so much for socialization … May 26, 2008

Every homeschooler has been questioned about the Big “S” … the socialization question. How will our poor homeschooled children ever become properly socialized? A single room with a single adult supervising 20 to 30 same-aged children is assumed to be the proper milieu for learning good social interaction skills.

Five-year-old Alex Barton might have a slightly different take on this concept. Alex is in the process of being diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a mild form of autism that causes eccentric behavior. But his kindergarten teacher thought it would be a good idea to make Alex the butt of a Survivor-type episode in the classroom, asking each of his classmates to publicly state what they disliked about the boy. As if that were not enough, at the end of this exercise, said teacher led the children in voting Alex out of the classroom. Alex spent the rest of the day in the nurse’s office. His mother has not returned him to school; but every morning since, when she drops off her older children at school, Alex is reduced to screaming hysteria though he stays inside the car.

I can’t help wondering, when public school fans are touting the virtues of institutional socialization to me, whether they would prefer their own child to be on the giving or receiving end of such an exercise?

Subway Gets Fresh with Homeschoolers May 24, 2008

So Subway has this essay contest which is open to children in pre K-grade 6 … unless they are homeschooled children. “No home schools will be accepted” is the exact language used on their contest page.

The contest winner receives, among other things, $5000 for athletic equipment for her school. Okay, I get it, the $5000 is not for a single family to win. But what a short-sighted decision! Wouldn’t it have been simpler to say that the winner could designate the institution of his choice to receive the $5000? Eligible institutions could include not only schools but community centers and playgrounds, recreational and homeschool sport leagues, and possibly even churches with community outreach programs.

I bet they get a huge backlash from the homeschool community. I admit, they’ve already heard from me.

Homeschooling or Homefooling Q3: Involved Parent v. Objective Teacher April 12, 2008

(Editor’s note: This is one of a series of questions about homeschooling that will all be posted with answers. Eventually.) 

Question 3. Separating the roles of Parent/Teacher. To me, my parents are my parents, not my educators. Although they have taught me many valuable life lessons, they have allowed me to be an independent thinker, learning from various individuals. I have learned something different from all my teachers, and I’m grateful for that. This is like the last point about the Christian world view; home schooling parents shouldn’t impose only their point of views on their children. In addition, home schooling diminishes the professional roles of teachers. Teachers are professionals like doctors and lawyers. Doctors don’t normally operate on close relatives, and lawyers don’t normally represent close relatives in trials. That’s because there should be a standard of objectivity, and I don’t see how parents can be objective when teaching their own children. Parents are going to be more likely to give their children more leeway than professionals. When John and Jane get jobs, unless it’s in the family business, bosses are not going to be mommy or daddy. They’re going to be objective professionals.

Your parents are not your educators? Who taught you to talk and communicate, to walk, to dress yourself, to behave in social situations? “Eighty-five percent of a person’s intellect, personality and social skills are developed by age five,” according to Virginia Secretary of Health and Human Resources Jane Woods. More learning takes place in the first five years than in happens for the rest of one’s entire life; so why are parents suddenly disqualified as their own child’s teachers, after having taught him in five short years eighty-five percent of everything he will ever need to know in his entire life, simply because the child is six years old, only one day older than yesterday?

Parenting is education. The Latin root of the word educate is educare, meaning “to rear, educate,” according to my Webster’s. The idea that homeschool parents mew their children up in their homes, never letting them interact with people outside the home … can we just drop that tired old idea? It never was true, and it isn’t going to become true. People homeschool because they want to open up the world to their children, in a way that classrooms cannot. How is doing a worksheet on worldviews better than meeting the old Chinese man who runs a stand at the open air market, and hearing his stories about his childhood in his homeland? I don’t really have to answer that question, do I?

Parents are not educators? I beg to differ. A list of the successfully home educated reads like a who’s who honor roll of American and world history as well as modern newsmakers.

