Home Schooling: The Bad and the Ugly
Published by Greg March 14th, 2007 in Homeschooling, Education, Commentary, Science Education
There has been a lengthy discussion on this web site on home schooling. This began with a couple of posts on the Twin Cities Creation Science science fair, and continued through a series of other posts and the extensive comment on them:
Home School Creationist Science Fair: Har Mar Mall Feb 17 and 18 2007
Home Schooling Creationist Science Fair 2007
“Home Schoolers are All Creepy Miscreants”
Choose Wisely: The Internet Is a Dangerous Place
Some Sick Atheist Demeans Kids … Photographic Evidence Destroyed
Twin Cities Home Schooling Creationist Science Fair Photos
This has been, and continues to be, an interesting journey for me, and I wanted to pause for a moment and summarize some of my thoughts, what I’ve learned, and some open questions. I want to orient this discussion as one view of home schooling from a person who is not totally sanguine on the idea, but who is open to considering it as a valid mode of education. I want to describe some of the things that I think make progressive/liberal people intersted in education nervous, including political aspects, sociological and economic aspects, and ideological aspects.
Home schooling is a way of cheating the system.
Home schooling and private schools both have this characteristic. There is a small subset of families that can afford the money it takes to send their kids to private schools. When this happens, an important part of society withdraws from the public, collective endeavor to educate our children. This can have many implications. Even something as simple as the funding of a class field trip serves as a microcosm of a broad array of effects, many less obvious but probably very important. My daughter attends a school that has a very ambitious yearly field trip for one of the grades, in which the children go away for three days and two nights. It is a little expensive (cost per child) but there is a guarantee that every child can go. Fund raising activities are carried out, and the surplus funds are set aside to subsidize any child who’s family can’t afford the fee. Chaperons (parents) pay their own way as necessary so as to not increase the cost of the trip.
This happens to be an outstanding public school, so there is a full range of economic levels represented there, so only a small percentage of the kids need some help paying for the trip. But imagine if 10 or 20 percent of the parents pulled their kids out of this public school, sending them to private school. Suddenly, the marginally poor and middle class would be responsible for funding the much less fortunate on this trip. It may become impossible and have to be dropped as a program.
There is a correlation between wealth and ability to invest time and energy into a school via the PTA, as a school volunteer, and even in terms of helping the children at home with their homework, etc. There is a correlation between wealth and educational level, and in turn, there is a correlation between educational level of parents and the educational success of the children. All the students gain by increasing the number of involved and available parents, and all of the students gain by increasing the educational success by even a proportion of the children, by raising expectations and providing positive interactive experiences. Society as a whole gains by all of this.
When a large number of parents send their children to private school, society as a whole pays the cost of benefits reaped, and sequestered, by the few.
That is an indictment of private schools. But a similar argument can be made of home schooling. In many cases, home schoolers may not be able to home school because of wealth, but they can because of available time. One way or another, home schoolers are able to do this because of differential distribution of resources, and the act of home schooling, like the act of attending private schools, contributes broadly to a lowering of quality of experience for everyone else.
This is America. The American Ethic allows for such selfish behavior. But it should be understood to be what it is..
Home schooling, on average, provides children with fewer resources of lower quality.
There are many resources that exist in schools because schools are large enough to afford them, or because schools, as institutions, can obtain grant money or easily for affiliations with other institutions. Indeed, one way in which we measure relative quality of a school is in terms of these resources. A school with a great gym, a nice telescope and and some other cool science gadgets, a darkroom, good computers, a great media center, etc. is better than a school with none of these resources.
Home schoolers claim that hey have access to these resources via various means. However, it is simply not possible that home schoolers, in genral, really have access to the full range of resources that a reasonably well funded school has, and to the extent that they do, they are cheating the system more by staying out of it but showing up to use one or another resource when it is convenient.
To the extent that home schoolers are also paying taxes but not using the schools, they are actually benefiting the system. But in some cases, they are getting vouchers, but then showing up to use resources set aside for specific schools but not augmented (fiscally) by the presence of that student in that school. It’s like getting your money back for a shirt at Target but now and then showing up and wearing the same shirt anyway. Furthermore, as suggested above, the resources are not all quantifiable as things that are bought or paid for. Home schoolers using public resources are picking and choosing outside of the system, and the system at the same time is trying to make effective and efficient use of the resources. Home schoolers are essentially uncontrolled noise in the system. In small numbers, this probably has very little effect. But if home schooling expands significantly, this may become a serious problem.
Home Schooling provides children with lower quality teaching.
This is simply a matter of numbers. On average, a pool of teachers drawn from a job search will produce significantly better teachers than a pool of teachers drawn from a single household.
Home schoolers claim that they make use of other resources … it is not just the parents (often, actually, one parent) acting as the only teacher. Nonetheless, it has to be the case that an institution with administrators and an HR policy will provide better, safer, more appropriate and more diverse access with respect to personell. To the extent that some home schoolers are making use of these very institutional resources, I have two reactons: 1) as you might expect, this is simply more cheating of the system (see above) and 2) the degree to which home schoolers claim that they provide their children with quality education by using expert educators is an acknowledgment that home schooling is at the base very limited.
How much home schooling involves the effective integration of other resources? (Including facilities, equipment and people?) I’ll come back to that below in my discussion of oversight and reporting.
Home schooling is ideologically driven.
Home schooling is often driven by ideology. Despite efforts of many individuals to deny this, the evidence is strong that it is. In some cases, home schooling resources are adapted to this ideology. For example, a set of learning materials in biology may include a disclaimer regarding evolution, something that one could not do in a public school, by law. Nonetheless, these resources are either directly or indirectly funded by tax dollars. This is a problem.
Oversight and testing.
We often hear arguments that home schoolers do great on standardized tests, but it is often not mentioned that these tests are often administered in such a way that would disallow the use of the data within the public school system. I’m not sure how widespread this is, but my understanding is that these standardized tests are often administrated by the parents. In a public school setting, many standardized tests can’t even be administered by the teachers … they must be administered by third party specialists, to make sure it is done right and to make sure there is not tilting of scores.
Home schoolers are likely to argue that it is obnoxious of me to assume that they would cheat on theists test. Here, I simply want to quote the great Ideology of the 20th century, Ronald Regan. Trust but verify. This means that you don’t use test results that are not derived from tests administered by a third party specialist. The argument that home school mom and dads can be trusted is not as strong as the argument that professional teachers can be trusted. If we use controlled testing environments in the public school, they should be used for home schooling as well. Otherwise, home schoolers must top citing these data. The data are invalid.
Home schoolers tend to be very defensive about the prospect of oversight. I want people to realize that public schools themselves provide an important kind of oversight. I a middle school or high school with several hundred students, there is a handful of cases per year where authorities realize that a child is being abused … beaten, molested, etc. … in the home. A handful of cases are discovered whereby parent’s alcoholism or drug use are interfering with the learning of the students. And so on.
In the absence of data to the contrary, it is irresponsible to do anything but to assume that abusive or negative home environments are likely to occur among home schoolers. There is no comparative data because home schooling families as a whole tend to be very negative about any kind of oversight. Since the schools, which act as a way of identifying problems in a home that require intervention, we have to see home schooling as a potential area of grave problems.
This is the darkest side of lack of oversight, but there are many other less critical but still very important aspects as well. Some home schoolers seem to be fond of pointing out cases where a teacher does something bad or stupid, presumably as evidence that home schooling is better than regular schooling. This is absurd. The cases where teachers screw up are in fact known about because it is a system with a certain degree of oversight. Home schooling seems to have absolutely no oversight whatsoever. The very fact that some home schoolers feel that this is a legitimate comparison indicates either a deep and disturbing lack of understanding of the reality (one cannot compare the details of a closely held secret with the details of public information … that someone would think that you could indicates a serious deficit in ability to reason).
Conclusion
As an individual, I have changed my mind about home schooling. I used to think it was all bad. Now I see that there are some good aspects to it. But I also see that there are problems. If I had to choose right now, I would prefer to eliminate home schooling completely rather than let it continue with these problems. But there is another alternative. This is honestly and openly addressing these problems.
However, I have been deeply disappointed by much of what I see in the home schooling community. My information is highly biased by the self selection of people who have chosen to give me their opinion. The majority of people who have spoken out on this web site seem to believe that oversight or any kind of outside evaluation is out of the question. It almost seems as though that one thing is the most important reason to do home schooling. This is in accord with the tendency for home schooling to be ideologically driven. Part of that ideology may dictate that society as a whole be viewed as evil and suspect. Why, then, would a home schooler want any kind of oversight?
This makes me think that solving these problems is impossible. I expect almost no one (who is involved with home schooling) to agree with any of my assertions or concerns. What could work is for people who are concerned about the children in home schooling situations to work for making home schooling without oversight invalid as a means of obtaining a certified education. Colleges should not accept home schooling high school certificates or diplomas, for instance, until some of these problems are addressed. A solution from the outside could be agitated for and obtained, I think. From the perspective of academia, the same socio political entities that constantly attack academia overlap considerably with the home schooling community. It would not be too difficult, over the next few years, for a movement to develop convincing college administrators to put pressure on the home schooling community to address problems. At this time, that is what I would recommend, even though I admit it would also be throwing the baby out with the bathwater, because there do seem to have been some success, and some important and positive progress, with some home schooling efforts.
Do visit this post: Home Schooling …. The Good…
79 Responses to “Home Schooling: The Bad and the Ugly”
- 1 Pingback on Mar 14th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
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Some very good points, and I was sorry to see that COD was so dismissive of them. I fear he or she has done nothing to change your conclusion about the homeschooling community’s receptiveness to discussions of its problems. For one thing, you do have one unbeatable argument: the social context of homeschooling. It occurs in families who are well-off enough to manage it and have sufficient funds of time to consider it, both of which could be employed to help the schools perform better. If one is going to point out the homeschoolers who are concerned about the quality of their childrens’ education and trying to teach their children to the highest standards, one must admit that this imposes large time commitments on them and makes them less likely to pursue correctives of what they found wrong with their local schools in the first place.
However, it is still possible to take a broad interest in schools, although unlikely, since anyone can run for school board (I’m seriously considering it myself). I’ve also previously encouraged the possibility of bringing scientists into classrooms to talk to students. This could be accomplished with a minimum of fuss even for scientists (or other experts) who homeschool.
I would caution against assuming that the standardized tests are generally administered by the parents. Granted, my homeschooling experience is zilch, but when I took the SAT I and SAT II, I didn’t even do it at my own high school or even during the school day. Instead, I did them both on Saturdays at San Diego High School, under the supervision of a professional SAT test proctor. I see no reason why homeschooling parents can’t avail themselves of the same system. Until one sees some specific numbers that most don’t do that, I’d be wary of making any assumptions in that direction.
One other problem is the ideological content of homeschooling. You’re right about that. I know many homeschooling parents who despair of the homeschooling textbooks they examine, since the vast majority the people I know have seen are written for fundamentalist Christians. I have generally recommended going to a local college or university and finding out what texts they use for the subjects and then buying those online. If we allow those who have the desire for the highest standards for their children to homeschool, disregarding the first problem you mentioned, then we must open it up to those who want to shield their children from secular knowledge.
It certainly should be a cause for concern, although I would say from what I’ve seen of polls in America, the propagation of religious mythology in the place of knowledge cannot entirely be laid at the feet of homeschooling. With 45% of Americans affirming their belief in young earth creationism, it’s obvious that the public school isn’t doing its job either. That in no way condones shoddy teaching anywhere, but it does mean that we have a lot of people for whom a secular, public school education wouldn’t help anyway, so that it’s not apparent that homeschooling in this case will do any more harm than would be done another way. Does that mean that we should give up on these people? It’s a matter for judgment obviously, but in every case we cannot expect a perfect outcome and must weigh the concerns against the benefits, and it saddens me that you, a critic of homeschooling, would be more open to that approach than its avowed supporters.
Nullifidian: Regarding the testing. I am trying to be careful with this. I don’t know how the tests are administered. I only know of cases where students take the test at home and the results are reported.
