Via Doc’s Sunrise Rants, I found Jack Lessenberry’s essay on Homeschooling. She does a rather good job of refuting just about everything he says, but I couldn’t help but focus on one part of the essay which seemed out of place.
Hillsdale College is about as conservative a liberal arts school as exists on the planet. But Hillsdale’s honors program director recently told the Detroit Free Press that the home schooled children he sees are typically badly deficient in science education. Jack Lessenberry
Indeed. Hillsdale College has opted to refuse all government funding, including students receiving federal aid so that it can maintain its independence from state control. A good deal of their students come from homeschools or private schools. And they even publish the Hillsdale Academy Reference Guide as a resource for teachers, parents and homeschoolers. I hardly think that they or their faculty would approve of greater oversight over homeschoolers for the sake of science.
Searching for more information, all I could turn up was a 2002 article on the Michigan Education Report making essentially the same argument.
Besides the threats and harassment home school families face, they also cope with criticisms of home schooling teaching practices. For example, David Stewart, director of Hillsdale College’s honors program, told the Detroit Free Press that home schooled children are typically deficient in science education. “I can generally count on them for having almost no science and virtually no lab science,” he notes. Michigan Education Report
I don’t call 2002 “recent” and since all I could find in all my searches was the repetition of this one sentence, I became even more suspicious. And did what the Michigan Education Report and Jack Lessenberry seemed unable to do. I contacted David Stewart to see if something has been left out. He responded in less than twelve hours, so I don’t think he is that difficult to get a hold of (emphasis mine).
Yes, there was more to my conversation with the Free Press than the single-sentence quotation. I am generally favorably-disposed towards home-schooling (indeed, two of my own children are currently home-schooled), and my 2002 comments to the reporter were positive. He was looking for balance, so I said something to the effect that if homeschoolers have a consistent weakness, it’s laboratory sciences: students are typically better prepared in math, history, English, etc. than in laboratory sciences. I also said that many parents recognize that deficiency and enroll their children in a local community college during the senior year of high school (which would be the short version of my advice to you as your children grow. The same solution also helps some parents with advanced foreign language studies.)
So, I asserted in 2002 that the Free Press reporter mis-quoted me and, more significantly, took my comments out of context. I also believe Lessenberry mis-represented his facts by stating I “recently” commented to the Free Press and failing to note that I have not been the Honors Program Director for several years.
His words sort of speak for themselves, don’t they? But there is more. Chris Bachelor, the Associate Vice President for Hillsdale College also responded, Also in less than twelve hours, to highlight his comment on the site. Edited: the email I received referred to “that blog site” and I thought it referred to Lessenberry’s article. It referred to Doc’s blog, however. Thanks, Rebecca!
It is no great surprise that when Mr. Lessenberry perceives a problem, he calls for increased government regulation as the solution. At Hillsdale College, we refuse all federal and state government support, and annually produce hundreds of high-quality graduates, approximately ten percent of whom were homeschooled prior to matriculating.
The Detroit Free Press article (which Mr. Lessenberry calls “recent”) quoting our honors program director was published over six years ago. It substantively misrepresented his sentiments then, and today, two of this gentleman’s children are being home-schooled. Mr. Lessenberry doesn’t mention that the article also quoted this professor as saying that homeschoolers have “typically done a lot more in English and history than other students come in with. They tend to be better writers.”
Rather than relying on one anecdotal comment taken out of context over six years ago, I asked our admissions office to compare last year’s ACT science scores of homeschooled students with their conventionally-educated counterparts. The homeschoolers averaged in the 85th percentile on the science portion of the test, scoring one point below the average of all admitted students. Their scores in non-science areas were generally superior to the conventionally schooled students, and by a much greater margin than the alleged “deficiency” that Mr. Lessenberry suggests would warrant an enormous intrusion into the lives of homeschooling families.
All in all, our experience is that homeschooling is not only more cost effective but can produce results comparable to or better than private, parochial or public schools. For those interested in academic studies, there is a vast amount of literature available to the public supporting this conclusion.
And Lessenberry’s comment to the objections is:
I sleep with a public school teacher, every night, and have for 31 years. I remain convinced that, if anything, I was too kind to the homeschoolers.