>>In addition, home schooling diminishes the professional roles of teachers.

Not to be too free market here, but if “professional” teachers are not getting the job done to the satisfaction of the consumer (parent and child), then they had just better be prepared to lose the customer’s business.

It is long past time to dispel the myth of the teacher as the sole holder and dispenser of knowledge, and the myth of education as children sitting in neat rows having knowledge poured into their waiting minds. Remember the old adage about leading horses to water? Well, a teacher can stand in front of a classroom all day and teach and teach and teach, but if the child is not stimulated to learn, he won’t become educated. True education is stimulating the child’s interest in the subject and facilitating a deepening desire to know more. The best teachers know this and try to do it - often not as well as they would like, because it is nearly impossible to do it for twenty-four students at once. Some superlative teachers do sometimes manage to overcome some of the obstacles institutionalized school puts in the way of their teaching, as did John Taylor Gatto, three times elected New York State’s Teacher of the Year … oh, wait; he quit teaching because, he said, he was “no longer willing to hurt children.”

You did catch that, didn’t you? A man publicly recognized three times as one of the best teachers in the United States quit his profession because he believes it damages children.

>> Doctors don’t normally operate on close relatives, and lawyers don’t normally represent close relatives in trials. That’s because there should be a standard of objectivity, and I don’t see how parents can be objective when teaching their own children.

What on earth does objectivity have to do with education? Where are the studies showing that “there should be a standard of objectivity”? I’ll tell you where they are: they don’t exist. Sure, a doctor might excuse herself from cutting her child’s abdomen open, because emotion and anxiety would cloud life-and-death decision-making ability. But education has relatively few life-and-death moments; and unlike surgery, attachment enhances education. All good teachers seek parental involvement because they know that is the best predictor of the child’s academic success.

Look back at the time when your parents were your teachers. Your parents helped you learn to walk by holding your hands, encouraging you, walking with you, and setting your feet on top of theirs to help you take giant steps you couldn’t take on your own. They weren’t objective, they were involved. Would your learning to walk have been enhanced by someone “objective” standing there with a checklist and a red pen, peering at you over a clipboard as you struggled to stand and cruise along the couch and let go and take that first step? Or “objectively” making you meet arbitrary “walking education” standards: “Left foot first! Young man, I’m going to have to mark you down if you insist on starting with your right foot! And don’t tippytoe!” Of course not. It is precisely their loving, encouraging involvement that fueled your desire to be like mom and dad, to keep getting up and trying when it seemed impossible. Someone objectively saying, “Well, this is the eighth time he has fallen in six minutes. Most other children have mastered this skill by now!” as she placed a large X beside your name - would that attitude have helped or hindered your learning to walk?

Guess what? The way we learn does not change suddenly because we hit a certain age. Knowing the child’s interests and learning style can only enhance the child’s learning experience. Being involved and ruly caring about the child as a person produces more educational results than standing back with a timer and a red pen, looking for objective errors to compare to the rest of the class. Teachers have students for six hours, five days a week, less than nine months a year. Hardly enough time to develop an intimate understanding of an individual child when there are twenty others clamoring for attention; besides the fact that statistics show that each child receives about one or two minutes of one-to-one adult attention in the classroom every day. How is any teacher, no matter how dedicated and skillful, going to address the individual needs of each child in the classroom, much less meet each one emotionally with the involvement that enhances learning so well, and which comes like breathing to any loving parent?

Homeschooling or Homefooling Q2: One World View April 11, 2008

(Editor’s note: This is one of a series of questions about homeschooling that will all be posted with answers. Eventually.) 

