Salon: Home-schooled and illiterate - for some kids it means isolation with little education

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Thursday, Mar 15, 2012 11:30 AM 04:36:22 GMT-0700
Home-schooled and illiterate
The religious right calls it the "responsible" choice, but for some kids it means isolation with little education
By Kristin Rawls, Alternet



http://www.salon.com/2012/03/15/homeschooled_and_illiterate/

In recent weeks, home schooling has received nationwide attention because of Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s home-schooling family. Though Santorum paints a rosy picture of home schooling in the United States, and calls attention to the “responsibility” all parents have to take their children’s education into their own hands, he fails to acknowledge the very real potential for educational neglect among some home-schooling families – neglect that has been taking place for decades, and continues to this day.

While the practice of home schooling is new to many people, my own interest in it was sparked nearly 20 years ago. I was a socially awkward adolescent with a chaotic family life, and became close to a conservative Christian home-schooling family that seemed perfect in every way. Through my connection to this family, I was introduced to a whole world of conservative Christian home-schoolers, some of whom we would now consider “Quiverfull” families: home-schooling conservatives who eschew any form of family planning and choose instead to “trust God” with matters related to procreation.

Though I fell out of touch with my home-schooled friends as we grew older, a few years ago, I reconnected with a few ex-Quiverfull peers on a new support blog called No Longer Quivering. Poring over their stories, I was shocked to find so many tales of gross educational neglect. I don’t merely mean that they had received what I now view as an overly politicized education with huge gaps, for example, in American history, evolution or sexuality. Rather, what disturbed me were the many stories about home-schoolers who were barely literate when they graduated, or whose math and science education had never extended much past middle school.

Take Vyckie Garrison, an ex-Quiverfull mother of seven who, in 2008, enrolled her six school-age children in public school after 18 years of teaching them at home. Garrison, who started the No Longer Quivering blog, says her near-constant pregnancies – which tended to result either in miscarriages or life-threatening deliveries – took a toll on her body and depleted her energy. She wasn’t able to devote enough time and energy to home schooling to ensure a quality education for each child. And she says the lack of regulation in Nebraska, where the family lived, “allowed us to get away with some really shoddy home schooling for a lot of years.”

[lapfog_1]

1. US Christian Madrassas - n/t

[get the red out]

6. Absolutely

It seems in this country that children have rights, and females have rights; unless they are born into a cult, then the religious rights of the Patriarchs to treat them however they want are considered the most important.

[no_hypocrisy]

2. Consequences of "home schooling".

I've been the legal representative of a mother. All her children were removed three years ago by Child Welfare. One of the allegations is educational neglect. She may lose her parental rights and the kids adopted by the foster parents. We're in trial right now.

Because she kept her three eldest children out of public or private schools. The eldest couldn't go beyond "J" in his ABC's at age 8. Fortunately once the kids were in enrolled in school by social services, they not only caught up in months, but have continued to excel in their grades.

It's debatable how much culpability can be attributed my client as she lived under the thumb of her husband-abuser and was a victim of domestic violence. Whatever her husband said or wanted became the law. The kids watched television (including educational television) most of the time and she read them books. She wanted the kids to go to school and there were options. Although client and her husband withheld vaccinations on "religious grounds", the public school would have accepted the kids and they were poor enough to qualify for financial hardship scholarships at the local Catholic School. The father/husband/abuser just wanted to control the kids. (More likely he didn't want the kids in school to reveal the abuse going on in his house.)

Does my client regret her role in keeping the kids out of school? Sure, she does. The kids have been remediated and she'd put them in school if they are returned.

BTW, my client moved to another state 18 months after the children were removed, to escape her husband and go into hiding from him. She's gone to counseling, therapy for the DV. She's completed school herself and has received two certifications, one advanced, as an EKG technician. She was top of her class gradewise. And she's days away from getting a final divorce judgment from her estranged husband.

I'm not defending her per se as much as explaining what happened.

[Skelly]

7. The other side

Those may be the consequences of one home schooling family, but I caution using such a broad brush. I home schooled all five of my children (from PreK - GED test). I used to think we sacrificed a lot (living on one income, owning older cars, older house, etc), until recently.

I look at my children now, all grown, some still in college, some having graduated and starting their own families. I realized those 'sacrifices' were nothing at all. Would they have succeeded academically if they had attended 'regular' school, yes. Would they be the same people they are today? Probably not. And I am proud of who they are today.

The thought of sending my 6 year old off to some place to spend the majority of her day with 30 other 6yr olds did not seem wise. We started there and took it one year at a time.

My children are as diverse in many ways (from religious beliefs to political involvement) but there is a constant among them. They are independent, critical thinkers. They love each other, their family and friends. They care about others and the world beyond their own backyard. They make a difference in the lives of everyone they meet.

When we started home schooling nearly 25 years ago, the only 'support' available was 'Christian' support groups. I never would have thought all these years later, 'home school' would still be synonymous with 'religious'. I know there are many families today that home school for reasons other than religion. I know there are many successful home schooled children (whatever the reason their parents had for choosing this option). A close friend of mine was very upset when I told her of our decision to home school. She was a 3rd grade teacher. She said she had never seen a child who was home schooled succeed. In fact, every one that came into her class was way behind their peers. Of course she hadn't! She taught 3rd grade. To have a former 'home schooler' in her class meant it did not work out for that family and they did the right thing by moving them into a more structured environment. Just because she did not see the 'successes' did not mean they were not there.

