I finally found a homeschooler who agrees with me!
Published by Greg May 17th, 2007 in Homeschooling, Education, CommentaryHer name is Stephanie, and she says:
“I don’t have to turn in anything to the state that shows what I’m teaching my son. With the governor promoting this as Home Education Week, it really is a shame that there are no rules or guidelines, [dictating that] you go in … and they test to see if your child is learning what he/she should be learning.
Homeschooling is not for everyone. If you have a child who does not want to learn, and parents who don’t what level their child is on curriculum-wise, it makes things very difficult … If you have parents who are not dedicated to their child’s education, and they don’t teach the child, then that child can’t grow up and function in today’s society. It’s really scary, and there should be rules and guidelines.
[Home Education Week] means that the state of Mississippi and the United States accept home education, and they accept it on the same level as public or private schooling. That said, there should be certain rules and guidelines that each state sets for parents to go by. Whether it’s standardized testing or whatever, there should be rules and guidelines that each family has to abide by for the sake of the child.
For people who want something different for their children, there are resources out there,” she said. “You are not alone.”
Go Stephanie.
I totally agree. We toyed with the idea of home schooling our kids but really decided we were not dedicated enough to make it work at home (and my husband is a teacher). It would be to easy to blow off the stuff we didn’t enjoy. But I think it is a disservice to kids that are home schooled that there is not always state guidelines that they have to meet. There actually are guidelines in my state but they are a bit vague.
It’s hard to believe that any home education program would go completely unregulated! I’m almost speechless!
First I had to apply through the provincial Board of Education in order to get permission to home school my son. After they sent me the curriculum guidelines (endless they were, too), I had to submit a ‘detailed’ report on what curriculum I was going to teach for the year, which then had to be ok’d by the Board before they would even ok our application.
I also had to submit reports to them during the homeschool year along with work samples to prove he was actually following the curriculum I originally set out.
Incidently, they also have the right to have a child tested before re-entering the public school system and in order to graduate and move on to a community college program, a home school student has to complete the provincial GED (high school equivalency) exams
No regulations, huh?! I guess this explains why other parents laugh about how they only have to spend an hour a day on their child’s education. - And these kids may be running the world some day?!
Take care;
Anna
The idea of homeschool “parents who are not dedicated to their child’s education” seems just a bit incongruous, don’t you think? If someone does not care whether his child’s education is successful, the easier route by far is to dump the child off in the public school and let the state handle it. Heck, you even get six or seven hours of free babysitting out of the deal, five days a week.
By that I don’t mean to imply that the public school is de facto a dumping ground, nor that public education is automatically inferior (though that argument could be made under certain circumstances, for some districts or for some children). Nor do I want to address topics such as “unschooling” or religious homeschoolers; those choices are made consciously by the parents, regardless of whether the jury is out on the efficacy of those methodologies. The point I make is simply that the choice to homeschool is never the path of least resistance, therefore the bogeyman of the lazy homeschool parent is a fairly laughable one.
I agree with Tom, parents who choose to homeschool are invested in their child’s education. Those parents who aren’t dedicated enough go the private or public school route. (This isn’t a slam against those parents; but there are options to homeschooling and parents are free to choose them, so it is ludicrous to think that some ‘lazy’ parent would choose the homeschooling option.).
Regulations are not needed. Parents are capable of picking out textbooks and devising lesson plans without the help of the State. Just because poor little Stephanie had trouble picking out a Math textbook, doesn’t mean the rest of us do. And if you have problems it’s easy to get help. Saxon has online test to help you determine what grade level your child is at, and which book to use. I assume the other publishers do too. As I am happy with Saxon I haven’t looked.
Regulations lead to a cookie cutter education which is one of the problems with the public schools. Children are individuals not mass produced clones. They have different learning styles and different interest.
Also who would be in charge of creating ‘regulations’? The public schools that homeschoolers are in competition with and that are failing our children? The ultra religious Fundamentalist Homeschool Groups? (Hank Bounds the Superintendent of Education in Mississippi meet with one of the ULTRA RELIGOUS GROUPS to ask for their input on legislation he didn’t meet with any secular groups).
Homeschoolers in Mississippi take the ACT or SAT to get into college, depending on the college they choose to attend.
We file a certificate of registration with the school attendance officer for our school district each year.
And yet homeschoolers in Mississippi are thriving and successful. On the other hand our public schools are in disarray with school principals dismissing hazing and bullying as “horse play” and doing nothing to discourage it.
Maybe once Hank Bounds gets the low test scores, the bullying and violence etc in the public schools under control we will take his and others demands for regulations seriously. Until then maybe we homeschoolers should regulate the public schools, as we seem to be doing a better job (and with less money to boot).
I agree with Sandra and Tom. I am a secular, evolution-teaching home educator living in Mississippi. In my experience (personally and as the founder of a tri-state inclusive homeschooling organization), homeschooling parents take the responsibility of educating their children very seriously. We, as parents, want our children to succeed and therefore have so much to lose if we fail.
Although I disagree with many of my fellow homeschoolers’ methods or philosophies (or lack thereof), I gladly acknowledge their rights to practice and pursue them. Likewise, the best thing pro-reg homeschoolers and state legislators can do for independent homeschoolers is stay out of our way. We don’t need another person’s guidance or expertise to excell; we need the freedom to teach to our children’s individual strengths and help them work through their weaknesses while receiving an education far superior in its content and method than traditional schooling. Forcing home education into the contraints of public school standardization would erase those benefits.
Here’s why: People like Stephanie are so convinced of their rightness that they’d like to pass a law using their personal standards and methods as a model. It’s arrogant and smells of insecurity (bless ‘er heart, she–with a doctorate in education–had trouble finding a suitable math resource. The rest of us must be so lost!). And another thing. Christian fundamentalists (generally speaking, of course) tend to appeal to authority for reassurance. This is the basis for many (not all) faith-oriented homeschoolers’ support of regulation; minus the onus to think for themselves, they much prefer for someone “higher up” to tell them what to do. That is good enough for them as long as it does not encroach on their worldview. Now, the minute that authority tells them to teach evolution alongside creationism, there will be a riot.
People like State Superintendent Hank Bounds look at homeschooling and see $$$. It’s an illusion, but it doesn’t change the fact that virtual public schools (aka public school at home) will be used in my state to entice independent home educators into enrolling in public schools. The state dept of ed receives federal funds for relatively little overhead in the short term…and at the expense of homeschool autonomy in the long term.
The bottom line is this: The only person who makes my child’s future the utmost priority and takes such an active role in securing it is me. I’d like to keep it that way.
Re: Alasandra,I just have to disagree: “it is ludicrous to think that some ‘lazy’ parent would choose the homeschooling option.”
There are those who are smart enough, in that devious way, to do exactly that.
Cmf you have to be kidding, some lazy parent is going to choose to homeschool when they have the option of sticking their child on a school bus and not having to worry about them for the rest of the day?
Homeschooling takes a lot of Time & Energy, it requires parents to put their child first. I have never meet a lazy homeschool parent. On the other hand I did meet tons of lazy public school parents when I was subbing in the public schools.
There is a law in Mississippi stating that parents cannot use homeschooling to circumvent the compulsory attendance law. People who sign up to homeschool yet do nothing to educate their children are not homeschoolers; they are neglectful people whose actions reflect poor parenting, not bad homeschooling.
There are idiots everywhere. I don’t think responsible people–the majority of homeschoolers– should have to pay the price for a neglectful few.
Natalie: What is a “majority” … in terms of numbers? 51%? 99%? And based on what data?
Are you disputing the numbers or the logic? There are no numbers (not in Mississippi). Creating a database from which one could retrieve accurate statistical information would require the state to first define what a responsible home educator is and then compel enough of them to submit information (…which most responsible *independent* home educators won’t do. Voluntarily. Hence the push for regulation. See where we’re going with this?).
Homeschooling does not conform easily to standards and, therefore, is not easily measured. That is the nature of homeschooling (which, I believe, is an asset). I wish there were a tangible, short-hand way to adequately convey that.
The best answer I have as to what constitutes a majority is based upon my experience: I’m a rather in-the-know kinda girl when it comes to homeschooling in Mississippi. I know hundreds of homeschoolers whose demographics are fairly representative of the population. They’re responsible parents. As such, I can only assume they are responsible homeschoolers.
That’s the best I can offer you. But, if that’s not good enough, try this:
Assuming that being a responsible parent means providing adequate care for one’s children and assuming that responsible parents become responsible homeschoolers, perhaps cross-referencing Child Protection Services records in Mississippi with homeschooling registration would yeild some sort of statistical ratio (though I realize this mode of measurement has its own faults). Cross-reference that same CPS list with public school enrollment and ask yourself: Does gov’t oversight of a child’s education ensure that the child will be (a) safe and (b) educated?
No and no.
Alasandra: “Cmf you have to be kidding, some lazy parent is going to choose to homeschool ….”
Seeing is believing, and I have actually seen it. Yup. Homeschoolers who are not only lazy, but using the concept of homeschooling as a defense against being seen as bad parents, abusive parents, neglectful parents,etc.
I even know of one girl who only recently gained some form of education that propelled her to college, where she is able to get GED qualifications, and other necessary courses to fill the huge void left by her mothers abuse of the system, and her. That particular girl was pulled out of school in the fifth grade to hide her mothers abuse, etc, and never made it back to school.
So, yeah, there are lots of issues other than laziness, per se, but it exists, and is covered up by the homeschool community at large–glass houses and all that.
I am confused Cmf you stated in your post that she recently gained some form of education that propelled her to college but then you say she never made it back to school, which is it?
If HER Mother was abusing her that is child abuse and Child Protective Services should have been involved. And No, no one I know in the homeschool community would cover child abuse up. If I see a child that looks abused I will report it. And I am sure the other homeschoolers I know would too.
Natalie:
I am a supporter of the idea of homeschooing, but I am not a supporter of unmitigated, unfounded bullshit. Many whom I’d refer to as home schooler jingoists are doing very little service to the discussion by making strong and unwavering statements about what a “majority of” or “every single” home schooler thinks, does, feels, acts like, and is capable of. This verges on cultism! The assertion that the very nature of homeschooling means it can’t be measured AND means that it is virtually flawless is the best piece of bullshit I’ve heard all day. No, all month!
CMF. Don’t be absurd. Home schoolers are, by definition, perfect and would never do any of those things! No home schooler that Alasandra has ever known has ever done anything wrong!!! Therefore, home shcooling is very close to a perfect system. It’s actually pretty amazing. Right Ali? (Nor has any public school teacher ever done anything right!).
I’m not surprise you and Stephanie found each other. Like attracts like - scientific principal. You’re both morons. Now why don’t you go back to writing about all the other stuff you don’t know anything about. Yawn.
Doc:
My policy is to not delete posts that are not spam. You, on the other hand, have not allowed me to post on your site! Guess what. That was your last post.
“she recently gained some form of education that propelled her to college but then you say she never made it back to school, which is it?”
Ali: back to school means back to grade school, middle school, or high school, where she would have been protected by school counselors who could have seen the travesty that her mother perpetrated on her, with the complete complicity of an ill trained/complicit child protection system, welfare, and excuse after excuse, state after state, wearing social workers to the bones with lies, distortions,and the help of the ‘homeschool network’ and then fleeing.
So:
“If HER Mother was abusing her that is child abuse and Child Protective Services should have been involved.”
They were, in every state she was in, and slipped through the cracks, partially because of the homeschool mantra that says there is no abuse in these environments, and largely because the mother was able to manipulate the system like a professional con artist, finding every loophole she could, and did.
” And No, no one I know in the homeschool community would cover child abuse up. If I see a child that looks abused I will report it.”
I have to take you at your word there, and trust that you would do that, sans other reporting mechanisms in place, or any other secoind opinions on parenting styles, or practices.
I will give you a big clue how to spot these perpetrators:
1)more often than not they are transient, and stay away from the sight of official channels of child abuse reporting with a variety of methods.
2) Highly manipulative single mothers with lengthy stories of how they don’t trust ‘the system’, and constant claims that they were abused, and other smokescreens for their own behaviors with their children.
3)children with boundary issues, or overly adult behaviors to mask their abuse
4) households that have authoritarian rather than authoritative parenting styles
You can pick any of a number of other abuse indicators, but those are a few that I recognized, sadly, in retrospect.
Greg: yeah, that pefection seems to be “god given”–orchestrated by whoever “gods authority” happens to be in those households;-)
Oh, yeah: one other great indicator I have noticed is that mom seldom gets up before noon, and the school shedule is based around moms sleep habits, etc, rather than the childs well being.
Hey Greg: let Doc speak! Sure, he is a little hit and run coward, blacklisting on his crappy blog, but nothing is more intriguing on these blogs than a human being who can talk out of their rectum, and keep their heads full of shit without it falling out of their mouths at the same time! It makes the circus more exciting!
Oh…wait…he did let some shit fall out there didn’t he….
Whoa, I didn’t say homeschooling was flawless. That’s your bias showing, not mine. I said it did not conform well to standardization, which makes it difficult–if not impossible–to quantify. What I meant (and what you will never understand, because it can’t be quantified or replicated in a lab) was that there are so many ways to learn and so many ways to impart knowledge that homeschool instruction is a broad, fluid, highly customizable collection of methods. That’s a bonus. That does not make it flawless.
Please try to keep up.
Natalie and “doc”:
Why are so many of you homeschooler babes absolute bitches? Do you train your children to be so poorly behaved? Do you really expect everyone to believe that you are so wonderful when you are obviously so deranged?
I worry about what happens in your home. You should not be allowed to home school your children. If this is your attitude, you can not be trusted.
Research has shown that homeschooled students from low-regulation states perform just as well as students from high-regulation states. HS students average at the 86th percentile on standardized testing so clearly there is not a significant problem with “lazy” parents “neglecting” their children’s education.
My sister-in-law is a public school teacher and she told me that her B.Ed coursework was a joke- way easier than her high school classes! Yet she’s considered “qualified” to teach on the basis of it while the Stanford science degree I worked so hard to earn does not. Give me a break!
“My sister-in-law is a public school teacher and she told me that her B.Ed coursework was a joke- way easier than her high school classes! Yet she’s considered “qualified” to teach on the basis of it while the Stanford science degree I worked so hard to earn does not. ”
nuff said…
Chrimson: Please give us citations for that very interesting sounding research. I’d be very interested in looking at that. Thanks.
Cmf, I do agree that CPS leaves a lot to be desired. I know a Mother who has 3 kids in public school and she has been reported to CPS by everyone - school teachers, friends of the family, relatives (including her own Mother). She gives CPS some BS about how her Mother hates her because her Father abused her (not true), how her ex and his new wife are out to get her kids (true because he wants his kids to be safe), etc. For some reason CPS always buys her line that she isn’t doing anything wrong the teachers, relatives, friends, etc are just “out to get her”.
So to me the problem is Child Protective Services not homeschooling or public schooling.
There is no reason homeschoolers can’t do school at a time that suits the family. We have occasionally slept till noon when we stayed up late to watch a meteor shower, attended a concert or some other special event, or had a sick child in the ER. Our learning wasn’t hampered because we choose to do school during unconventional hours.
