state any child I spawn b/c I am incapable to make life decisions for it. That I must give my most precious child to strangers to practically raise (remember there’s talk of mandatory preschool) and I don’t even get to hire them offends reason! As John Taylor Gatto pointed out, I wouldn’t even give my TV to a stranger who came to the door and demanded they fix it, so how can we so casually turn over our children?
All dimensions of real life can only be found among the proletariat of public school?
I don’t know of any other situation in ‘real life’ where my daily associates are determined entirely by my birth date and the narrow geographical boundaries of my school district.
In my small midwestern town all but a tiny handful of the black children who also live here actually are homeschooled. The few who aren’t homeschooled are in the local Catholic school. My mother has worked frequently as a substitute teacher in the public schools. She moved her from Los Angeles County in CA, and she has been astonished by the lack of ethnic diversity here. She commented that my homeschooled children see more black children on a weekly basis than their age-mates in the local public school do in a school year.
My public schooled son-in-law is 26, and he grew up in a small town in Nebraska where he never met an African American until he moved away (after graduating high school and joining the Army). I asked him once if there were any minority children in school with him at any time, and he could not remember one. Nor did he know any Latinos until he left home.
We lived in that area for five years, and because we were a military family with friends and connections to the base 45 minutes away, our homeschooled children actually interacted with and had friends who were black, Korean, or Japanese on a regular basis, something the public schooled children in our country town never, ever experienced. We were able to do what they were not because homeschooling gave us a flexibility of schedule and experience that the more rigid government institution simply couldn’t provide.
“Geeky” in the last article and now “otherness.” Wow. Sounds like the intolerant criticisms thrown at Asian students in the 1980′s. Sounds like the intolerant criticisms thrown at Jewish students in the 1930′s. Both groups were hitting mainstream colleges and were upsetting the WASP apple cart with their sincerity, academic aggressiveness, intellectualism, wholesomeness, and cloistered backgrounds. But both groups tremendously affected the campus and the culture for good. Maybe cultivating otherness isn’t so bad? Maybe homeschoolers are the poets, mathematicians, musicians, authors and artists of the future. Maybe that’s why MIT actively courts them. Maybe this is America, at least for a little while longer. Maybe the infusion of otherness is what makes us the great melting pot that we are. Maybe you don’t understand homeschooling and homeschoolers at all. And maybe that’s just fine with me. We’re the others.
“They seemed to understand something that I didn’t understand. Maybe I was lacking. It was possible. I often felt inferior. I just wanted to get away from them. But there was no place to go.”
—Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye, 1982
Believe it or not, there were a few more things I meant to address. And these posts are meant to respond to both recent homeschooling posts, so pardon my straying from the stated topic.
When kids go to school or day care too young, Raymond and Dorothy Moore sagely point out that they don’t learn proper socialization (as is often the selling point), but conformity. And as I previously mentioned in my first post, school is being imposed on children younger and younger, for longer and longer. The result is that peer relationships become way too strong way too young for the comfort of most homeschooling parents (and I would argue for a child’s mental health) and the parents become irrelevant or the enemy infringing on the fun. This is especially true for older children. In healthy home environments, many of us believe that the parent/child relationship is of great importance. And this is supported by stats. Children who eat regularly with parents statistically do better on standardized tests and display fewer at risk behaviors (less child obesity, teen pregnancy, drug usage, smoking, and even seat belt wearing!). We believe the nurturing environment of home is essential to a healthy child and the demands of state schooling and most private schools create serious impediments. There’s a proverb that reads, “He who walks with the wise grows wise, but the companion of fools comes to harm.” Children are naturally foolish. That’s part of what education is all about. If you take too many children and too little time with too few wise adults, you get many of our present problems.
Furthermore, you made a reference for arguments sake re: “discipling all nations”. I am a Christian and do want my children to grow up to serve others and being active in mission work. But the actually making disciples doesn’t need to happen (and dare say wouldn’t happen effectively) at age six! My oldest doesn’t even know all that’s in the Bible and can’t legitimately decide if she’s going to believe it, much less share it with others.
We do pray for missionaries and social and political strife around the world and are trying to take a more active roll in human rights, but right now mine are just babies and don’t yet need to know the extent of human injustice and the potential for evil. As they grow, so will their global involvement and ability to be catalysts for change. Perhaps my children will reject our faith, but I suspect in that case they will still carry a burden to defend the defenseless and help the needy.
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You FAIL, sir. Sad but true.