Our youngest son (he is 23) said something to his father and me this past summer that simultaneously gladdened and saddened my heart. Sitting on the front porch during a visit, he thanked us for his childhood. Unlike some of his friends, he never worried about when his next meal would come, or whether dad would be beating up mom tonight. He never had to wonder if he was loved or important to someone. He said he just really wanted us to know how much he appreciated all we had done.

I am not naive. I know home schooling does not work for everyone. I know it can hide a neglectful or abusive situation. While we may only hear about the horror stories, there are thousands of other stories, successful ones, that we never hear. I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

[spinbaby]

13. When it works well, it works very well

I home schooled my oldest for first and second grade because he was extremely hyperactive. The school gave me the choice of medicating him more than he was already medicated or putting him in special ed. Things did not go well in kindergarten and I think they were quite relieved that I decided to home school. When he went back to third grade he was performing at a much higher level than his peers and was up to high-school algebra in math. He eventually graduated from college with a computer engineering degree.

The difference here is that I am myself highly educated and was willing to put some time and energy into teaching my child. I also used the same materials as the school--they were more than willing to share.

[no_hypocrisy]

22. My problem is my client is being punished for homeschooling (to the best of her ability).

We are fighting from the defense and not convincingly.

[fasttense]

3. Home Schooling has its good and bad points

I can understand how some parents don't want to send their children to bad schools. I think at the elementary school level parents can do a better job then some schools, if the parents are disciplined and ensure the homework gets done (yes, homeschoolers get homework too). But I wonder about parents home schooling at the high school level.

When I was in military recruiting there were a lot of teenagers who dropped out of high school and claimed to be home schooled their last 2 to 3 years. Yet they did very poorly on the ASVAB. These kids were never home schooled. They were high school dropouts.

The government has a vested interested in ensuring everyone has an education. An illiterate mass of people is a drain on society and will become burdens instead of productive members. There needs to be checks on home schooling, to ensure children aren't neglected or that it is not used to disguise dropouts.

[Alcibiades]

9. A lot of it depends upon the child

My son is seven now, but performs as well as a ten year old on most measures--off the scale on most tests used to assess academic ability in first graders. From the time he was born, I read to him 45 minutes a day, until, when he was three, he was able to read on his own. Now he reads material on a middle school level, and I just hang around and help him on his vocabulary. I've tauight him math, science, etc. I worked hard at it, though I never thought of what I do with him as homeschooling, it is.

And yet there are gaps. My freakishly bright son needed the public schools to get him to sit down and shut up. The discipline and structure is good for him. Plus, they ahve done a better job at some of the nuts and bolts of getting him to write his letters well and write sentences than I ever would have.

I have a PhD and have taken a deep and abiding interest in the education. Nonetheless, I regard it as a kind of arrogance to assume that I or most any other parent can really do a better job of teaching than the public school system--almost any public school system. Some of these institutions have been around a long time, and they have an institutional memory about the subject of educating children that is hard to match, even if you have "every advantage." I'm qualified to teach college kids, but it's different from elementary age kids. Sure, some of the on grade level assignments my son gets are, for him, too easy, but we make sure he's challenged, and this year he's had a very good teacher who also makes sure he's challenged, so that he does have the experience of having to work hard in school.

I also have a three year old girl. I've done everything I did for the boy with the girl, with little result. I can tell she's smart by the things she does, but she's speech delayed and so we're sending her to speech therapy: they assessed her as speaking at about the 20% percentile for her age. She knows her letters and numbers, but at this point my son was way past that. For me, educating a very bright child has proved to be much easier than one who has challenges.

I'm going to do everything I can to get her ready for school, but I am glad we have a good public school system, one that has experience working with kids who have learning or other problems. One thing I've learned about this country is that there are two things everyone thinks they are qualified to have an opinion on, and those are politics and education. The truth is that's just not the case. Public education is a jewel of great price, and folks can only doubt that because they don't know what this country would be like without it. I think it would suck.

[Igel]

23. I've seen this a few times.

I live in Texas. In TX a parent can issue a high school diploma. Homeschooling is essentially a (state-)constitutional right.

If their senior's failing and wouldn't get a diploma *and* would drop out of school if they didn't graduate it's a kludge that works. I don't know how you validate a parent-issued diploma, but there must be some way. You could also take a few classes at a community college. Even if you're failing because you just don't meet the graduation requirements of x credits for science and y for history you could still probably pull off auto mechanics or such.

I've also known girls who were pregnant, doing badly in school, and who were "homeschooled" for their sophomore or junior year. Sometimes it works. Usually it doesn't, esp. if they're juniors. So they stay homeschooled and are content enough for the time being with their prized possession and the sense that they've done something with their lives.

I imagine parent-issued diplomas also wreak havoc with drop-out statistics.

[Bonhomme Richard]

4. Isolation is what it is all about when religion is the issue. n/t

[freshwest]

5. Faux Newz and Rush will take up the slack and turn them into good little...

[teewrex]

8. This isn't so much a home schooling issue as it is a religious fanaticism issue.

I home schooled my kids and my oldest is now in college majoring in pure math. These religious fanatics don't believe in education at all. They want to keep the kids ignorant because with knowledge comes power and with enough knowledge they will probably leave the religion.