I am a morning person so we start school at 7AM, but that doesn’t mean everyone has too.
southerngirl your attack on Natalie was uncalled for. She isn’t being a B***, she is merely pointing out that it is impossible to fit a square peg into a round hole.
Homeschooling is not public school at home. Homeschoolers can’t be neatly categorized and compared to public schoolers. We are a diverse group that embrace different philosophies, different methods of teaching etc. No two homeschool families are exactly alike, so even comparing one homeschool family to another is impossible. It would be like comparing apples to oranges. They are both fruit and they are both good, but they are different.
I read the followng quote in the article, “How safe is the homeschool horizon?”, found in this month’s The Home School Court Report Magazine, Volume XXIII, Number 2:
“According to a 1997 study by Dr. Brian Ray of the National Home Education Reserarch Institute, children who are homeschooled in states with higher government regulation do NOT perform better than children in states with low regulation. Both groups scored 36 percentile points above the national average of 50.” The footnotes point to “Is Government Regulation Necessary for High Achievement?” Home Education Across the Unithed States, Home School Legal Defense Association and Brian D. Ray, 1997, www.hslda.org/docs/study/ray1997/12.asp.
I predict Greg will pooh-pooh the research as not valid due to the sample being self-selected homeschoolers. Where exactly he expects to find non self-selected homeschoolers is still an open question. He will continue that it’s not a fair comparison because the public schools have to take everybody (good and bad) and homeschoolers have more involved parents. More involved parents are a prime indicator of educational success anywhere.
Both are valid points. But you know, you work with the research you have, not the research you wish you had. Further, if homeschoolers are the bastion of involved parents producing well educated kids based on the very tests that the government mandates in most states be used to evaluate educational success, um, uh, wait, what was his problem again?
COD: Thanks for this spirited defense of these points that I have never actually made (nor did I not make them).
I have not looked at the report, but if as you say it is biased and unusable data, then perhaps I won’t bother.
It seems to me that we can never really know what is going on in a home schooling environment, and that many home schoolers want it that way.
From your comment to your own blog post at http://gregladen.com/wordpress/?p=495#more-495
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.
Those exact links from above, among others, were provided to you in the comments at my blog (and here) back in the original discussion. So you in fact did pooh-pooh them, just as I stated.
And tell me Greg, exactly how much do you know about what is really going on in the public schools?
COD:
Your games are not especially amusing. I was referring to the conversation at hand. I have of course expressed opinions.
It is absolutely true, and you seem to be agreeing (at least in your earlier comment where you attempt to put words in my mouth) that for the most part there are not any really useful data. What data exists is biased or cooked, for the most part. The Great Circle Jerk of the Home School Jingoists seems to suffice for both information and guidance.
Home schoolers can do nothing wrong. Public schoolers can do nothing right. This is your mantra. How boring, how stupid, how counterproductive. How totally transparent.
I did say about tests (tests) that I was not expressing an opinion about them. that remains true. This paragraph is about tests, not data.
Regarding public school? What is the point of your question? Is there some litmus test you wish to impose on me?
Let me ask you a question, COD: Why are you and most of your fellow Home School Jingoists such unmitigated assholes?
When others express opinions that differer from yours, your instinct is to turn around and shit on that person, run off to join with your fellow jingoists and engage in some sort of bizarre circle jerk. I truly hope that you represent a minority of home schoolers. You so often seem incapable of a civil conversation. You are TOTALLY incapable of being criticized. I do not believe for a moment that given this extraordinarily immature attitude that you are capable of teaching your children effectively.
Natalie:
You missed the point of my comment entirely. Please re read and respond if you like.
Please also clarify your point about “labs.” I don’t understand what you are saying there.
Thanks
GTL
I have noticed this homeschooler knee jerk defensiveness from the very start of this discussion where their
” instinct is to turn around and shit on that person,” that makes a criticism, or asks a question. I think it is case in point for my earlier critique that homeschoolers are generally socially immature persons who hide their inability to communicate as adults behind their self given authority over their own kids.
Much like the point that COD makes that these studies, like all homeschool studies, are with ’self selected’ participant h/sers.
alasandra: one common mistake that I see is that many in the discussion instantly compare themselves to public schooler parents, and use an analogy of the kind that you gave about the homeschooler mother ” who has 3 kids in public school and she has been reported to CPS by everyone,”.
Yeah. We know about her, the newspaper carries her story–but only AFTER she actually murders her kids, etc.although I agree that nothing is done, and we agree about the ineptitude of CPS( it is precisely that dad abused me myth that keeps them clouded in their attempts to find the real abuse)and so I appreciate your affirmative nod for the ‘dad abused me’ myth that these women use and perpetuate as a smokescreen for their own behaviors;-)
But the point is to begin discussion about those in the h/s environment that DO abuse or neglect their kids,and how we can protect kids in those environments where the only reporting mechanism is either A) good parents who will discuss their practices or B) the kid that ends up dead or in therapy after they are old enough to leave the lunacy of those who claimed to be schooling them and enter the real world. The discussion is NOT the public school parents, or public school failures, etc. This discussion is ABOUT h/s’ers, not comparisons to public schools, or the many psycho patents therein.
So really, in the end, it kind of proves my point that homeschoolers deny the abuse that occurs, or its potential to occur, or protect those they might suspect by deflecting the topic to public schools and the many psycho parents who get away with everything short of murder by manipulating CPS, school counselors, and the courts. Perhaps it is true that there are many good homeschoolers–that is not in contention–but that even the good ones participate in the ‘jingoism’ that Greg maintains covers up the flaws of this HS network.
I mean, isn’t it somewhat ironic that there is a legal defense association, the HSLDA, for HSers adults, but no legal protection association for the kids?
CMF, homeschoolers have neighbors. Wouldn’t you find it suspicious if you knew your neighbor had kids but they NEVER went anywhere, not even out in the yard to play? I would.
Homeschoolers go to doctors?
Homeschoolers are involved in outside activities.
I really don’t see your point CMF. Abusive parents should be reported - it doesn’t matter if they send their children to private school, public school or homeschool them.
Abuse occurs everywhere; the homeschooling community is not a sanctuary from it. It is hidden from fellow homeschoolers using the same methods keeping it hidden from the world at large. Should all homeschoolers be subjected to unique and unusual scrutiny in order to uncover it? Absolutely not! There must always be some evidence (objective or subjective) that abuse may be occurring before an intervention of some kind can occur. Homeschooling is not a de facto indicator of abuse any more than Lutheranism or vegetarianism, although abuse certainly occurs in all three communities.
Beyond this enormously essential principle of a free society, proposals of homeschooling regulations are so fundamentally flawed that they should be rejected on that basis as well:
1. There is no way to expose non-educational abuse.
How does a requirement for state-supervised curriculum reveal the corporal or sexual abuse of a child? Will annual testing find it? Such regulations cannot reveal abuse, and they can’t prevent it, either. No requirement that fractions be taught at age 9 will prevent a secretly psychotic homeschooling parent from harming their child. Even regulations that require some kind of face-to-face event between government employees and homeschooling families establish such a brief point of contact as to obviate the possibility of discovering abuse, given that so much abuse remains hidden even in systems with significant contact (such as schools).
2. There is no way to define “educational abuse”.
There are too many variations on the acquisition of knowledge to even try to do so. (Is it abuse to fail to teach evolution? Is it abuse if a child of 12 cannot read? Is it abuse to make an infant watch Baby Einstein? In CA, it’s mandated to teach the Great (Irish Potato) Famine; is it abuse if it’s left out, willfully or accidentally?) Furthermore, any attempt to define it leaves the traditional educational establishment open to litigation on the matter, as it continues to self-destruct around the nation’s children. At some point it becomes clear that a child (or an adult) is not succeeding in their education, yet because of the multitude of factors involved it will almost certainly be impossible to identify a sole culprit in the matter, whether the individual is schooled or homeschooled.
3. The proposed methods of regulation are not demonstrated to achieve their purported goal of preventing educational abuse, even if such a thing could be defined (see #2!).
Standardized curriculum and standardized testing and standardized teachers (i.e., credentialling) have absolutely nothing to do with educational success (and you will find no study demonstrating a correlation, much less a causality); they have to do with providing accountability in the expenditure of public tax funds.
Fundamentally, the only way to prevent abuse by homeschoolers is to outlaw homeschooling entirely. Unfortunately, that only gets rid of the homeschooling, and not the abuse. How to prevent the abuse? I don’t know, but it’s certainly not by putting superficial academic regulations on one small demographic!
[I am a homeschooling parent in California; I have been homeschooling for 8 years. In this state, most independent homeschoolers (and I am one) operate very exclusive, one-family private schools and function under the regulations governing all CA private schools (I am the same as the Catholic school down the street). Those regulations are extremely minimal, requiring annual notification of the school’s existence and compliance with a few record-keeping requirements, and requiring that courses be offered in the same general subject areas as the public schools offer (e.g., science, social studies, etc.). Private school teachers are required to be “capable of teaching” in CA; there are no diploma or credential requirements.]
Christina: Hey, Indigo Girls quote … damn, why didn’t I think of that. I might steal your idea.
It sounds like you have a good system in CA.
I find it rather amusing that Greg went off the deep end because of a comment that was primarily a cut and paste quote of himself. It was even totally within context, since he was referring to the same links back then that were provided in this thread.
cmf: Self selection is feature of home education, not a bug. People in any endeavor tend to do better if they really want to be doing that particular thing. It’s not different than the kids going to the science or arts magnet school being better at science or the arts. The only way Greg could conceivably get the data he is looking for is to do two huge random samples and force one of them to homeschool. Of course, then the self selection feature would not exist, which would negate some of benefits of home education. I think homeschoolers would still do just fine in that scenario though because teaching a class size of one or two is simply far more efficient than a class of 20 . It’s so efficient it allows the parent to learn the material with the kids if it’s not already familiar to them.
The flaw in your logic, COD old buddy, is that the class size does not matter if the teacher is untrained and selected on the basis of criteria unrelated to qualifications.
Alasandra: Ah, but there is a fundamental difference: public and private schools have mandatory reporters, and homeschools do not–anywhere, and so there is inherently a larger crack for the homeschooled kid to fall through because there are no regulatory checks or balances that mandate reporting of abuse.
Sure, it is easy to say ‘what parent in their right mind would not report the suspected abuse of a child they know’, but that hinges on the phrase ‘right mind.’
Mandatory reporters are trained to spot, and report abuse, and to track suspected abuse, in contrast to homeschoolers, neighbors, and those the schoolers choose to enable them, should they be abusive or neglectful. Public schools, flawed as they are, have guidance counselors, peer counselors, and several teachers, all of whom interact with individual children, and all of whom are trained to be objective in reporting abuse,by law, which is a ‘right state’ of mind.
Homeschoolers, on the other hand, though they go on outings to the zoo, the creationist science fair,the church,or Gaian earth worship ceremonies, are always within the direct eyeshot and earshot of their potential abusers, so of course there is far less freedom for the kids to reach out to report on their own, much less space away from the potential abuser, and that potential abusers closely held authority over the child. That is a pretty basic difference, don’t you think?
My eldest son’s 5th grade teacher for the second semester when he was in public school couldn’t do Algebra, even though she had a brand new teacher’s certificate.
One of the flaws in MS and maybe elsewhere is practically everyone makes more then the teacher. His 5th grade teacher first semester was wonderful. The school guidance counselor left and he was offered the counselors job (which paid more). Since it was during the middle of the year all the ‘good’ teachers already had contracts, so the school board hired a young girl that graduated in December and wanted to be a Kindergarten Teacher (which she would have probably been good at) to teach 5th grade. She was hopeless, she couldn’t control the class and she couldn’t do Algebra, so she simply skipped Math altogether.
Teacher’s certificates, training and qualifications do not make a teacher. 50% of the parents could have done a better job then her, and the other 50% could have done at least as well as she did.
Christina: “Homeschooling is not a de facto indicator of abuse,” no, but limiting a childs environment and ability to reach out to those who could protect them is.
You are on to s/th tho: it is essential to freedom to have the option to homeschool, and yet it is virtually impossible to spot abuse in these situations.
“Should all homeschoolers be subjected to unique and unusual scrutiny,”
No, but some regular form of it would be good. Incidentally, I presume you are talking about strict scrutiny which is a legal doctrine test that applies to fundamental rights, such as those enumerated in the Bill of Rights, and comes into play when there is a Federal Constitutional issue at hand, such as whether one group of people( homeschoolers) is subjected to unfair treatment or differential treatment that others do not have to be subject to, and a host of other fundamental rights.
http://www.lectlaw.com/def2/s118.htm
I think at the very least, mandating that the h/s child come into contact with mandatory abuse reporters as often as public school kids do is a fair start, because as it is, the h/s kid does not, and in fact comes into contact with mandatory reporters less often.
It is essential to the child abuser that they train the victim into silence, and also distrust of authority, so the conundrum is what I said above ‘limiting the childs environment,’ and training a child that the bad guys are those from the outside world that challenge the primary parental authority. A case that I recently heard of from a friend is is a Branch Davidian kid from Texas, and we know the views of that group of homeschoolers.
I think at very least someone in the h/s community would find this topic worth putting some time and resources into to kind of police it themselves, but instead, there are always these kind of blanket statements about the inherent goodness of h/s ers, and no real stories of what is happening. Not even one homeschooler with a story of actually reporting an abuser, anwhere in the h/s community. It’s like the ultimate taboo to admit that it goes on, or that somenone out there actually knows someone who….and then they….to protect a kid, but then we hear about it in the paper and everyone acts indignant or surprised.
Like I said in an earlier post: there is HSLDA,a mouthpiece for parents, but no protection organization for the kids, and that is a little odd.
COD: Sure, self selection….this painted an image for me:
public schools here,
full of kids whose parents comply with the ages old norm of bitching about bad teqachers, and kids having to go to school
……………………………………………………………………………………………………….
freaking huge gaping crack here, full of those who are crappy or deceptive homeschoolers using it as a front for laziness, meanness, abuse, religious mind warping, parental authoritarianism, etc
………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
relatively honest, well intentioned and sometimes hard working homeschoolers here, who could give a shit what is going on in other homeschool settings that aren’t as rosy as the pictures their kids paint for them.
Alasandra,
There is no doubt that there are many problems with the school system. I have never maintained otherwise. But it simply isn’t true, as I think you are implying, that the average parent has the same qualifications as the average teacher (I may be misinterpreting you but I think that is what you are saying).
Your information is anecdotal. I have anecdotal information too, and I could bestow on the readers of this blog a very large number of personal stories of great teachers whom I have encountered in a wide range of contexts.
HS participate in on average 5 outside activities such as sports, Scouts, 4H, music, church/synagogue youth groups, academic enrichment classes, etc. These provide plenty of opportunities to interact with a trusted non-parent adult who could report suspected abuse. Plus doctors, clergy, babysitters, extended family members, etc.
The one incident of abuse I knew of growing up where a girl’s stepfather ended up going to jail, the school was in the dark for years. How the pervert finally got busted was when one of her friends got creeped out by the way he was acting towards them & confided in her mom that she suspected he might be abusing her friend. Mom reported the suspected abuse to CPS and it turned out the stepdad was in fact abusing the friend.