Where did he get his research skills from? As is typical, there is a little more to the story, yet no one seems to want to confront that.
Principled Discovery is a place to stop and discuss news and information related to faith, family and particularly education. Pour yourself a cup of tea and join the conversation! 
>>I sleep with a public school teacher, every night, and have for 31 years. I remain convinced that, if anything, I was too kind to the homeschoolers.
Here’s the rest of my first comment, which apparently got cut off (oops!)
One of the most vocal opponents of homeschooling in our church (who is also a community leader) explains that he watched his wife, who is a public school teacher, go through too many years of teacher training to think that homeschoolers can match the quality of eduation received at a public school. That is such a sad argument! If these people ever allow themselves to acknowledge the truth, they will be faced with the reality that all these “years of teacher training” are basically a waste of time. Time spent in a college classroom has little bearing on teacher success, and I say that as someone who has earned my degree in education at one of our major public universities. My degree of expertise in my subject area, hands-on classroom experience and excellent mentoring had a much greater impact on my ability to teach successfully than the wasted hours spent in a classroom debating “Educational theory.”
Dana, Chris Bachelor’s comment appears on Doc’s blog, not Jack’s. I’m glad he took the time to do so; his words bring a lot of perspective to the article in question!
Ok, thanks! I first read it from the email so that is where I got confused. Thanks. I’ll change that.
Homeschool critics taking quotes out of context? What’s next? Lying politicians?
Thank you for taking the time and trouble of tracking down the author of the quote and getting to the heart of what HE REALLY SAID.
No. They’d surely get caught and kicked out as quickly as journalists who take quotes out of context.
It just didn’t seem right, especially since so much of their student body is made up of homeschooled and private schooled youth. Now it doesn’t surprise me that homeschoolers might lag in the sciences. It is expensive to get everything you need. But in all the searches I did, I could find only this one sentence reproduced over and over.
How you can give an interview that is entirely positive and then come up with a weakness when pressed for something “for balance” and then report only that little tidbit is journalisticly irresponsible. That isn’t Lesenberry’s issue. He was only repeating what he read elsewhere.
But it does make me wonder about the rest of the snipped quotes in the media on every topic. I’m beginning to think they write their stories and conform the interviews to give it the appearance of credibility.
I’m confused by that last quote from Lessenbury. Is his wife’s opinion about homeschooling supposed to trump research and the opinions of other professional educators?
Who knows. I think it illustrates well his general opinion and what he has based it on however–his own thoughts, as opposed to any real research.
“I sleep with a public school teacher, every night, and have for 31 years. I remain convinced that, if anything, I was too kind to the homeschoolers.”
That quote represents the Schimeks (anti-homeschool, pro American Communist Lawyers Union members) and their constant barrage on homeschoolers in Nebraska.
I’ll say it again. It’s not the results or the research that matters. It’s the organizations and governments behind it all.
SPECIAL INTERESTS etc, etc. The bane of capitalism.
“I sleep with a public school teacher, every night, and have for 31 years.”
If I were unrefined, I’d have to point out that he isn’t the only one sleeping with public school teachers lately. Just read the headlines. Apparently, a couple of students are, as well.
However, my mother reared me better than to make a tacky littel comment like that, so I’ll refrain.
Ugh! Bad Karma. Little, not littel.
Thanks Dana for this link.
I’m convinced tha the issue of “educational malpractice” (also known as, educational neglect) is becoming the new argument to regulate homeschooling. Michigan legislators just introduced a bill which would require homeschoolers to report to the local school district. It’s been vehemently renounced by the homeschool community and several legislators have pulled their co-sponsorship. It originally had the support of 24 Democrat legislators. The bill may never come out of committe, but essays like Mr. Lesseneberry’s tell me that this issue isn’t going away any time soon. I wrote a comment as well under the essay and have sent out these links to many in Michigan who might have missed the essay when it was published a few days ago.
Thanks for your work.
Blessings
Spunky
It is the “easy” argument. Now we are not only declaring education a “right” but are so narrowly defining education that if a particular program is not followed you are guilty of “educational neglect,” abuse of the mind or whatever nonsense.
I started to answer these arguments some time ago. Maybe I should revisit the idea, but here they are:
The Right to an Education, Part I
The Right to an Education, Part II
Ironically, I talked about the problems Hillsdale has had in the second entry.