[jhasp]

10. There are good and bad homeschoolers, private schools, public schools, etc.

I am a homeschool parent. Using one incident to paint a picture of homeschooling is extremely inaccurate. I know many homeschool families and at least one family that shouldn't homeschool (an unschooling family where neither of the parents have a college education).

I also know many families for which homeschooling works out great. We have a 4-Club that is made up of homeschoolers. The kids work together and run everything. Kids of all age groups elect the club leaders and everyone has responsibilities.

One family that I know has four homeschooled daughters. Mom was a business professional and decided that she wanted to stay home and teach her daughters. They are all very outgoing and well-educated and the girls all are active volunteers in the community. My wife tutored them in Biology two years ago.

Another family that we know has an adopted daughter that has some learning and anxiety problems. Homeschooling works out very well for them too. They are able to give her a comfortable and supportive environment to work in.

Homeschooling works out great for my family. It's Friday, I'm off for spring break (college professor) and my son and I are going on a long bike ride this morning followed by some origami and Lego building this afternoon. The schools here have spring break a different week than the colleges, so we wouldn't be able to do this otherwise. My wife (also college educated) developed a learning plan using a curriculum that we researched and other learning activities. They've finished their curriculum work for the week and so we have a free day today.

My wife and kids are often confronted by people during the day when they are out who either don't understand homeschooling or have a bias against it. A few weeks ago, they were at the grocery store and the cashier started off with some innocent questions that led to confrontational questioning about how my wife handled teaching them music, art, and how they were socialized. The cashier then told my wife that she (the cashier) was a public school teacher (I assume she had been laid off as she was cashiering in the middle of the day).

The most ardent anti-homeschooling group that we run into are school teachers. And I get it. They get the kids for which homeschooling has failed. They don't see the majority of homeschoolers because most don't have a need to go to school. But I see a lot of homeschoolers for which public schools have failed and, taken out of that environment, they prosper. It would be easy to paint public schools with the same broad brush that anti-homeschoolers use, but it would also be just as inaccurate. There are good public schools and there are public schools that are failing. There are good public school teachers and there are bad ones.

[d_r]

11. quality of the teacher

When we think about formal schools - either private or public - I don't think that we have any problem with understanding that they range in quality in facilities, resources, administrators and teachers. And I don't think we have any problem understanding that schools with lower quality resources and teachers do a poorer job of educating children than do schools with better resources and high quality teachers. I know that for my children I want them to have good teachers; I believe that the quality of the teacher's performance is related to my children's success.

I would think that home schooling is the same sort of thing. There are certainly homes with adequate resources and parents who are doing a high quality job as teachers. It doesn't surprise me that some home-schooled children do very well on standardized tests and in college. I would also think - as the anecdotes in the linked essay document - that there are home settings that are sub-par in resources and parents who are very poor teachers. In fact, just my opinion, but I would think that the lack of training in education that many home-schooling parents have would exacerbate this. It would seem logical to me that there is a wide variety of quality in the teaching skills of parents who home-school, and there is no oversight to this.

I thought this was a well thought out essay. The point isn't that home schooling per se is inadequate - and it may well be excellent in some cases - but that there is little over sight and documentation. We would not accept that children in public schools be held to no standards or documentation. We wouldn't.

Parents are certainly the primary socializers of their children and hold primary responsibility for their children's well-being and values, and they should have every right to. But the end idea = that children have a right to quality education is true also, and the rights of the children should be protected.

[Skelly]

16. Still a state issue?

I have to admit I have been out of the 'home schooling' business for quite a few years now. However, when we home schooled, it was a state issue. Some states it was legal, some it was not. 'Oversight' depended on the state. In Texas (at the time), there was little oversight. In Ohio, we were put through the proverbial wringer (sending in documentation of curriculum, yearly state testing or evaluation by a certified teacher, etc.). Support from the school district was extremely varied. We lived in the city school district. They offered no support to home schoolers. As I was told when I sought out help for one of my children (I suspected a learning disability), all responsibility was on me, "from pencils to graduation". We paid for testing and private tutors. Other districts allowed home schoolers to attend classes (for example, biology lab) and/or extra curricular activities (band, sports, etc.).

But I disagree about the educational level of the parent. Even my advanced degree did not prepare me for high school level calculus. When that was needed, we sought help. Of course, I couldn't teach my son how to play soccer either. Or Drama to my daughter. Or swimming to any of my children. But they learned these things because we were committed to them learning.

As I look at my children now, I see the greatest advantage they received from being home schooled is the ability to understand themselves apart from anyone else. Their critical thinking skills amaze me. They are so different from one another in many ways, but their love for each other taught them how to accept and appreciate the differences among everyone.

[Igel]

24. Oversight is the issue.

Regulations and the like.

The problem is finding a disinterested overseer and legislators.

Some legislators support homeschooling. Parents' rights and all that.

Some legislators are convinced that socialization in a school--preferably a public school--setting is indispensible.

The conversation's driven by two (here absurdly stereotyped) views. 1. "government interference in the family is good and wholesome at all times; government cannot have too much power and since kids are ultimately society's responsibility they should be subject to societal control." 2. "Government corrupts everything it touches so government authority should be circumscribed to the greatest extent possible, especially because bureaucrats and legislators have primarily their own authority and how to expand it in view; no bureaucrat loves kids more than their parents, so kids are properly the responsibility of their parents and subject to nearly solely parental control; kids should be brought up in keeping with their parents' cultural views and with a view primarily to socialize them into adult society and not to socialize them into transient, temporary teen or pre-teen society." Yeah, stereotypes. But we see views closer to one or the other in many areas; oddly, people tend always to pick the views that benefit themselves in some way.