There are certain standardized tests that no on takes anywhere but in a special location, as per the SAT’s you mentioned. Home schoolers taking those tests are obviously taking them under controlled circumstances.
I invite everyone who has previously commented on test results, with personal knowledge, to report the circumstances under which they took the tests!
I’m not sure what it is that is saddening you here about my approach… I have certainly not meant to imply that I’m giving up on anything. I am trying to make a strong statement, which can be summarized like this, to home schoolers:
A lot of what I’m hearing is bullshit. Drop the bullshit and let’s talk about the problems and make this work better. Or, is there something you are afraid of?
In the mean time, as long as the home schooling community is mainly interested in secretive behavior and obscuring the situation with something less than candor, that community should not be taken to seriously. But education of our children must be taken seriously. So let’s take the home schooling out of the equation as long as the behavior of the community is so questionable.
I’m not sure why this message is not coming through clearly. It is a simple carrot and stick approach:
Carrot: Working together towards a common goal of publicly supported secular education of the highest possible quality. Perhaps a parallel system would develop in parochial contexts, but that is not of concern here.
Stick: Close it down as long as the HS community is so intractably belligerent. Assume they must be hiding something, and for the sake of the children, assume the worst.
Carrot … stick… it’s one thing you can do when reason does not work.
Greg, all you have done is list a bunch of stuff you don’t like about homeschooling. You have not produced data indicative of any problem that needs a solution. You listed a bunch of things that maybe possibly could go wrong, with no evidence of any of it is actually happening on a widespread basis. In fact, most of your imagined problems are far more prevalent in the public school system, and that is well documented in the news.You are throwing around strawmen like cheating on tests without absolutely no evidence.
My kids do their annual CAT-9 test at home because the testing authority allows it, and in fact the state requires it. I don’t think we could go to the schools to take the test if we wanted to. The state requires the test, I personally don’t give a damn how the kids do. Standardized tests mostly test how well kids do on standardized tests. It’s not a particularly useful life skill.
They score 90th percentile and better across the board, we sent the results in the the school system where I imagine they are filed with barely a glance at the numbers, and we forget about it until we have to do it again the next year. I personally don’t care if you trust my wife or not to administer the test honestly. It’s none of your damn business in the first place and I’m really sort of at a loss to figure out why you are so worked about a tiny minority of people that you so clearly hold in contempt.
And since you are so big on controlled tests, consider the results from the ACT over the last few years. It’s a composite of results available from act.org.
When we do testing it is under the supervision of a qualified tester person. We did the Iowa test I think. I’d have to look because it’s been a couple of years. It was done in a classroom situation. Fill in the circles. A lot like I remember it in school. My state allows other methods but I liked the classroom one. We paid for it. About $30 per kid. To me, it was practice dealing with “test anxiety”. My shy kid had a lot of stress the first year and bombed the test but did fine the next year. I have no problem with testing like the school kids do and find it helpful to have the results. I do not “teach to tests” though. I guess that’s another topic.
Cod:
Yes, I’ve mainly listed a bunch of things I don’t like about home schooling. The positive things I’ve said about home schooling are not “bones” as has been suggested. The problem is, the response to questions has been fairly unimpressive, and by and large have cause more concern then they have alleviated.
I appreciate the added data from each and every post, and thanks for letting us know of the circumstance of testing in your home. “N” is still small, but so far no home schoolers who took the test under the same circumstances as the public school kids.
Please note: I have not expressed an opinion about tests per se. I have only expressed concern about the data that home schoolers have put forth. For almost all such data, if I scratch the surface a little, the data falls apart, for other data, it is inadequate for other reasons.
That is no one’s fault, or at least I don’t think is is anyones fault. However it is a situation that I feel needs to be remedied. What I find astounding is that the response from so many home schoolers is fear and loathing at the idea of learning more about what is going on.
Originally, I felt nothing like contempt. Then I ran into a wall of obfuscation and that made me wonder. Then I ran into hatred and malicious accusation. So yea, now I’ve got a little contempt going. But my feelings about this whole situation are more complex than that and I am still trying to keep an open mind, despite the deafening sounds of doors slamming shut over on your web site.
The link you provide goes to a page that says this:
Forbidden
You do not have permission to access this document.
Web Server at homeschooling.gomilpitas.com
A joke? A clue? A truth? … or just a typo???? I’m afraid we may never know….
Oops. Apparently you can’t direct link to graphics on that site. Go here and scroll down to the ACT stuff.
Ummm. Wow.
There’s a lot to chew on in your post. Will just quickly comment on a couple of things –
Re: cheating the system. At this point, I am reasonably certain my school district is happy to take the tax dollars my children represent and run with them. Our district is quite crowded and struggles to find seats for the children rapidly flowing in to the county.
I’m a bit confused about how you believe homeschoolers outcompete public school students for public school resources. Perhaps that is common in MN? We are not allowed to cheat public school children out of opportunities or otherwise compete for resources – the principles of individual schools have say over most resources and are reported to not be open to sharing them with homeschool students. The resources we use most (library, free museums, etc.) are open to all equally, so far as I can tell.
Re: not contributing to the system. This is a topic I have struggled with. I would like to give of my time and talents to help other children. Unfortunately, because of the young children in my home, I am not able to give to our local school in the ways they would like me to. I would need to bring my children along and include them in the activity, and the school system cannot allow that due to liability concerns. I’ve been able to help in the past in informal tutoring, but that opportunity has not presented itself again.
Re: homeschool testing. You are correct in that there are some standardized tests that allow for a parent to administer the test. Usually there is some nominal requirement that the test administrator hold a bachelor’s degree or the like. In the area we live, I would estimate about half the homeschoolers choose to test at home, and the other half seek out group testing opportunities or individual achievement testing through independent contractors. We’re taking the independent contractor approach to test through the Woodcock Johnson III. Part of the problem I have with your statement is that each state has its own individual requirements in regards to testing — some states require no testing at all, others have a high level of oversight – your statement seems to discount the diversity of requirements to be met.
Re: Homeschooling is ideologically driven. Well, duh. Isn’t all education ideologically driven, in that we have a set of ideas or beliefs about what constitutes an educated person and then strive to shape children based on that belief set? I am guessing you meant that homeschooling is ideologically driven in the pejorative sense and that you assume that most of that ideology is centered on supernatural beliefs with which you disagree. Again, I am led to see a lack of understanding on your part in the diversity of views, opinions and practices within the homeschooling community.
Finally, a comment about homeschoolers resistance to regulation, oversight, etc. First, I would say that choosing to homeschool is fundamentally about choosing to go against the grain for one reason or another. For one, it’s a decision made to counter the worldviews taught in their schools, for another it’s to protect their child from any number of real or imagined bogeymen, for yet another to allow their child the greatest degree of freedom possible. Once you’ve chosen that freedom, it is exhilarating and you aren’t willing to trade a bit of it in. My spouse would agree with you that more oversight is needed – I lean more toward the libertarian side. I am much more comfortable with giving entire families the chance to fail, and fail big, than to dictate to them that their lives are to be lived to the rhythms of our educational and governmental institutions.
So much for quickly commenting.
I like how COD’s blog has a ’security code’ one must enter to keep out bad thoughts, and posts;-)
” In the beginning, G-d created blogging in his own image: controlled, censored, and closed to the general public with their evil contradictory thoughts and ideas, not to mention scientific facts.”
Nullifidian, I tried to put my energies to use to improve the public school. It didn’t work for me. I didn’t enjoy it (understatement) and I found that my interest was not in working with a school but with my kid. Totally different interests. Not the same at all. I agree that the schools need involved parents but I’m not a person that enjoys that.
Greg, don’t assume that homeschoolers all have loads of money. We sure don’t and many people we know don’t. It’s not really about money.
While I’m a homeschooler, I am not arguing that it is the “best” way to educate kids. For some parents and kids it’s a great way to do it. It has been wonderful for my family and I feel my kids are getting a great education by any standard. We are not perfect and there are things I would do differently if I could go back I suppose. It’s a lot of work. It’s not cheap and it’s not for everyone. It’s good to have the freedom to make choices.
COD: Thanks for the fixed link. I’ve seen those data before, and its actually one of the issues. There are about two thousand home schoolers tested in each year, but there are between 800,000 and 2,000,000 million home schoolers “out there” What percentage of eligible home schoolers took the test, and for that percentage, what system is in place to see to it that this was a non-biased, representative sample? In other words, do these numbers have even one iota of meaning? They might, but its not lookin’ good.
Barkinchick: Thanks for the very informative comments.
You may be right or maybe not about your school district. I’m sure they are willing to take whatever money they can, but when home schoolers are counted in a district, the school district typically loses money. (But they are not often counted, as I understand it.) It is not necessarily the case that home schoolers are paying taxes for other students to go to school. That is probably true sometimes, but it is clearly not true in many if not all cases. (I’m just now finding some of this out.) So there is an issue there.
Regarding use of school resources, it depends on who is talking and what question they are addressing. I’ve heard all different versions of this, which is why I mention it at all. Home schooling supporters have told me, when confronted with a question of limited resources at home, that they, in their case, used all sorts of resources at school including being on the sports team, being in the band, etc. etc. Again, there are many different things being said. What is the truth? We don’t know. How do we learn what is going on? By asking questions and collecting data. But that requires willing participants!
As far as helping, you are right, it is difficult. Different people can do more or less at different times.
Regarding testing: I am in no way discounting the diversity that exists out there.
I agree with you. Regular testing in regular schools, as it is, is a very large and complicated mess, and it is hard to justify it’s worth. Every time a new test is implemented, a huge amount of class time is lost! It’s sort of dumb. As far as home schoolers and testing, thanks for the additional information, that is the most quantitative data I have seen so far!
Regarding ideology: Yes, I was waiting for someone to point out that yes, it’s all ideologically driven.
But you know what I am referring to here: I’m referring to people going through great lengths to either drive Fundamentalist Christian Beliefs into our public school system, or, when that does not work, to drive their kids home and give it to them there.
As far as the diversity of the system, this is a point that I have made again and again in earlier contexts but probably not clearly in this particular post. So here it is again, but this time in all caps and bold so anyone skipping through will likely see it:
THERE IS A LOT MORE DIVERSITY IN HOME SCHOOLING APPROACHES, REASONS FOR HOME SCHOOLING, ETC. ETC. ETC. THAN I HAD THOUGHT.
I had assumed it was 100% crazy fundamentalist miscreants, but it turns out to be somewhere between 35% and 75%. I’m shocked at that, frankly. (and pleasantly surprised)
Yea, I had picked up on that issue of not wanting to be counted. And you know what, I don’t care about you, or cmf, or a lot of other people. I may not agree at all, and I may even want to argue over what you do in your home schooling, but yes, if you or anyone else wants to ignore my sagacious advice, whatever.
I’m worried about the sick fuck who is raping his own kids every day. I’m worried about the Tonya Hardingoids who are, well, just insane, being at home all day and all night alone with their kids, passing on their psychosis. I’m worried about people who believe they are totally competent, and that they know more than everyone else about everything, but who are actually simply unable to handle this and thus who are giving their kids … who might have some potential otherwise … the worst possible education.
So, which one of you home schoolers is raping your kids? Which one of you home schoolers is drunk all day? Which one of you home schoolers [fill in the blank with your favorite scary scenario]? Which one of you homeschoolers is as dumb as a brick?
What? No one is coming forward? Not surprising. See my point?
Yiela, money is one of the things there are some data on. Home schoolers mostly exlude the lowest quartile in income. I’m not so sure about the upper end, and I was not assuming home schoolers have “a lot” of money.
I should point out, of all the people I know who have incomes of more than 150,000 or more, the only ones I know who admit to having a lot of money are those with incomes in the millions. In other words, it seems that no one things they have a lot of money until they have millions and millions. Funny how that works. But yea, I suspect really really rich people don’t homeschool. They have private schools for that.
And Yiela, your last point is the most important, really. There is diversity in what works, I’m sure.