Question 2. Teaching one world view usually Christianity. Home schooling like private schooling is often designed to have a Christian-based curriculum. For home schoolers or private schoolers, basic subjects such as science and history have a Christian slant. In science, evolution is absolutely wrong, and creationism is absolutely right. In history, more emphasis is placed on religious groups such as the Puritans than on atheists. I’m a Christian myself, and I find nothing wrong with Christian teachings. But children should be given a wide world view of different cultures and different religions. Not everybody is white and Protestant, and an educational curriculum should reflect that. Teaching children a wide world view also gives them the chance to decide for themselves if they want to believe in evolution or creationism or become an atheist or a Christian. Parents shouldn’t home school to brainwash their children into little versions of them.

This paragraph treats at least three completely separate arguments as a single topic: history (Puritans v. atheists), social studies (cultures, religions, worldview), and science (evolution v. creationism). Let’s look at them separately.

SOCIAL STUDIES

>> Children should be given a wide world view of different cultures and different religions. Not everybody is white and Protestant.

Who said they were? Not all homeschoolers are white and Protestant, either, so you are guilty here of the same sort of pigeonholing you are accusing others of. The Christian segment of homeschooling may be the most vocal, but it is not actually much larger than the non-Christian segment.

Most homeschooled children meet with a much wider variety of people in their everyday lives than do their school peers, who are cooped up with twenty-nine other children every day, all day; children who are exactly the same age, who live in the same neighborhood, and who belong to roughly the same socio-economic group. Homeschoolers, on the other hand, are generally out on field trips, doing public service projects, and just living life in their communities; all of which give them access to a much broader range of acquaintance in age, race, experience, and socio-economic range than is possible in a schoolroom. I think most people would agree that living life in the real world and meeting real people from all walks of life is a more valuable cultural experience than doing a worksheet on “My Colorful World.”

DARWINIAN EVOLUTION v. CREATIONISM

>> In science, evolution is absolutely wrong, and creationism is absolutely right.

Christian homeschools, atheist homeschools, homeschools of other faiths, private schools, and public schools all promote a single point of view, pro or con, regarding evolution. In other words, teachers teach what they believe, or at least what they are paid to believe in the classroom. Most Christian homeschools and some private schools will teach creationism and will choose to do any of three things with Darwinian evolution: (1) ignore it completely, (2) touch on it in order to give arguments against it, or (3) study it in-depth to give their children a thorough grounding in why they believe creationism to be a better argument. Atheistic homeschools, most public schools, and some private schools teach evolution exclusively and if creationism gets any mention, it is merely to ridicule. So if your argument is that children need to be taught the wide spectrum of views on the beginning of the universe so that they can decide for themselves, well, then they need to drop out of public school for sure. Almost without exception, no homeschool of any faith and no private or public school actually teaches a nonjudgmental multiplicity of views on Darwinian evolution, creationism, and other theories on the beginning of the universe so that their students can make an informed choice. Almost without exception, every homeschool of any faith and every private and public school promotes a single viewpoint on this issue. Many homeschools at least give a blow-by-blow of why they think the opposing viewpoint is incorrect, whereas public schools merely assume it is not worth airtime at all; so as a whole homeschools touch on more diversity in this area than public schools.

HISTORY

>> In history, more emphasis is placed on religious groups such as the Puritans than on atheists.

And public schools teach a balanced point of view? When were you in school? The truth about the Puritans is that they had strong religious motivations. In order to understand why they did what they did, we need to learn the truth about their motives. In US history, the biggest motivating factor in the settlement of the colonies was the Christian faith. And yet, that Christian faith is written completely out of most public school textbooks these days! What about the textbook that teaches that at the first Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims were thanking the Indians … where is the truth in that? Where is the objectivity?

It is true, some Christian homeschools may focus on Christian history to the exclusion of other parts of history, but how is that worse than teaching a deliberately skewed version of history? Let’s be honest, whoever is teaching history is picking and choosing what to teach - there is simply not enough time to teach every interesting or important point of history. So, guess what? Everyone has gaps. Why are some gaps better or worse than other gaps? Gaps are not a problem; gaps are inevitable. Deliberately falsified history, on the other hand, is a problem.