You're not going to get something that respects "reasonable" homeschooling because there's no definition of "reasonable" that we can all (or mostly) agree upon. In one state I lived in you needed to take the standardized tests. If you score too low, you must go to public school, even if you do better than you did on the last standardized test and your failure is actually an improvement. If you score too low and you're already in public school, oh, well. Circumstances beyond the parents' control simply don't matter if they're homeschooling; they do if the kid's in public school.

California's teachers unions and bureaucrats a few years ago managed to get homeschooling parents classified as teachers. I don't know if this continued, but the effect would have been to require all homeschooling parents to be certified for their charges' ages and content areas. Only a certified teacher can teach kids, apparently; and all certified teachers are apparently qualified. (One has to imagine that if this stuck, in a decade there'll be required procedures and policies for somebody to conduct teachscapes and observations to evaluate the efficacy and adherence to best practices of homeschooling parents. Perhaps a decade after that, since parents are almost always the first and primary teachers of their kids, certification and annual performance goals/evaluations of all parents can be instituted.)

In Texas you're almost guaranteed liberty in homeschooling. You need to have some written curriculum to show that you're teaching 3 things--reading, writing, and, I think, civics. (Maybe reading, arithmetic, and civics. Don't feel like googling it now.) This has been construed rather broadly on the side of homeschoolers; principals, who want enrollment and are former teachers, convinced that only they can teach and only they truly are able to love kids and love all kids more than their parents ever can--thousands of nameless faces at a time, but pure, true love--usually try to push enforcement. There's a group in Texas to support homeschooling parents in their legal defense.

[sinkingfeeling]

12. I worry more about the social 'isolation' that so many of the religiously

home schooled live in. It seems to me that some fundamentalist churches even seek to limit all contact to those within the church. The mega-churches want to furnish everything and provide all socialization to their members.

So if, say, a group like the Duggar family, decides that girls above the age of 13 need no futher education in math, history, languages, etc., and they have no 'outside' contact, the whole belief structure is just passed on and on. Of course th Duggars aren't 'isolated' because they're big TV stars and have a ton of outside contact with the real world.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

19. Anything that teaches a kid to function in a bubble is a bad thing.

My personal belief is that life should be filled with choices and options. Parents have a responsibility to get a kid off to a proper start in the world, but they also have the responsibility of "cutting the cord" at some point. And when they do, if they have raised that kid with blinders on, the world is going to be one tough and brutal place for them to function in. They either have to seek out a bubble similar to the one they were raised in or deal with life as a misfit in the "big picture." Of course, we create and shape our own realities...but only if we understand that we have the tools to do it. If kids are raised to conform to a certain set of principles, it's like that old story about putting the fleas in the glass jar with a lid. The fleas jump until they hit the lid. After hitting the lid repeatedly, you take the lid off and they never jump higher than where the lid used to be.

[Igel]

25. I'd say anything that ultimately fails to teach kids to function outside their bubble is a bad thing

But schools are a bubble. Teens set up their own society, their own structures. They're not like adult structures. They don't have adult responsibilities.

The rules aren't very adult-like. The expectations are fake-adult-like. They sort of look adult, but in fact they're not. They're a delusion, and satisfying just the minimum standards for being in high school would get most adults fired within a week. No detention, no remediation, no third second changes.

Most of my kids learn to be adults, learn to live outside the bubble, in their home lives and their lives outside of home and school. They have friends and neighbors that aren't set by school norms; they get jobs; they interact with adults, relatives or not, in fairly natural settings. I've known some home schooling disasters. But I've also known homeschoolers that were better in adult society at age 16 than in 16-year-old society. Somehow other kids' parents thought this wrong. "Kids should be kids." What a kid should be has changed over the years, varies by community and family.

When kids are exposed to "outside the bubble" stuff in school, it's usually on the side. And it's often not when they're ready for it, it's when others decide they're ready for it. Those "others" aren't adults responsible for the kids but other, often older or delinquent, kids. These are the things that the bubble that teachers and administrators is designed to mitigate--then they often turn around and implicitly say that these factors are the reason for public school.

Here's an example of "outside the bubble" behavior. A 15-year-old in my class got pregnant. She really wasn't ready for sex, much less pregnancy. She's quiet, backwards, and went out with the guy on a dare: Social pressure. She got pregnant a couple of weeks later. The girl got counseling; parents said "no" to an abortion and the girl was too meek to have an opinion. Her parents said "you will marry"; his parents said "you will marry."

Provisions were made for her pregnancy in phys ed, in what she'd have to do for classes. She had a teacher collect all her stuff for 6 or 8 weeks and deliver it to her home, tutoring her so she wouldn't get behind. Tests were proctored at home. Projects got incompletes or "excused" so as not to pressure her. She is provided with free daycare services in school and counseling. Absences because of her child's illness or checkups are excused. The school helped make sure that the government service providers were lined up for her.

Now, try this: She's 19 and working as a cashier. She's pregnant, and for the last 3 months special provisions are made to allow her flexibility in work schedule and in working conditions. Since she's making minimum wage, her employer contacts government aid agencies and makes her appointments, following up to make sure she attended. She gets free counseling at work during work hours. She gets time off with pay for absences for her checkups, 6 or 8 weeks off (with employer assistance to make sure she can do whatever work only she can do) and, when she returns to work she gets free daycare, counseling, and anytime her kid is sick or needs a checkup she's excused from work. To me, that sounds really, really cushy.

