Dave Richards, graduating Summa Cum Laude from San Diego State University, is an example of what might go wrong in homeschooling. After listing the honored graduate’s honors, the North County Times explains how Richards started at the bottom to get where he is today:
His most noteworthy achievement, though, was accomplishing all that despite never spending a day in a school classroom until the age of 19.
David Richards was one of those kids who fell through the cracks. His parents, deeply religious, decided before he attended kindergarten that they would home-school Richards and his two siblings. North County Times
This is not a homeschool success story. Smith’s homeschool education was far from stellar. But his most noteworthy achievement was most certainly NOT the fact that he hadn’t spent a single day in a school classroom. Nor the fact that he achieved his honors despite his parents’ “deeply religious” views. Nor the fact that he was homeschooled. After all, colleges are looking more seriously at homeschoolers, and beginning to recruit them actively. The University of California at Riverside even describes homeschoolers as “a pipeline of great students.”
The noteworthy achievement for Richards is the fact that he did this on his own, after his mother gave up on him.
At age 10, he said, his mother threw his books at him and told him to teach himself.
Giving up on your child, throwing his books at him and stepping completely out of his education is not homeschooling and has nothing to do with religion. But from this low came something I find of great encouragement.
A common worry among homeschoolers is whether we are “doing enough.” What if we leave gaps in their education? What if they aren’t as prepared for college, career, life as we want? What if we fail? As I am preparing and planning for fifth grade, what I view as a key transitional year, these worries are beginning to sprout like weeds in my thoughts and plans. And I look at Richards and all that he accomplished after he turned ten.
He taught himself. He didn’t do a very good job of it, only reading at a fourth grade level when he graduated. He failed the GED and it took a year and a half of study to finally pass it. He entered the local community college unprepared, and was forced to take and retake remedial courses to catch up. But catch up he did and from there he excelled. All while working to support himself, and then his wife, taking a class or two a semester until he earned his associate’s degree and was able to transfer to San Diego State.
Alongside the many honors heaped upon him, he achieved another goal: to graduate by the time he turned 30. His birthday is in July.
It took twenty years, but seemingly against all odds, he succeeded due to his determination and strength of character. Through this, I am reminded that facts and figures and gaps can be made up and filled in later. But all the preparation in the world means nothing without the strength and determination to set goals, chart a course to those goals and work diligently to achieve them.
My childrens’ character will go much further in determining how far they go in life than my lesson plans will, and shepherding that developing character is perhaps the greatest challenge of parenthood.
[My childrens’ character will go much further in determining how far they go in life than my lesson plans will] And that really is the point.
I am not going to comment on Richard’s homeschooling experience, because it isn’t my family’s story. But, last year I stepped out of Marissa’s reading, writing and arithmetic and concentrated on responsibility and respect. I felt a twinge of guilt, but Marissa had failed every class she took while in public school. At every IEP meeting we discussed moving Marissa into more EBD classes because she refused to do the work and was disruptive to the class. I brought her home because they wanted to transition Marissa into a locked classroom for children with behavioral problems for the 8th and starting in the 9th grade move her to charter high school with a psychiatric day-treatment program. Marissa is a moral chameleon and takes on the norms of the kids she is hanging out with. I couldn’t see anything but disaster coming from this plan.
She has been home schooled since the 8th grade. Guess what, she started refusing to put any effort into her school work at home too. It was a constant battle. I finally put all her books on the shelf and told her I would be available to mentor and teach her when she was ready. In the meantime, if she wasn’t going to spend part of her day educating herself, she would have extra responsibilities in the home and she needed to get a job.
She picked up history and English very early in the game. But, math and science sat there unattended to until just last week. She has found that working fast food will not make her enough money to move out at 18. With the economy doing poorly, she is having trouble finding full time hours. Also, she has been sent home when they are slow at work; she rarely even gets the hours she is scheduled. So, she called the technical college. It seems education is a little more important to her than it was about 1 1/2 years ago. She has to take an Accuplacer as part of her application. She is studying Algebra, asking questions, trying to learn and we are not fighting.
Now, I know she is not going to learn algebra in a 2-weeks. She will probably have to take a remedial math class. She made a choice about educating herself and is facing the consequences of that choice. Sometimes teaching your child consequences trumps teaching them math.
I put together a transcript of the classes she had completed and indicated that she had an incomplete in algebra and science. As she scanned what I wrote, “Yeah, I still have to do biology and chemistry next year.” SIGH…
((Julie)) but telling Marissa what the guidelines are during the late teens is a bit different than throwing the ol’ books at a kid who is ten. And I read stories like this and go, that’s a nice God they have there… or did they bother chatting with Him about their educational plan???