Greg, here’s a few thoughts on your original post. Thanks for your comments on your last post.
Home schooling is a way of cheating the system. So? The schools job is to do the best it can for all kids. My job is to do the best I can for my kids. I had this discussion with a principle once about why my kid couldn’t be moved out of a rotten teachers class. She was handling it better than some others so she had to stay with the rotten teacher. Having kids is a selfish (as well as selfless) thing to do. There are repercussions to any decision but I have to do what is best for my kids first. There must be a balance between being selfish and sacrifice for the greater good. If you were in a rotten district (as I am), would you be wrong to move out of it? Also, I don’t think forcing kids to stay in bad schools helps improve the schools. Competition for students is good for schools.
Home schooling, on average, provides children with fewer resources of lower quality. I’m not sure if you are more concerned about homeschoolers or the schools here. From the kid perspective, public and homeschool are different. They each have pluses and minuses. I’m just going to say I disagree with your statement.
Home Schooling provides children with lower quality teaching. I just don’t agree here. There are some great public school teachers and a whole lot of boring dull ones who have lost interest. That’s my experience anyway. Remember school? One of my biggest dreads was the thought of teaching history. God how I hated it in school. Guess what, history if more than dates! It’s fantastic. My kids both love history and we discuss historical stuff all the time (and read books) even though we are not doing any actual history classes now. I’m not blaming teachers. I’m just saying that the curriculum is dull.
The abuse issue…At risk of showing impaired reasoning I would like to share some of my experiences in school (public and private). None of these were ever discovered by “the system”. I could name five teachers off the top of my head that had sex with students. One of those students was a 7th grader. I myself, got my grade raised from a D to a B by unbuttoning my shirt and begging while bouncing around, ugh, from my YEC public high school biology teacher. I knew many, many kids who who came to school with visible bruises and the abuse was never caught. I went to school drunk and got stoned at school more than a couple of times and was never caught. At least I didn’t drink enough to totally forget what school was like, haha. I could go on about drugs an bullies but it just belabors the point. The fact that there are problems in schools does not mean that homeschooling is “better” any more than bringing these things up as problems for homeschoolers means that they are not a problem for schools. Lots of humans suck. We have to deal with that. Of coarse bad things can happen at home. Yes, homeschool can be used as a shield to hide these things. Yes, it’s a problem. I agree that homeschoolers need to be more open to oversight. And I’ll agree that many of them are paranoid about it. I’m sorry about that.
I can’t imagine that the problems are impossible to solve. I guess you are right that I don’t agree with your assertions but I do hear your concerns. I don’t like the idea of colleges being used to make people educate in a certain way. Colleges should accept people because they think they can do the work. Greg, I think you just don’t understand homeschooling and you are scared off by some rotten apples at the extreme end and problems that are not that common in reality (in my experience). Several schools in my area work well with homeschoolers and even have programs for them. I am very involved in one of these programs now. These programs are also working to the advantage of school kids. Freedom is good. Competition is good. People being different is good even if we don’t agree with them, even if they are wrong. We can’t legislate them out of existence. It is better to work with them (I do it every day) then to work against them. Discussing education is good. This is a great and interesting topic and I think it’s fantastic that you are interested in discussion.
You know, I just see such a strong division of people. I think it’s very distructive. That is one reason I am now involved in this school program. I want to work on something that is inclusive and that respects different points of view while keeping an eye on meeting educational goals for kids. A public school never would have done this without pressure from homeschoolers and the desire to bring them back in under the public school umbrella. We need diversity. We need people to learn that they can hear things they don’t agree with and know that it won’t strike them dead.
Thanks Greg.
cmf: The challenge in my comments is designed to weed out those that can not read a sentence, understand the context, and answer a simple question, namely spam bots and idiots. Are you a spam bot?
re: the ACT scores. Public school kids are not required to take that test. Kids going to colleges that require or accept the ACT self-select into the test, the same as homeschoolers. The last numbers I saw (and I can’t find the source at the moment) was I think 54% of school kids go to college versus 46% of homeschoolers. I’m not aware of any study that tries to explain that difference, and I’m not sure that it is significant. Likely, kids that have spent 12 years outside of institutional education are not in a hurry to join it for their early adult years. Again Greg, you are hinting at conspiracy theories with the concern that the only homeschoolers that take the test are the one that know they will exceed the national average. Please tell me how anybody knows that in advance. I imagine if you polled the kids at school heading into the ACT (or the kids taking a test in your class) well over half would express a belief that they will score better than average
Regarding abuses, etc Yiela pretty much covered it. Abuse happens everywhere, and no homeschooler that I’m aware of has ever claimed we are exempt. However, absent any evidence that homeschooling is somehow correlated with increased cases of abuse, you simply have no rational basis for your concern.
Honestly Greg, my personal belief is that most of your concern about homeschooling is predicated on your dislike of the fact that some homeschoolers are teaching their kids that your life’s work (evolution) is bunk. And in case it’s not clear, I’m 100% on your side in the evolution vs creation debate. 50% of the people in the US claim to believe in creationism, yet almost all of them are responsible adults holding down jobs, raising families, etc. It’s simply not an indicator of anything important.
Dear Greg. Why won’t my comment show up?
June (NOT) This comment is visible. Did you post another one? I don’t see it anywhere.
COD: You are nearly right about my concerns. It is not that I care what crazy fundie yahoos think of me. I’ve been dong this a long time and I’m a professional. I don’t care any more what they think of me or my work than a veteran cop cares what a criminal thinks of his work.
But every time my daugther tells me about some fundie yahoo who happens to be a fellow student, a teacher, whatever, tries to talk her into taking jesus into her heart: Every time I have to watch colleagues spend time testifying at a school board hearing instead of giving a lecture in a classroom: Every time my wife the teacher comes home with a story about how biology class was totally disrupted for the entire period by students with a list of questions provided by their pastor .. the same list they had the prvious week … in an obvious attempt to disrupt and disturb … every time [fill in the blank] I get inspired to do something.
I know you understand what I’m saying.
Yiela, thanks for the additional comments. The overall situation as I see it is that there is a huge range of variation in all of the system, and I know there are things we’all can do, and that I can get personally involved in, with respect to the public system. But home schooling has too many loose strings at a certain end of the spectrum.
But maybe it is best to let certain families sink or swim on their own! We make kids in Minnesota wear seat belts, so they don’t have to suffer the fate of their parents who don’t think wearing them is necessary when their cars engage in Newtonian Physics with another car on the highway. But it may be impossible and impractical to do anything other than to write off that percentage of kids that are being given much less than they deserve, and possibly worse, in a home schooling environment.
But I would like to see the numbers … what are the numbers? And I have to stand by the idea that public support or sanction of the whole concept should depend on the ability to get the numbers.
I left a comment on the “Home Schooling Creationist Science Fair 2007″ post, so I’ll not re-iterate what I said there. However, for those who haven’t seen it, I was homeschooled in a YEC, fundie Christian family from birth to highschool graduation, sans an English and two History classes I took in College for dual credit.
Cheating the system:
This doesn’t apply to all homeschoolers, I’m sure, but most of the religious fundies I’ve known have a traditional, dad works, mom stays at home approach to family. There’s nothing special about homeschoolers in that regard; even the kids going to public school are likely to have a stay-at-home mom. Claiming that homeschoolers have some special wealth of time is a little silly.
I don’t really see how money comes into it either. Other than single parents, there weren’t a lot of people more lower class than us. My best friend’s family had six kids, lived in a trailer park and barely made ends meet. My family only had three kids, so we weren’t quite as bad off, but I still made my own toys out of cardboard and duct tape. Not that I’m complaining, mind you; I had a bed to sleep in, three meals a day and a good family. It doesn’t get much better than that.
Because we owned property, we paid school taxes, which is more than can be said of half the families using the public schools. I pay taxes right now for owning a house, even though I don’t even have a girlfriend, much less a family to send to school.
Fewer resources of lower quality:
Agree and disagree. I agree that I didn’t get access to chemistry labs and other “high-tech” stuff, but I did visit the planetarium once a year (they had a Christmas program, with lots of Jesus talk, but also normal stuff), and had plenty of access to museums. In fact, my friend and I rode our bikes around town looking for historic sites probably 3 times a week. I’m not a big fan of history because it’s dry and boring, but standing in the location where history happened changes all that. I’ve vacationed to nearly every state in the US (I’ve not been to Washington, Oregon, Maine, Alaska or Hawaii), and seen a lot of cool stuff. Unfortunately, I was never able to truly appreciate some stuff, like the fossil and geological records, because there was the constant “how can they teach that this stuff is so old?” from my parents.
I also disagree on teaching quality. My mom was the primary teacher (seeing as my dad worked 12 hours a day), but between the two of them, they were able to teach us up to high school or so without problems. I learned French from my best friend’s mom, even though I’ve since forgotten most of it. For a while I used an internet phone to talk to two French girls, but they moved somewhere without internet, and the US to France long-distance rates were too high. Spanish would have been easier to maintain since I lived in Texas, but my loss of language isn’t any different than my public schooled friends. When I had problems with algebra, my mom couldn’t really help (when she was in public high school they gave her a C or D just so she could pass pre-Algebra and graduate), so I went to other people who could. I didn’t normally have problems, and the few I did I could usually figure out by looking at the answer book because it broke each answer down into steps, but when I needed outside help there was always somebody who knew the answer, and Google (well, it was Lycos back then). And we’ve always had better computers than the school systems.
Smaller public schools have better teacher-to-student ratios, but even they often don’t have the time to tutor each student properly. Rather than teach the failing students better, tests are dumbed down to the level of the weakest students, and little effort is put forward to ensure actual knowledge is gained. I understand this is probably about as biased as your views towards homeschooling, but I’ve seen this happen over and over.
Ideology:
I absolutely agree that letting ideology drive coursework can, and often does, create huge vacuums in the learning environment, and allows abominable levels of misinformation. We didn’t have little disclaimers about evolution; we had “evolution is stupid and God created everything in 6 days” *books*. I didn’t learn anything real about evolution until I was 19 or so and actively sought information about it. The strawman ideas I thought were evolution were stupid, so I found teachers and professors and told them why I thought evolution was stupid, and asked for explanations of why it’s still taught even with all the glaring holes (so I thought). 4 years later, I’m still learning things I probably should have learned in high school. This is not to say that every homeschool situation is lacking, but this is a real problem for large numbers of homeschoolers. Like Nullifidian said, even public schoolers don’t always get it right, but at least they’re exposed to it.
Testing:
I’m not a parent, but I cannot imagine allowing my child to cheat on a test to let them feel better about themselves. I’ve met many, many public schoolers who were allowed to plead and bribe and cheat their way through entire grades, but it’s pretty rare to see a homeschooler successfully cheat more than a little. And when they’re caught, the consequences are much higher. Parents want their children to succeed, and those who are devoted enough to teach their children are usually devoted enough to keep them straight on testing.
If your beef is solely with “we do better than you on tests”, then I agree with disallowing self-administered tests for fairness reasons. However, I’ve taken CAT tests given by the same people who gave it to the local schools, and those test-givers said our group (some 30-40 families) were, on average, significantly better than the local schools. Now, our local schools were, on average, worse than the nationwide average, so I don’t know where we fit relative to the USA as a whole. Also, I don’t know what “significant” means. Similarly, I was told by my Air Force recruiter that home schoolers consistently do better on the entrance tests, but have no verifiable data to back that up.
Abuse:
I’m not sure where I stand on this one. I agree that homeschooling seems like a good way to hide abuse, but I’ve never met a homeschooler who was seriously abused. Maybe questionable dicipline methods, but not any worse that you’d see elsewhere, and I’ve never met a homeschooler who got raped by their parents. On the other hand, I’ve met several people who were public schooled and had been seriously abused, molested and raped as children. Maybe it’s luck-of-the-draw, maybe it’s because homeschoolers are really good at hiding it or maybe it actually means something, but I would say homeschoolers are less likely to suffer such things, if anything. (Apparently, my birth mom abused me through negligence and just not feeding me, changing diapers, etc., but that had nothing to do with homeschooling, and between my dad and the legal system, that was sorted out–hence why I have a “step-mom” now.)