According to the National Clearinghouse on Child Abuse & Neglect 2002 statistics, 84% of reports were filed by individuals OTHER than teachers. The highest percentage (44%) were filed by parents, relatives, friends, or neighbors.
cmf: >
You are equating isolation with homeschooling. Isolation is a risk factor for abuse and is of course the reason that abuse can be so hard to expose; but isolation and homeschooling are not associative. School is not the only point of exposure for children. Non-homeschoolers simply cannot get their minds around this; any homeschooler will tell you that it is the first question or comment that a new contact will make: what about socialization, what about being around other people?? It is only for schooled children than school is important, because it is such a big chunk of their lives! Even in those subsets of the homeschooling community that are widely perceived as isolating (generally religious communities), they are more accurately labeled as exclusive, and are often quite active within their chosen smaller community.
cmf:
I was not referring so specifically (my PoliSci days are long behind me!) but that would certainly seem to apply.
cmf: “A case that I recently heard of from a friend is is a Branch Davidian kid from Texas, and we know the views of that group of homeschoolers.”
And yet the important factor in the abusive nature of that group is the isolationist cult aspect, and not the homeschooling. It is not reasonable to pull out a factor that exists alongside abuse and target it as causal of the abuse. There is no demonstration of a link between the two events; the fact that the media highlights “homeschooling” in reports has to do with the sensation effect and not reality. Even for those factors that are correlated with increased risk of abuse (which homeschooling is not), such as alcoholism, there is neither the heightened scrutiny and invasion of privacy that you advocate, nor is there the insistence on “group policing” that you outline below.
cmf: “I think at very least someone in the h/s community would find this topic worth putting some time and resources into to kind of police it themselves, but instead, there are always these kind of blanket statements about the inherent goodness of h/s ers, and no real stories of what is happening.”
Abuse happens in every niche of society; I fail to understand why homeschoolers should bear a particular burden that other demographic groups do not. There must be some unusual level of correlation presented in order to require special attention that is not required of the larger community. The fact that homeschooling abusers make the national news is not evidence of a correlation; it is evidence that the media likes to highlight unusual cases. The vast majority of child abuse cases will occur among publicly schooled children, simply because the vast majority of children are publicly schooled. Yet we are probably all hard-pressed to provide an example of a publicized case of abuse of a schooled child, possibly because it is not emphasized or in most cases even mentioned that the child was in fact schooled. Homeschooling as a minority demographic is automatically newsworthy.
An explanation for why “no real stories” are presented should really devolve upon Occam’s Razor – the simplest explanation being the most reasonable. You are making assumptions of some organized homeschooling cabal conspiring to hide abuse within the community, when in reality the most likely reason we do not hear of such cases is that we have not experienced abuse on our radar. I would say that this is true for many demographics, because significant pieces of abuse are isolation, secrecy, and silence.
In reality, the biggest risk factor for abuse is having a mother or a father. That being the case, effective solutions to abuse will need to be addressed to that demographic, and not at the straw man of homeschooling.
SORRY, FORGOT ABOUT USING GREATER THAN/LESS THAN FOR QUOTES… HOPEFULLY I FIXED IT!
cmf: “Christina: “Homeschooling is not a de facto indicator of abuse,” no, but limiting a childs environment and ability to reach out to those who could protect them is.”
You are equating isolation with homeschooling. Isolation is a risk factor for abuse and is of course the reason that abuse can be so hard to expose; but isolation and homeschooling are not associative. School is not the only point of exposure for children. Non-homeschoolers simply cannot get their minds around this; any homeschooler will tell you that it is the first question or comment that a new contact will make: what about socialization, what about being around other people?? It is only for schooled children than school is important, because it is such a big chunk of their lives! Even in those subsets of the homeschooling community that are widely perceived as isolating (generally religious communities), they are more reasonably labeled as exclusive, and are often quite active within their chosen smaller community.
cmf: “[Christina] “Should all homeschoolers be subjected to unique and unusual scrutiny,” No, but some regular form of it would be good. Incidentally, I presume you are talking about strict scrutiny which is a legal doctrine test that applies to fundamental rights…”
I was not referring so specifically (my PoliSci days are long behind me!) but that would certainly seem to apply.
cmf: “A case that I recently heard of from a friend is is a Branch Davidian kid from Texas, and we know the views of that group of homeschoolers.”
And yet the important factor in the abusive nature of that group is the isolationist cult aspect, and not the homeschooling. It is not reasonable to pull out a factor that exists alongside abuse and target it as causal of the abuse. There is no demonstration of a link between the two events; the fact that the media highlights “homeschooling” in reports has to do with the sensation effect and not reality. Even for those factors that are correlated with increased risk of abuse (which homeschooling is not), such as alcoholism, there is neither the heightened scrutiny and invasion of privacy that you advocate, nor is there the insistence on “group policing” that you outline below.
cmf: “I think at very least someone in the h/s community would find this topic worth putting some time and resources into to kind of police it themselves, but instead, there are always these kind of blanket statements about the inherent goodness of h/s ers, and no real stories of what is happening.”
Abuse happens in every niche of society; I fail to understand why homeschoolers should bear a particular burden that other demographic groups do not. There must be some unusual level of correlation presented in order to require special attention that is not required of the larger community. The fact that homeschooling abusers make the national news is not evidence of a correlation; it is evidence that the media likes to highlight unusual cases. The vast majority of child abuse cases will occur among publicly schooled children, simply because the vast majority of children are publicly schooled. Yet we are probably all hard-pressed to provide an example of a publicized case of abuse of a schooled child, possibly because it is not emphasized or in most cases even mentioned that the child was in fact schooled. Homeschooling as a minority demographic is automatically newsworthy.
An explanation for why “no real stories” are presented should really devolve upon Occam’s Razor – the simplest explanation being the most reasonable. You are making assumptions of some organized homeschooling cabal conspiring to hide abuse within the community, when in reality the most likely reason we do not hear of such cases is that we have not experienced abuse on our radar. I would say that this is true for many demographics, because significant pieces of the abuse dynamic are isolation, secrecy, and silence.
In reality, the biggest risk factor for abuse is having a mother or a father. That being the case, effective solutions to abuse will need to be addressed to that demographic, and not at the straw man of homeschooling.
Greg: “But it simply isn’t true, as I think you are implying, that the average parent has the same qualifications as the average teacher (I may be misinterpreting you but I think that is what you are saying).”
Homeschooling parents have different qualifications than teachers, and in many ways these qualifications are better for promoting educational success and general well-being: love; time; focus; interest; and so forth. For many subjects, it is not necessary for a teacher to have extensive personal knowledge; what is required is to provide the support necessary for the child to learn. As adults, we should be honest in admitting that what we have taken away from our schooling is merely the essentials plus those things that interested us. The best teachers are those who connected with us on a personal level of friendship, time, interest, etc.; they are not those who had the most information in their lectures.
cmf: “freaking huge gaping crack here, full of those who are crappy or deceptive homeschoolers using it as a front for laziness, meanness, abuse, religious mind warping, parental authoritarianism, etc”
There is a “huge gaping crack” in the public schools as well. It is peopled by those who have abdicated their responsibilities to be parents and turned over that task to overworked, underpaid educators as well as to the Lord of the Flies dynamics of peer pressure. And yet not only do we not abolish school (wherein the problem exists), but most don’t even see it as a problem, even as standardized measurements show achievement declining and as little girls and boys wander the halls dressed as miniature versions of psychotic celebrities…
Regardless, it is not a solution to a gaping crack, to take a jackhammer to the solid concrete surrounding it! You will not eliminate “laziness, meanness, abuse, religious mind warping, [or] parental authoritarianism” by forcing the majority of dedicated homeschoolers (of all types) to undergo microscopic or even general scrutiny. Many of these things are endemic to our society as a whole, and you will only resolve them at that level. (Indeed, some things, like hyperscheduled children (which is emotionally abusive) and spanking (which is of course physically abusive) are commonly accepted practice.)
The best thing that homeschoolers can do to minimize as much as possible the crack that concerns you is to do exactly what it is they are already doing: to build supportive communities. These communities help prevent numerous factors that contribute to abuse, including such things as parental frustration and isolation. They provide community oversight, so that most homeschooled children are observed by others on a regular basis at homeschooling events and activities. The top risk factors for child abuse (see www.childwelfare.gov include both not enough support, and stress and worry. A supportive community alleviates both of these risks. I have been a community contact for homeschoolers in my area for most of my years as a homeschooler, and families are always excited to discover there are large and small communities to integrate with, as well as assistance to create new communities and opportunities that match their needs. They are also excited to make friends whose families follow the same rhythm as their own, swapping playdates and making connections that lead to support in difficult times, such as when a child or parent is sick, or when money is tight.
When you attack homeschoolers with threats of monitoring and illegalization, you do nothing to promote supportive communities to fill the cracks. Exactly the opposite is achieved, because no one wants to expose themselves, their children, their choices and beliefs to one who refuses to learn and is closed to understanding. People begin to self-isolate in order to avoid judgmental conflicts, and the risks begin to increase, not decrease.
CHRISTINA: I HAVE TO TAKE SOME TIME, AND GET BACK TO YOU, BECAUSE YOU ARE A LISTENER, AND A THINKER.
YOUR PERSPECTRIVE DESERVES MORE TIME THAN i HAVE RIGHT NOW. bUT YOU GIVE ME FOOD FOR THOUGHT, AND I REALIZE YOU ACTUALLY READ THE COMMENTS.
Christina: You ask why homeschoolers should bear a particular burden regarding the issue of potential abuse. I don’t think anyone is asking for that. I think the concern is that home schooling situations are special cases that can exist totally outside of all forms of social oversight in all areas, not just abuse. I think people are asking for homeschoolers to engage in the process that everyone else is engaged in to a modest degree and no more, and certainly not to any degree that would interfere with the schooling process itself.
I am repeatedly surprised at the reaction this sort of proposal gets from some (many?) home schoolers. One person, Stephanie, suggested that there be some modest involvement in this sort of thing and I made a statement indicating that I agreed with her, and we were both called morons by one of the more outspoken homeschoolers in blog land. This sort of very reactionary, negative, and verbally abusive attitude makes me think that what was an academic concern on my part originally should be a more serious and general concern. The highly reactionary attitudes of some (many?) home schoolers does not inspire confidence. It also annoys other home schoolers who do not have this attitude.
It’s really not that complicated Greg, and it’s been explained to you at least several times. Regulation and erosion of freedom in this country always leads to more regulation and further erosion of freedoms. Homeschoolers are diligent about resisting any encroachment on our freedoms for the exact same reasons that the ACLU is so diligent about keeping religion out of schools, or the NRA is so diligent about opposing additional regulation of gun ownership.
And again, as been pointed out to you countless times by now, we are already “engaged in the process to a modest degree.” Our kids go to the doctor, hang out with friends, play little league, join boy scouts, go to church, and do countless other activities where other adults have the opportunity to observe them.
You have yet to produce a single shred of evidence that suggests that home educated kids are any more prone to abuse than a kid in school. In fact, the demographics on most abused children (low income, single parent families) would point to homeschooled kids being safer than the average kid, as most homeschooling families are 2 parent and middle class.
You started this whole conversation months ago with an outragous attack on homeschoolers that was completely devoid of any actual factual evidence to support any of your claims. Having lost the argument on test scores when you implied that there must be a nationwide conspiracy among homeschoolers to cheat on standardized tests, and having lost the argument that us being out of the system somehow cheats those that are still in it, and having lost the argument that colleges should ban homeschoolers from their campuses, you have now moved on to homeschoolers as harborers of child abuse.
I can hardly wait for next outragous theory.
COD:
Thanks for the additional example of the condescending and obnoxious attitude of the Home Schooling Jingoist camp.
You really ought to read more carefully what I’ve written before commenting. Abuse is an issue, and it does not go away because you or others say it can’t happen or that it is somehow being taken care of. But my main concern lies in other areas, as I’ve expressed on numerous occasions.
Since your definition of “condescending and obnoxious” seems to be “anybody that disagrees with Greg” I’ll take that as a compliment. It’s also somewhat amusing coming from the person that wrote
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.
And from the conclusion of that original post.
If I had to choose right now, I would prefer to eliminate home schooling completely rather than let it continue with these problems.
Colleges should not accept home schooling high school certificates or diplomas, for instance, until some of these problems are addressed.
And I’m the condescending and obnoxious one? An academic with no real life interaction with the homeschool community and a very limited understanding of what we actually do proposes to eliminate our way of life, and he’s shocked, shocked that we don’t agree.
And they say homeschoolers have socialization issues…
Greg: “I think the concern is that home schooling situations are special cases that can exist totally outside of all forms of social oversight in all areas, not just abuse. I think people are asking for homeschoolers to engage in the process that everyone else is engaged in to a modest degree and no more, and certainly not to any degree that would interfere with the schooling process itself.”
Some homeschooling situations may be these “special cases”, but no homeschooler will be aware of them, precisely because they are “outside all forms of social oversight”. If no one can see these people, then no one can regulate them. Having laws in place - which of course all states already do on all of these issues, from violent abuse to neglect educational and otherwise - means that when such families are discovered, action can be taken. To actively police all homeschooling families in order to try and find them is unreasonable on two levels. The first as I said is that this sort of action violates very fundamental principles of our free society. The second is that these families will not be discovered by such means. A family living off the social radar will not be found among homeschoolers registering with the state for supervision. It will fall on those people the family was connected with before they left the radar to initiate an investigation, private or governmental. Spending tax dollars on educational monitors for one million homeschooled children whose parents are providing at least a comparable education to the public schools is wasteful and ineffective in rooting out violent abuse, educational neglect and whatever other social ills exist in families.
The fact that you feel “modest” proposals would not interfere with the “schooling process” is indicative of the lack of non-homeschooler understanding of the entire concept. In the first place, modest proposals such as cmf’s above, that homeschooled children should come into contact with mandatory reporters at least as often as schooled children, would obviously result in significant interference with the choice to homeschool, as such program would mean 35-40 hours a week of external observation. Secondly, it is a huge outlay for a pretty small return, given that according to the study cited above only 16% of abuse cases are reported by educators. Mandatory reporting for teachers is not something that was created out of wholecloth to reduce abuse; there was already a system in place with a completely different purpose (education), and it seemed like a good pairing to try and get some abuse prevention systems in place within that system. That system sees some success because the monitoring is incidental; most families send their children off to school to be educated, and therefore cannot always disguise the signs of abuse and neglect (though it apparently can be disguised 84% of the time). Any system whose professed purpose is rooting out neglect and abuse will have a much higher failure rate, because abusive and neglectful parents will be able to navigate the system to hide their crimes.
Other proposals are equally disruptive, and of course they only attempt (and fail) to expose educational neglect. A family that chooses to follow a more organic approach to education, recognizing that an examination of adult knowledge would show that the vast majority of schooled knowledge no longer is remembered (why waste time teaching something that will be forgotten? life is too short…), would obviously have objections to both standardized curriculum and standardized benchmarking. My own children would not yet know sufficient math to match the “grade standards”, and yet they know exactly the amount of math they need to function in their lives; because their lives increase in complexity over time, that amount of knowledge increases in complexity over time. And yet they have understood about equivalency of fractions since the preschool years. Their reading skills go far beyond that any grade level test would expose. They would be tested on knowledge they do not have, and not tested on knowledge they do have. As I have said, these standardizations are in place for taxpayer accountability, not because they result in wonderful education. On the level of the independent child, it is completely irrelevant when fractions are learned, or any other item in a traditional scope and sequence. For some things, it simply matters that they are learned prior to adulthood; for others, different for every individual, it does not matter whether they are learned at all.