Tell me that's not a bubble, that this has taught her how to be an adult. It's keep her life from being ruined by unpunished date-rape--we figure there's little chance that the guy will actually marry her, esp. since the baby's nearly a year old and he's stationed overseas, but she's been kept in school and between parents and the school district she has time to finish her junior year.

[mimitabby]

14. home schooling is not for everyone who WANTS IT

Unfortunately, in my family several members are home schooling. At this point, for some of them the jury is out. But i can already see that people who did not learn math in school (because they didn't go!!) shouldn't be teaching kids math.
People who hate school shouldn't be home schooling.
So it came to the point where the 19 year old son was still somewhere about 10th grade level. so he quit. he actually found a job.
None of the other kids are old enough yet, that's why the jury is still out. But these are the kind of women who tell their little kids to shut up when they say "why is the sky blue mommy? " "what is this what is that?"
they are growing up ignorant and naive. and being taught by a person who HATES to be their teacher.

[Skelly]

21. When I was in college

oh so many years ago, my Marriage and Family professor threw out some statistic on the number of inter-racial marriages. A student in the class would not believe that low percentage. She alone knew quite a few inter-racial couples. She remained adamant about the percentage having to be higher.

My point is, our perspectives on any issue are derived from a number of factors (experience, education, etc). Sometimes, we only see the 'knee of the elephant' (so to speak).

I understand somewhat what you are saying. However, there is also a 'flip' side. I see parents who send their kids to school and don't even know their teacher's name. I see cookie cutter graduates that are taught what to think, not how to think. I see teachers that should never have entered the profession or should have left long ago (two of my children ARE teachers).

Home schooling is not the problem. Individual people are the problem. It is how we can be part of the solution that is the answer.

[shcrane71]

15. True. I met illiterate home-schooled kids.

It was sad. Their life choices were drastically shrunk. I'm sure that home-schooling has its place, and it should be an option. It just seems that it would behoove us, as Americans, to send an educator around to these families to check up on their progress. Or have a central testing site for the children.

[Myrina]

17. I don't understand how/why

... home school parents think their kids can qualify for 'regular school' sports teams/scholarships.
(Saw a lawsuit about that somewhere recently)

If you don't attend the school, you shouldn't be allowed to participate in their sports & utilize their equipment/facilities/take advantage of the experience, IMO.

[Igel]

26. Because the teams aren't academics.

They're bonuses, add ons. Some states allow homeschoolers to participate. Some don't.

They're not always just school-based. I've known schools that didn't have enough students for their own team. The students a team district-wide or from 2-3 adjacent schools.

Often the "you don't attend, you can't participate" argument relies on funding.

In some cases the school only pays for part of the extramural funding. Or the funds are kept segregated on the school's budget. There's the mission of the school with one funding source; then there are extramural sports with a different source. Football team needs new uniforms? School won't buy them--the PTO does. There's a real sense in which they're "extramural"--they're "outside the walls" of the school.

There are even entirely self-supported organizations. You want to belong to X club, you pay the fee to support it. The only thing the school does is make available a heated/cooled lit room with a volunteer employee.

Then there's the larger district funding issue. Homeschooling parents pay taxes for the schools yet don't use the school's academic services. It's claimed this is fair because they don't want the services. Then when they do want *some* services it's said to be fair to deny them the services because they don't want the complete service package. Sometimes the argument is made that non-attendance deprives the school of federal or state money-if they're not going to participate in society's obligation to teach all students, screw them. Still, the parents usually pay more in taxes than extramural services would cost. Federal and state money goes for academics and teacher--not coach--salaries.

The funding issue falls flat in many districts. The district we live in has a grandfather-in clause. If you're a sophomore at a high school you can spend your junior or senior year there. It's your "community." You have something like a $50 tuition fee per year. No property tax money from your parents, but you can be on the football team, debate squad, whatever. You attend the school, you can participate.

Often the "you don't attend, you don't participate" argument sounds like sour grapes or bitterness. "Public schools not good enough for your parents, little asswipe? You don't like our beliefs? You disapprove of our views? And now you want to let little Amanda-Sue or Billy-Sean use our facilities? Screw you!" It's not a public-service argument, not a betterment-of-society argument. It's seldom even a fiscal argument that is sustainable, unless you assume that tax support for public education is a duty to society with no reciprocal obligation. Having a dozen homeschoolers on teams that are no larger than they'd otherwise be doesn't exactly cost the schoolboard a dime. You pay $X for your 30-person team, regardless of who they are. It's usually a moral-support-for-public-education argument. It's an ideological argument waged by one set of adults to hurt the parents by punishing their kids--if the parents fall into line, great, otherwise the kids get the shaft. Not very compassionate, either. Sure, nail the parents for being obdurate, uncaring conservatives who sacrifice kids for ideology and personal views. But then to sit back and be obdurate, uncaring liberals who sacrifice kids for ideology and personal views? I find this unconvincing. I think it's common, and that not just in the sense of "frequently occurring."

