The Colorado Independent has a special issue devoted to homeschooling. In it, you can find an interesting mix of stereotype and reality, laced perhaps with subtle mocking and a strange sort of intrigue. At least that is my impression after reading all the articles. The tone is best summarized by Anthony Lane’s conclusion of sorts:
Many homeschooling parents were enthusiastic to the point of contagiousness, and I saw the appeal of giving kids individual attention and the kind of nurturing environment that few, if any, public schools can provide.
The scarier part of parents controlling their kids’ education: It’s a largely unchecked phenomenon. In many cases, no one outside the family really knows what’s going on, and researchers say good statistics on homeschooled kids are hard to come by. Long Story Short
We are back to this idea that the most frightening part of homeschooling is not academics, not socialization and not even the possibility of fundamentalist whackos brainwashing children. Instead, the scariest part of parents exercising their natural right to direct their children’s education is the fact that we just don’t have good statistics. The state cannot peer into their homes and see what is going on. And we all know that the state is better at raising children than the family.
This raises an interesting question. One I wish the author had actually explored, for it would have generated a much more interesting discussion than the odd assemblage of old studies and objections raised by Rob Reich.
One of these things…
is not like the other. But at its core, just how different is a homeschool education?
And the answer, like so many other things in the homeschool community, is: it depends. Some families go out of their way to replicate the school environment. I did. For many of us, that wears off after a time, and for others it remains a solid consistency.
At its core, however, I believe the true heart of homeschooling can be found in this short statement which seems to puzzle Lane.
“I’m homeschooling so I can open up their world, not close it,” she says, offering a justification at once noble and vaguely paradoxical. One of these things…
So just how different is a homeschool education? I’ll start with the two Lane offered:
Individual attention.
Every child is unique, with his own set of strengths, weaknesses and interests. Because the parent knows the child intimately, the entire curriculum can be set up to challenge each child individually. Strengths can be developed and weaknesses minimized. Interests can be supported and used to further stimulate the child’s development. All of these concepts are discussed in education courses for teachers, but are of limited practicality in a room of 25 children the teacher meets on the first day of school.
Nurturing environment.
No one loves a child quite like his own parent. We make incredible sacrifices for our children on a daily basis, and this does not stop when it comes to education. While researchers speak of the “affective domain” and its importance in education, parents are naturally attuned to this aspect of their children’s lives.
Opening horizons
The thought of homeschooling “open[ing] up their world” is only paradoxical if you believe it means we never leave our home. But homeschool families rarely spend all their time at the kitchen table, memorizing scripture and practicing math facts. In fact, for many of us, integration between learning and life is a motivating factor for homeschooling. Our children are not locked away in a school, making a yearly field trip into the world. Instead, their community becomes their classroom.
Free to be different.
Perhaps the one characteristics that makes it most difficult to talk about homeschoolers in any sort of collective sense is also our greatest strength. Walk in to any public school in America and you will notice the obvious similarities. But each and every homeschool has the opportunity to be truly unique, set on different principles and following different methodologies. We are not molding children after the pre-set factory mold, but using our community resources to inspire our children to be their own person.
We are opening up their world, and tailoring an educational program to suit.
Update: Valerie at Home Education Magazine takes a close look at the bias in the main article. She even has a statistical analysis. (And if you read this, Valerie, my comment got eaten by your spam muncher again. I promise I’m not a spammer!)
[tags]homeschool, homeschooling[/tags]
“Our children are not locked away in a school, making a yearly field trip into the world. Instead, their community becomes their classroom.”
Brilliant…………….Brilliant……….!!
I find it more than a bit obnoxious that educrats want to reduce everything to a chart, a graph, a armload of statistics. Measure, measure, measure. They are completely brainwashed by the idea that unless something can be identified, quantified, labeled, and packaged, it isn’t valid.
Of course, THEIR measurements are unbiased and accurate, while HSers can’t possibly be objective or honest. I’d like to grab some of these self-proclaimed educational potentates by their neckties and say “Measure this, bucko!”
Lovely post.
Dana, you have one heck of a research dept.
I was an active and vocal part of the famous NHEN debate referenced in the article, which I link in my blogpost on this story so anyone wishing to, can read what really happened. It’s extremely good “debate” and quite wide-ranging, still relevant, and imo, the public-school union apologists just lost and are whining about it:
Apple and Reich Are SQUELCHERS, Oh My!”
Thank you…I thought about seeing if I could dig up the conversation, but you’ve made it a tad easy!
Sorry your comment got held for moderation. I’ve had a ton of spam over the last couple of days, and had to start holding everything with links. I had 729 links to pornographic sites to delete in one morning! I got tired of that really quickly.
What I don’t get is the obsession with “accountability” for independent homeschoolers when we don’t receive government funding. Yet the same critics aren’t calling for more government oversight of traditional private schools. Why should home education be “guilty until proven innocent” yet private education gets a free pass?