Families homeschool precisely because they want a nonstandard education for their children. To take this opportunity away in order to seem to be protecting (but not actually protecting) against social crises that are not unique to the homeschooling community would be a travesty.
I have always felt that those arguing for increased regulation of homeschoolers really have one particular section of the homeschooling community in mind. It is not liberally minded homeschoolers, even ones who refuse to use a textbook or workbook or follow a traditional scope and sequence; even knowing that approach, we are confident that the children will receive what we deem an adequate education by the time they are adults. We believe they will have exposure to multicultural opportunities and that their parents will allow them the freedom to choose among multiple paths. It is homeschoolers whose concept of education includes religious indoctrination, biblical worldview teaching, creationism that one hopes to catch and prevent. We sense that these children are being done a disservice; it is educational neglect to refuse to teach evolution, to deny exposure to alternate religions and perspectives, to expect girls to grow up only to be wives and mothers. These families may even edge into areas of physical abuse, with disciplinary paddlings and other highly punitive techniques that they feel are supported by The Bible.
I agree with these judgments, and yet I recognize that there is nothing to be done, that indeed nothing should be done. Unless we desire to become a police state, an unfree nation, we must accept fully that parents have a right to raise their children as they see fit. (Other countries tread this line already, such as France which has banned Islamic headscarves in schools.) As a nation we have agreed that this freedom does not include the right to risk a child’s life (or have we? certain religious groups are protecte in their right to refuse medical care…). Children are people, yet they are not mature people and someone must have the authority to bring them to maturity. Do we really want that to be the government? I don’t, and I consider myself a progressive! There are things that the government should be in charge of, and things that the government should be backup for (and of course things the government should stay out of!). Education definitely falls into the “backup” category, because in most cases a far better education can be provided within local communities. The education government is able to provide is hypergeneralized, targets the lowest common denominator, and sets a standard of information rather than wisdom.
Christana,
Thanks for the comments. As a person home schooled from 7th through 12 grade I do have some understanding of the concept.
Inadequate education is not invisible. It is often very visible! A pretty large chunk of the home schooling population openly teaches their children creationism instead of real science, for instance.
Plenty of private schools teach “Young Earth”/literal reading of Genesis beliefs- why single out homeschooling for criticism? Also, a significant number of publicly schooled individuals who have been taught Darwinian evolution still reject it. Not all homeschoolers are Young Earth Biblical creationists and not all Young Earth Biblical creationists are homeschoolers.
I’d offer a Venn diagram but I don’t think I could get it to load properly!
A pretty large chunk of the home schooling population openly teaches their children creationism instead of real science, for instance.
So what? This is been one of your primary points of contention regarding homeschooling since day 1,and you’ve never produced anything to explain why it matters. Based on recent surveys that I’m sure you are familiar with, over 50% of Americans believe in creation. Do you have any evidence to support that there are bad consequences for society from this? Any evidence that creationists are more likely to be criminals, or more likely to be on welfare, or more likely to do anything that has a measurable societal cost? They probably are more likely to reproduce, but if they aren’t on the public dole that doesn’t materially affect any of the rest of us.
I’m not aware of any documented evidence that creationism has some sort of cost that the rest of us are bearing. If you know of something please share.
Greg: “Inadequate education is not invisible. It is often very visible! A pretty large chunk of the home schooling population openly teaches their children creationism instead of real science, for instance.”
I am with you in wishing wholeheartedly that this were not so; however, this is not a phenomenon limited to the homeschooling community. The creationism upsurge is endemic to U.S. education as a whole: creationism is present among homeschoolers, yes, and also in private schools, public schools, universities - even graduate programs. As with the abuse issue, it is ridiculous (and unconstitutional) to require something particular of the homeschooling community when the problem is universal in U.S. culture.
You demonstrate my previous point: it is not homeschooling in general that you want to regulate, it is more narrowly the religious fundamentalist segment, which makes the choice to homeschool in order to avoid secularism. While I disagree with religious fundamentalists on creationism, indoctrination, corporal punishment and many other issues, I value our free society more than I value coercing them to be rational (which isn’t possible, anyway). If this is the type of thing you are trying to regulate in homeschooling, again I have to say that legislation cannot succeed and it is therefore worthless and wasteful even to try. Creationists, both young and old earth, will teach their children this tenet of faith regardless of whether their children are schooled or homeschooled, with or without monitoring. (Creationists do teach their children a lot of “real science”, by the way; they just don’t teach evolution.)
It is unfair to require more of homeschoolers than is required of other educational systems. If parents can send their children to private schools that are minimally regulated as to content (and I believe this is the case in almost every state because of the church/state boundary and religious private schools), then homeschooled parents should be minimally regulated as to content as well.
These are the breaks of a free society. We can only legislate so much if we want to remain free.
I really don’t think any significant amount of actual regulation and paperwork, etc., would ever be good. That would serve little purpose and simply interfere with the process. I do hope that the increase in number of home schoolers that is reported to be happening is in regular people who have the opportunity to do home schooling (the lucky ones) and not in the yahoo-istas.
Bad news: Could not get tickets to Indigo Girls concert happening here in June…
Christina:”There is a “huge gaping crack” in the public schools as well.”
Again, and it should be something that does not need to be said
>>this discussion is not about public schools
cmf: “Christina:”There is a “huge gaping crack” in the public schools as well.” Again, and it should be something that does not need to be said >>this discussion is not about public schools”
This discussion is about a comparison of the inherent risks and benefits of different educational choices. Without such comparison, there is no discussion to have, since all choices of all types have risks and benefits; absent any societal context, neither of us can make an assessment of whether homeschooling is deserving of increased regulation.
You are attempting to demonstrate that homeschooling is more dangerous to children, and the unwritten “than” in the comparative is “than public schooling”. I argue that homeschooling is at the very least equivalent to public schooling in the danger posed to children. It is disingenuous of you to reprimand me that the discussion is “not about public schools” when you and others bring it up in support of your own position (e.g., that public schools have mandatory reporters and evolution education, which two items make it superior to homeschooling). It’s a bit difficult to measure the merit of an argument without a ruler of some kind, and the slapdown does not bolster your position.
If there was something about homeschooling that created additional danger to children - not simply different risk in the same quantity - then and only then would an argument that homeschooling be additionally regulated make sense. When I evaluate the two systems, I see that each system has “cracks” exposing children to risk of emotional, physical, sexual and educational abuse and neglect; the paths to those dangers are different (parents on the one hand, teachers and peers on the other). Furthermore, the risk of neglect and abuse from parents is also present for publicly schooled children. Publicly schooled children therefore have more risk (parents teachers peer group dynamics), and more protection in the form of exposure to mandatory reporters.
You have not demonstrated that the equations add up to homeschooling being more dangerous to a child; you have only demonstrated that homeschooling is differently dangerous.
No, actually Christine, I haven’t “demonstrated that homeschooling is differently dangerous,” you just demonstrated that, with an interesting and clear analysis of the differential nature of the types of abuse that h/s kids are more prone to, versus the public school kid.
Now, can we discuss those differential dangers that exist in the h/s environment? You certainly stand in a better position than I do to enumerate and clarify what those dangers are. If you must insist on difference, which I notice that a large body of commentators seem insistent upon, then lets focus on that differential abuse potential.
If the idea is to create a new ruler to measure it by, then the raw materials that this discussion deals with on that topic are clearly only rose colored, and spongy,without the substance to create measurement, and even worse, those who could provide data all adhere to a code of silence, and denial on this issue, not to mention a lack of concern.
Greg, can you articulate what specific outcomes you would like to see as the fruits of increased regulation?
Gregh: you are so articulate….I think the phrase’articulate’ date to an episode of Seinfeld, when Elaine was ‘making love’ to a ‘black guy’.
Before you say “Tom, haven’t you been paying attention?” I’m asking the above question in the context of several specific outcomes of regulation that would be highly offensive. Examples:
– Don’t regulate me to the point that I must teach Subject X during Year Y for a minimum of Z hours. My child is not a standard child. If I am rearranging the curriculum, there is probably a good reason. My 4th-grader reads at high school level. He’s a little behind on his long division. I’m confident that the shortfalls will even out over the long run. I’m far less confident of that prospect if I am not allowed broad latitude to tailor to his developmental needs, his interests, and his skills.
– Don’t try to set up standardized tests to measure homeschoolers. Standardized tests are for standardized curricula, which are generally the antithesis of homeschooling. I won’t be teaching to the test, and I expect not to become a bogus penalty statistic as a result. (Indeed, there are indications that public school teachers are increasingly teaching to the test in response to No Child Left Behind, and the quality of the education is suffering.)
– Don’t lay on a burden of specific data sets that must be covered. Keep the requirements at the level of core skills for competence as a citizen. I have not needed to recite the capital cities of the states or their principal exports since the day I took the test in 7th grade. No, not even once. If I as a homeschool parent elect to omit that, in favor of additional time spent on marine life, or insects, or perhaps Greek and Latin roots, that is probably an improvement over what the public school requires. Useless busy work is what kills a love of learning. (My son reads field guides of local reptiles and insects. Voluntarily!) Far better to spend that time teaching how to find answers to those questions on demand. Google is a wonderful thing.
– Don’t set up a system of protective services that treats me as a de facto suspect class. Do not impose additional burdens of inspection on me that are not placed on public school families. And no, regular appearance before the inspector-general so he can check for bruises is not acceptable. Public school teachers do that only in the most incidental fashion. Your system of safety checks must not impose on the ability of innocent parents to conduct the day-to-day raising of their children.
So again, what outcomes do you want to see? Be specific.
Tom: I don’t think standardized tests are even useful for “standardized” curriculum. It is quite possible to have a set of perfectly well done standarzed courses, and a state wide or national standardized test for that topic, and to have the standardized test end up having nothing to do with some or all of the otherwise perfectly good courses. All courses “sample” knowledge. To a lesser degree they sample concepts. There should be a good match between key concepts in any course or standardized test, but the students who understand these will get screwed by the rest of the discordance.
If anything, state/fed agencies would be doing a service to provide test banks. These could be useful to both home schoolers and teachers.
I agree with most of what you say except for your last point, I think yoiu are making an invalid comparison. I don’t think there needs to be any kind of appearance before the inspector general, and in fact, I’m not specifying anything at all in the way of details. But I don’t think the comparison between a public school family and a home schooler is valid, because the school is the missing element in the HS family.
Maybe you can elaborate on the child safety issue some more. It has been said in these discussions that the teachers function as a check against abuse because the students are seen by them every day. It’s also been stated that the nature of the risk to homeschoolers is that they are kept “locked away” from mandatory reporters. (This begs the question of whether the kids are in fact isolated, but let’s not digress.) From there, it’s not a gigantic leap of logic to assume that the proposed protective service would necessarily involve regular appearances before a similar mandatory reporter.
When you say “the school is the missing element in the HS family,” what exactly about the school is missing? That might provide some clue as to what would be an appropriate replacement.
cmf, I am not looking for a new ruler for measuring - I want you to use a consistent ruler when evaluating risks for children, and not a special ruler for homeschoolers where you have to have fourteen inches to make a foot. You cannot simply look at homeschooling and say, “There’s no mandatory reporting, therefore there’s more risk” without simultaneously evaluating the ways in which other factors impact risk up or down.
I’m afraid I’m not understanding what you mean by “insist[ing] on difference”. Are these two educational choices not different? Is that not empirical reality, and therefore not something that I’m having to prove?
My assessment of the neglect and abuse dangers to homeschooled children is that they are at worst equivalent to the dangers faced by public schooled children, and more realistically they are significantly less. This would be a direct impact of the most fundamental initiator of homeschooling: an interested and involved parent taking the time to participate directly in their child’s life. We are all familiar with the studies demonstrating that parental involvement is key to a child’s success across the board; children with involved parents have more academic success, they are less likely to be prematurely involved with adult experiences like alcohol, sex and drugs, and so forth. An involved parent provides more supervision and support in risky environments as well, generally simply because they are there. This is the primary strength of homeschooling (no matter educational style applied or the family’s sociopolitical environment) and in my opinion the reason homeschooling is better than public schooling on issues of child safety and success.
The only space I see an increased risk is in the reduction in contact with mandatory reporters, and proposed homeschooling regulations would do nothing to counteract this. Any system of regular monitoring whose intended purpose is to look for abuse and neglect would be far too easy for the abuser to circumvent (and there is no justification for monitoring whose purpose is other than this). The beauty of the mandatory reporting system within schools is that it is completely incidental, inserted into an association where there is lengthy contact, so that it is difficult to maintain the silent pretense of normality. Furthermore, it is unconstitutional to monitor an individual against whom there is no evidence or suspicion of criminal activity. Mandatory reporters do not have authority to initiate interrogations regarding abuse, and there is no minimum amount of contact with mandatory reporters required (e.g., no minimum number of doctor visits annually, etc.).
My understanding of your position is that you are willing to totally compromise the nature of homeschooling in order to bring children into better contact with mandatory reporters. (See your proposal above “mandating that the h/s child come into contact with mandatory abuse reporters as often as public school kids do”.) As one active in the homeschooling community, I think the benefits of homeschooling are too great and the risks to homeschooled children too small to warrant any such change.
I actually do have a proposal of my own on this issue, though I have no idea what sort of objections my fellow homeschoolers might have. As I said, in CA independent homeschooling occurs under the banner of the private school regulations; I run a one-family private school and the requirements upon me are the same as those of the large religious school down the road. The administrative requirements are minimal: an annual notification and a few small paperwork requirements that take a total of 15 minutes of my time each fall. I am minimally regulated as to educational content, being required to cover the general subject areas without direction to the specifics; there is no supervision of time, curriculum, or progress, and my teachers must simply be “capable of teaching”, which is a nice broad standard that applies to every homeschooler I have ever met. In other words, all of the educational and social benefits that homeschooling affords are completely unhindered, and the true test of success is ultimately a real-world one (whether my children can achieve acceptance in spaces where their education matters, such as entry to university or winning employment).
As a private school teacher and administrator, I already am a mandated reporter for abuse and neglect. (This label is irrelevant to me, as I would take action if I suspected abuse regardless; 18 states actually mandate all citizens as reporters of abuse, although CA is not one of them. See ChildWelfare.gov for the list.) What I don’t have is any information to support me in that mandate, even though I file documentation annually including my mailing address with the state. If the government is going to require certain individuals to report abuse, they should support that mandate with training; it can be as simple as an e-document provided at the Department of Education website and available via snailmail for those who request it in that format. Each year a form letter could be sent out to all private school administrators notifying them of their obligations as reporters and requiring that all faculty and staff be signed off on this document, in the same way that we must sign off on background check requirements (which in CA are waived for parents working exclusively with their own children, in public schools as well as private). My annual notification statement is an affidavit that I sign under penalty of perjury as to my compliance with private school regulations; instead of a form letter it could be an explicit part of the affidavit (as the background check statement is).