We are developing a skewed view of rights and that is the real problem.
Oh, and Hi!!! I am jumping up and down with glee to “see” you again.
Hi to you as well. I read as often as I can, but I’m a terrible commenter! I’ll have to check out the links and see if I read them, they don’t sound familiar to me. Anyhow, I also wrote an article about this for the Spring issue of TOS which is out now. I’ll be doing a follow-up in the Summer issue. The more avenues for getting this issue and the arguments against it out in the open, the better prepared we’ll all be to fight it.
“The more avenues for getting this issue and the arguments against it out in the open, the better prepared we’ll all be to fight it.”
I fear you’re very right on this one. Right now homeschooling is legal(in one form or another) in every state. But it feels lately like the anti-homeschooling forces are getting ready for a new push. There have been several attempts to paint homeschoolers as deficient (socialization has been beaten back so now citizenship, neglect and gender equality are being raised as issues) in academic journals (Reich and Yuracko) and new legislation floated to regulate and control homeschooling. The presumptions that parents had their children’s best interests in mind and maintained both authority and responsibility for them seem to have been well eroded since the first few waves of homeschooling legal wrangling.
It just feels like a new fight is around the corner.
Yeah…I think I wrote those back before anyone read what I wrote.
I heard about what was going on in Michigan but haven’t had the time to really look at it closely. But I thought about you.
Quite true. Reich predicted that the tendency toward deregulation was about to shift and I’m afraid he is right. The rest of the education system is getting too centralized and the focus on “accountability” leaves everyone worried about those who don’t fit in the system.
And we are growing a bit too big and a bit too fast to just ignore.
Commendable detective work! I am delighted to have heard the explanatory comments from Hillsdale’s director — wow, what a distortion! Good work debunking that ridiculous essay.
ON the relationship between school teaching and homeschooling, Elsie & Joe Deluxe had a GREAT post recently. The two are not really comparable. Elsie is now homeschooling and has been a teacher (private school; has all the same degrees and qualifications). The fact is that teacher training is mainly about how to teach LARGE GROUPS of kids, and how to be accountable for what you teach to the parents of those kids and the school district, NOT about the content. Her post is here: http://elsieandjoedeluxe.blogspot.com/2008/04/homeschooling-parents-and-teachers.html
And since when was “I sleep with her” a sound piece of evidence?
Mr. Lessenberry FINALLY responds..sort of…
First of all, there WAS something I said in my essay that I would like to amend. I quoted a recent Free Press story as saying that Hillsdale College’s honors program director recently told the Detroit Free Press that the home schooled children he sees are deficient in science education. In fact the man who said that, David Stewart, actually said it in 2002. I do not think that is ancient history, nor do I think the situation is likely to have radically changed since then.
But I would not have used the word “recent” if I had to do it over. Mr. Stewart is also no longer the honors director, and I apologize for that error. What I actually did was take that statement from a more recent article written by David Plank, the man who I interviewed in that same segment, a nationally renowned expert on education policy. Here is what that article said. “David Stewart, director of Hillsdale College’s honors program, told the Detroit Free Press that home schooled children are typically deficient in science education: ’I can generally count on them for having almost no science and virtually no lab science.”
Incidentally — there is nothing wrong with totally disagreeing with me on this topic. Many of the postings, however, seem to be from people who did not do a very good job of reading my essay.
I did in fact say that there were cases where home schooling makes sense. It is clear that many of the people posting here have done an excellent job home schooling their children, or at least are convinced that they have, though the defensiveness of some of the comments makes me wonder. However, I have seen examples of home “schooling” failures as well; students whose home schooling included no biology and lots of religious fanaticism.
Students who are insufficiently socialized.
Hats off to those parents who do in fact home school their children and somehow give them a well-rounded educational and social experience. But very few parents can do that in today’s economy, where two-earner families are the norm, and everything that weakens the public schools financially weakens our democracy.
But I have no sympathy for home schoolers who oppose even letting the authorities know that they are home schooling their children; that makes no sense in today’s world. And I remain unalterably opposed to allowing uneducated and unqualified to home school their children, for the same reason I should not be allowed to practice medicine. And I think the state SHOULD prescribe some basic curriculum, and require home schooled children to take tests to demonstrate they are performing up to capacity. All of the people who have posted here that their home schooled children are performing far ahead of grade level should scarcely fear this.