Being from the Bible belt and Hickville, Texas, I’ve seen a lot of wife abuse, and “do your duty, woman, and be subservient”, but that was definately not a homeschool-specific problem. I don’t know how many times we called the Sheriff because the next door neighbor beat his wife, made her walk on broken glass, etc., and his daughter went to public school. Had I seen the same thing in a homeschooled family, I would have been just as quick to call the same Sheriff. Perhaps quicker, as they indirectly represent me.
Conclusion:
I still agree there are problems inherent in the current system of homeschooling, but I also believe that there are useful benefits, and I don’t see the major problems being as bad as some make them out to be. Furthermore, I think it wouldn’t be that hard to make legal provisions which overcome most of the problems, such as mandating annual or semi-annual tests given by unaffiliated parties, and only allowing curriculums approved by a state-run board.
P.S. When I try to type in the comment box, it stretches way off-screen, so I have to write it in notepad and paste it into the box.
I think MichealS exhibits my point perfectly. A substandard primary education is not the end of the world. Millions of kids come out of the schools poorly educated, and some homeschoolers do too. A healthy ecosystem requires diversity, the same goes for the ecosystem of ideas and beliefs. No matter how hard you try Greg, you can’t make more than half the kids end up above average
I’m totally on your side wrt to the fundie yahoos. The difference seems to be that I respect their right to be fundie Yahoos, up until the point they try to use the police power of govt to impose their beliefs on the rest of us. You don’t give them that much quarter!
COD: I assure you that my problem with the fundies is all about their evangelical efforts. They are stepping on other people’s rights, and that is what I have a problem with!
Yes Greg, I posted it 4 times. Three last night just before midnight, and then again today immediately after posting the one that worked. My post had two links in it. Do you automatically moderate posts with more than one link a spam? That might be the problem.
After I post this message, I will try to post my other message if this one works.
It didn’t work. What’s up?
I am now trying again by taking out the two links. Maybe that will work.
//However, I have been deeply disappointed by much of what I see in the home schooling community.//
It seems that you are making some very broad generalizations based on a very narrow view. What is it that you are seeing? Just like public or private schooling, there may be some undesirable aspects to homeschooling, but a few anecdotal examples shouldn’t automatically condemn it.
I look at homeschooling as just another option for educating children. Take it or leave it. Some homeschoolers go all out and some don’t. Some have the goal of college and some don’t. I think the “secrecy” and “fear” you seem to be seeing is due to the fact that homeschoolers come in all shapes, sizes, and ideologies. There is no “one-size-fits-all” answer. They have chosen an individualized education and they want to protect their right to do that for their children. Forcing the people who have chosen a different path to follow your or anyone else’s standards just wouldn’t work. You are assuming bad motives and disregarding all the more likely ones.
//Colleges should not accept home schooling high school certificates or diplomas, for instance, until some of these problems are addressed.//
These are the “problems” you listed:
//Home schooling is a way of cheating the system.
Home schooling, on average, provides children with fewer resources of lower quality.
Home Schooling provides children with lower quality teaching.
Home schooling is ideologically driven.
Oversight and testing.//
[BTW, you have a little parallelism problem going on here.]
Your statement assumes that college admissions boards don’t evaluate applicants wisely. At many colleges, any person who meets the admissions criteria may be chosen for acceptance (and many don’t require any high school diploma or equivalent at all). The means don’t justify the ends here. Colleges are seeking out kids who want to learn and who have proven their ability to learn. If they show a variety of educational experiences and do well on their ACTs or SATs, then it doesn’t really matter exactly how they got to that point. I would be inclined to assume that the college admissions boards can appropriately evaluate the “quality” of the LEARNING the kids have done prior to college. [Somehow I managed to learn a lot despite some really bad TEACHING in the public and private schools I attended.]
The goal for any college bound kid, regardless of how they get there, is to go to college. How is a public or private school diploma more valuable than any other? Because it proves they jumped through all the ridiculous hoops set before them? I’m not sure that is really necessary. The college degree is what really matters in our society, and if kids meet the admissions requirements for college and successfully graduate from college, who really cares what they did prior to college?
June, I will check again. In theory more than two links requires moderation, but you were not in the moderation cue. This means that Akismet probably grabbed your post (an anti spam thing that generally works pretty well). I’ll check into that momentarilyl
When I posted it without the links, it worked, but it put a big yellow banner at the bottom that said “Your comment is awaiting moderation.” I never got that when I posted it with the links. Then I posted a second one right after that one with the two links, and it went into la la land like the big post did when it included the two links.
(Not) June,
I think your posts are up now, thanks for your comments.
Thanks Greg. The link post never showed up though. I tried to send them in separate posts, but it still didn’t work.
COD: re:”The challenge in my comments is designed to weed out those that can not read a sentence, understand the context, and answer a simple question, namely spam bots and idiots. Are you a spam bot?”
No, I was homeschooled.
… which might well leave me in the latter category, if the evidence is on my side.
But actually…. it appears we agree on the necessity to maintain our rights against the fascists who would program your kids and steal them if they could Big Brother invading our lives and all of that;-) But tell that guy on your blog–the guy who is tempted to proof read Gregs work–that there is no such word as “rigidy”…except if you are reading a… you can probably guess where I was about to go…..or would I meet you there? I was just trying to post there about people who leave rocks in glass schoolhouses….
Hey Greg, what is that webtool you use to weed out spam here on your blog, but also leaves your Blog open to the public without a background check, or an inquisition? Seems that O’D is open to learning, AND discussion,which is a good sign.
p.s. we also agree about the fundies and their obfuscations of fact and science.
I’m getting confused as to where I should post my comments! There are a zillion posts all over the place.
Greg Laden @ Odonnellweb: “The bad and the ugly” … the good is there, just not addressed in this post.”
FYI, I was also unsure of why you left the Good out of the title. Thanks for clarifying.
Jon Strong, Miscreants Attack. . .: “I still haven’t met one home schooler who was pulled out for academic reasons.”
I have met several, though roughly half have gone back to public school after moving or finding better schools, etc. I met two of my best friends because they got pulled from public school to homeschooling for the very reason that public school education sucks. Of note is that they are a mildly religious to athiest family; definately not fundies. Also, they have been attending college full-time for several years now (I think this is year 4).
Another of my best friends was pulled out of public school because he had severe ADD and needed special attention. Because his parents homeschooled him, he was given the attention and dedication he needed, and is now a smart, normal guy.
Jon Strong again: “Their fourth grade son couldn’t read at all, and their eighth grade daughter was still sounding out words.”
I find that very troubling. I’ve known several people who specifically homeschooled their children for the first couple grades just so they could get a better grasp of reading, basic writing, and basic math. After this, they send their children to public school to learn the harder stuff the parent doesn’t have the knowledge or patience to teach.
My final point (which was actually my starting point) is that formal teaching is over-rated. I have never been to a formal school for learning how to drive, working on my car or programming computers (which is my job, by the way). However, I’m pretty good at all of those. Of the two wrecks I’ve been in, one was because I slept-walked to the car, and slept-drove over a fence (basically because of poor time management when I was 16) and the other was because I was racing and sometimes shit happens on the track. Also, I drove away from both wrecks–jumping a fence at 40 mph while sleeping did $4000 of mostly-cosmetic damage, and sliding under a guardrail at 95 mph did about 30 minutes and a can of spray paint worth of damage 7 years later. I’m not the best racer in the world, but I took 2nd place at the last event I went to. I’ve rebuilt many engines, swapped components, turbo-charged a car not meant to be turboed, done bodywork after sliding under a guardrail and taken a car from totalled to completely passing a level 3 Arizona state inspection. And I make enough money to share ownership of a house with my friend and pay for my hobbies because I taught myself programming (Google rocks).
I’m not saying formal teaching is pointless; sometimes it can be very useful. But you can learn a lot and be very successful without it.
Oops, I didn’t proof-read that very well: I meant to say the two wrecks were 7 years apart, not that it took 7 years to do 30 minutes of work.
Testing is a fairly boring topic for me. We do it. I can’t see any reason to bother cheating. I don’t want to prove that homeschooling is “better” and I don’t think it would work for everyone so test scores of homeschool VS public don’t interest me very much.
The ideology thing is interesting to me. I chose to HS for academic reasons and because I wanted to do it. I guess that is an ideology. After volunteering for a long dull year of kindergarten where my kid nearly forgot how to read and developed a “learning sucks” attitude and I got every kid sickness on the planet, I decided I couldn’t do worse than the school. To me, school should be about education and I just didn’t see that happening. There are so many other issues to deal with in a school setting and the kids spend a lot of time waiting around. So much wasted time. I knew I couldn’t teach everything off the top of my head but there are a lot of resources out there.
Socialization was a big reason too. Not the way most people seem to think of it though. I didn’t want my kids socialized by other kids. I’m tired of pretending that the socialization kids get at school is somehow great and they will grow up weird if they don’t experience play ground social drama. We joined clubs, they had friends their own age and neither of them are socially stunted (though generally one is shy and one is outgoing). The difference isn’t so much in quality of kid social drama, it’s quantity. They experienced all the important bully stuff and and even pressure to drink after a club meeting. But they didn’t/don’t have to face every day all day long. It’s the constant wearing down that makes peer pressure so effective and if they get time away to regroup and think about it, they are better able to resist it. We are in a fairly rough school district where violence is a concern. We dealt directly with bully situations both times we attended the school. The principle had no interest whatsoever in even discussing it because he didn’t see a problem at his school. You see, this is where the homeschool option is so important. It gives you leverage to deal with the school and if worse comes to worse it gives you an out. Otherwise, they make all the rules.
You probably think I have an insane hatred of public schools but no, I don’t. I’ve just been talking about the “bad and ugly” parts. I’m now (as I’ve said) very happily involved in a public school program. This program only exists because of the efforts of homeschoolers and of coarse, the willingness of this district (not my own) to work with homeschoolers to come up with this program. Classes are two days a week with a lot “home work” and a lot of parent participation. The kids get traditional class time and they retain a lot of time at home to pursue other things. It rocks. I wish it had been available for my older kid.
Great post MichealS.
It is interesting to hear from actual homeschooled kids. Even though your parents may not have been “perfect”, they did accomplish the most important thing a teacher can accomplish. They taught you to want to learn on your own and you pursued the knowledge you were lacking. They either taught you to think for yourself or at least didn’t squash your ability to do so because you were able to accept what you found even though it contradicted what they taught you. I hope I have done the same for my kids.
I believe this site requires registration to comment, and runs a spam filter in the background that apparently ate Not June Cleaver’s post. I have a variety of reasons for not using those two method - it’s way more detailed than should go into an off topic comment. Suffice it to say I have spent a lot of time and energy over the years figuring our how best to prevent spam while minimizing the hassle to anybody who wants to comment. A simple text based Turing test is the best compromise for now. Spam bots can’t get in , and all humans at a 3rd grade reading level should be able to get in. If somebody can’t read at 3rd grade level I doubt they have any desire to comment on my blog in the first place.
This site (Evolution… not just a theory any more) does not require registration, but you can register if you want.
The benefits of registration are …. nothing that I know of. Some day maybe It will dawn on me as to why such a thing exists.
The anti-spam thing that I use is called Akismet. It is free for small time use, there is a charge for commercial use (which I believe is a web site that takes in more than 500.00 a month in ads or sales).
As a server wordpress user, I have to join wordpress as though I was setting up a wordpress.com blog, and this gives me a code number. Then I install the Aksmet plugin and fiddle with it just a little (entering the wordpress key number).
The akismet web site is: http://akismet.com/
I have been running it for something like five weeks and it has filtered out 6,962 messages. I only know of a few that it filtered out that it shouldn’t have, but then again I don’t check very often, only when I’m alerted to a particular problem.
About six or seven spam messages have gotten past it in that time. That’s pretty good!