Go do your research – visit homeschooling families, look at some more statistics, listen to the feedback of all these homeschoolers desperately trying to correct your extremely twisted view of homeschooling…..and then maybe we’ll be able to take you seriously.
What an arrogant, intolerant post. You make so many assumptions that merely show that you have not met many homeschoolers. Poor job of researching, I give you an ‘F’.
Once again, you demonstrate that you don’t get it.
1. You were bothered by our criticism of public schools and their students.
Response: You missed my criticism of teachers. There are good reasons that we criticize public schools. Most of us know from personal experience what they are like. I’ve had foster children in public schools and my son that I just adopted (I’m very selfish as a homeschooling parent remember?) just finished kindergarten. My son started off on the same level as all the other students. As the year progressed, he fell further and further behind. The teacher couldn’t understand why he couldn’t sound out words or read at the end of the year. She blamed foster care. She blamed “developmental delays”. She blamed everything but the the right thing. Her teaching methods and the classroom. My son has been out of school a week now. He’s already reading better. He will be homeschooled next year to ensure that more teachers waste my son’s and my valuable time “blaming”.
2. Too much “control” from one information source.
Response: I always thought that the public school system had an ulterior motive in wanting my kids…and if your comments here are any indication of the public schools belief, I was right. You see, it has seemed obvious to me for years that our public schools have had their own agendas. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, eh? Since when is it the public schools place to ensure that I don’t “brainwash” my kids? I thought it was to educate not teach philosophy. If the public schools only goal was to teach my child reading, writing, science and math, this statement would make no sense. But by making this statement you have made it clear that you believe that part of public schools agenda is to ensure that our kids are being taught philosophies other than their parents. Now what is it all those agnostis/atheists shout? Oh, yes. Seperation of church and state. Oh snap! I think the more obvious problem here is that public schools wish to be the largest information source to our children. It perturbs many that WE, as parents dare, take this “right” from them. Public schools have turned into the “thought police” when they’ve entered this role, and they are trying to do the very thing that you just said was a problem with homeschooling.
3. It Takes A Myriad of Worldviews To Build A True Educational Environment
Response: Says who? Who died and made you the educational guru? Really? This is basically the same point as your second one so my second response still applies. However, I will add some more.
I don’t brainwash my kids. Anything “brainwashed” into them, can be deprogrammed out of them. My kids have visited Jewish Mosques. Catholic monasteries. Religous museums. Talked with Atheists. Listened to debates on numerous topics, read about evolution and the problems with creationism, learned about Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, etc. The world is their oyster. I have a sincere desire for them to become Christians, but I don’t believe that going to church, being baptized, making a “profession” of faith, or partaking in communion makes one a Believer. If I did not believe in a real heaven and a real hell, a real judgment and a real Christ, than I would be non-chalant about this matter. But the truth is, these are as real to me as this laptop I’m typing on. If I *really* love my kids, how could I NOT try to influence them and teach them about these things? If hell is real, how could I NOT teach them about that with fervor and zeal?
Here are my questions for you. When the public schools try to teach about morals, where does it get it’s morals from? What is it’s “moral standards”? Why shouldn’t one kill if we are all just animals and we evolved? That’s what animals do. Why shouldn’t sleep with other people’s spouses? Why shouldn’t we lie? How can a public school answer these questions for our kids?
Ravi Zacharias is from India and was raised as a Hindu. He converted to Christianity later. Today, he gives speeches all over the world, including our ivy league universities. If you have any interest at all, please listen to his speeches titled “Why I’m Not an Atheist” pt. 1 and pt. 2
http://www.rzim.org/USA/Resources/Listen/LetMyPeopleThink.aspx?archive=1&page=2
I am so sad for your anger. I will pray that someone some where helps you at of this mind set that you have been brainwashed into. And if, God Forbid, you have children I will pray for them.
Yes you are brainwashed, and you are so unbelievably angry, Why? because there are people that are thinking for themselves and doing something that is different than society. According to you we should all be drones who think the same thing, cows going to the slaughter! You do have the public school mind set that I encountered when I went there: “we all need to be alike, if you are different and an individual then God help you, because we are going to make you like us or we will get rid of you.”