This proposal would not require that all states change their homeschooling regulations over to the private school model; it would simply require that under whatever model they have, they attach homeschooling parents to the list of mandated reporters and provide some method of training on the issue.
As I said, I do not know what my fellow homeschoolers would feel about this proposal. There is a vocal subset of libertarians who disapprove of governmental regulations in general and this would obviously be no different to them. It would of course make the most sense for the other 32 states to follow suit and require all citizens to report this crime when they observe or suspect it, although the issue of adequate information and training remains.
(I am well aware of the complications within the child protective services systems that make outliers including myself critical of government interference in our natural rights as parents and I am not interested in engaging in discussion on that topic here. I am in full favor of striking a reasonable balance between the rights of the parent and the rights of the child; obviously as a homeschooler I would be livid if someone tried to regulate away my right to provide my children with a terrific, albeit nonstandard and often incomprehensible to the uninformed, education. And yet I also appreciate that my children are not solely my concern; their safety as well as their eventual maturity is of import to society at large. Still, I believe that the machine of government can never reach the level of concern that an actual individual human does and that therefore the governemnt should have a very high burden of cause before interfering.)
Tom,
I think I’ve actually addressed most of what you are asking here. Please keep in mind that I am not proposing specifics, but rather, asking questions. Also, the abuse/safety issue is way down on my list of concerns, and I haven’t really thought about it much. There is a reason that I occassionally post a story referring to abuse. I do that because a) I’m annoyed by some blogs on which there is a constant sream of stories and invective regarding bad things that happen in public schools, and b) I enjoy watching COD get mad on my blog and Alesandria getting mad at me on her blog.
With respect to the bit you quote, what I mean is this: Everyone has a home, and homes are a component of society that involves a certain amount of freedom and a certain amount of social control. We strive for a system that respects privacy yet protects the vulnerable, etc. etc. Then we have school, and school is a different component of society where the freedom/protection issue is handled somewhat differently, and that has a different purpose.
In your comparison you seem to be collapsing schooling into the home and in so doing stripping off the aspects that relate to education as a component of society distinct from the home. This may leave out important considerations.
Think of it this way. Joe lives in a house and owns a chemical factory down the street. Society and government treat his chemical factory one way, and his home another way. He is annoyed at the regulations, etc., that are imposed on his chemical factory, so he closes it and starts manufacturing the chemicals in his basement, and does so with a permit allowing mixed use in his house, so that it is not an underground operation. EPA rules for chemical factories do not normally apply in our private homes. But this fact does not mean that when Joe puts his chemical factory in his home, that EPA rules for chemical factories no longer apply in his chemical factory, by virtue of it being in his home.
There are certainly many aspects of what happens in schools that are entirely obviated by moving a child into a home schooled environment. You no longer need to have a declared tornado shelter, you no longer are covered by equal opportunity rules, etc. But there are aspects of education and welfare that might still pertain.
Christina: Here’s a thought experiment. (COD: You can play too.) Imagine that a secret cult emerged in which children were used as sexual objects during secret ceremonies. The cult realizes that the children may report this or that it may become known or obvious via the school system an other public activities, so they sign their children up for home schooling at the district and keep their children home. They hide this from their neighbors, etc. The children are kept in sound proof cages in the basement so on one knows they are there. … (details are unimportant).
I assume you would think this is a bad thing. As a proponent of home schooling, you might even thing that one of the bad effects is to give home schooling a bad name, even though these people are nto really home schoolers, but just crazy sick people hiding behind home schooling.
Now you have a meeting of a bunch of concerned home schooling parents to see if there is anything you can do to help solve this problem. What would you do?
Greg: “Everyone has a home, and homes are a component of society that involves a certain amount of freedom and a certain amount of social control. We strive for a system that respects privacy yet protects the vulnerable, etc. etc. Then we have school, and school is a different component of society where the freedom/protection issue is handled somewhat differently, and that has a different purpose.
“In your comparison you seem to be collapsing schooling into the home and in so doing stripping off the aspects that relate to education as a component of society distinct from the home. This may leave out important considerations.”
It seems like you understand that “school” and “education” are two very different animals; what you do not seem to understand is that while “school” is a very well-defined system based on many government regulations, “education” is not. A close look at specific regulations that seem to cover “education” (like the Irish Potato Famine statute I mentioned previously) reveals that they actually do not; they direct what is taught only, i.e., school. No law can ever cover what is learned, which is the true heart of education.
I have browsed your blog; creationism/evolution is openly one of your button issues, and of course as an issue it brings you to that section of the homeschooling demographic that refuses to teach evolution in any way. Put it in perspective. This is not a problem that can be solved by regulating homeschoolers. The spread of creationism is rampant in the entire culture, and as such needs to be addressed at the cultural level. Furthermore, it is not creationism itself that is the problem, it is religious indoctrination. There are many challenges to rational and scientific thought within religious doctrine: how about the miracle of transubstantiation (bread to flesh, wine to blood), saintly miracles, virgin birth? (Although I hear scientists are discovering the ability to “virgin birth” in higher orders of species all the time - there was a hammerhead shark story on my local NPR yesterday.) We need to protect our society as a place where freethought is embraced and encouraged in order to make it possible for children emerging from indoctrination to find support. Placing educational regulations on homeschooling does exactly the opposite. It takes a segment of the population where a lot of freethought is occurring and ties it up.
I know there is little that can be done in the short term regarding religious indoctrination (and I agree that is the root of the problem, with creationism riding on top) but pseudo science (including creationism) as the central material taught in science class (for example) does not qualify a home schooled kid for college.
This becomes abuse when parents disqualify their children for normal lives by inculturating them in this way, with emphasis on the c-u-l-t.
50% of people in the US believe the creation myth. The vast majority of them have jobs, families, pay their taxes, etc etc etc. The theory that being force fed creationism somehow disqualifies children from a normal life simply does not hold up under scrutiny in the real world. Whether or not you want that life is not relevant. There is simply no evidence that there is any significant societal cost to creationism. And even if there was, I don’t see how you can do anything about it without amending the Bill of Rights. Good luck with that.
It’s interesting just how much alike Greg and the fundies are. They both want to use the police power of government to impose their beliefs on each other. Greg believes teaching creationism dooms kids to a low quality life. There is no proof of that. The fundies believe teaching evolution dooms kids to hell. There is no proof of that either.
Finally consider this. Imagine a massive Al Queda attack on the US in mid 2008 scares the electorate silly and they elect a veto proof majority of Republicans to Congress to support President McCain. The new Secretary of Education is a fire and brimestone fundie who immediately sets out to remake the public schools in God’s image. (we are ignoring the political realities of ow dificult that would really be in the thought experiment)
You are going want to that freedom to home educate outside of the prying eyes of the government. When the fundies lose the freedom to direct their kids education, we all lose that freedom. That includes you Greg.
I think the only way to approach the problem of pseudo-science is with well-publicized, compelling debunking. There is no way to prevent parents from indoctrintating their children. Are we going to regulate what they are allowed to say over the dinner table? As evidenced by the number of Americans who disbelieve evolution, this is clearly a problem of far broader scope than homeschoolers; therefore addressing it by regulating homeschoolers misses the target.
COD:
I think your intention is to simply not get what I am saying. Why is that? No, don’t answer. Don’t say anything. I’m not interested.
Also, you need to start being more polite.
Tom: Nice idea, and I appreciate your thoughts, but we have been doing that for a couple of decades and have gained virtually no ground. It really does seem like that would work, but as you said before, indoctrination is the real problem, and indoctrination essentially obviates that approach for many people, unfortunately (yet yes, we continue to try).
There is not “a target” that needs to be hit or miss. There is nothing at all that is the one single problem. Therefore, all potential avenues can be disregarded with your logic (”this” is not “the” target that will do it, therefore don’t bother). I agree with your basic premise and what you are saying, but I’m not talking about dinner conversations. I’m talking about qualifications. Admissions qualifications, job qualifications, qualifications to be a citizen, etc.
Tom, you may be late to this conversation, and with COD’s incessant moronic babbling (oh, I hope he doesn’t read this far down the post!) you may not realize this: I was home schooled, and I am fully in support of home schooling. Don’t look at me as some crazy anti-home schooling nut. I’m a person asking questions.
It turns out that when you ask questions of home schoolers, a certain number (hopefully a minority) think you’ve just killed their favorite puppy, and they attack. I assure you there are others who have engaged in conversations on this blog who are reasonable (I’m thinking you’re reasonable but not quite getting where I’m coming from, which I’m sure is not your fault at all).
Greg, it’s a nice straw man, and true to the straw man approach you are including assumptions designed to create a point that you can pseudo-victoriously refute. Any individual or group operating so far outside the bounds of normal human behavior is not going to play by the rules and register the children with the district in the first place; the children will be kept totally off the radar.
How about instead of setting up deliberately contrived and implausible scenarios in the hopes of proving your point, you instead demonstrate to me that the benefits of monitoring homeschoolers as a group to expose hypothetical and unevidenced individual criminal activity outweigh the costs to liberty?
Christina,
Sorry, I guess you missed my point. I’m trying to see what sorts of things home schoolers (active in the practice) might themselves consider. That’s why I’m asking that question. I’m not trying to prove some point. I assure you that if I’m trying to prove a point, you’ll know it because I’ll say that.
Greg: “I know there is little that can be done in the short term regarding religious indoctrination (and I agree that is the root of the problem, with creationism riding on top) but pseudo science (including creationism) as the central material taught in science class (for example) does not qualify a home schooled kid for college.
“This becomes abuse when parents disqualify their children for normal lives by inculturating them in this way, with emphasis on the c-u-l-t.”
I agree with COD that there is no evidence that children raised on creationism are disqualified from “normal lives”. And I have to restate that within the fundamentalist paradigm, there is plenty of real science (by your and my definition) taught: experiments, scientific method, all the normal stuff. Does it make sense that it is so? Of course it doesn’t - the inconsistency of it boggles the mind. (Did you read the NYTimes article I linked to above, about the guy who is a young earth creationist and yet wrote his dissertation on mosasaurs in the Cretaceous? I was getting motion sickness from the spin…)
Given the magnitude of the problem, those of us wishing to work against the tide have to be creative in our methods. Mandating that all homeschoolers teach evolution might work in some cases - although I assume there’d be significant civil disobedience, because it’s not like the penalty will be prison time - but I’d argue that those rational children it would reach would come to that place without the law, so why direct our energies that way? The legislative front already keeps us busy battling down the opposition, although I suppose there might be some merit in the argument that we should put them on the defensive for a change.
Still, my own personal choice for action in this matter is simply to put myself out there, because this sort of cultural change cannot be effected from the authoritarian top down; it has to build from the grassroots bottom up. As a homeschooler, I am in regular contact with others in the community, many of whom are creationists of one type or another. I actively seek out new contact by being a known community resource and host. I am around their children (and so are my kids). Many homeschoolers choose to avoid this sort of topic, and I’d say that’s a good thing because without skill it becomes a confrontational mess. I have never been one to shy from discussion, and by applying good communication skills I am able to make sure my point (or my child’s point) is out there to be contemplated. I have been around homeschooled children who didn’t know it was possible not to believe in gods and who had never heard of evolution. Well, they know now, and with any luck that will stick with them as they figure out what it is they believe.
“But I don’t think the comparison between a public school family and a home schooler is valid, because the school is the missing element in the HS family.”
Greg, what exactly do you mean by this?
One could just as easily say: “But I don’t think the comparison between a secular family and a religious family is valid, because the church/synagogue/temple/etc. is the missing element in the secular family.” It is a true statement (the house of worship is not in the secular family’s life), but what exactly does it mean? I’d wager that you and I would have very different opinions on that.
You would probably object to the implication that not attending a house of worship somehow leaves the secular family lacking in some way when compared to the religious family. You would undoubtedly argue that society has no business in dictating to the individual whether or not to attend religious services.
Well, I object to the implication in your statement that not attending school somehow leaves the homeschooled family lacking in some way when compared to the publicly schooled family. And I *definitely* feel that society has no business in dictating to me whether or not to send my children to public schools!
Greg: “Sorry, I guess you missed my point. I’m trying to see what sorts of things home schoolers (active in the practice) might themselves consider. That’s why I’m asking that question. I’m not trying to prove some point. I assure you that if I’m trying to prove a point, you’ll know it because I’ll say that.”
I guess the point wasn’t clear. As an active homeschooler, I would have nothing to offer, because I wouldn’t have any awareness of the situation. The situation that you describe is completely dependent on deus ex machina for exposure: perhaps something as grandiose as a natural disaster forcing it into the open, or something as simple as a TV technician being in the house and noticing something suspicious (assuming of course that in the wildness of the scenario, the cultists don’t murder the tech and roast him over the ceremonial fire, but even then, his boss will notice he’s missing and an investigation will eventually be started…). As far as preventing the situation from arising? I have little to no knowledge about the strategies that prevent cultist behavior; common sense tells me that the best we can do is minimize religious indoctrination in general, and that’s a problem on a national scope - actually, on a global scope - as well as a problem that would be unaffected by any regulation of U.S. homeschoolers. We could probably also improve the mental health system, since I’m sure many cultist leaders and followers have personality disorders and traits making them susceptible to the pattern.
In the real world homeschooling community - and frankly for the world community as well - I prefer to prevent neglect and abuse with the application of interpersonal contact and community support. Homeschooling can be challenging, even knowing that almost all of us choose it willingly; I want the parents and children to have opportunities for connection (in learning and in play) that keep their information level high and their stress and worry low. (I may have said this before, or it may be something I edited out: Lack of preparation and stress/worry are two of the top contributors to abuse, triggers if you will for any latent tendencies.) I work to build communities that offer support not only on homeschooling issues in particular, but that will also bring meals to a family that is struggling with medical or unemployment issues, that will offer to take the children of that struggling family on adventures. That schedules “moms’ nights out” and curriculum swaps to keep spirit and budget on an even keel. That keeps parents’ expectations of their children at a reasonable level to keep frustrations down. (A couple of weeks ago I found myself reassuring a friend that neither she nor her 16yo child was a failure for the lack of Canterbury Tales!)
Go through this list of contributing factors at ChildWelfare.gov; most of them can be alleviated with good community support. Even such items as a parent’s own experience of childhood abuse, domestic violence, or substance abuse can be mitigated by a well-functioning community of support, which will be populated with individuals who can mentor a troubled parent or work to connect them with more professional assistance. A child with disabilities? Check out this terrific article at NHEN on How Can Homeschool Support Groups Embrace Special Needs Homeschoolers?
Insofar as exposing abuse rather than preventing, I believe I have said my piece on the subject, but I’ll recap for you: 1. All adult citizens should be mandatory reporters of suspected abuse and should one way or another receive information on what this means. 2. The child welfare system should receive sufficient funding to resolve and maintain resolution of its internal problems of corruption and abuse of power and lack of information and lack of time, so that people do not put aside their suspicions because of the possibility that they might be wrong (which if they are, under the current system, can be a terrible experience for the suspected family because of the problems listed above). 3. We should not erode the liberties of an entire community and an entire nation in order to expose the insane cases of abuse such as your cult scenario; such tragedies and larger ones will always be in occurrence. We cannot make a perfect world.