Not June: Send me the links (greg “at” gregladen.com) and I’ll make sure they get up (I can just insert them into your post, most likely)
COD: the web is “evolving’ into better democratic means of filtering, as well as anonymity protection for those who like truly open debate. The whole founding fathers approach of identify yourself, and if we decide to let you live, and then maybe, speak, as well as the standard of “edumacation for those who have attained a thrid grade reeding levl” is no longer fashionable;-)
Yes, cmf. But as we know, evolution is a slow and messy process. The web has a long way to go
What is remarkable to me is the number of paragraphs spent berating yours truly for not allowing comments or making commenting difficult on this site! All the problems certain unnamed (or, should I say, un not-named?!?!?) individuals have had were at their end, as has been noted not nearly sheepishly enough. (Most of the nastiest berating happened on another site … the “we hate Greg” site that COD maintains)
It probably isn’t so much a “we hate Greg” site as it is a “we hate the way Greg is lumping all homeschoolers into one bucket” site. There are many of us secular homeschoolers out there.
Greg, I sent you my links shortly after you asked for them. At the same time, I tried to post them again with no luck. I have tried twice again in the last few minutes with no luck. Weird, because I have been able to post links in some of my other comments.
Definitely NOT June Cleaver.
But June (not), really! Why do you keep saying this!!!
Prior to the beginning of the discussion that I’ve invited here on my blog, I did lump home schoolers to a large degree, but never really thought about or acted on that “lumping” I’m a more thoughtful and considerate person than to actually do that. I have then said, again and again and again and again … and again that I have found a great deal more diversity among home schoolers than I had expected.
Again and again and again, June.
No, it is not a “we hate greg” site and it is not a “we hate the way Greg is lumping” site. It’s a “We can read, but we cure can bitch” site!!!
//But June (not), really! Why do you keep saying this!!!//
That’s the first time I said it, Greg. Are you referring to me specifically or to all your commenters in a fit of exasperation over being so badly misunderstood?
(Not)June: this is my unrequested moderation moment of the week:
re: your ongoing comments that this blog is hard to post to>> we are all sure you mean well, and that you are seriously trying to post; but after awhile, when you repeat the same thing over and over and over it gets old>>>something is wrong with your computer, or your methodARE THE ONLY ONE>so get out of bed before 11 a.m. and fix your computer troubles, or it won’t just be your neighbors thinking you to be a little odd;-)….
Oh is that what he meant? Thank you so much for clarifying that for me cmf. I thought he was talking about something else.
Greg,
You posted this response (in part) at edspresso:
“Most of the very vocal home schoolers … those that have posted the most on my site to be exact, not necessarily the most vocal … have made drastic assumptions about me and my point of view, and seem almost incapable of understanding anything I say because the “know” what I’m “thinking” in such detail.”
Seems to me you were making some drastic assumptions about homeschoolers.
Silvia,
I have outlined what I think are the assumptions that people coming at this from my perspective make, myself included, in an effort to get some discussion going. There has been a lot of discussion, and this discussion has gone all over the place. I’m glad to have you join the discussion.
Greg Laden: “I’m worried about the sick fuck who is raping his own kids every day. I’m worried about the Tonya Hardingoids who are, well, just insane, being at home all day and all night alone with their kids, passing on their psychosis. I’m worried about people who believe they are totally competent, and that they know more than everyone else about everything, but who are actually simply unable to handle this and thus who are giving their kids … who might have some potential otherwise … the worst possible education.
So, which one of you home schoolers is raping your kids? Which one of you home schoolers is drunk all day? Which one of you home schoolers [fill in the blank with your favorite scary scenario]? Which one of you homeschoolers is as dumb as a brick?
What? No one is coming forward? Not surprising. See my point?”
No; I don’t. Yes there are abuse and/or incompetent parents. There are also abusive and/or incompetent State (government, generally) school teachers. Which causes more harm is an empirical question.
“Give into the power of the teacher the fewest possible coercive measures, so that the only source of the pupil’s respect for the teacher is the human and intellectual qualities of the latter.” –Albert Einstein–, __Ideas And Opinions__, p. 61, (Three Rivers Press).
“It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wreck and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty. To the contrary, I believe it would be possible to rob even a healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness, if it were possible, with the aid of a whip, to force the beast to devour continuously, even when not hungry, especially if the food, handed out under such coercion, were to be selected accordingly.”
“Autobiographical Notes,” in __Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist__, Paul Schilpp, ed. (1951), pp. 17-19 © 1951 by the Library of Living Philosophers, Inc. (from Karl Bunday’s Learn in Freedom blog).
From: Hyman and Penroe, __Journal of School Psychology__.
“Several studies of maltreatment by teachers suggest that school children report traumatic symptoms that are similar whether the traumatic event was physical or verbal abuse (Hyman, et.al.,1988; Krugman & Krugman, 1984; Lambert, 1990). Extrapolation from these studies suggests that psychological maltreatment of school children, especially those who are poor, is fairly widespread in the United States….”
“In the early 1980s, while the senior author was involved in a school violence project, an informal survey of a random group of inner city high school students was conducted. When asked why they misbehaved in school, the most common response was that they wanted to get back at teachers who put them down, did not care about them, or showed disrespect for them, their families, or their culture….”
“…schools do not encourage research regarding possible emotional maltreatment of students by staff or investigatiion into how this behavior might affect student misbehavior….”
“…Since these studies focused on teacher-induced PTSD and explored all types of teacher maltreatment, some of the aggressive feelings were also caused by physical or sexual abuse. There was no attempt to separate actual aggression from feelings of aggression. The results indicated that at least 1% to 2% of the respondents’ symptoms were sufficient for a diagnosis of PTSD. It is known that when this disorder develops as a result of interpersonal violence, externalizing symptoms are often the result (American Psychiatric Association, 1994).”
“While 1% to 2% might not seem to be a large percentage of a school-aged population, in a system like New York City, this would be about 10,000 children so traumatized by educators that they may suffer serious, and sometimes lifelong emotional problems (Hyman, 1990; Hyman, Zelikoff & Clarke, 1988). A good percentage of these students develop angry and aggressive responses as a result. Yet, emotional abuse and its relation to misbehavior in schools receives little pedagogical, psychological, or legal attention and is rarely mentioned in textbooks on school discipline (Pokalo & Hyman, 1993, Sarno, 1992).”
“As with corporal punishment, the frequency of emotional maltreatment in schools is too often a function of the socioeconomic status (SES) of the student population (Hyman, 1990).”
“Furthermore, according to a report for UNESCO, cited in Esteve (2000), the increasing level of pupil-teacher and pupil-pupil violence in classrooms is directly connected with compulsory schooling. The report argues that institutional violence against pupils who are obliged to attend daily at an educational centre until 16 or 18 years of age increases the frustration of these students to a level where they externalise it.” –Clive Harber, “Schooling as Violence”,p. 9, __Educatioinal Review__V. 54, #1.
“…It is almost certainly more damaging for children to be in school than to out of it. Children whose days are spent herding animals rather than sitting in a clasroom at least develop skills of problem solving and independence while the supposedly luckier ones in school are stunted in their mental, physical, and emotional development by being rendered pasive, and by having to spend hours each day in a crowded classroom under the control of an adult who punishes them for any normal level of activity such as moving or speaking. (DfID, 2000, pp 12, 13)” Quoted in Clive Harber, “Schooling as Violence”,p. 10, __Educatioinal Review__V. 54, #1.
“Violence at school is a prevalent problem. According to a national survey of school principals (National Center for Educational Statistics, 1998), over 200,000 serious fights or physical attacks occurred in public schools during the 1996-1997 school year. Serious violent crimes occurred in approximately 12% of middle schools and 13% of high schools. Student surveys (Kann et al, 1995) indicate even higher rates of aggressive behavior. Approximately 16.2% of high school students nationwide reported involvement in a physical fight at school during a 30-day period, and 11.8% reported carrying a weapon on school property (Kann et al, 1995).”
“Research on victims of violence at school suggests that repeated victimization has detrimental effects on a child’s emotional and social development (Batsche & Knoff, 1995; Hoover, Oliver, & Thomson, 1993; Olweus, 1993). Victims exhibit higher levels of anxiety and depression, and lower self-esteem than non-victims (eg., Besag, 1989; Gilmartin, 1987; Greenbaum, 1987; Olweus, 1993). Karen Brockenbrough, Dewey G. Cornell, Ann B. Loper, “Aggressive Attitudes Among Victims of Violence at School”, __Education and the Treatment of Children__, V. 25, #3, Aug., 2002.
“Results showed that the over-representation of Black males that has been cited consistently in the literature begins at the elementary school level and continues through high school. Black females also were suspended at a much higher rate than White or Hispanic females at all three school levels.” Linda M. Raffaele Mendez, Howard M. Knoff, “Who Gets Suspended From School and Why: A Demographic Analysis” __Education and the Treatment of Children__ V. 26, #1, Feb. 2003.
“The issue of social skills. One edition of Home School Researcher, Volume 8, Number 3, contains two research reports on the issue of social skills. The first finding of the study by Larry Shyers (1992) was that home-schooled students received significantly lower problem behavior scores than schooled children. His next finding was that home-schooled children are socially well adjusted, but schooled children are not so well adjusted. Shyers concludes that we are asking the wrong question when we ask about the social adjustment of home-schooled children. The real question is why is the social; adjustment of
schooled children of such poor quality?”
“The second study, by Thomas Smedley (1992), used different test instruments but comes to the same conclusion, that home-educated children are more mature and better socialized than those attending school.” …p. 277
“12. So-called ’school phobia’ is actually more likely to be a sign of mental health, whereas school dependancy is a largely unrecognized mental health problem”….p.281
Roland Meighan, “Home-based Education Effectiveness Research and Some of its Implications”, __Educational Review__, Vol. 47, No.3, 1995.
In Hawaii, between 1987 and 1997, juvenile arrests for assault, drug possession, and drug promotion fell in summer, when school was not in session. –Reported– burglaries fell in summer. Juvenile hospitalizations for human-induced trauma fell in summer.
“Criminal violence emerges from social experience, most commonly brutal social experience visited upon vulnerable children, who suffer for our neglect of their welfare and return in vengeful wrath to plague us. If violence is a choice they make, and there- fore their personal responsibility, as (Criminologist Lonnie) Athens demonstrates it is, our failure to protect them from having to confront such a choice is a choice we make, just as a disease epidemic would be implicitly our choice if we failed to provide vaccines and antibiotics. Such a choice-to tolerate the brutalization of children as we continue to do-is equally violent and equally evil, and we reap what we sow. …” Richard Rhodes, __Why they Kill: The Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist__.
“August 1, 1939″
…
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return. –W. H. Auden–
This has been interesting food for thought. But what about when the public education is so bad (our local high school has a 3% graduation rate!) that it would be educational neglect to actually put your children there?
Competition, not monopoly, improves businesses and it seems to me to be the same way with education. But that’s another discussion.
But here’s a thought for you: my very well-educated-at-home children will someday be productive members of society. Rather than cheating the system I see homeschooling as improving it.
Thanks for the interesting discussion.
3% Graduation rate? Where is that? That’s horrible! Is that for real?
Hmm…I’d like to know how my homeschool is subsidized by tax dollars. I don’t see a red cent for homeschooling my school aged children (5 out of 7). In fact, I pay taxes to a school down the street I don’t use. Since my school district spends about $11,000 per student, I’m saving them about $55,000 per year, You’d think they’d give me a little kickback.
Also, just because I believe in Creationism does not mean I won’t teach the THEORY of evolution. Since none of us can go back to the time when humans first occurred, neither of us can know for sure what happened. I choose the THEORY that has the most hope.
“I choose the THEORY that has the most hope.” Yeah, but do you tell your kids that religion is more than just a theory, and a mechanism for social control as well, based in “faith” not “Facts”?
And: where is that district with 3% graduation rate? I want to see the data?