Take a little time and think about what I am saying, but then again I think that your indoctrination is complete. So I will pray for you
Don’t know if you’re still reading these, but I thought you’d be interested in a home-schooled senior’s perspective. I asked my home-schooled high-school senior to read this thread and tell me what she thought. She just got back with me this morning, and she says:
“I thought it was interesting that at one point he said “I don’t think I’m qualified to make sweeping judgments about homeschool education. Homeschool situations are too diverse for that. The crux of today’s argument focused on a learning environment with limited perspectives.”
and then his next comment was:
“No, not all homeschooling environments. I was generalizing… which was and is tricky, given how varied homeschooling environments can be.”
Generally, if you believe you’re not qualified to do something… you don’t do it.
And this was interesting:
“I believe we would live in a better society if everyone was forced to attend public schools, but that is not a society I would want to live in.”
If it was a better society, why wouldn’t he want to live in it? I guess he was saying that society would be better if everyone attended public schools, but he wouldn’t want to live in a society where everybody was forced to attend public schools, but he definitely didn’t word it really well. ”
Personally, I would still like an explanation of how an environment that carefully excludes nearly everybody in the community who isn’t a child living in a narrowly defined geographical region or an employee of the school, and then further isolates children by their birth-year and ability can be said to be a ‘cross-section of the community’ and the ‘proletariat.’
“One former school employee had such low esteem for public school students to say, ‘When I worked in a public school most of the elementary children I worked with thought the world was their state and had no idea about the world.’”
Ah yes, I was the one to say that. It is not low esteem for public school students, but a statement of the education machine our government runs. I certainly don’t understand how a child could be in second grade or third grade and have no idea what was out there beyond their state. I started to incorporate a geography based reward at the end of my classes with the kids. Even though they only spent 1-2 minutes a week examining a map their skills grew. They grew to recognize more and more places on the map and they all enjoyed it. But of course I was working with only 1-3 kids at a time so 1-2 minutes made a bigger difference.
Based on this http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/geography/results/natachieve-g4.asp I think the research shows that children in the US do not have a handle on geography. 21-22 percent proficiency? Do the reporters have a low esteem for public school students? Or perhaps it is a statement of the reality of what children are learning in public schools.
My 7 year old could probably name or identify all 50 states and Canadian provinces. We are now learning about Europe and just yesterday my 5 year old was pointing and naming countries in Europe.
To give my child an understanding of the world and a world-wide perspective is important to me. While I do see it as possible in the public school settings, it is unlikely. Would my children know what they know about geography and cultures around the world if they went to public school? Doubtful.
I don’t blame the teachers or the students. The system does not work well. So if your statement could be reworded it should say “One former school employee had such low esteem for the public school system to say…”
“The problem with homeschooling is that the parents construct the learning environment. By so doing, they hand choose what elements of society their child is exposed to. If you don’t think this is dangerous, I don’t know what to say to you. A child taught by parents– even a group of parents– is being made privy to a paucity of the viewpoints and perspectives out there. Given that the homeschooler is likely to choose like-minded suplementary teachers (morally, ethically), this leaves the child, basically, in a position of being brainwashed.”
I suppose you would suggest the government require state-run daycare for 6 week olds. Does it suddenly become wrong for the parent to construct the learning environment when the child reaches Kindergarten?
What are the morals and ethics you refer to here? I certainly don’t want my child to get the perspective that it is morally fine to steal or that cheating is justifiable. I’m guessing you are talking about homosexuality or sex ed though. If I’m incorrect please correct me. In my opinion, those things should not be taught in schools. The schools need to focus on academics and leave instruction in social and religious matters to parents. The government appears to have done very well with social education of our youth. School should not be about the socialization of our youth, but training in academics.
This post really doesn’t do anything to clarify the last post and ultimately just continues to berate homeschoolers and homeschooling.
And just one note on something you said:
“The problem with homeschooling is that the parents construct the learning environment. By so doing, they hand choose what elements of society their child is exposed to. If you don’t think this is dangerous, I don’t know what to say to you. A child taught by parents– even a group of parents– is being made privy to a paucity of the viewpoints and perspectives out there. Given that the homeschooler is likely to choose like-minded suplementary teachers (morally, ethically), this leaves the child, basically, in a position of being brainwashed.”
This would imply that it isn’t brainwashing when someone else is teaching your child something…
To clarify, I have homeschooled, private schooled, and public schooled my children. This coming year, I am both homeschooling and sending a child to public school.
I think you’re reading things into comments to make them read as you interpret them. This “othering” to which you refer… these are parents giving examples of the problems they perceive in public schools, not othering the kids in the schools. As far as drugs, alcohol, tobacco, teen sex and pregnancy, and so on… as a public school parent I witnessed all of these things and more (yes, even animal sacrifice) in a small town good high school. Our local shooting was at the junior high. I am not saying here that public school kids are “other” or should be kept away from my kids, but I am saying that these are things I don’t want happening to my kids.