Pennsylvania prescribes a strict curriculum for home schoolers, by the way, and education policy experts tell me it works very well. And no, I am not talking about filling their little heads with liberal orthodoxy. I am talking about competence in most basic subjects, without which no child in Michigan stands a chance of survival.
***
Posted by: Jack Lessenberry | April 26, 2008 at 12:22 PM
Yeah…still doesn’t quite address the fact that the original quote was taken out of context, does it?
For me, all his response does is show how arrogant he is. If it’s the state’s “job” to make sure all students are educated, and study after study shows they are failing, but homeschooling studies show it works, why doesn’t the state leave homeschoolers alone while they fix their broken system?
This is unrealted but shows that manipulated reporting happens everywhere. Did you see Nancy Pelosi has been quoting a Bible verse that doesn’t exist? http://www.onenewsnow.com/Politics/Default.aspx?id=79920 You did some great detective work here. But, can’t any person with a brain realize a Bible verse is pretty easy to verify?
When you look at just how twisted the reporting is in homeschooling, you wonder how bad it is in other things. And I’m not just talking about author bias. You can’t get around that and I don’t expect every journalist who tackles a homeschooling story to become magically converted to homeschool advocates. They don’t have the time to do that much research, and some cursory reporting that doesn’t really deal with much is to be expected.
But to take a lengthy interview which is completely positive toward homeschooling and press the interviewee for some “balance” and then report only that “balance” completely out of the context of the interview? That isn’t due to lack of expertise in the subject area. That is complete manipulation of the source material.
And you know it isn’t just going on with homeschooling. It makes you question all reporting. Which is why I think blogging is having such an effect on journalism. Suddenly, there are people asking basic questions and tracking down answers. We don’t just have to take “their word” for it that the story is accurate.
I just checked in to see how things were shakin’ at Lessenberry’s, and I noticed that he has posted about 15 or so blog entries since April 22 (the date of the homeschooling essay) and of all those posts, the highest comment count I saw was 4.
The homeschooling essay got 127 comments- and Jack never came back to seriously answer any of the questions or criticism raised by responders.
So much for the idea that “Jack has always said that the thing he loves about journalism is the fact that it’s all about people-about connecting with and learning from them.
“I want to create intelligent dialogue about the problems we face. I think we need to think about and talk about who we are as a country and people, and explore those things.”"
I used the available link for comments and suggestions, and left a few ideas for Lessenberry and company.
My suggestion is that if Jack honestly wants to create intelligent dialogue, he could actually engage in the discussion that brought the most comments and traffic to his site since Noah got off the boat, and answer the questions raised about the validity and supportive data for Jack’s opinions and sources.
And to further increase the intelligence quotient on Jack’s blog, consider blocking Thrasher.
But Sunniemom, it is only “intelligent” conversation if we agree with him.
And I agree with the Thrasher bit. What is up with that guy?
I don’t mind people being against homeschooling, but they shouldn’t have to twist quotes out of context to make their point. That was more the Detroit Free Press’ issue, but when the fact was pointed out, Mr. Lessenberry could have made the correction.
At least that is what I would do if I found out that there was a lot more to what was going on in a story than what was reported.
Dana, I’m so glad you’re on the homeschooling side. We are very lucky to have such an intelligent, fact-checking debater in our camp!
Peace and Laughter!
“Hillsdale College has opted to refuse all government funding, including students receiving federal aid so that it can maintain its independence from state control.”
This is a bit OT from the main point here, but I wanted to elaborate on the above to say that while Hillsdale does refuse all govt funding, including that which might come in the form of student aid, it is well worth noting that no student is ever turned away from Hillsdale on account of that stance. All student aid which might otherwise have come from a govt source is replaced with private funding.
Hillsdale has an interesting history. It was the first American college to prohibit discrimination based on race, religion or sex; was an early force for the abolition of slavery; and was only the second college in the nation to grant four-year liberal arts degrees to women.
http://www.hillsdale.edu/about/history.asp
Thank you, Suze. And they do have an interesting history. I just finished reading Liberty and Learning not too long ago written by their President. Quite fascinating stuff.