This is just me, but I think the real issue behind that “accountability” is an attempt to raise fears in the public without really having to give an argument.
What is “scary” to me is the fact that so many people think the lack of state intervention in the private affairs of families is scary.
The idea of ‘the public good’ gets trotted out for exercise any time the gov’t wants to take power from it’s citizens- the recent rash of eminent domain abuses, for example. It ain’t just an anti-homeschooling ‘conspiracy’, it’s an erosion of our liberties wrapped in good intentions and tied with the bow of ‘the greater good’.
What I don’t understand is how anyone can think something is for the “public good” when it is not good for individuals in the public. Who specifically benefits from greater oversight?
Not the homeschooling family, whose rights are being infringed upon.
Not their childrren, whose education will by default look more like the public school.
Not the general public who aren’t effected in any way by homeschooling, unless they are really sweating the Spelling Bee thing.
Great post Dana! I think my biggest reply again and again is that I homschool to keep my children out of the bubble, not stick them in one.
~What is “scary” to me is the fact that so many people think the lack of state intervention in the private affairs of families is scary.~
I ditto this a statement!
No statistics – what!!! Here in NY state our kiddos are required to be graded every year and even take the same state tests as their public school peers. The statistics speak loud and clear for home education!
But see, those don’t count because they show that home education as a whole is doing just fine. We have to have a tool to find those situations where it isn’t. And current objective measures just aren’t turning them up, thus they must be inadequate.
Did you see the lastest installment, this time by reporter Amanda Lundgren? http://www.csindy.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A23280
The other homeschoolers I met, more often than not, could talk about physics for three hours but couldn’t (or weren’t allowed to) have a conversation about the latest episode of Dawson’s Creek.
Wow.
Yes, I saw that.
And that is just a travesty. To be more interested in physics than Dawson’s Creek. Whatever the reason is. I knew people like that in high school…in fact, that would have been me and my friends, although physics wouldn’t have been the topic. More history and politics. : )
Thanks for the heads up, Dana. I found your “spam” post, and also Sunniemom’s, and I resurrected them. SpamKarma2 was in a munchy mood.
The odd thing with the gizmo is that I’ll get notices for “moderated” comments that I can’t ever find in the program’s cache (and from what I can read in the email notice, they’re usually spam), but yet authentic comments get eaten without notice.
Oh, well. Such is life in Computerland.
Thanks again for mentioning it.
Homeschooling would never be the right choice for our family but the key word is “choice.” I have problems with it from a conceptual standpoint, but would not advocate for its elimination as an option. I would like to say the public school districts are doing a great job of monitoring homeschool programs, but I don’t have a great deal of familiarity with the structure. And I see what a fabulous job our district is doing with our school as a whole @@, so if that’s any indication . . .
It’s all interesting and important, so I thank you for contributing this post to this week’s Carnival of Family Life, hosted at A Child Chosen. The Carnival will be live on Monday, February 5, 2008, so I hope you and your readers will stop by and check out all of the fabulous entries included this week!
I personally think the whole Dawson’s Creek statement was to illustrate that sometimes homeschooling kids can no doubt be very intellectual but be missing the ability to relate to people in the popular culture of our society today… that there is a divide and that is a shame, to that writer/observer. Why can’t a homeschooler be both intellectually prepared for life and be able to blend in well with “regular people,” so to speak.
I honesty don’t think the statement was a comment that one aspect was better than another or that missing out on popular culture was an awful thing… just that it tends to add to a divide that seems to already exist.
Anyways… just my take. I didn’t find that statement/article all that disturbing.
I didn’t find it necessarily disturbing. She was homeschooled and that was her experience. But it falls into the stereotype of homeschoolers as these brainiacs that can’t relate to “normal” people.
Sometimes when I read those sorts of comments, I wonder who is really being reflected in a worse light. The person in the anecdote being shared or the person who was publicly educated and just can’t accept them for their differences.
I had not interest in popular television shows when I was in school. It had nothing to do with parenting, school or anything else. It was just me.
And I know a lot of people upset about Dawson’s Creek who weren’t homeschooled…even some pretty liberal teachers I taught with in Texas who weren’t particularly happy with the obsession.
I just don’t like pegging people’s interests on homeschooling and then using that to somehow prove that homeschooling raises “unsocialized” children. Why can’t we just accept that some children like physics and would prefer to talk about it? Regardless of their educational background.
JHS, I’m all for choice! I had problems with homeschooling until I started. I think it is one of many things that are easy to pass off without really considering the real implications of policy. Sure, greater accountability sounds great, but what does that mean, really?
In our society, the state is supposed to be accountable to us. We are not accountable to them unless they have reason to believe we are doing something illegal.