As for limited information sources, it depends on how you look at it. My kids read news from all around the world, with no censorship against worldviews or perspectives. But I do not force them to get information from hostile sources. School attendance is by force, and when the teaching becomes hostile (as it does if the teacher has a negative attitude, for example, about a child’s lifestyle, family, or religion), it becomes an abusive situation. That is the one kind of censorship I definitely do. When I see the racist attitudes you hint at in your “Case Against Homeschooling” and the anti-Christian views you more than hint at, I feel that to put a Christian or minority child in your classroom would be more than it is fair to make a child endure.
Forgive me, Jesse, but didn’t you “other” homeschoolers in your first post? Come on, attack someone else and he/she is likely to attack back. Really, no throwing stones on Sunday? Is it okay if I get my homeschooling Jewish or Muslim homeschooling friends to do it then? Because I have them – I also have Pagan homeschooling friends and atheist homeschooling friends….
If my kids were in the local public school, I think it’s likely they would encounter far less diversity – they might never even meet a witch.
I don’t know, Jesse, I think there are problems with diversity in the local gifted and talented tracking in public schools, too. And what about private schools?
Great blog post!!! (and this is coming from a homeschooler)
You stated, “This almost sounds like the bitterness of a divorced person, attempting to alienate their child from their former spouse out of fear and insecurity.” This is a great analogy and very very true from my observations of the homeschooling world at large. I often feel like an alien in my own country when it comes to being a homeschooler.
99% of my daughter’s friends in town attend public school. She is also the only homeschool kid in the extracurricular classes she takes. Her friends are nice kids. Some of the things they are allowed my child is not, just as some things my child is allowed, the other children are not. This is part of learning that all families are different and just because Suzie jumps off the Brooklyn Bridge doesn’t mean you have to.
I also agree that a child needs many different teachers, not just mom and dad or a group of others who think and act just like mom and dad. Being able to learn and take direction from many different individuals (some of which you will not like) is essential to success in college and in the workplace.
Many homeschool parents I’ve encountered seem hostile to consulting psychologists or other professionals. Some seem resistant to seeking out opportunities for training and education for themselves. But not all homeschooling parents are like this. There are some who are taking direction from professional educators, psychologists, and others. There are some who take teacher training courses and seminars led by qualified instructors.
Homeschooling doesn’t have to prevent a child from being around diverse communities of other children. In some states, homeschool students are eligible to take extracurricular classes at the public school. In my state, we do not have such a luxury, so we have to put in the extra work it takes to make this happen. We would have to put in some extra work even if our child attended public school, since we live in a small town, suburban, mostly white, middle class district.
I thank you for bringing to light these very real and important concerns. Facing them head-on and coming up with real solutions, rather than getting defensive and burying our heads in the sand, is only going to help our children- and society at large- in the long run.
I read your blogging on homeschooling and although everything has pretty much been commented on I will say a couple of things:
A. You ASSume homeschoolers are white … well don’t tell my children that because they happen to be black and you might get an earful.
B. Homeschoolers are “Protestant/Christian” … that too is laughable to me as we are pagan so I guess we don’t fit the mold.
C. You seem to get really upset at comments directed towards public schools/teachers/students, yet you have absolutely no problem making rude comments about us. Pot, have you met kettle yet?
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You make me laugh! I was public school educated, graduated with a bachelors from Texas ATM University and as a homeschool Mom I am learning more now than I was EVER taught in my 16 years of school. Anyone of modest intelligence can pass and do very well in public school. If you can memorize and guess well on multiple choice, True/False and fill in the blank tests then you have it made. I graduated top 1% in high school and 5% in college and my 10 year old can run circles around me in most subjects already! Public school holds so many kids behind. I can remember sitting in first grade in agony as I had to sit and listen to kids read out loud that COULDN’T read at all! It was miserable….why did I have to do that! Your most humorous argument is the one about being “brainwashed” by the parent/teacher at home. What the heck do you think they are doing to the kids in public school? There is no debate, the liberal progressives in this country have held the educational system hostage for years and are turning out the “little idiots” that they want so that they will continue to vote us into a socialist nation.You can control idiots much more easily that smart, thinking people. This is happening right now with this very administration, people just need to wake up and smell the coffee. YOU are the one brainwashing our children, not us. My kids love to learn and it is amazing how much they learn on their own, they do not have to be spoon-fed anything by a teacher. God made us amazing and when left alone to seek knowledge on our own, we will find it, but put us in a chair for 8 hours a day and tell us to sit down and shut up and listen, well you are basically putting out the flame at age 6. What a shame! We are constantly getting comments about our children’s social skills since they are comfortable talking to 90 year olds in our church as well as the 2 year olds and all of the ages in between. I can attest to public school kids who look at you like you have a third eye if you ask them a question. The only people they know how to talk to (if you call it talking, usually it is just texting) are their “friends!” Oh, I could go on and on but time to stop and read to kids a book before bedtime, I want to make sure I get in as much brainwashing as I can!