I myself may have to let academics slide a little bit and integrate more social skills time or… something. Elf is still freaking out in the tiny church we’ve been in for two years when he’s without me. Who cares how well he can read and write if he’s too scared to get out of the house to get to a job? Or if he keeps hiding under furniture when he’s not sure how to handle a social situation? How do you prepare a class like that? And how can I as a mom do this when the very premise is to get him AWAY from me and more independent?
And yet I can’t go to the school for help. Am in a bit of a difficulty. There are no local co-ops on this either. :]
Julie, I can’t judge exactly what was going on in that family, but I think there is a distinct difference between what you are describing and throwing the books at a kid and telling him to do it himself. Maybe he had learning difficulties and that is why mom became frustrated. Maybe there was more going on than she could handle seeing as there was a divorce later. I don’t know.
But from the article, it didn’t sound like a parent dealing with the issues a child needed to deal with most and being available for when the child was ready.
Unfortunately, stories like this one are just going to increase calls for greater “accountability” for homeschoolers (standardizing testing, portfolio reviews, logging hours, etc). Even though the overwhelming majority of children suffering from educational neglect are enrolled in government-run schools (or have dropped out from them).
What a story and what a blog post. Thanks for blogging your thoughts.
A few parents of schooled kids who are struggling learners and unmotivated to learn told me they threw the books at their kids and refuse to help with homework, refuse to even make sure they do it. They were frank with me that they give up and don’t know what to do about the child’s D’s and F’s. They have other complaints regarding parenting their boys too.
See it is not just one homeschooling mom who gave up on her child it happens with failing schooled children from upper middle class families too.
I’m most sad that she let the boy on his own at age 10 and gave up. IMO if a HS mom gives up she should enroll the child into school. At least in my state that is the law, if the parent chooses to not do their duty to home educate their children they are supposed to enroll them to public school for the education-getting. (That is the way the law in CT reads.)
Christine, I agree completely! There are so many children in the schools with children who have essentially given up (or maybe never really cared to begin with). But if you get overwhelmed as a homeschooler, you have that option. The schools are there, and that is preferable to essentially abandoning the child educationally.
And you are right, Crimson Wife. Because people seem to think that the homeschool community is just crawling with people who don’t bother to do anything.
Mister Dad blogged today about visiting an elementary school in which he overheard one teacher asking another, “what’s 3 times 15?”
Thanks for this post, it is interesting food for thought!
All right, I’m coming from an unschooling angle. To me, the most important part of homeschooling is not the academic aspect, but a rich, supportive environment. Dana’s comments seem to indicate that his mother was under a lot of stress in her life and might not have been able to provide much input. However, in spite of this, he did manage to succeed on this level. And who says that his mother stepped completely out of his education? If you consider education only to be the three R’s then this might be the case, but for me, there is a lot more to education than just academics.
Maybe he was just a slow reader. If he was reading on the same level as a fourth-grader, this would certainly seem to indicate it. All three of my older children (the fourth is only six) are reading at an advanced level for their ages. I taught my eldest child to read, but left off when I was struggling to teach him words with two syllables in them. A month later he was learning these words himself. However, I “threw the books” at my daughter, in a sense, when she was 7 years old,by not teaching her to read when it became clear that I might have more success in getting blood out of a stone. Other people might interpret it as me giving up on her, but I just knew that when she was ready, reading would come. At 8 and a half she started reading all by herself and a year later she was reading in two languages like a 14 year old.
If you look at the section on reading on Sandra Dodd’s unschooling pages, you will find several stories that are similar to that of Dave Richards. To me, this IS a homeschooling success story. Because he never went to school, he probably never grew up with the feeling that he was a failure because he was a slow reader and it didn’t stop him going on to achieve the academic success that he yearned for.
If it is meant figuratively, I agree with you. I had the feeling it was more literal and a little more angry from the article. The young man says he doesn’t want to do this to his own children, so I’m guessing he didn’t find it that positive.
But you are right that his success wasn’t stopped by it. And we don’t know all that was going on and in what other way his parents were educating him. That determination of his, after all, may have been exactly what they were instilling in him. I don’t know.
I think it’s impossible to make a judgment about what happened in this situation. Often the press tells only part of the story, and if there are ‘deeply religious’ Christians involved, it won’t be the pretty part. I have seen this first hand, where Christians have been completely misrepresented in the press. There have been times I have used dramatic words to hold my child accountable for his actions, where if told, would give a misleading view of our family. Also, children (even grown children) can re-create history according to their personal bitternesses and whims, and we have not heard the other side of the story.
Lori