Christina: First, thank you for actually proposing a check and balance for the rights of these h/s kids, instead of letting those knees fly up in the air , jerking around in rage that someone would dare question h/s motivations, like some can’t seem to stop themselves from doing;-)
Second, I ask you: if the following isn’t a differential ruler, what is ? You wrote in regards to dangers faced by homeschoolers the dangers are “at worst equivalent to the dangers faced by public schooled children, and more realistically they are significantly less.”
Because as yet the data isn’t fully in yet,with h/s being a kind of new phenomenon, and we will see that the dangers are the same, no matter how you and others want to distance yourselfs from the more disturbed Waco fringes of the h/s movement.Put together, all of the h/s enjoy the freedom to school as they want to under the same banner.
Just like the Nazi party, the Jehovahs witnesses, radical anarchist Jews of the early labor movement, etc, and many other fringe groups have been the larger part of Supreme Court rulings on various freeedoms( assembly; speech; association), they too have been part of some wacky behavior part and parcel to the strugle for liberties.
So, if it is true as you posit, that h/s kids are at less risk, let’s see it over the years, show us the data from both sides of the discussion, but first: how to gather that data? That is where reporting m,echanisms come into play, and I appreciate your nudge in that direction–training for mandatory reporters are a good first step. Sure, who wants the Davidian viewpoint, or the creationist viewpoint, or the Andrea Yates viewpoint to be included in the data–but it is part of the data, and the abuse that occurs in those h/s situations is part of that data as well( yeah, I know Andrea Y wasn’t yet an official h/ser for Jesus, as her kids were kindergarten ages but she definitely was headed in that direction).
Unfortunately, just like in the original debates about child abuse where some people with full blown agendas( those who actually get paid to gatekeep data) worked hard to frame that abuse as exclusively perpetrated by men, and fathers,and denied female perpetrated abuse and excluded it from the data, today we have new data that proves in many cases quite the opposite,that women abuse as well, and the nukmbers of perpetrators caught and prosecuted is increasing with better reporting, and minds that are open to the possibility of spotting and stopping this form of abuse.
Like domestic violence, again, it was framed as a man on woman thing for years, and other forms of it were denied–until the data on gay and lesbian domestic violence was collected and that data created ties with the data that some worked so hard to supress in the early discussions about abuse and Dom violence. Meanwhile, as those who labored away as little Eichmanns working hard to suppress data, cloud data, and hide data, kids and other abused peoples were slipping through the cracks created with a broad brush stereotypes contained within rosy colored anecdotes.
cmf: “Second, I ask you: if the following isn’t a differential ruler, what is ? You wrote in regards to dangers faced by homeschoolers the dangers are “at worst equivalent to the dangers faced by public schooled children, and more realistically they are significantly less.”
“Because as yet the data isn’t fully in yet,with h/s being a kind of new phenomenon, and we will see that the dangers are the same, no matter how you and others want to distance yourselfs from the more disturbed Waco fringes of the h/s movement.Put together, all of the h/s enjoy the freedom to school as they want to under the same banner.”
I completely agree with you the dangers of Waco and Andrea Yates exist within the homeschooling community. My point is that they are not unique to that community, and therefore that community should not be subjected to particular scrutiny. This is the different ruler I’m talking about; you cannot demand surveillance of a demographic for a behavior that they share in common with society in general, and you are not demonstrating that the behavior occurs with more frequency within that demographic. (By the way, modern homeschooling, including both the liberal and conservative facets, is almost 40yrs old.)
I think it is likely a misrepresentation to claim that cults like Waco homeschool. Though some cults may choose this path (individual parents educate their own children), I suspect that the typical situation in a cult of families is more accurately described as private schooling (select teachers educate a group of children); my understanding of cults is that they are very very big on centralized control.
I certainly wouldn’t claim that the dangers of psychotic mothers and cultist beliefs are reduced in the homeschooling community, and I don’t believe I did so. I argued that the total sum of abuse risk to homeschooled children (from all perpetrators) is less than public schooled children, and I presented the mathematics that lead me to that conclusion. (That’s why I used the term “equivalent” and not “equal”, because I was not referring to identical risk sets.) Both groups of children (HS and PS) share the risk of parental abuse (as well as familial/friend abuse and stranger abuse). PS children have the added risk of institutional abuse from both the teacher and peer segments; homeschoolers have almost none of this (even my active butterflies spend at most ten hours a week in institutional type classes and activities). In order for the total risk to be equivalent, the former risks (parental, familial and stranger) would have to be actually higher for HS kids.
I theorize that certain segments of the parental risk go up (for example, the percentage of fundamentalists is higher within the homeschooling community than the general population, and their biblical attitudes on parenting and discipline are a risk factor), but other segments will almost certainly contribute risk reductions (for example, the poverty segment in homeschooling is very low, as is the single parent segment, both of those being risk factors for abuse). Familial risks will likely see both up and down movement in different segments for the same reasons. Stranger risk may very well go down, because in my experience homeschooled children have far better supervision due to increased parental involvement.
If, as you say, “the data isn’t fully in yet”, why are you pushing for increased regulation of homeschoolers? Wouldn’t an appropriate first step be to begin collecting data? It seems likely that many social service agencies have not yet added this statistic to their forms. One would also need to figure out a way to assess the total population of homeschoolers in order to calculate the rate, so a movement to have more information about children’s schooling status (I think it’s just grade level right now) added to the census procedure would be necessary as well.
Christiana,
I think this is the problem with the present discussion: Some people are asking about oversight. Some home schoolers are saying that oversight of any kind is very very bad and should never happen. That would be David Koresh, COD, and DOC
Others are saying that home schooling should not have special oversight. But nobody is asking for that. I’ve tried many ways to get something productive going here, and all I get is slapped around on my own blog for even asking the question. But, the question remains open: No one is asking for special oversight. No one is asking for special oversight. Some are asking, is it OK that there is this thing, home schooling, that appears to have virtually zero oversight?
It is not in fact the case that there is zero oversight, but it is spotty, variable, and what oversight does seem to exist is apparently not satisfying, at least to home schoolers. But home schoolers seem to be unwilling to make even the smallest constructive suggestion.
You seem to think we are out to get you. If you keep thinking that, we will, eventually, get you!
Christina: you again offer some useful and productive insight here. However, in regards to this one point: “you cannot demand surveillance of a demographic for a behavior that they share in common with society in general,” is not set in my mind as accurate, or representive because g/s people distinctly DO NOT share their behavior in common with the rest of society, because we are a society that has the vast majority of kids schooled in p/s. I am not demanding surveillance per se, and I think what intrigues me is how the h/s community uses the terms ’surveilance’ interchangeably with ‘ oversight’, or other terms of use that are not so laden with police state overtones.
So the behavior of isolation is not a factor that public schoolers sharte with h/sers, and a factor that cannot be understated, no matter how many outings and baseball games some h/sers claim to participate in. I must note that many here are actually the h/sers that can make a difference, and likely do make a positive difference for their kids, but unfortunately, many of them, as Greg notes “That would be David Koresh, COD, and DOC,” seem to not be able to be objective even in discussing these issues–which can easily lead to the inference that their are indeed problems in collecting objective data FROM homeschoolers themselves.
So, to answer your question,in a small way, these discusions ARE the first step toward collecting the data. And on another point you make, the Yates and Koresh folks are indeed a factor still, because the kids were in their ‘home’ environment, and the laws that should have protected them are the same laws that apply to other home environments.
I appreciate your nod towards the abuse that is more likely to occur in the single mother homes as well, but “the total sum of abuse risk to homeschooled children (from all perpetrators) is less than public schooled children,” is too broad of a platform because again, data collection possibilities are scant, and horribly slanted and controlled by those who have the agenda of promoting the purported safety of the h/s environment.Also, as we know, the most common form of abuse is by those the children are closest too, not the institutional abuse, or the stranger abuse, and so this to mee makes the h/s enviro a more likely place for abuse to occur, and not be reported.
I can’t resist pointing out that 98% of the 50% of the population that “believes in” creationism were educated in our public schools. I think we should regulate schools more to make sure that this can not happen! What? That won’t work? I know, let’s try it on homeschoolers, then!
And yes, it is ok for homeschooling to have virtually zero oversight! Thank you for asking. Now, we are still talking about coming under existing laws for abuse and neglect that are in place to protect all children, right? Yes, that would be ok with most homeschoolers I have spoken with. But since we are not accepting any taxpayer money (which is why there is oversight of public schools, along with the fact that the children’s care and education have been outsourced, so there needs to be accountability to compensate for the outsourcing), then we are talking about zero oversight that would be targeted to us because we are homeschoolers. We are using our own money, and we are not outsourcing to the government’s employees who need to be checked on.
I also want to point out that in many, many places, it is necessary to HOMESCHOOL in order for a child to truly learn about evolution. It is such a hot button issue in so many places, that the curriculum and its presentation are totally watered down. Even as long ago as when I was in public school, a “creationist” had to be invited in to “debate” with our science teacher so “both sides” would be presented. This continues to be a reality in many communities, including the places where I have lived. The local culture in the schools has actually been consistently more fundamentalist than many of the homeschoolers that I know in those communities. (I have homeschooled in three southern states, in four distinct communities). My freedom to homeschool with zero oversight prevents the local culture from requiring me to water down our discussions of evolution. It also keeps me from being treated like a suspect because I am making a non-mainstream choice. Which, last time I checked, was an important thing in America.
My opinion is that the default has gotten all messed up. So many people outsource their children’s education, that the “normal course” of nurturing and educating children has gotten confused and forgotten. This messed up paradigm keeps people trying to think of ways to make homeschoolers more like schools, since sending children out of their families for school is the overwhelmingly popular choice. But in reality, that choice is not because the model is successful; it’s just because the model is so prevalent. The real “default” for education should be the family model, but as a society, we are unwilling to see that the emperor has no clothes - because if we admit as a society that the short experiment in standardization through schooling is a failure, then the mistake is so huge that it is an unbearable thought.
Easier, instead, to keep trying to make the family model conform through oversight, so we won’t have the nonstandardization of homeschooling as a reminder of the discrepancy between schools’ stated aims and schools’ results.
My mother hasn’t forgotten her one-room school house of 75 years ago, where the children went home or to the homes of their nearby classmates for lunch. She hasn’t forgotten how the children fed the stove and the teacher read aloud “for hours.” She hasn’t forgotten how the “most educated man” she knew was her father, whose formal schooling ended in gradeschool, but whose love of learning was nurtured by his own family. But society’s memories of these stories is just about gone and still — homeschoolers, these darn unregulated homeschoolers — keep a tiny piece of what should be the default alive and creating the tiniest bits of doubt about the Institutionalization of Everything.
Christina: Here’s a thought experiment. (COD: You can play too.) Imagine that a secret cult emerged in which children were used as sexual objects during secret ceremonies. The cult realizes that the children may report this or that it may become known or obvious via the school system an other public activities, so they sign their children up for home schooling at the district and keep their children home. They hide this from their neighbors, etc. The children are kept in sound proof cages in the basement so on one knows they are there. … (details are unimportant).
I assume you would think this is a bad thing. As a proponent of home schooling, you might even thing that one of the bad effects is to give home schooling a bad name, even though these people are nto really home schoolers, but just crazy sick people hiding behind home schooling.
Now you have a meeting of a bunch of concerned home schooling parents to see if there is anything you can do to help solve this problem. What would you do?
I would evaluate the risk like I would any other risk, by looking at both probability and impact. I would also avoid evaluating the risk by irrelevant factors, such as how much control you have over the situation and whether the causative agent is people or natural events. Following these measures will ensure that I don’t make common mistakes that result from misconceptions about risks, such as evaluating the risks of flying higher than that of driving or worrying about terrorism instead of being struck by lightning.
I’d do research to see if there ever have been such secret cults. Having actual data about risks is essential, as I’ve found, for example, that most people seem to be unaware of the precipitious decline in violent crimes since the early 1990’s. If there haven’t been or if they’re extremely rare, I wouldn’t do anything about it. There are an infinite variety of potential risks, and I have a limited amount of resources to invest in risk prevention, so I must invest them wisely. I also know that every risk prevention measure I take has tradeoffs, which can increase other risks (i.e., moving to the surburbs, with their typically lower crime rates, may not reduce your overall risks if it causes you to spend more time in the car.)
Attempting to prevent secret cults is probably not a wise investment in security, and the prevention measures may increase my other risks.
Well, in my opening sentence, I forgot to include private schools in the non-homeschooling figure of 98% of the population. Sorry. I am meaning only to point out that the majority of people who are creationists are not homeschooled but attend public or private schools.
Greg: “It is not in fact the case that there is zero oversight, but it is spotty, variable, and what oversight does seem to exist is apparently not satisfying, at least to home schoolers. But home schoolers seem to be unwilling to make even the smallest constructive suggestion.”
You addressed this comment directly to me. I am confused as to what part of my previous comments you didn’t understand as “constructive suggestion[s]”? The suggestions seemed pretty obviously stated as such to me. Perhaps you would begin to offer some solutions of your own devising, rather than simply armchair quarterbacking? Given the lean of your blog, I expect the best regulation you would like to see placed on homeschooling would be the requirement that evolution be taught and creationism be banned. I happily disagree; I want no part of that kind of thought control, regardless of how much I disagree with creationism. Think of it as the ACLU stance: “I despise what you teach, but I will fight with my last breath your right to teach it.”
I’m wrapping up my posting here this evening on this and cmf’s newest comment - I have to take advantage of the last couple of days before my kids come home from their grandparents’ to get some projects done around the house, and as fun as these kinds of discussions are, they do take up time!
To reiterate: Homeschooling should have only minimal oversight, and none of it should be about the education itself.
Thanks for stimulating a sometimes thoughtful discussion; I plan to take my own writings and synthesize them into a single piece.
cmf: “Christina: you again offer some useful and productive insight here. However, in regards to this one point: “you cannot demand surveillance of a demographic for a behavior that they share in common with society in general,” is not set in my mind as accurate, or representive because g/s people distinctly DO NOT share their behavior in common with the rest of society, because we are a society that has the vast majority of kids schooled in p/s. I am not demanding surveillance per se, and I think what intrigues me is how the h/s community uses the terms ’surveilance’ interchangeably with ‘ oversight’, or other terms of use that are not so laden with police state overtones.
“So the behavior of isolation is not a factor that public schoolers sharte with h/sers, and a factor that cannot be understated, no matter how many outings and baseball games some h/sers claim to participate in.”
A few last comments before I close up shop:
“The behavior” in question was abuse, not homeschooling.
You clearly have a trigger issue on abuse, so much so that you are completely unwilling to take shared information at face value. “[C]laim to participate in”? Your prejudice is very strong. I suggest a frolic through the blogs at HomeschoolJournal.net when it is done with its server migration. What you call isolation, I call quality family time, something which public schooled children are sorely lacking, and as I mentioned, involved parenting is actually a predictor of a child’s success and well-being. If 40 hours a week of public schooling was so very nuturing to and protective of children, would we not see success coming out of the system instead of constant failure?