Does it really matter if a child has 40 like-minded teachers teaching basic skills along with a heavy does of multi-cultural dogma and “character” training …OR… two parents devoted to EDUCATING?
As homeschoolers, they are the ones who are “different”. They deal with intolerance and arrogance from people like you on a regular basis. They perfectly understand diversity and the need for acceptance.
While you are certainly entitled to an opinion (aren’t we all) until and unless you’ve tried your hand at homeschooling, you truly can’t argue intelligently for or against it. Certainly not all, but most parents who choose to homeschool have had experience with public schools either while in school themselves or with their children whom they now school at home. A degree does not qualify you to teach, no matter how many or how grand the degree. Some people are simply not meant to be inside the classroom, and all too often, this is the case in public school. (And admittedly, on the flip side, there are parents who shouldn’t be in the homeschool).
I attended a homeschool graduation just yesterday and I can assure you that not one of the 10 students who graduated were geeks, backwards or socially inept. All were very talented and incredibly, nearly all of them either sang or played a musical instrument. At least two were gifted horsewomen and nearly all are headed off to college. Does that sound socially inept or geeky? I suppose one could make the argument that only geeks go to college, but then you’d be lumping public school kids in with home schooled.
For the life of me, I can’t figure out why so many public school teachers and parents are so against home schooling. Are you afraid of us? Do we cost you money? We don’t receive a single tax break for our troubles and in fact, continue to pay school taxes on our properties, etc. We don’t ask the public school for supplies or books, so why is there so much mistrust on your parts? As I pointed out early on, many homeschoolers have experience with public schools, so we’re fairly certain of our arguments.
All I ask is that you stay out of my home school. I’ll happily answer questions, but when someone starts tossing around uninformed opinions (and that’s all the arguments you present are) the conversation will be over on my end. I’ve got better things to do, such as teaching my children, something “we” do all through the summer as well. Teaching doesn’t end on a certain day in June and begin on another in August for us…….
Speaking of which, our local school district just announced the termination of nearly 30 positions–most of them teaching! We expect a huge influx of home schooled in our area and our support group stands ready, willing and quite able to assist anyone who needs the help.
Brainwashing? That could just as easily be said for school systems outside the home; especially those which try to push an underlying agenda that compromises a student’s core value and belief system.
If I wish to teach my little children about fire…I show them fire. I tell them all I know about fire. I give them resources to investigate fire further on their own. I explain that fire can be used for good as well as bad. I teach them the difference. I tell them that when they are grown and well-prepared, they will be allowed to use fire; and they will have to decide for themselves if they will use it for good or bad. Before they are grown, I keep them at a safe distance and equip them with all of the knowledge and skills they will need in order to handle fire. I do not teach them by holding them in the middle of it and allowing them to be scorched! Did I hide them from fire? No. (They know it’s there, they see it, they learn all about it.) Did I shelter and protect them? YOU BET.
If one is faced with a terrible storm or fire or other outside danger, one seeks shelter and security.
There are enough adults in this world that have a difficult time being good examples and mentors, and standing up for what is right…I do not wish to inflict this burden upon my children before they have been well-prepared and equipped to handle it.
Just because a family actively chooses NOT to take part in or expose themselves to certain aspects of society that they find dangerous, immoral, inappropriate, or harmful…doesn’t mean they do not allow their children to know these things exist, or that they do not teach their children about them, or, for that matter, that they do not give their children the skills and ability to make up their own minds about such things…This is not brainwashing, it is educating the whole person…body, mind, and soul.
Our world would be a much better place if teachers in schools outside the home were given the freedom to do this. Sadly, they are not…and the results of that are all too obvious.
Out of curiosity, is the author the original post the one responding or would it be another contributer?