“The argument that home school mom and dads can be trusted is not as strong as the argument that professional teachers can be trusted. ”
Utter hogwash. Teachers, schools and districts get monetary bonuses for high test scores. Homeschool parents get … what? The opportunity to continue doing exactly what they have been doing so far. Which of those sounds like a greater inducement to corruption to you?
The reason homeschoolers are resistant to oversight is because it is simply an imposition into their homes of the same system that they perceive as failing the rest of society. If the state can force them to educate according to a particular plan, they may as well skip homeschooling entirely. Were that plan actually working, they would have no need to homeschool; but it isn’t, so they do. To simply impose the plan by fiat solves nothing, and only stifles alternatives. You would resist too, if you found yourself in that situation.
” But education of our children must be taken seriously. So let’s take the home schooling out of the equation as long as the behavior of the community is so questionable. ”
These are not “our” children. These are MY children. You are suggesting that I sacrifice MY childrens’ educational opportunities for the dubious prospect that throwing them into the current system, one that is so broken that I refuse to use it, will somehow make it all better. Second, with hostile proposals like the one you just threw out — you did just suggest effectively destroying homeschooling entirely, until the homeschoolers toe the line to your satisfaction — is it any wonder that homeschoolers are a little uncooperative?
” as you might expect, this is simply more cheating of the system (see above) and 2) the degree to which home schoolers claim that they provide their children with quality education by using expert educators is an acknowledgment that home schooling is at the base very limited. ”
You utterly miss the point here. If I choose to contract expert educators, the point of homeschooling is not that I’m the one doing the educating. The point is that my child is getting the most appropriate piece of education for this point in time, based on his interests, skill level, and the educational track we are crafting for him. Your alternative? Stuff him in the class with everyone else his age, and free choice and individual need be damned.
“In the absence of data to the contrary, it is irresponsible to do anything but to assume that abusive or negative home environments are likely to occur among home schoolers. ”
In the absence of data to the contrary, it is irresponsible of me to do anything but assume you are sodomizing your dog. I’d better call the ASPCA and the police right now. We had better assume you are embezzling from your employer too, since you probably aren’t too happy with the idea of throwing open your bank account for general review. Just to be on the safe side.
Now, if you had said “In the absence of data to the contrary, it is irresponsible to do anything but to assume that abusive or negative home environments are likely to occur among home schoolers AT THE SAME RATES AS IN THE GENERAL POPULATION,” you might not have said something utterly ridiculous. So, take the rate of abuse in the general school population, apply it to the comparatively miniscule homeschool population, and you’d see what size of problem you are LIKELY to confront.
“I used to think it was all bad. Now I see that there are some good aspects to it. But I also see that there are problems. If I had to choose right now, I would prefer to eliminate home schooling completely rather than let it continue with these problems. ”
If you were to apply this same philosophy even-handedly to public schools, you would undoubtedly “eliminate [public] schooling completely rather than let it continue with these problems.” Given that you then go on to advocate a movement to forcibly delegitimize homeschooling, I disbelieve you when you claim to wish to work to solve the problems.
Interestingly, college boards at this time are taking precisely the opposite approach from you. They are actively interested in homeschooled applicants. I wonder what would make them so attractive? I guess it must be all that inherently inferior education those kids are getting.
“The argument that home school mom and dads can be trusted is not as strong as the argument that professional teachers can be trusted. ”
Utter hogwash. Teachers, schools and districts get monetary bonuses for high test scores. Homeschool parents get … what? The opportunity to continue doing exactly what they have been doing so far. Which of those sounds like a greater inducement to corruption to you?
I don’t know of any systems (I’m not saying they don’t exist … I just don’t know of any, certainly not in MN) where teachers get anything out of test scores other than an interference with their schedule. I know a lot of teachers, and I don’t think there is a trust issue with teachers. Theorizing about trust with home schoolers has gotten me into a lot of trouble with home schoolers … even though I don’t see any actual substantive reply to my concerns anywhere. But in the end, theorizing about either is inadequate. What I have suggested is that we need to have some kind of information. If I ask a question about the public education system, I can often get piles of data. If I ask a question about home schooling, there is a little bit of data everyone cites over and over again, but mostly what I get is anger and reactionary rhetoric.
TOM: The reason homeschoolers are resistant to oversight is because it is simply an imposition into their homes of the same system that they perceive as failing the rest of society. If the state can force them to educate according to a particular plan, they may as well skip homeschooling entirely.
Tom, this is exactly what bothers me! I can understand the resistance to oversight for a number of reasons, including the imposition you mention as well as the cost in time/effort/etc. (Instead of reporting what you are doing, you should be doing what you are doing). However, I have never suggested anything that would imply a link between what you are calling oversight and forcing anyone to educate according to a particular plan!
I would hope that any kind of reporting or oversight would mainly be used for something very much opposite of that. How many times are home schoolers reinventing the wheel? One can easily find numerous web sites in which home schoolers are communicating with each other… which indicates a need for this sort of thing, and indicates that it is happening in a large way. I don’t see any need for government oversight to ensure that home schoolers are doing anything specific pedagogically. That is not what I am suggesting. But it is automatic for many individuals to make the link.
With all due respect, and there is much respect due, I find many home schoolers remind me of mistreated dogs. If you go to pet the dog, it cringes, sometimes bites. But all you were going to do was to pet the dog.
(Tom: With respect to your very well written and reasoned posts, this does not specifically apply to you, but as you read through the comments on my various posts, you will see some evidence of this. Then, if you go off my site to the various home schooling sites and see what the same people say when I’m not looking … which is very funny because I can in fact see them on the internet
… you see the cringing and biting in a bit way!)
with hostile proposals like the one you just threw out — you did just suggest effectively destroying homeschooling entirely, until the homeschoolers toe the line to your satisfaction — is it any wonder that homeschoolers are a little uncooperative?
I assure you that this idea never occurred to me until after I witnessed the reaction and this reaction made me wonder. I am still wondering, frankly. Another analogy: A cop on patrol slows down to get a better look at someone who from a distance vaguely resembles a wanted felon. The person notices the cruiser slow down and runs away, turning down an alley and jumping over the fence. One would wonder. My proposal that home schooling has a problematic side was met with vigorous and obnoxious insistence that home schooling is 100% perfect and public education is 100% bad. Wow.
You utterly miss the point here. If I choose to contract expert educators, the point of homeschooling is not that I’m the one doing the educating. The point is that my child is getting the most appropriate piece of education for this point in time, based on his interests, skill level, and the educational track we are crafting for him. Your alternative? Stuff him in the class with everyone else his age, and free choice and individual need be damned.
Tom: Most home schoolers tell me that they (almost always one person in a couple) have all of the skills necessary to do all of the home schooling that needs to be done, and nothing else is needed. A few people indicate that they do anything outside the home but most do not. I have no idea what people are actually doing because there is no way to know because if you ask home schoolers what they are doing they cringe and bite.
“In the absence of data to the contrary, it is irresponsible to do anything but to assume that abusive or negative home environments are likely to occur among home schoolers. ”
In the absence of data to the contrary, it is irresponsible of me to do anything but assume you are sodomizing your dog. I’d better call the ASPCA and the police right now. We had better assume you are embezzling from your employer too, since you probably aren’t too happy with the idea of throwing open your bank account for general review. Just to be on the safe side.
Tom: Please check the grammar and also check your manual of Jeffersonian philosophy. What you say here is incongruous. I don’t assume anything about you. But you are cringing and biting.
If you were to apply this same philosophy even-handedly to public schools, you would undoubtedly “eliminate [public] schooling completely rather than let it continue with these problems.” Given that you then go on to advocate a movement to forcibly delegitimize homeschooling, I disbelieve you when you claim to wish to work to solve the problems.
I fully advocate shutting down the public schools under certain circumstances. I do a fair amount of work regarding “solving the problems” in education, it is not important that you believe me or not!
Tom, listen. My criticisms of public schools are similar to and different from home schooling. Similar in that they are as severe, at least. Different because I know something about public schools because they are not shrouded in mystery.
Do you teach your children to be so reactionary?
Okay, I should have read through the comments more thoroughly before ranting.
Some info you may be interested in:
– My children take the STAR test; administered at home, but by our consulting teacher. More on that below.
– We are signed up through a charter school that supports homeschooling. We receive state funds (though somewhat less than the standard public school per-pupil allotment), and have oversight by a consulting teacher who visits monthly and reviews progress and curriculum planning.
– We choose to homeschool for reasons of temperament needs (I think my son would do poorly in a public school, between the particular attention demands of the structured classroom day, and the pirahna in the social pool) as much as for a poor public school system in our area. Religion is not a factor.
– I’m right there with you in worrying about the fundies, with the proviso that I limit it to when they try to impose their will on the rest of us, as in the public schools. When we try to prevent them from teaching their own children according to their belief systems, then we’re the ones imposing our beliefs, and it falls afoul of that part of the First Amendment that reads “…or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Sure, I think their beliefs are laughable, but that’s part of the price of a free society. I trust their kids will have the ability to come to their senses when they grow up. (Or choose not to come to their senses, but again, that’s free choice.)
Tom: Do you get any tax breaks at all? You note that the state funding you get is less than per-pupil rates. I assume there is some logic behind that (may be a bad assumption) … like the per pupil rate has to account for overhead one assumes not relevant to home schooling. Yet, while you do not have a maintenance department or a hungry boiler to feed with fuel oil, you probably do have a house and some degree of climate control, etc!
Greg, I’m not aware of any implications to my tax return. As to the exact dollar amount we get, I’ll have to go back and look it up. I’m confident that some of what you mention about facilities, et cetera, applies to the allotment calculation. I did not mean to imply that the figure was unfair, only that homeschoolers are expected to do as well on fewer dollars total. Certainly doing without a top-heavy administration helps make that achievable. (At one point in the recent past, it was reported that there were 116 administrators for every 100 teachers in our district.)
Several of the school voucher propositions I have seen included provisions that the voucher student would receive half the state allotment, with the other half going to the local district. That’s right: the local district would be paid not to teach that student. I don’t know whether any of these were accepted by their respective states. The implication was clear however: voucher students were expected to do as well in their private schools (which do have facilities and hungry heating systems) on half as many dollars as the public school students.
Regarding being reactionary: you must understand that by the time that most homeschoolers arrive at your blog, they have already weathered more than one attempt to regulate or simply remove the opportunity for them to homeschool. Then there is the general opprobrium heaped on homeschooling by the general public. To continue with your analogy, you need to ask, “Who has been mistreating the dog?” (I’m not entirely innocent of it myself.)
Two years ago the state made an attempt to revoke the charter of our homeschool affiliation, unless a sufficient number of parents agreed to take the STAR tests. Many of the parents are resistant to the standardized tests for various reasons (”we have not been teaching to the test”; “our son for neurological reasons does poorly on timed tests”; “this measures his test taking ability, not his learning ability”; “he was ahead of grade level last year, but for whatever reason is at grade level this year, which will register as ‘no progress’”; others in this vein). Whatever the movtivations of the state, the net effect to the homeschoolers would be the same: namely, to shut them down, or at least force them to try to educate their (unfunded) children at a serious disadvantage compared to their (funded) public school counterparts. The results of such a course of action seemed to be woefully predictable. Submit right away, get a (bogus) poor grade, and get shut down; or get defunded, get a (legitimate) poor grade in a couple years, and get shut down.
I don’t know whether that attempt was fended off through legal channels, or whether enough parents knuckled under, but we are still funded. Interestingly, the test results are actually positive.
People get tired of being called whackos and incompetent, or for that matter being lumped in with the folks that even they consider whackos. Many of the things you suggest sound like more of the same, subtle though the differences in your reasoning may be. The fact that you arrived at your position via your own path does not figure into the reaction.
To get back to the the question of resistance to oversight: Standardized tests are only good at testing standardized children. (If that sounds too much like a rhetorical flourish, substitute “standardized curricula.”) Homeschoolers are painfully aware that they are being pressured to submit to measurement with a yardstick that is fundamentally at odds with their approach. I forget at this moment whether you have suggested alternatives to the standardized tests, but that seems to be the only option that the government is offering now.