Some school districts even take the societal obligation to educate all students as a service to the community seriously enough to ex parte allow homeschoolers to actually do the lab portion of their homeschooling science or foreign language curriculum on campus. Can't do the lab with the spectrograph at home? Don't have the right telescope? Not enough photogates and accelerometers in the garage? Off to the high school with you for the afternoon! Sometimes there's an equipment/materials fee, sometimes not. It does some serious pomo deconstruction of the idea of a public school system as a monolithic, bureaucratic entity.

Personally I think that since it ultimately depends on the allocation of tax dollars it should be up for a community vote every decade or so. Just put it on the ballot in November every 10-12 years.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

18. We were partial home schoolers

We were overseas and did not have the kids in "American" schools everywhere we went. Made for interesting times occasionally.

My experience with homeschoolers here in the US is very mixed. Some are great, others far from adequate. Religion was not always the primary factor, but it was up there. Overall I still support allowing it. One on one instruction is one of the best ways to maximize what a student can learn at any age.

[bvar22]

20. It is NOT just the narrow "Education Spectrum" that is important.

Some of the most important lessons I learned in Public School simply can NOT be taught
in the isolation of home under the protection of a parent.

*How to Stand Up for a personal value or opinion against Peer Pressure.

*Sharing

*Admitting mistakes and shortcomings in a group without falling apart

*The gray area between selfishness and taking care of yourself

*Dealing with taunting & teasing

*How to LOSE with dignity

*Personal Boundaries

*Empathy

*Where to Draw the Line, and when to Let it Go

*Sportsmanship

*Personal Bullshit detection

*The difference between an acquaintance and a friend

*Reasonable expectations from individuals and groups

*Not fearing someone who is different

There are a LOT of people in this World,
and learning healthy ways to interact with them is important preparation for LIFE in this World.
A great deal of Who I am today was discovered, sharpened, and refined on the School Playground.

A child can read about the above,
or be told anecdotes by a parent,
but the lessons are not truly learned until the situation is experienced.

Sadly, many parents choose to Home School in order to protect their children from the Learning Experiences listed above.
Those children will be ill equipped to deal with Life on the Outside.

[Igel]

27. "Cannot"?

You're right. It's the playground that you learn these things, when there are responsible adults available for counseling and advising. The playground is precisely the part of school that is the least subject to regulation, and it precisely the part that is most commonly outside the classroom. In my youth I spent more time on the school playground on weekends, summers, and after school than during class time.

And it was on the playground that bullies bullied the weaker, that peer pressure created homophobes, that boys were taught to be sexist goons. That's still where this takes place.

But these are the things that the responsible parents I've met over the last 40 years routinely teach their kids. Some of the traits have become more frequent. Some less.

And they're still the things that many teachers still lament they're forced to teach because of all the irresponsible parents "out there." "character education" is something that some teachers embraced as part of a messianic vision. Most teachers looked at it and sighed. "Content. PD. Lesson plans. Classroom management. Procedures. Evaluations. Conformity with district curriculum guidelines. And now we get to build the New Soviet ... er, Modern Man."

Granted, they're the things that many irresponsible teachers feel are properly their job to teach. You just can't trust parents to love and rear their kids. We need professional child-rearers for the job, people who are truly enlightened and able to create the proper citizen for the way society should be. In the '60s and '70s and '80s people objected to Dewey's original vision of public education: It was intended to produce conformity, to educate the lesser Americans in how to properly behave as an American. Then in the '90s it returned, and many embraced it. As long as *their* values were being preached.

The problem is that the teachers often aren't there when the lessons are taught, however omniscient and omnipresent they believe themselves to be. And when they are present, they don't often teach the lessons in ways that stick. Even worse, they often teach in ways that make sure that the wrong lessons are learned.

In my classes kids don't learn how to deal with taunting and teasing. Taunting and teasing are prohibited by school rule. We defend against peer pressure and support students in resisting peer pressure. Drawing the line is decided by the principals; it's above the teachers' pay grade, and the students have little say in the matter. You *will* respect differences--at least publicly; if you're a raging homophobe you *will* keep it to yourself so that nobody has to be intimidated by your speech. To prevent intimidation, we restrict the behavior. Perhaps the bullies learn to not bully; but it's unclear, at best. It's clear that the putative underdogs learn to hide behind the teacher's authority for protection, even at age 17. Many haven't learned how to confront or argue with bullies, just how to get others to stand up for themselves. It's unclear what good this does in the larger social sense. Are the teachers really the agents for social change some see as their primary purpose?

Hard to say. My anecdotal observations pretty much say otherwise. The kids with irrespossible parents have been brought up in the same classrooms with kids with responsible parents. But it's not hard to tell which kids have responsible parents--there's some statistical noise, some good kids with irresponsible parents and bad kids with responsible parents, but that's not the way to bet. In other words, there's a small correlation between enlightened an teacher corps and responsible social behavior; there's a large correlation with responsible parents and responsible social behavior.

[Skelly]

28. 90% of your list

is on my own...."What my children learned BECAUSE they were home schooled".

'Home School' and 'raised in a vacuum' are not synonymous.

From the time my children were elementary age, they were able to hold a conversation with those younger, the same age, and older than themselves. They were able to do this because they were exposed to all age groups. (I once had the mother of my daughter's friend approach me say, "I always enjoy talking with Anna during dance class. She is a wonderful girl". Anna was 12 at the time.)