Jesse writes: “I was disheartened at the amount of broad criticism pointed at public schools and public school students. ”
Jesse, in many cases, it takes a broad dissatisfaction with public schools to make the courageous leap to homeschool. In contrast, public schoolers didn’t make the same leap. Therefore it would stand to reason that a homeschool parent who flees the system would be carefully analytical about what he didn’t like there.
You’ve heard from all homeschool stripes here. Some never set foot in school before. Others found school to be merely okay where homeschooling was heavenly. But there is also a large subset of parents who yanked their children out because they were yanking their hair out. These are parents who never contemplated homeschooling before. I know of many cases where things got so bad, the parent didn’t even wait until the end of the school year. So OF COURSE she will be critical of school. After all, it’s her tax dollars.
In order to vote with your feet, you have to know what you are running away from. You have to be clear this is the right choice for you. And you aren’t going to reach that conclusion without some strong opinions of what you are escaping from.
Examples of children whose needs are not met or for whom school is not a safe place are children with special needs, highly gifted, profoundly gifted with special needs (twice exceptional), children who are teased and bullied and an army of families who don’t want their children getting the message that you learn information for one reason only — to pass a test.
My partner wrote that, I believe.
And c’mon, enough with the “Jesse writes.” It makes it seem like you’re more interested in calling me out than in engaging in a meaningful conversation.
- Jesse
And c’mon, enough with the “Jesse writes.” It makes it seem like you’re more interested in calling me out than in engaging in a meaningful conversation.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Okay, so I won’t say “Jesse writes.” No, you got that wrong. It’s not about calling you out on anything. It’s a journalism thing, getting the quote right so you can respond to it. I could just as easily paraphrase. Please don’t see it as a repudiation, or evidence in a court of law. I’m not an attorney. That’s Marjorie’s bailiwick and she’ll shoot me for sharing personal details on list
.
And if you are referring to me, you did write the comment I referenced, I cut and pasted it right off your post. It gets confusing when we don’t reference the exact comment.
As for meaningful conversation, I’d love to have one. Email me and if/when you are in my area, let’s do lunch. Remember, my child spent most of her years in formal schooling, homeschooling was but one year, a sabbatical. But I have the heart and soul of a homeschooler, I cut my parenting teeth on Alfie Kohn, Susan Ohanian and David Elkind, learned all about and embraced John Holt and John Dewey, so my combined experience of private, public, homeschool and selective magnet gives me a potent voice in this discussion.
And I’ve said repeatedly, if I had it to do all over again I would have yanked my daughter out of school the first week of kindergarten and kept going until at least high school. My gut was screaming to do that, but for one reason or another, I didn’t take the plunge.
Why I reached that conclusion after so many years in school should be of interest to you, no? And it’s not just about bashing the schools. It’s illustrating why at best, it was not the optimal place, and at worst, why it did such harm. And that tidbit, I feel, should be of interest to any school teacher.
Jesse, to add. You may conclude, well, it just didn’t work for you. It doesn’t work for all kids.
It’s not that simple. Because my child is not one in a group, completely unique. There are many many more kids like her. And they are getting lost in the system.
We aren’t talking about a discipline problem. This child is very quiet and well behaved. We aren’t talking about a child with a great deal of academic struggles. This child is highly gifted and several grades above grade level. We aren’t talking about a misfit, an odd kid, a one in a million.
Yes, we are talking about a child who is not “neuro-typical,” if typical is the norm. I’m talking about something else. And for the record, I’m not talking about high school. She’s there now, and in many respects, this is a good fit, a good peer group. Or as good as school will ever get.
What needs to be examined is why the earlier years didn’t work. And what school could have done to help her and did not. The schools failed my child. And we aren’t talking grades. Or scores. Those were very high, no problem there.
I’m not letting the elementary school, where most of my beef lies, off that easily. It’s not a matter of shrugging and saying, well, it doesn’t work for everyone. That’s a cop out. That’s lazy. That’s a system that simply doesn’t care about certain kids. One poster wrote that it’s little surprise that so many of your respondents are parents of highly gifted children. Whose needs are not met, especially if they are twice exceptional. You haven’t addressed where these kids go. To homeschooling? But of course, that’s the whole point.
Jesse, I share you with you the mixed feelings about the gifted label. Look, I would have killed for a normal amount of homework all these years. Gifted Shmifted, sometimes. But some kids you just can’t put in the regular classroom, it’s really a disaster. Socially as well as academically. Even David Elkind asserts strenuously that these kids must have acceleration because you are not pushing them, that is where they are. I can no more change that fact about her than I can the color of her eyes.