Geez this board is alive…..I am still waiting on that information about a district with a 3% graduation rate….sounds like BS.
Homeschooling Rocks! You don’t know what you are talking about!
Thank you. I was searching the Net for arguments against homeschooling and I wasn’t having any luck. The vast majority believe that, across the board, schooling at home is a wonderful thing. So again, thank you for your brave and isolated opinion.
All across the board, you’re going to find successes, failures, and people in between.
I know homeschoolers who are taking graduate-level programming classes, and I know publicly schooled 11th graders who haven’t, and probably can’t, read Shakespeare.
Conversely, I know a musically brilliant and generally sharp public school kid -she’s my best friend- and a kid whose parents are complete dumbasses to the point of negligence. Their kid didn’t want to brush her teeth and only wanted to eat candy, so she’s nine or ten years old -I try not to think about her, freaks me out- and has virtually no teeth.
I left school at the end of third grade. I’m in tenth grade now. And I freely admit, at the risk of being jumped on by rabid people from both sides, that it hasn’t been a smooth ride.
One of the reasons I’ve wavered on the issue is that my school was retarded so I had to leave abruptly, meaning that for fourth and fifth grade I was pretty much floating around, alone, skipping from curriculum to curriculum.
Some days, I want to go back. Others, I’m happy I’m out. I really like my math teacher, and my theater group. My local school is one of those nightmares with security guards, metal detectors, a graduation-rate high of 70%, where about half of the students don’t speak English and if you’re literally a minute late to class, you’re put in a holding cell by the principal’s office so you don’t knock someone up or get high. Needless to say, that put the brakes on the, “Try it for a semester,” idea, and is also why I had to find the specialized schools.
The difficult thing about being homeschooled is that you don’t have someone high up telling you what to do. If you want friends, you have to get off your ass and go out and poke around until you find a peer group you like. It can be discouraging. Also, I wanted to high school for ninth grade but my mom passive-aggressively stopped me…I’m not going for the last two years because I’ve already been robbed of the experience that I wanted.
Yet, homeschooling isn’t all bad. I have friends, my parents don’t abuse me, I have intellectual freedom, I’m way ahead of my ‘grade level’ in most subjects, and I can pursue my hobbies. That’s a lot to appreciate.
Homeschoolers aren’t all loaded. The Mormons I mentioned are supported solely by their church. The four kids (three boys and a girl, ages 9-16) share a room and their apartment is three rooms. There’s also the question of what that money’s going to.
My dad makes about 140k a year. Subtract 1/3 in taxes and 24k a year in rent on a small, two-bedroom apartment…we’re not rich.
The potential for abuse is the same in both systems. I knew a kid in school who was always showing up with bruises and broken bones. She was jumpy in class, and afraid of everyone. Sounds like a pretty classic abuse case, but nobody ever took action.
Some people take their kids out of school to rape them. They’re indisuputably disgusting, but shouldn’t be considered homeschoolers: ‘homeschooling’ is just a screen for them. Some people buy backpacks to hide bombs, but most people buy backpacks to haul their stuff around.
The part of your argument that really gets to me is your belief that homeschooling parents are wrong because they spend all their resources on their kids instead of working through the PTA to make the school better. Now, making schools better is good, but I’m a libertarian and as far as I’m concerned, I don’t owe my time or resources to anyone else.
The present school system is undeniably fucked up anyway, I believe we can all agree that the government forcing people to hand their children over to its education system is wrong. If they were available but voluntary the would improve vastly and the moral issue would disappear.
Sorry about the rambling.
The thing about my math class and theater group isn’t as pathetic as it sounds.
Theater productions are the best for screwing around with friends, and my math teacher’s a little crazy so that class is insanely fun.
I met all of my friends through theatrical exploits. Met my steady boyfriend of a year in one of the first classes I took: playwriting.
And just to be clear about that, I’m a girl.
All of your arguments are pointless and just plain silly. That’s something I would not have expected from someone who claims to have a degree from Harvard and be so well educated.
I have not read all of the comments, so forgive me if I am repeating someone else, but in your “Conclusion” you try to convince homeschoolers that government oversight is the key to perfecting it. I beg to differ. Look at what a mess government oversight has made of the public school system. Schools that make it their mission to make every student conform, squelch creativity, discourage questioning, reward for no reason, discourage overachievement, and use children as guinea pigs for some of the worst social engineering experiments ever. They are nothing more than political pawns. ( “I am from the government! We’re here to help! Let us take care of you!” Uh….I think I’ll pass.) No. More, bigger government control of education is not a solution to any of the so-called problems you supposedly have with homeschooling.
For one thing, some states DO require homeschoolers to take the standardized tests (which really do not measure a child’s level of understanding or what a child knows, but that’s a different discussion). This is done at the parents’ expense by a “certified teacher” in a room full of other kids taking the same test. For some reason, homeschoolers actually do better on these tests than public schooled kids whose teachers often “teach to the test”. Go figure.
Also, how is government oversight going to solve the “problems” that YOU see with homeschooling? How is it going to help with funding? I know that with the “cyber charter school” movement, like K12, the school system can count them as attending the school, even if they never set foot in the classroom and, thus, get full funding for each one. Is that your angle? How does this help the student, who is still homeschooled, but tied to a computer during set hours during the day. With regular homeschooling, children can go on field trips to the zoo or museum, or older children can work a part-time job or do volunteer work, and still get their school work done. Not so with a system like this.
As for the “homeschoolers have fewer resources of lower quality” and “homeschoolers have lower quality teaching” arguments, how do you know? Have you done a scientific study of this? I know there are public schools with state of the art equipment, but I’m sure, as in my city/county, there are many more with crappy equipment and old books. Some classes in some schools don’t even have enough books for all of the kids to have their own copy. But, by golly, they have a new gymnasium. Wait a minute - there’s one school that doesn’t have a gymnasium because they had to spend all of the gymnasium money on bringing the building up to code!
As for the lower quality teaching, why do homeschoolers do better academically than the public schoolers. What is “low quality” about having a teacher practically at your beck and call all day? Also, just how much “teaching” is taking roll, passing out papers, dealing with difficult students, etc.? I had a retired teacher tell me, when I first started homeschooling, to make sure my children knew how to read and read well as early as possible, because if a person knows how to read they can learn anything they want. They can and they do.
“One way or another, home schoolers are able to do this because of differential distribution of resources, and the act of home schooling, like the act of attending private schools, contributes broadly to a lowering of quality of experience for everyone else. This is America. The American Ethic allows for such selfish behavior. But it should be understood to be what it is..”
I attended private school myself, but not because of a so -called “differential distribution of resources”, but because my divorced, unsupported mother wanted a better life for us and made the sacrifice. I went to school with people who wore Polo shirts whose fathers were doctors. We lived in a small house with a one car garage. We drove an old car with a loud muffler. If parents really want to send their children to private school, they can, and don’t try to give me any of that “differential distribution of resources” crap.
As for private schooling and homeschooling being “selfish”, do you also call those parents who spend hours working on homework - drilling math facts, reviewing history, reading great literature - “selfish” as well? Aren’t they giving their children an unfair advantage over those students whose parents either work too much, don’t make enough money, or just don’t give a flip? What about those public school parents that can afford to send their kids to Sylvan or some other tutoring facility over the summer or after school?
“Home schooling is ideologically driven.” Of course it is. Every institution is ideologically driven - yes, even the public school system.
http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=6974
I believe your real problem with this is that you fear it doesn’t jibe with your personal ideology. Too bad.
“Colleges should not accept home schooling high school certificates or diplomas, for instance, until some of these problems are addressed.”
Wow. It must burn you up to know that colleges are actually recruiting homeschoolers because of their varied interests and abilities. Yes, even your supposed alma mater - Harvard - has had at least two homeschoolers that I know, and will soon be getting even more. And to beat it all, they are Creationists!
THAT’s the crux of the problem I think you have with homeschooling. The government oversight you are talking about is not for the benefit of the homeschooled kids at all, but because homeschoolers can choose their own curriculum, and you assume (probably correctly) that the majority of homeschoolers do not subscribe to your belief that the theory evolution is no longer a theory. This isn’t about how you sit up nights worrying about homeschooled kids, or how much you care about society in general. Not at all.
“At this time, that is what I would recommend, even though I admit it would also be throwing the baby out with the bathwater, because there do seem to have been some success, and some important and positive progress, with some home schooling efforts.”
Are you kidding? SOME homeschooling efforts have had SOME success? Please. Look up the “success” rates of public schools. You should be embarrassed.
So… have you heard about the “After-Schoolers” movement? They aren’t government-regulated either, and they let anybody in - homeschoolers, public schoolers and private schoolers. (*Gasp* They’re inclusive!) What if they’re teaching creationism AND getting into ivy-league colleges as well?
Oh, and there is a Christian program in my city, as well as in other urban areas, where they teach disadvantaged children how to read. I know of some homeschooling mothers and older homeschooled kids who help out there - and they aren’t even “certified” by the state. I’m not sure many - if any - of them hold degrees in special education or the like. The program has had great success - and by “success” I mean the kids really learn how to read actual books, not dumbed down “readers”, and comprehend - I do not mean that they learned a few sight words and how to “decode” the rest….eventually. They receive none of your precious government funding. Not one penney. They are volunteers from all walks of life and all income levels who truly care about the future of children.
The constitution does NOT say that the U.S. government owes us an education. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. You have to pursue it. If you want to go to an ivy league school or send your kids to private school, you have the right to sacrifice, study hard and pursue the path to get what you want.
And get this - - learning takes place every day without the “benefit” of government oversight, government teachers or government funds. Pull your head out of the sand and check it out.
I am a homeschooler. I chose to homeschool for educational reasons. I have a child (now 17) who was very interested in mathematics and science, and the only way to give him the freedom to pursue his interests was to allow him to assist in dictating his own education. The results of this decision have been magnificent. He passed the AP Calculus with a 5 last year (as a sophmore), and prior to that CLEP’ed Pre-Calc and Algebra 1 and 2. I barely know funnybook algebra so I didnt teach him…..he learned it. My son will graduate high school in a month (a year early) using Pennsylvanias “30 credit” rule. 30 College credits gives you a Dept of Education diploma. He will have an Associates degree at 18. The best advantage is that he has gone from hating school to being a life long learner. Knowledge is something to be sought for its own sake, not because someone is telling you that it MUST be done in a specific way.
In a Thomas Jefferson Education the following example is sketched:
Little Johnny is sitting in math class, the teacher says ” and in this right triangle……”
Johnny says “Mrs.___, you are basing your instruction on Euclid, however Gauss and Einstein have both argued that Euclidian Geometry is limited by…..”
“Johnny, this is the way we do it here, this is the way you will do it, if you want to get an A”
Public education is designed with a specific type of “average” child in mind, and they educate that child. Mediocrity is the key word here. What if you have an exceptional child? How about one with special needs? Maybe just one who is really talented in one area? Specialization is what we value in adults, why not value it in children? The fact is, there truly is more than one way to de-fur a feline.
Public education was initially designed because the poor were not being educated at all, the middle classes did not attend (they were educated at home to take up trades and professions), and the upper classes (usually taught by private tutors) wouldnt have dreamed of attending public school. Homeschooling is not a new movement, its an old one revisited.
Homeschools are subject to oversight. Every year we have to turn in to the school district a portfolio of our work for the year. They review it, and if it is inadequate, our kid dosn’t pass the grade. Standardized testing…..is a joke. We have never had a problem with it, but I know of public school kids that became expert at writing messages using the fill in dots. Homeschool SAT scores (my son got a very respectible 1480 on the math and reasoning, but wants to try again for a perfect score) are logged in with our public school district. Claiming to be homeschooled is not an option for registration…the school district gets the credit….perhaps you should ask the school districts why they fight about having a homeschool registration option….maybe they like our numbers.
Greg, I fail to see how I am cheating anyone. I pay for my sons college level courses out of pocket, pay property taxes, AND the school district gets to keep the 15,000 that is allotted to educate my son. Maybe they can send some of those poor kids on the field trip.