Peer pressure? Two of my other children each helped the save the life of other individuals (one was young girl who was drowning in the local pool while everyone watched, expecting someone else to do something. The other was an elderly gentleman who had fallen in his yard and while the other neighborhood kids were saying he was drunk and leave him alone, my oldest ran home to call 911...he had suffered a heart attack).

Back in the late 80's and early 90's, you can bet my kids were seen as 'different'. You do not have to be on a school playground to learn about bullying. When my child was teased because she wasn't wearing the latest fashion, she looked that public school mean girl in the eyes and said, "First, I wear clothes that are comfortable. Second, I don't remember asking your opinion", turned around and walked away.

I could go on with nearly every item on your list, but I think you get the idea. Again, 'home schooling' isn't the problem. Individual people are the problem.

I did not choose to home school my children to protect them from these experiences, I chose to do so because I wanted them to be able to think for themselves.

[laundry_queen]

29. I vehemently disagree.

I didn't learn any of that crap on the playground. Most of it I learned from my parents or from adult relatives or from the parents of my friends. Children learn those things from being around many adults, not by being around 30 kids of the exact same age. Children need more guidance from adults and less "Lord of the Flies" which was pretty much how our playground operated. As someone said upthread, school itself is a bubble. It creates an artificial social atmosphere that does not mirror real life.

I agree that homeschooling can, at times, be used as a tool of abusers to keep their family under their control. I also agree there are some really, really horrible homeschoolers out there. I will state that I have never met a homeschooled kid that was awkward in social situations. My daughter's babysitter was homeschooled and has a 2-year post-secondary diploma and is currently working on her BComm online. In fact, we were discussing taking online courses, because I'm also in university right now (I was public schooled here in Canada) and I mentioned that the only thing I disliked about online courses was trying to figure out concepts on my own, sometimes having to read the text over and over again and then google the concept because I don't understand. I said it's much easier for me to have a teacher explain the concept to me. She replied she prefers it that way because she's used to figuring out the concept on her own and it helps her remember it for exams. She's also really good at self-motivating and setting her own deadlines, where as I seem to have no intrinsic motivations for finishing homework and wait until the teacher's deadline. So our fundamental way of learning is vastly different because of our experiences. I think she's likely to do much better than me in post-secondary because of it.

I also have many friends who homeschool (all are non-christian based) and all make sure that the kids have plenty of opportunity to hang out with their peers. School is not the only place for peer interaction. Activities such as dance, soccer, hockey, baseball, swimming and so on are all great opportunities for a homeschooled kid to find friends of the same age. Many homeschoolers belong to associations that organize field trips for homeschoolers once a week. In our community there are homeschooler's swimming lessons at the pool, during the day when the other kids are in school. The opportunities are really endless. Public school isn't the only place kids see other kids.

I think it's important not to paint all homeschoolers with the 'crazy christian abuser' brush. Many homeschooled kids are getting a far superior education. It depends on the parents, their dedication to their kids and the curriculum they are following. With the internet now, the learning that is done outside of a public school is just as high quality as the stuff done inside of a public school setting. And it's the wave of the future in post-secondary as well. It wouldn't hurt kids one bit to homeschool in that manner.

[bvar22]

30. I expected Home Schoolers to disagree.

Do you see any negatives at all with Home Schooling?
Can you see any potential gray areas at all in developing individuation, self-confidence, self-reliance, internal validation, or self-actualization?

[jhasp]

31. I am an avid homeschool parent and I see potential negatives with homeschooling

Some people just shouldn't home school. We've seen some horror stories. I've seen one family who raises their daughters to be good wives and that's it. It's a disaster. You have to know your limitations as a home school parent. My wife primarily does the teaching, but can't read music, so I do the music stuff. I have horrible handwriting, so she teaches handwriting. You can go to outside sources (we have co-ops) to get specialized education in math, science, etc. My expertise is finance, so I'll eventually teach a course on personal financial management.

The big benefit of homeschooling to me is that I can teach my children to learn for the sake of learning. Most college students that I have in my classes learn for the purposes of getting a grade. They, and a lot of adults that I interact with, see education as a painful difficult experience and resist educating themselves.

[bvar22]

33. All in all,

I am profoundly grateful that my parents were NOT my school teachers.
I have had many, many different teachers, some good, some bad,
some excellent mentors, and some that I stayed as far away from as possible.
I've also had many different disciplinarians and Principals at several different schools throughout my youth.
This large base of experience in our Education System has served me well.

My parents were loving and helpful, but they were my Parents,
and that IS a different relationship than the one I had with my teachers.
It frightens me to imagine my parents devoting that much of their life trying to control all of those different aspects of mine.


School was not easy for me.
I was not one of the popular, good looking, athletic kids with wealthy parents to whom everything comes easily.
I was a ragged eccentric, long before that was cool.
My grades were good, and I was barely OK at most sports.
I DO know what it is like to be chosen last.
But I learned a great deal about different people, and learned the skills to deal with the wide variety of experiences, challenges, and adventures life throws at us all without my parents riding in the back seat.
The way to learn about different people is to spend a lot of time with a lot of different people,
friends, acquaintances, team mates, class mates, teachers, principles, mentors, and parents.
Having a parent trying to wear all those different hats seems frightfully limiting.

I DO understand why some are attracted to being all those things to their children,
but I AM grateful that my Parents stuck to Parenting,
and left the rest up to me and the World.
Thank You, Mom.
Thank You, Dad.

BTW: My mother was a high school math teacher in the Public School system.