I home school for the sole purpose of being able to hand pick the curriculum and activities that are used to educate my children. Read any History text that is used in the public school system. That text will be filled with incomplete, and often completely inaccurate, information. I prefer that my children learn the cold hard truth about key historical events, including but not limited to the founding of our country.
The Art and Science of Parenting
Who Needs School?
Meandering Through the Forest
Quickies From the Blogosphere
Of Thoughts and Quotes
To Jesse,
What can I say that has not already been said? Both proponents of schooling and homeschooling have cricitized your widespread intolerance. What I teach my children today about conflict resolution, acceptance of differences, and tolerance is what you need to learn. Wars are fought over your current approach to life. I wish you peace of mind and send you love as you resolve this difficulty within.
The only reason my husband and I are deciding to homeschool is because we went to public school and were honor students, he, now a doctor and I just a medical assistant with “some college” and we didn’t learn jack! We are amazed at how little we do know despite the array of impressive transcripts and test scores between the two of us!!?
Public school teaches nothing except to pick what social class you want to perpetually align with by what brands you are sporting to school and how much lunch money you can waste on junk food. Cheers to our effort to teach our kiddos whatever their hearts desire, and hopefully learn things ourselves along the way while abiding by our state requirements!!! Worst case, they take their GED by 16 and start junior college. Advantages are good!
you sound as if you did pretty well for your self via PS Thus if you are doctor who didnt learn jack you must be a terrble doctor LOL
The author’s arguments seem to be based on presumption. He presumes that homeschooled students are locked away facing mom all day with no contact with the outside world to speak of. And, he assumes that mom is very limited and will prevent the child from being aware of or interacting with other viewpoints and sets of knowledge. When I unschooled my child, his world was full of international experts as well as people with disabilities, different cultural backgrounds, different interests, different life situations, etc. He was exposed to a huge world whereas his friends in public school were limited by one teacher’s lesson plans and plain vanilla, committee approved textbooks with a political agenda at times. Further, he could study at the college level while still a young elementary age child. He was not hindered by “age-appropriateness” in challenge, and was not “socialized” by group-think, bullying, or class bells. He learned to manage his time, interact with a wide variety of people, and negotiate his place in various settings.
The author needs to gain some expertise in homeschooling before speaking as an expert on it. His comments sound more like opinions formed sitting at home thinking about it from his own perspective without experience or knowledge–it’s that public school think that says that what we are told is all there is to know–that inability to go out and grab knowledge, experience the world and see what is before us because we are supposed to be in this building in this room with this teacher at this time and think and believe and act in this way or we will get a “bad” grade.
By unschooling my son, I was able to allow him to become a true scholar, and when he entered public school in adolescence to allow me to get cancer treatment, he bested almost all the doctors’ kids and researchers’ kids overall, and certainly in standardized tests. You see, he grew up not being graded, not getting tested, and not being limited to a defined set of knowledge or skills. And, thus, he became more knowledgeable and skilled than those who were subject to “standardized education.” He blew the tops off the standardized tests. And, he is one of the funniest, most hard-working, nicest young men you will meet.
Let’s look at kids as individuals and let’s be honest about education. As a former public school teacher, private teacher for many years, and current and former homeschooler, I can tell you that we are missing the point if we beat up on each other and try to convince others that ours is the only way. We need to focus on the kids and their needs. Only when public school teachers can learn from homeschoolers and realize that group management is just that and nothing more, that the teaching they do is less than they could do as a homeschooler, and that we all need to learn from each other, will the focus start to be on the kids.
Years ago, I attended a Science, Technology, Engineering and Math conference in a large city. A study was presented showing what the highest achieving high schools did and saying that other high schools need to follow suit. I pointed out that those practices are what homeschoolers do. Silence. Snarky remarks. Anger. And private thanks from people who agreed, those educators who worked with homeschoolers, not to teach them but to learn from them, statewide experts too afraid to agree publicly but who privately commended me for saying that. Why is this a competition? Money. Money for more vice-principals. Anger that homeschoolers win competitions (those that they are not blocked from by teachers associations). Salary raises. Computer funds. Oh, those selfish homeschoolers who are only caring about their own kids when their kids could be used to get more ADA money to get equipment for the schools! If only you cared as much for my child, he would still be publicly educated.