Assuming that I am drunk all day, a fundie evangelist, and raping my kids is offensive. Asking the homeschooling parents who are guilty of the above to step forward, and then reading something into the lack of response is trite. How about if all the public school parents who are drunk all day and raping their kids step forward. Huh..no answer….go figure.
You’re completely right. You know what hacks me off SO much more than homeschooling, though? People like you. You cheat inner city schools of good students, lowering the quality and raising the violence because you arrogantly and selfishly choose so-called “good” neighborhoods and towns to raise your children in. If you had any concern for the wellbeing of society whatsoever, you would find the worst school in a 50-mile radius and place your children there.
I would just like to say ,that the only reason I chose to homeschool, was the lack of disipline in public schools. My child was verbally threatened at school, infront of adult witnesses, but because the boy did not actually hurt her they would not expell or reprimand him.If my child will not be protected by the people we are supposed to trust I’ll keep her at home .( he said he would kill her because she stood up for another student.)
Interesting conversation. I can see that this is over a year old, but I just wanted to say that I am a homeschooling mother who is willing to answer any questions you may have about the mysteries of homeschooling.
I, too, realize that this conversation is old, but I would like to throw my 2 cents in.
I have 1 child in public schools, and 1 child that I homeschool. The reason for this? Because my youngest needs speech therapy that our tiny, rural, school can not provide. We drive an hour from home twice a week, to go to 2 3-hour long therapy lessons, where he is with other children his age.
He’s 6. It’s insulting to imply that I can not give him what he would learn, and THEN SOME, in public schools, due to the one on one attention he gets. While his peers are learning to use scissors, write their names, and add 5+5, we are reading, doing 3+ digit addition and subtraction, we do fractions and division like it’s nothing, tackling science that goes far beyond the “Let’s look outside! What’s the weather today?!” talk that my daughter’s teachers considered science. In your field, you have to admit that our science classes are strongly lacking across the board in public schools. In our area, teachers are having to take time out of class to teach children English, while other children sit doing busy work, or being bored.
We are non-religious. We live, a family of 4, off of $45,000 before taxes. Is that rich? No. Is it poor? We certainly don’t think so. We live within our means, and there is someone home every day to have warm meals on the table.
I am a registered nurse that dropped out of the most secure, expanding market in our current economy.
I did what I felt was best for my child. I’ll adjust that, yearly, as I see fit.
And isn’t that what we SHOULD be doing?
Imagine the equally loud, and violent, uproar if someone insisted that all public school children were to be forced into homeschooling, or, even better, imagine the uproar if suddenly private schools were outlawed, and all of those parents were told to send their children to public schools.
Sounds like a smart kid. Keep him challenged!!!!
I’m a single father of a home schooled child. While I’m sure home school has it’s place in many situations, the opposite of that is true as well.
Unfortunately for my child, his mother is doing home school for self service only. By doing home school she can do it on her own schedule, which resembles a roller coster rather than a nice steady pace. She stays up late, gets up late, and constantly finds excuses for not have homeschool days. My son has 3 hours of home school per day “maximum and thats being generous”. My sons mother, isn’t married, doesn’t work, is healthy but gets social security and child support from me. She, is basically teaching my son that one, doesn’t need to follow a schedule or work very hard to succeed in life. In my opinion, one should have follow much stricter rules, as well as attain credentials before being granted the right to home school there children. Home school is not for everyone, (too many freaks out there).
I have found this article to be very interesting, and yes, I’m a homeschooler. I don’t consider myself geeky, but, hey, who am I to judge? I’m just a homeschooled teenager, right?
I have many, many comments, but if I share them all, I will probably sound extremely defensive.
On the testing, I have to conclude you have not personally met very many homeschoolers. When I took my elementary & middle school tests, an English teacher friend of ours administered them and my mom wasn’t even there. I took the PSAT and the SAT at the local public school.
Also, I find it amusing that you think we use public school resources. What are you referring to? I (or rather, my parents) pay the same taxes as public schoolers, so for me to join public school athletics or academics should not be a problem. Personally I am not a part of any of these, though. Many homeschoolers aren’t.
Finally, I find your comment about public education to be very…left wing. “I should attend public school for the good of the rest of the students”. Okay, what about my good? What if homeschooling helps me? My sacrifice is insignificant for the greater good? That would be called utilitarianism. If you’ve ever read Hard Times by Charles Dickens (which I just read in my recent English course), you can understand where I gain this response.
I apologize if I sounded defensive, I can understand where many of arguments come from, even if I don’t agree with you.
I am your exact opposite, Mr. Laden, I’ll be the first to admit. I’m a junior in high school, I’m homeschooled, I’m a Christian, I’m a creationist, I’m a right-wing conservative, and I don’t agree with what you’re saying.
I have a question for you: how many homeschoolers have you met?
Thank you,
Hannah
The author must surely be a product of public schools. I see so many words spelled incorrectly. Even the name Ronald Reagan…not Regan.
I invite everyone who has previously commented on test results, with personal knowledge, to report the circumstances under which they took the tests!
OK, I will take you up on that.
You have no idea what you are talking about. We have homeschooled all of our children, over 20 years of education. In NOT ONE instance has a SAT test or IOWA test been allowed to be administered at home with the results being added to any research or reporting. We had to pay extra, and our children went to local high schools to have the test administered as any other child. I was no where around.
Our children had to take tests to be admitted into colleges and university just as any other; and both daughters graduated at the top of their class.
I had our special needs daughter in the public school for “socialization” the teacher told me she was “unteachable” so I brought her home as well. She can read and write now, and her math is only a few years behind age level. We do not use your public library, orny other school resources. We pay twice for our children’s education, once through taxes and once through purchase. We pay 100% of all field trips. I get real tired of people who have no knowlege of homeschooling pretending to be experts and quoteing the ever faithful socialization charge out.
Have you ever met any homeschoolers? Had you, they are polite, will look you in the eye, and will answer questions without extensive use of slang or foul language. For yoru information, we teach our children how to learn, take facts and determine their own conclusion; and yes that includes evolution.
While there are a few who abuse any situation, even public school teachers; the majority of homeschooling parents are graduates of higher education (the majority being retired from the public school system). I warn parents that homeschooling is not for everyone. We take abuse from the local school board, because they insist we are pulling families away from homeschooling when nothing could be further from the truth.
I went to private schools my whole life. I started my children in public school and then, due the lack of supervision in the lunch room and playground, finally enrolled them in private schools. My olden son is in the middle of 9th grade at a private school, but I am toying with the idea of home schooling him next year. Why? Because he tells me that 99% of the kids say the “F word” under their breath. Before I make a decision, I need to go and spend time in his classrooms to see what is actually taking place.
I have lots of relatives and friends who home school and I have struggled with the philosophy of home schooling for many years. Something is not “quite right” with home schooling or the products of home schooling, but I have never been able to verbalize it until recently.
This is it . . . we all have the need to be part of a community. To be healthy is to feel a burden for the improvement of others in turn to grow and improve by the influence of others outside of our nuclear family unit. Otherwise, we become isolated mountains of strength and self-centered pillars of morality who eventually start to implode.
The sad thing about some home schooling parents is that they begin to view home schooling as a religion, that to send their children to a classroom setting would be “giving up” and “less than ideal.” One mom whose home schooled daughter was obviously failing scholastically, psychologically, and socially in the home school environment said, “I’ve thought about giving up and sending her to school.” I’ve also seen a number of parents send their kids to school and be pleasantly surprised to see their children suddenly thrive and blossom.
Why would children suddenly thrive and blossom after leaving the home school to go to a traditional classroom? I only know that my own children needed mentors in addition to their parents after about age 9 or 10. A teacher that loved my child, agonized over my child, and encouraged my child on a daily basis when coupled with my own love, agonizing, and encouragement seemed to have an amazing effect on them.
This is what home schooling is missing . . . a child’s knowledge that he is loved not only by his family, but by a larger community. I’m afraid that without this experience children grow up self-centered and inward focused and not able to extend love and commitment outside of their nuclear family.
It would be interesting to test this theory by seeing what types of vocations home schoolers chose as compared to traditionally schooled children. I’m not ruling out home schooling, but I think that outside mentors are a key factor to healthy development as well as ensuring that these children feel that they are an integral part of a larger community.
I am 12, a firm believer in evolution, and this is insane!
My mother is a major in education and computer sciences, and is perfectly capable of teaching.
I am part of a secular group that holds classes tought by both parents and qualified outside teachers.
I just took the ACT and got 97th and 95th percentile in English and Reading respectively.
Next time, talk to some homeschoolers beofre you write something like this.
Never judge someone unless you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.
This is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. My friends who are homewchooled are the SMARTEST people I know. They are so much farther ahead then us. Besides, it’s none of YOUR business what parents want to teach their children. To deny parents the right to teach their own children is unAmerican. Your ignorance and stupidity frankly annoys me.
It’s funny to me how blogs like this just do the author and their point such an injustice by proving what home-schoolers across America have been trying to say for years.
During my years of being homeschooled, I have taken almost every standerdized test that every other public school student has taken. Where did I take them? In public schools! What did i score? Far above “grade level”, and in the 80th-98th percentile, and good enough to get into college as a 17 year-old, home-schooled, high-school senior.
I was home schooled for almost all of my 12 years of education. *almost* because my parents have always allowed me the choice to go to public school or even private school, or to stay home schooled. I’d tried it occasionally, but never stayed more than a few weeks, because I’d just realize that I was right were I needed to be academically, and that my “peers” were downright uncivilized, and that I was actually learning more at home.
During my junior year in high school, i had a boyfriend who went to a public school, so i decided to enroll for that year. What happened to during that full year of public school was disgraceful. First, because of the 8 hour days and 3 hours of homework, I was no longer able to participate in the other social and community actives (such as 4-H, horse shows, piano lessons & recitals, etc.) that I once had as a homeschooler.
As it turned out, this boyfriend of mine turned out to be a sicko, and abusive, physically, emotionally, and sexually. When I reached out to my school staff, (counselors, principals, teachers) for help, what I got was promise, but little action. Nothing was done to prevent these acts from occurring on school grounds, and my parents were never even notified of my condition and situation. There was never any action taken against my offender by the school, so instead, I was forced to transfer to a different school.
It was just a bad, sad, situation all together, but all that aside…
I am not homeschooled because my family are religious yahoos, and I was taught all about evaluation AND all the other opposing views. I was taught to do the research for myself, and form my own opinion on everything. What I’ve come to believe is that there is a God, and He created the universe, the earth, and all that is in it, and that is my own faith, not my parent’s.
As for tax dollars, and cheating the system, my parents (and myself, since I have had a job since I was 15), have paid the same taxes as everyone else. We’re not rich, by any means. My dad is a car-salesman, and during my younger years, we had to move several times so that my mom could afford to stay home to teach my brother and myself. Off and on, we have been involved in public “home school” programs, which received federal funding for us being enrolled there, as did the public schools I attended or where took select classes.
I am now a part of one of these schools, and attending college simultaneously, and doing just fine in all my classes, (all A’s and B’s so far!). I am not socially awkward, geeky, or reclusive, and do not feel as if I have been disadvantaged in any way by being home schooled. I plan on majoring in English and in Fine Art, and going on to home school my own children in the future, just as my parents did, because I know from experience that it is the best way to give a child a complete and comprehensive education.
I’m a homeschooled student, and I’ll say right now that i do not like it.
While not everything in this article is accurate, (such as the abuse in homeschooling families, that’s extremely rare) most of it is true, or at least close.
I think the the oversight section is 100% common sense. There is no oversight whatsoever, and it leads to sub-par acedemic achievement from many homeschoolers. There is no required curriculem. I didn’t take a science course until 6th grade, and have never taken a social studies course of any kind. My mother doesn’t teach me. She sleeps untill noon evey day, and everything i learn i teach myself. I’m 14 and cannot write in cursive.
Oversight should be mandatory. Makes some laws congress.