Here is a question for you to ponder: Of the 35-40 hours a week that the average student spends in school, exactly how much of that time do you think the teacher is spending in observation for abuse signs? Given the norm of thirty-student classrooms, the teacher could spend at most 1.17 to 1.34 hours watching a child for suspect behaviors, and that’s if the teacher didn’t teach or do classroom management at all. The teacher’s primary responsibility is not reporting abuse, it’s teaching, so any abuse signals are going to have to be pretty obvious in order to win attention through the other work. A schooled child spends more time with their teacher than with anyone other than their parents, and yet teachers only report 16% of the abuse cases. Presumably if the parents are the abusers, they’re not doing much of the other 84% - which leads me to the conclusion that the vast majority of reporters are people who are in low-level community contact with the child. In other words, the overwhelming majority of reporting happens outside of school.
One last thing: I have not seen you offer one piece of realistic action to solve the problem you so heartily decry. You merely complain that homeschoolers are weirdos who isolate their children and do not care about abuse (actually, you think we do worse than that, you think we intentionally conceal it to protect our choice). If this issue is truly important to you - not just abuse in general, but strengthening the homeschooling community against abuse - I suggest a shift from criticism to activism.
Thanks for the stimulus to discussion.
Jeanne: ” I think we should regulate schools more to make sure that this can not happen! What? That won’t work? I know, let’s try it on homeschoolers, then!”
No not necessarily–no one here is “out to get homeschoolers”, but the h/s people that are active in this debate certainly represent the possibility of the occlusive nature of the facts that can be gleaned from this debate and the non participatory stoppage of the advocacy for better more protective possibilities– however, they ( and you) are relying on knee jerk denial of response capability, rather than proactive defenses against these lunatics who are indoctinating kids and abusing them by rote.
Christine: I stopped reading you comment, because I bumped into a common factor of differntial partisan analysis ” What you call isolation, I call quality family time,” and then I said YIKES!
But I also said ” Christine sounds like someone who might have an open and active, non dogmtioc mnind.
Then I said” time to sleep on it, cuz’ Christine is a soldier, and willing to participate i open analysis.So, I will see you tomorrow.
Jeane: Just a quick note. We do regulate that creationism is not taught in public schools. It does not work as well as it should in many areas because of stealth creationist teachers and mean spirited aggressive reactionary Christian parents. There are many overlaps between those folks and the fundy home schoolers. In other words, this problem permeates all aspects of the education system. Indeed, our secretary of education here in MN was a fundy creationist type before we booted her out.
Related to something else you post: I’m concerned that in some areas homeschooling is necessary. You are probably right, and that is a serious problem, because the simple truth is that only some people can home school. Public education needs to be improved so that this is no longer the situation
Home schooling should be a choice, not a refuge.
Greg, the government is unable to regulate thought in our public schools, which people are compelled to attend by force of law. Likewise, our government is unable to control thought in our homes. So far.
Because of the government’s inability to regulate schools into success, I should invite or accept this entity’s regulation in my home? I don’t think so.
My conclusion is the exact opposite: the government demonstrates to me that it is unable to create consistently successful schools, despite its long-armed regulating power. It would be illogical for me to believe that inviting or accepting regulation by the government would create a different scenario in my home. I am just not going to be that stupid. When you do more of the same, you get more of the same. That is why I do something different.
Homeschooling exists as both a choice AND a refuge. For some families, it begins as a refuge and quickly becomes a whole-hearted choice.
Both choice and refuge will fail to exist if the government that regulates my local schools is given the opportunity to homogenize my homeschooling into an experience that educrats and critics would find acceptable.
My goodness, Greg, do you know that we lie around all day and read good books!? IN BED! Do you know that my 9 year old does not write ANY sentences himself but dictates whole books to me? Do you know that we sometimes went for MONTHS without doing ANY math, but somehow my middle son, now at 16, is excelling in advanced math and can become an engineer despite not knowing long division until seventh grade? He also NEVER had a spelling or grammar “lesson” or test and recently took the community college entrance exam and did not miss ANY of the language arts questions. Oldest son speaks fluent Spanish despite never having had a high school course, and just yesterday was speaking with our neighbor who had FOUR YEARS of high school Spanish and said she “cannot speak a word of it.” This is not meant to demonstrate any superiority of homeschooling (because to me, average and “below average” kids deserve homeschooling just as much and probably need it more). Instead, it is meant to show that my methods have been completely unusual, completely outside of parameters that “regulating” would have made possible, but completely successful. And since we don’t have a “control” for my family, we can’t know if regulation (MAKE that seventh grader do long division or SEND HIM TO SCHOOL! Where the majority of seventh graders who can’t do long division get THEIR educations!) would have squeezed the life out of my homeschooling or not. But I can tell you that during the years some of my children WERE in school and were well within reach of government oversight, the experience was tragic.
So many of our family’s “ways” are things that the government’s miminal oversight would have (and sometimes did, depending on what state we lived in at the time) interfered with, pushing us toward the mediocrity and worse that we have found in our states’ schools.
I have seen the result of government oversight, and I have found that I can do better. Government oversight creates stumbling blocks, limitations, lowest common denominator. We are about customizing, enabling, being nimble, basing intellectual “feeding” on healthy relationships, which give a thousand directions each day to the tuned-in parent. Forgive me if I don’t want to cave to regulation and lose the spark.
And finally, the cop-out that homeschooling is a choice that only the elite can make is something that I am not willing to accept. My local homeschooling communities have always included people functioning at poverty level, single parents, minorities, friends who lived in “trailers” and blue collar workers. Their heroic efforts on behalf of their children, to keep them out of the highly regulated unsuccessful schools, is something that inspires me. Yes, there are people for whom homeschooling is not an option, but my homeschooling community proves that a great many more people *could* make the choice to take personal responsibility for their children rather than outsourcing their education. It is an insult to their sacrifice to imply that therefore, we must be regulated, because we exist in a community where schools have apparently not been regulated ENOUGH to be good enough for their children. They homeschool against long economic odds because that choice is so important to them, demonstrating that a good many others *could* if others wanted to.
Greg, if you or one of your children or grandchildren ever seeks an education that is truly an alternative to a highly-regulated school run by the government, I hope that homeschoolers will have been able to hang onto it for you.
The point about regulating to keep creationism out of the public schools is an interesting one. The reason that is done is because creationism is a blatantly religious construction (let ID apologists and other such charlatans say what they will), and thus government functionaries (the public schools) must be careful not to impose it on those who may not want it, nor to lend it governmental support in preference to other religious thought systems (perhaps Flying Spaghetti Monsterism).
These roles and requirements do not come into play in the homeschool. The homeschool teacher is not a functionary of the government, but of the family. For the government to interdict the teaching of creationism in that setting is to “prohibit the free exercise thereof.”
It is an entertaining concept (though kind of pathetic) that the fundamentalists try to combat evolution by claiming that it interferes with their free exercise of religion, by virtue of being contrary to their dogma. A more accurate characterization is that evolution takes no notice of their dogma, which is why it is permissible in the public schools. (and incidentally one of the reasons why it is good science, though creationism is not kept out of public schools on the basis of it being bad science).
Jeane,
I am not interested in regulating thought. Are you? Apparently. You need to have the impression, or belief, that I have certain thoughts. Why is that? You are obviously a smart person. Why do you act as though you are not understanding me?
Your intractable reaction to what I am saying is belied by your final remarks … if I or anyone else ever seeks …. bla bla bla.
I was home schooled. OK STOP HERE. go back and read the beginning of this paragraph a couple of times!
No, it is not a cop out regarding who can do it. Again, you put words in my mouth. I never, ever said that homeschooling was for the elite. I did say that not everyone can do it. Perhaps your trailer-dwelling poor friends are poor because they are homeschooling, maybe not. But again, please try to refrain from misconstruing and misrepresenting what I am saying.
Greg: If you want the discussion to be constructive, why not tell us what specific “oversight” you propose, what problems this oversight would solve, and how you would feel if the creationists got control of your district/state/whatever and used this power on you?
I’m not trying to be antagonistic, I’m genuinely interested.
I believe regulation should not be the default, it should be used deliberately. So I might be argumentative. But there is nothing wrong with a good argument. If you’ve already made some specific proposal, please point me there.
Rolfe,
Over time I might make some specific proposals, or I may not. This discussion is not my central interest at this point though it is an interest over the long term. So I can’t promise anything along those lines. So far I have been mainly asking questions, and occasionally various suggestions just to see how they fly. I find so far that if I make even a vague suggestion, or alternatively a not-so-vague suggestion but one that is contingent (like if X, then Y), that mostly bad things happen, the most common (but least important) is that a few home schoolers gang up together and make strong statements about what they feel is in my mind, sometimes correctly usually not, and rand and rave and rail against me. Sometimes this moves on to ad hominem attacks on whoever is in the general vicinity. That does not get us anywhere.
Thus, the debate that derives from my suggestions ceases to be interesting to me except as sport. Sometimes it is fun to watch the crazy ranting people foam at the mouth for a while. But even that gets boring. Indeed, one of the things that makes it boring is that I can predict the responses so well.
“Well, then, fancy Harvard Professor who knows everything, if THIS is not your primary interest, then why don’t you just shut up about it and leave us freedom seeking home schoolers alone!” and so on.
I made a fairly specific suggestion just a couple of days ago: A specification of common skills and knowledge that all kids getting, say a high school equivalent degree, would have. I suggested that this not be the bulk or even majority of skills and knowledge. I suggested that this not be linked to specific methods of teaching or even timing of when it should be taught. I also did not suggest what this body of knowledge and skills would be, but I suggested that certain sets of state standards would be a good place to start a hypothetical conversation among, say, home schoolers and education people and so on to develop such a thing.
I was accused of trying to force a specific curriculum with specific methods at specific times down the throats of etc. etc. You get the picture. Rolfe, I swear, if your post is simply meant to bait me into this type of discussion, I’m not interested. Do your ranting on your own site. But if you are really interested in the conversation, you will be rare among home schoolers in the blogosphere!
One substantive response to my suggestion was the assertion, which I totally disagree with, that there can be no core of skills or knowledge. Some home schoolers believe that it is possible for several different home schoolers to have distinctly different and non-overlapping sets of skills and knowledge. I totally disagree with that. Not only should this not be, but it cannot not be. There is going to be a certain amount of natural convergence, and there needs to be a certain amount of controlled or required (strong words, yes, I am aware of that) convergence in order to not be doing a disservice to the kids that we are ultimately talking about here.
Another less substantive but important remark is that this is hard to do. It is hard to come up with any agreement. Yes, it would be hard, I agree. But hard does not mean impossible, and hard does not mean that it is inherently a bad idea. Some things are just hard to do!
Since I made some of the comments about specific methods at specific times, I’d like to respond.
I don’t remember accusing you of proposing that. I do carry an assumption that if the state were to attempt to define core curriculum, that would be a likely outcome. This is based on the fact that current educational standards do tend to specify that sort of thing: if Johnny isn’t capable of multiplying fractions by the end of fourth grade, he is officially “behind” in his education, and corrective action needs to be taken immediately. In the absence of specific proposals from you, the default model that we expect from the state is more of the same.
This also is the sort of thing that forces homeschooling into the same mold as public schooling, that limits the ability to tailor our educational programs to the needs of our children. That is why I said that your proposal specifically should not be that, were you to make one.
The “controlled convergence” that you talk about above smells suspiciously like “this subject at this age, or else.” If it is different, please explain how. If there is going to be some natural convergence, why do we need to impose structure on it?
As to homeschoolers skill sets being so different as to be non-overlapping, I assert that is your interpretation. They may be non-overlapping at a specific point in time — in other words, one homeschooler may decide that, based on her understanding of her child’s learning style, it may be a good idea to put off fractions until next year — but hardly non-overlapping, period. I have never met a homeschool parent who thinks that her child’s education should be so unique that by the time she is finished, all the things her child knows are not known by other students and vice-versa.
Tom,
Let me say that while I tend to agree with the scope of the standards that I’m familiar with, or in some cases have even had a small role in writing or interpreting, I totally disagree with sequencing. There is something to be said for some degree of matching content with developmental stages in the very broadest way, and of course certain material that is not so much academic, but health related, etc., is time-sensitive. No sense in teaching about birth control after several years of fertility have passed by, etc.
So I have to say that your form of argument is flawed: “In the absence of specific proposals from you, the default model that we expect from the state is more of the same.” I take to mean that since I have not specifically stated what I am thinking, that you substitute your own personal boogey man … “THE STATE” for my point of view.
Tom, I could guess that you are a libertarian type person, so why don’t I assume that you and the Unibomber are pretty much the same. You live in a cabin in Montana, and you send letter bombs to random people in academia and business. Of course, that would be wrong (or is it???
)
You know, there is a good chance that if I was asked to redesign home schooling AND the public education system (and given lots of time and resources) as Tzar, I would probably change a lot more in public education than in home schooling. My complaints to Rolfe is this: Many of the HS commentators on this blog (and I’m not specifically talking about you, Tom) assume that I worship the public school system and want to either force home schoolers out of the home and into the public school system, or impose as much of the public school system as possible on home schoolers.
Now, I can expect various comments attempting to prove that I do in fact worship the public school system and want to impose it on home schoolers. Such is the way of the jingoist … (again, not you, Tom). Well, we’ll see…
“The “controlled convergence” that you talk about above smells suspiciously like “this subject at this age, or else.”If it is different, please explain how.” …
Tom: You are fantasizing about what I am thinking. I can’t begin to imagine how I might explain that.
“If there is going to be some natural convergence, why do we need to impose structure on it?”
That is a good point and I had that in mind while I was writing my comment to Rolfe.
Yes, there would be a natural convergence, but there are several reasons why the convergence would need some guidance. The natural convergence would always lack currency. The natural convergence would be the outcome of the end process of cultural diffusion. In many areas of study, this would filter the outcome in very positive and reflective ways, and result in very unique and personalized experiences that are perfect for home schooling and would be the envy of a public education system. But for other areas, currency is critical. Health issues are the most obvious examples. Also, modification related to career planning and that sort of thing would be best informed by information that is not going to spring out of the home school culture.
So for hard working and qualified home school parents, the natural convergence would work for much but not all of what needs to be done.
But then there are the not so hard working or the not so qualified. How do you deal with that?
Regarding overlapping or lack thereof: Let me be clear. I never said there would be no overlap. Others have implied that zero overlap is possible and acceptable.
Greg: Thanks for the detailed answer and the summary of what came before. I get the picture and I do not want to bait you. And I will do my best not to rant on your site — call me on it if I do. I reserve the right to blow off a little steam on my site.
I firmly believe that freely available education is vital for our country and we should do what we can to make our schools better. I also believe that in my particular case, I am able to provide the best education for my kids at home, or on the road, or wherever we may be. I follow a very unstructured approach (look at my site for a small taste) that has been working well for me, so I bristle a bit at the idea of others imposing structure on me. I also have a knee-jerk reaction to fight any new restrictions on civil liberties; this has nothing to do with homeschooling.
With that said, if I didn’t think my kids would pass a basic GED-level test by the time they need to leave the house, I’d sign them up for school in an instant. I’m homeschooling because I think it is best for my kids, not to make any political statement.