As a e who mother who used to HOMESCHOOL and one who attended PUB LIC SCHOOl, what it truly comes down to is the parents and how involved in theen your kids will childrens education and life. A child can succeed in both environments IF the parents put Education as a priority.
You are so narrowminded! stop discriminating.
I was sent to public school and I hated it. Truth is i wish I had been homeschooled. The other students didn’t know anything about acceptance, I remember several instances where I was picked on for simply defending the school “geek”. The food was awfull, the teachers picked favorites (usually the popular kids), you had to wait in line for everything including using the bathroom, and it honestly felt like a prison. I once asked my mom what i had done wrong that i had to go there everyday. She didnt even know how to explain to me that i hadn’t done anything wrong, i just had to go. Say what you want about homeschooling, but after finding out about 5 year olds having police called on them for disordly conduct at school and 13 year olds getting arrested for farting in class i now have yet another reason to homeschool my kids. At least if they pass gas at home we can all laugh for a moment before getting back to our lessons. Oh and i didnt even mention schools trying to force parents to inject there children with live viruses.
Also as a teacher your opinion on this matter isn’t exactly biased.
I’m not a big fan of the word “homeschool” because most of what my children learn is not done in a seat in our house–especially not where they eat their Froot Loops (as you mentioned in another post), not that we purchase Froot Loops very often (as we try to serve healthy school meals around here). Instead, the learning happens in the world and in books. And, reading books all day long gives them much more perspective than being in a classroom with a teacher and the other students. We’ve read at least 100 different authors (outside our normal curriculum) in the past 18 months. That’s 100 perspectives–not to mention that I fully subscribe to “it takes a village” theories about child-rearing, so many people of different ages are involved in my kids’ lives, including their education.
And on this rather balmy day, how have my kids spent the most of it? Outside, trying to figure out the best way to catch tadpoles and pretending there is hot lava in the woods behind our house. Perhaps I am a little arrogant, as I like the fact that my kids are exploring nature in nature instead of sitting at a desk, looking at frogs in aquariums.
Thanks for this conversation. It’s made me think about how/why we homeschool (still waiting on a better term!). And, yes, I do think I am a little selfish for homeschooling, but only selfish because I want to spend more time with my kids. And, the flexible travel schedule is nice–no need to book flights around the local school calendar.
Hmm. So this teacher thinks that because not all public schools are an automatic “ticket to jail and eternal damnation”, homeschooling is really bad.
I really am too thick to homeschool my kids. Can someone (maybe a qualified teacher teaching at a public school who hates homeschoolers -because they’re all inherently really intelligent) explain this to me?
FYI my kids were public schooled for a few years before I gave up on the system and offered them an alternative. There were no complaints. I told my kids it was up to them and they wanted out of the public school system and the reason was kids at school are too loud and I want to concentrate on my work. How were my children getting a good education or any education at all if they were unable to concentrate on what the teacher is teaching because, he/she could not control the classroom?
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I am a divorced parents and my home schooling divorcee has temporarily taken away my right to send my daughter to public school and she is not an accredited person.My Child has said the following. “My mommy is disappointed in me and doesn’t love Me.” ” In Mommy school we only do fun stuff no home work or any thing that I don’t want to do.” This alarms me. In any case AP parents think they are right. But in the case of an unaccredited home teacher who forgoes boring stuff like home work is wrong IMHO. I have met a lot of the AP parents and it’s a mix bag of nuts. All weird and a lot of self appreciation in that group. I attended a few meetups and it seemed like a contest of ” well we only eat soy.” My child is too advance d for public school. My child is too slow for public school”. but in every case it was I am better than the teacher and the divorced father. Almost all the AP parents I have met is an AP mom with an AP dad who is unhappy. You can argue all the rhetoric you want. For all the AP moms who think they can do it all by themselves good for you. Just wish you’d spend half the time you spend praising and making your child “special” was spent on the one person who has to support you and love you even when they whole heartedly disagree. Yes. Attachment parenting should be made singular in form. Because in the end It is one Parent attached to the kid and one parent who is pushed aside. Might as well call it attachment mothering and father ostracism. I cant stand AP and all the AP crap. I can’t stand vegetarians and most of all I can’t stand AP parents who think they are smarter than everyone else. That is my opinion… AP Sucks!!!!!!!!
Oh and yes for the secular minded folks. I am not going to teach my kid to believe in zombies rising from the dead to save our soul. Also another reason to run for the hills.