[jhasp]

34. How many homeschoolers do you know?

The group that we hang around with generally have very outgoing kids. As I mentioned above, there is a large 4-h group where the kids (of all ages) participate in elections and make decisions for the group-without parental control.

Yes, we do have a little more control over what our kids do. It's funny to watch my kids (6 and 7 years old) when they see commercials, they take them very seriously because we generally don't let them watch regular TV. They also don't beg and scream and cry when they don't get the hottest new toy on the market. My 7 year old son loves Legos, but today at the store he saw a set that he wanted (and he had the money for) and he made the decision on his own to save his money for something better.

The homeschool kids that we know interact a lot with other kids in and outside of their age groups and also have disciplinarians that are not their parents. My wife is an AWANA (kids' church activity) director and part of her task is to keep eight 5, 6, and 7 year olds in line. Kids come over to my house to play with the kids and my wife and I have to set and enforce rules for them.

I think that a lot of people that aren't involved with homeschooling get this idea that homeschooled kids live in a bubble who the only adults that the kids come into contact with are their parents. I've rarely seen this happen. At least once a week my kids go over to someone else's house to play and we usually have kids over at our house every week or so. Every two weeks, several of our families get together. We hire babysitters and send them off with the kids so the adults can have a potluck dinner and enjoy spending time together. Usually, once per week my wife takes the kids on a field trip, sometimes with other homeschool families, sometimes not. The last one was two weeks ago (this week is my spring break so we took a mini-vacation), when she took them to an owl education program. They got to see all kinds of owls, dissect owl pellets, do some art projects, etc. Usually every week, she takes the kids to a pottery class. She often just drops them off and they work one-on-one with the owner of the pottery store to make projects. The kids are signed up for a city soccer club (non-homeschool, but a lot of homeschool participants) that starts in the spring.

We do take a greater interest in being good disciplinarians because we do spend a lot of time with our kids and we don't want to spend time with brats, even if they are our kids. My daughter (6) is going through an early-diva phase and we had her fill up a bag of her toys (that she can earn back) every time her inner diva got out of hand and then set her bedtime earlier for the days that were especially bad. So far it's been working well, we haven't had any extreme diva outbursts for a few days.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

32. Homeschooling can be a reflection of control freak parents

The only ones I knew personally were some relatives of my stepfather, who were fundamentalists and bizarre even by the generous standards of that group.

The Minneapolis paper once featured a story about a fundamentalist homeschooling family. The oldest daughter was 18, and instead of sending her to college (even a strict fundie college like Bob Jones University), they had her taking correspondence courses.

However, I know of people who have lived with their children in Third World countries with poor schools who have used homeschooling.

[Skelly]

40. Being President of the PTA

can be a reflection of control freak parents.
I do not think home school parents have a corner on the market.
What is really funny is the OPPOSITE of that supposition is often times used to discredit home schooling (ie- the belief that home school parents are unstructured and let their kids do anything/nothing at all).

Public/Private schools, Home School, UNSchool, can all be done successfully. They can all fail. In my opinion, it all comes down to teacher/parent involvement.

A parent does not have to home school their child to hide any agenda (not that it isn't used this way). There are, unfortunately, many kids in public and private schools that suffer abuse/neglect that fall through the cracks.

[Kablooie]

35. Many homeschool parents have a low level of education in the first place.

How can you expect them to teach things they never learned themselves?

[jhasp]

36. The magical age

There seems to be an idea of this predetermined age at which people can no longer learn anything. As a father who grew up without a father, I've learned how to do many things that I'd like to teach my kids, such as archery and playing the piano. In my late 20s and early 30s, I went back to school and earned my PhD-this took a lot of learning on my part. So, to answer your question about, "things they never learned themselves" is that sometimes the fun is learning with your kids.

[jhasp]

37. Do you have any statistics to back this up?

Following is a link to a recent study on homeschoolers' performance on standardized examines when compared to their public school counterparts. It appears that homeschoolers get a better education, on average, than public school attendees.

http://www.hslda.org/docs/study/ray2009/2009_Ray_StudyFINAL.pdf

[nxylas]

38. It varies

I've known a lot of homeschooled kids and most of them are at least as well educated as their, um, school-schooled counterparts. But there are exceptions. My wife is a piano teacher and one of her students is supposedly homeschooled, but in reality, doesn't appear to be receiving any education at all. He is 9 years old and barely able to read and write. The mother is a middle-class bohemian type who thinks that actually teaching him stuff would stifle her little darling's creativity, and his father is no longer in the picture. He is a bright kid, and I think what she is doing is a form of abuse.

[MineralMan]

39. I used to volunteer in the library in my small California town.

Late 1970s through mid 1980s. Just four hours a week. I quickly discovered that there was a group of about 10 children who were dropped off at the library when it opened, and picked up by their parents when they got off work. They were being "home-schooled." The reality was that they were receiving no schooling at all, but their parents were relying on the library as a baby-sitting service while the parents were at work or somewhere. I suppose the parents thought they'd learn by osmosis.

Fortunately, the librarian at that library didn't just leave it at that. She set up a system by which the kids learned to read and write and directed them to library resources for other things. We volunteers were part of that system. It worked, to a certain extent, but was no substitute for a real education. She tried informing the CPS in the county and the school system, but they did nothing.

I know that there are people who homeschool responsibly, and my praise goes out to them. But, there are other parents who provide no education at all. My contempt goes out to them.