I want to have the conversation about regulation because it could have a big impact on the way I teach my kids. Regulation is more likely to be “good” — to achieve its end with a minimum loss of liberty — if it is the product of a calm and careful debate. I only have the energy to engage in this debate because I care about my kids. This is certainly not my primary interest either.
So I’ll be interested if you change your mind and want to make a specific proposal, but I understand why you hesitate.
Tom: I tend to share your expectations of the state, and I worry very much about keeping my flexibility as a parent-teacher. But I’m not really worried until I see specific proposals, and then they need to be analyzed carefully. An “idea” will never become law so it is not a threat.
It will be very hard to come up with any agreement about what defines an acceptable level of knowledge. Does depth of knowledge in one area make up for some lack of breadth? What is knowledge? Is it storage of facts? Is it training in certain algorithms? Is it the ability to solve unfamiliar problems? But if there is value in making this definition, it is surely worth some hard work. If I felt I had such a great grasp on what knowledge is, I could be a much better teacher for my kids.
I’m a little confused by your calling the state my boogeyman. Who would be imposing the standards, if not the state?
Further, in envisioning those standards, I have two models to draw from right now: the state’s existing system, which does not work for me; and your ideas, which potentially could be much better, but as yet remain unspecified. (Okay, three, if you include mine, but then I don’t advocate imposing my system on other homeschool families.)
I’m not fantasizing about what you are thinking. I’m telling you that the words you have used so far are perhaps leaving the wrong impression. Now is your opportunity to elaborate.
Apparently my interpretation of “convergence” is not quite what you meant either. I took it to mean that by the time the typical student reached the equivalent of 12th grade, he would have covered largely the same set of subjects as other students, homeschooled or otherwise. I don’t see that as requiring large amounts of time for cultural consensus to form. I find it fairly unlikely that it won’t happen.
There are those hot-button health issues, but then ideologically driven parents already opt out of them in the public schools, as well as in homeschooling. Do we take that option off the table as well? It’s not appropriate to require people to know or believe in a particular way against their will. As odious as we may find certain ideologies, I’ll take the Ku Klux Klan over the Thought Police, ten times out of ten.
I’m curious why you don’t see career planning as coming out of homeschooling. Unless a family is grooming their son for the monastery, why would those parents not discuss their child’s career path with as much care as they would evaluate his progress in math or literature?
Rolfe:
In fact, the education industry has already done a lot of the work. Unless one requires the approach that all things government or academic are bad and all things related to the public school system are automatically wrong (a sort of reactionary version of home schooling … home schooling is exactly public education only in Bizarro land … anything they say is good is bad, bad good, up down, etc.) . .. there is a lot of good thinking, research, etc. on what key important areas of knowledge is, what skills are, etc.
I would find it very hard to believe that home schoolers are avoiding this or disagree with this in any substantive way. In fact, to the extent that home schooling can be much more efficient (with respect to the individual student), nearly 100% of home schoolers should be able to meet, say, all of the items in any state standard for K through 12 in a small percentage of the time available.
In truth, I think for most home schoolers, it is the method and the context of learning that is the most important difference from the traditional education system. I don’t think people differ that much in terms of what an education means regarding knowledge, skills, etc.
Tom: I was guessing that the state was your boogyman. Glad to hear its not, it’s a tough life to be worried about that all the time.
One way to put what I’m thinking very simply … too simply to be defensible, likely, but having not spent a lot of time on this exact question … is to say that the traditional education system has done a reasonable job at developing a vision of what knowledge and skills can be considered as “core” and a moderately good job at developing some of the pedagogy.
Home schoolers, on the other hand, have presumably (this is a claim that I cannot substantiate but let’s assume it is true) have developed a superior method for education, and even if their method was only half baked, the context of learning may be so much better than the classroom that it is still superior.
We are on the same page with our definition of convergence.
Regarding both health and career planning: You mind may be made up on this, so this may be a waste of time. Think about this: How does a parent become sufficiently expert at any one topic to really be able to teach it to their kids? I’ve asked that question before and the only answer I’ve gotten from home schoolers is that parents some how magically know everything, etc. But this is simply not true.
I think for the most part parents probably do this by learning at the same time (relearning) as their kids most material covered in home school.
But is it really fair to the kids to assume that every single thing that a kid can get out of school will be managed this way? I don’t think so. I thought of career planning as an example (I may be wrong about this) where a lot of currency is essential. Health as well.
OK, so maybe some parents refuse to let their children learn about sexual health. That may be a problem, and it may even be a form of abuse. But let’s put that aside for a moment, and assume such narrow minded and destructive approaches are rare among home schoolers.
There is a constant shifting of views on the best practices regarding health, as new problems emerge and new approaches are developed, and as research refines our understanding of issues such as the way in which sexually transmitted disease is spread. I would think that responsible parents would want to be very much up on that, and one way to ensure that the children in the home school environments are getting the opportunity to learn what is current instead of what gandma or even mom and dad learned years ago, or what some out of date source has, is to have a cannon of information to which parents can refer.
In what way is that doing harm? I’m not talking about if parents will take career planning seriously.
And remember, this conversation is not about you or Rolphe. I for one do not accept that any of the three or four things that must converge for a child to end up being home schooled correlated necessarily with competence. I’ve been told again and again by various home schoolers that home schooling parents are automatically competent, like some kind of gene causes both competence and a desire to home school the kids.
I think making a canon of resources available for parents — or even having counselors, teachers, and classes available for homeschoolers — is a great idea and would not impinge on anyone’s rights. This is particularly true in areas where currency is important, but I don’t see a reason to limit it. How to fund this is a question, but I’m sure it is one that could be answered.
I agree that home schooling parents are not magically competent. But I also believe that kids learn a surprising amount on their own, and that parents who care can overcome much of their lack of initial knowledge through careful listening, thoughtfulness, and hard work. Of course this doesn’t happen all the time, and maybe I’m being too optimistic here. When someone suggests that parents are automatically qualified to be teachers, I just understand that they are referring to the advantages of a “good” home schooling situation.
When it comes to defining core knowledge, I am willing to take the work of education establishment as a starting point, and I’ll grant that much of the work is done. But I still believe it needs more. Or I need more convincing. One part of my problem is that any sort of checklist tends to favor training over knowledge. I’ll throw out a rather extreme example of my concern: I think it is critical for my kids to understand the field axioms of basic arithmetic and be very comfortable playing games with them, but I couldn’t care less if they know how to do long division quickly. If they have the deep knowledge, they will figure out the skill when they do care. Being able to do long division is a likely symptom of understanding basic Math, but it is neither implied by nor does it imply understanding. So my checklist for my kids is a bit different from the state of Texas’ checklist.
I also believe that even at the age of 18, some students will have exceptional knowledge about some areas and just “not get” other subjects. But most kids I’ve known like that will still pass the sort of core knowledge test I think you envision.
And not to let my politics slip too much here, but I might give my kids a slightly different view of History and Government than what they would get at a public school (at least the ones I know). So here is where I’m a yahoo. I’m not trying to indoctrinate my kids, I want them to think for themselves. I just think it’s a waste of time to teach them what I believe is propaganda. So I anticipate some difficulties in those areas too.
Regardless of whether homeschoolers should be tested, I think that this definition of core knowledge is a very interesting question. One I will think about more carefully. If you have any specific references that would help me get a clear idea of what is “known”, I’d be interested. I always get mired down in epistemology when I start thinking about these things, and I don’t get very far.
If we are making the definition with the aim of creating a uniform test for all students, we also need to consider what purpose this test will serve. What good will it do? How can we measure the good? Will it do any bad? Will it open the door for bad things later? What do we do with kids who fail (schooled or homeschooled)?
One quick point about core knowledge and testing: You can’t have any reasonable core knowledge concept that does not have a) some specifics and b) a lot of latitude about what is actually covered in detail, vs. ignored, vs. glossed. Those are decisions about a particular situation (a class or a home schooling setting). Therefore, you can’t have a core knowledge bank and a standardized test.
I know this is true in the sciences. At the more elementary levels this may not be true, but in AP/Intro college, there can be big differences between otherwise perfectly good classes that have relatively little overlap and thus guaranteeing that any good student would do poorly on a standardized test (or one of five students would get A’s while the rest get C’s and D’s!)
What you can do is to have a way of testing knowledge that is based on what is actually covered.
Hey what the frack? This conversation has completely devolved into non reactionary, reasonable,productive, useful and insightful crap……
Greg,
Are you claiming that all public school teachers are “experts” on every topic of every subject they teach? If the answer is “no”, how do they then teach those topics to their students? Probably with the assistance of outside resources such as books, guest speakers, field trips, etc. Why then should homeschooling parents be any different?
I’m planning to do a unit on botany next year with my daughter and that’s a subject I don’t know all that much about beyond what was covered in the bio core. However, a good friend of mine in our homeschool support group is a former botanist with a Master’s degree in the subject and she’s helped me assemble a bunch of resources to teach it. She’s also going to be leading a field trip for our group to our local botanical garden. I learned more about botany in talking with her for an hour than I did from any of my science teachers (none of whom specialized in the field).
I also belong to several homeschooling email lists that have members all over the world. If I need recommendations for resources to teach a particular topic, all I have to do is post a request and I’ll generally receive a bunch of suggestions from people with expertise in the field. You’d be surprised how many homeschooling moms and dads there are with advanced degrees like my friend the former botanist.
Crimson Wife: Good point about expertise being a bit overrated. I remember back in grad school the first course I taught, multivariable calculus, was one I had never taken. I think I managed to teach the course well and I think my enthusiasm about the fresh material helped my presentation. There is an important advantage to learning the way you describe. Kids will learn not just about the subject, but they will also learn how to go out and find the resources they need. They see that down the road, knowledge is not handed to them on a silver platter. And they see that adults still learn. These meta-lessons might be more important than any particular subject lesson.
cmf: yes, it makes me want to say something capricious just for sport.
Greg: I like your statement about knowledge and testing. I happen to believe your observation is relevant in some subjects down to the elementary levels. Again, I’ll point to Arithmetic and History in addition to Science as areas where teacher discretion is required. For science, I think the problem may be worse at the elementary level: our science “curriculum” consists of observing, experimenting, and recording anything of interest. Let the litany of facts come after the student understands how to obtain the facts. This approach doesn’t tend to produce good standardized test-takers.
Obviously there are subsets of subjects that would be generally accepted as mandatory. How could you claim to have taught electrodynamics without covering Maxwell’s Equations and their prediction of electromagnetic waves that move at a constant speed? How could you teach the theory of computation without the halting problem and undecidability? You never disputed this, but I just want to point out that there is some core knowledge that would be pretty easy to get people to accept.
C.W.
Public school teachers have training. How much, and in what areas, depends on the state requirements. Generally, for example, high school teachers are certified in the area they teach. In addition, continuous training is required to keep their jobs, and training above a certain level generally moves them from one pay-grade “lane” to another. It is very rare that public high school teachers have to fly by the seat of their pants. It’s generally not allowed.
Your example of botany is a good one. Chance (who you happen to know, etc.) is dictating what you are doing and how you are doing it. Good luck with it!
I probably would not be even a tiny bit surprised about how much homeschoolers communicate with each other.
Tom: did you actually say this, or am I imagining something?
“I’ll take the Ku Klux Klan over the Thought Police, ten times out of ten.”
Exactly what is the difference between them?
CMF: Good point . I think the former has actually hung people by the neck from light posts, while the latter has, for their part, insisted that we think about the fact that the former has hung people from light posts.
(Oh, don’t get me wrong. I hate the thought police too. But the KKK is even more annoying, and they actually do kill people now and then.)
Actually, I’ve got a bio degree so in the state of CA I would qualify to teach high school biology for I believe it’s 5 years while pursuing a MAT. I just checked the coursework for that and only 1 of the 11 courses covers subject-specific methods. The rest are just edubabble such as “Multicultural Foundations of a Diverse Classroom”. Not sure how that would help me teach botany!
I wouldn’t consider it leaving it up to chance to ask someone who is a subject matter expert for his/her recommendations. Chance would be picking a textbook at random from Amazon and winding up with some nonsense like “Exploring Creation with Botany” (yes, that’s really what it’s called!)
Greg:” I think the former has actually hung people by the neck from light posts, while the latter has, for their part, insisted that we think about the fact that the former has hung people from light posts.”
Very interesting, and accurate juxtaposition. Did you intend it so?
I agree that the modern thought police and the political correctness they convey has indeed merely caused us to think, rethink, and then think again about lightposts, while watching CSI and Cops on television, causing us to rethink who the good guys and the bad guys are, as if there are only two ways to be, black and white, good or bad.
And then, in the disguise of all of that correct thinking, they raised a generation of fatherless kids who think that soldiering in Iraq is a good career move,and necessary for ‘freedom’, and that blogs are tools of terror, and those who are thinkers outside the box are dangerous …
Chrim: So, we have two different definitions of random. Fascinating but irrelevant. Let’s try it again: With respect to your child, it’s a fairly random event that you happen to have some background in biology.
It is possible that the State of California has never actually thought about it’s requirements for teachers, or perhaps they have. Are you implying they have not?
cmf, if anybody ever asks me what the phrase “quote mining” means, I will just point them at your post.
The difference between them is that the Ku Klux Klan is (by now) a lunatic fringe group, which any sane person is free to ignore or disparage as he sees fit; and when they do things like hang people from light posts, they get in serious trouble for it.
The Thought Police define correctness and enforce orthodoxy on everyone, with the authority of government to back their position. These are not the people who spoke out against lynchings when such occurrences were common. A better example of what the Thought Police might do is to promote the idea that “you can’t support the troops without supporting the mission.”
Yes, the Thought Police are fictional (at least in the US at this point in time, though other regimes have had, and do have, chillingly close parallels), and it’s a good thing they are. You have the luxury, as it were, of hating the Ku Klux Klan more than the Thought Police only because the Thought Police are not real.
I would have thought that the thought police thought that you can support the troops without supporting the mission. I thought it was the Klanistas who were linking the two together … supporting the troops and supporting the war … with yellow ribbons standing in for Jesus Fish and such
Tom, thanks for the nod towards my future fame as a quote miner; make sure you adend it with a nod towards careless and sloppy juxtapositions of thoughts by Tom.
However, you might like to know that the KKK has contributed volumes towards historic court precedents and free speech activism. In fact, they fought the thought police and won, even ironically lending weight to atheisms free expression by winning the freedom to burn crosses;-)
http://www.infoplease.com/cig/supreme-court/allowing-cross-burning.html
and cleaning up highways
http://usgovinfo.about.com/lib.....30501a.htm
and a host of cases that give them the right to demonstrate and express their views, even in a sloppy and not to well thought out manner.
And so I have to say that the thought police are not fictional at all, they exist in every facet of gov’t, and in every gov’t whether it is a liberal or a conservative one: there are limits on what you can openly say and do, and as an adult in society their are penalties for thought, rather than action, and mechanisms within governmetn to provoke one into the other ( Randy Weaver, Koresh, MOVE in Philadelphia, etc.) and yet none of that can protect children who might be locked up in abusive situations dubbed as ‘homeschools’ with a network of people interconnected and unified on one topic–the concealment of abuse from mandatory reporters.