>> Teaching children a wide world view also gives them the chance to decide for themselves if they want to believe in evolution or creationism or become an atheist or a Christian.

You imply that children taught at public school will be given a chance to decide for themselves if they want to believe evolution or creationism, atheism or Christianity, while those taught at home will not have such a choice. First off, this is a baseless argument since there are plenty of children raised in Christian homes (homeschoolers or not) who later become atheists or followers of other religions, just as there are children raised in atheistic or other religious homes who later convert to Christianity, so that’s a count against your argument right there. But more important, your implication is that home education proffers a single point of view while public education gives a multiplicity. Since when do public educators teach anything about Christianity or any other religion, other than secular humanism? As we have already seen, they see nothing wrong with twisting history to actually remove factual, historically verifiable religious motives from the picture. Since when do public school science classes teach anything about creationism? They teach a single view: Darwinian evolution. How is that equipping children to choose between the two?

Public school teachers are in the business of teaching a single worldview, just as you accuse homeschoolers of doing. So how does being taught a single, atheistic viewpoint better qualify children to choose between atheism and Christianity (or any other religion) than being taught a single, religious viewpoint? The happy outcome you envision, of children being free to choose between equal options, requires that the children actually be taught the basics of each viewpoint in an unbiased manner. Hmm, what about it? Put a religion course in the public schools, in which the basic tenets of atheism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, etc, are taught in a comparative and non-judgmental fashion. But wait … that would first necessitate that history be left intact so that children can understand why our ancestors - such as the Puritans - did what they did. Then the children would indeed have a good basis for making an informed choice. But, just leaving religious teaching out and teaching an anti-religious viewpoint does not equip them for making such a choice.

So, it is possible to teach the pros and cons of both creationism and Darwinian evolution, and atheism v. Christianity; and it is possible to teach children how to think through the evidence and decide for themselves; but that is emphatically not what public schools do. Admittedly it is not what most homeschools do either, but we have already discussed the fact that most teachers teach with bias toward their own belief system (or bias toward the demands of their paycheck), whether homeschoolers or public school teachers. Which brings us to your final point:

>> Parents shouldn’t home school to brainwash their children into little versions of them.

Since when is it brainwashing for parents to pass their own values on to their children? It is what has been done by every people, in every era, throughout history. It is natural. Every parent is familiar with the oft-repeated questions, “Mommy, do we do this?” and “Daddy, what do we do?” Children want to know what their parents believe as much as parents want to pass their beliefs on, whatever those beliefs may be. Only in modern times, with modern schools, has this prerogative of parenting been preempted. If parents are not to “brainwash their children into little versions of them” then on whom shall children model themselves? The Hitler Youth are one shining example that comes to mind of public schools taking over the parental job of teaching values to children. That is an example (admittedly extreme) of what can happen when loving parents abdicate their responsibilities to the state and let their values be shunted aside.

Your implication is that teaching children a single point of view without giving them other options is brainwashing. But we have already established that schools teach a single viewpoint on science, history, and social studies, just as you have accused homeschoolers of doing. All teachers pass on a set of beliefs and values to their students. So who is it really doing the brainwashing? Is it the parents, who love their children and have their best interests at heart, or is it the person who sits with the children for eight hours a day and may violate her own belief system in order to teach a children the prescribed curriculum in order to receive a paycheck?

To sum up: there will always be gaps in every child’s education. There are simply not enough hours in the day to teach all about everything, and even if there were, every teacher - homeschool, private, and public - teaches with bias either toward personal or paid beliefs. But living life in the real world and receiving a loving education in family values and mores seems like a much safer bet for actually learning a diversity of perspectives on a variety of subjects than sitting in a desk doing coloring pages and worksheets on the politically correct viewpoint du jour.

A pox on my house! March 1, 2008

Chicken pox has blessedly come and now just as blessedly gone for my four now-immune children. The pox parties are over (yes, a few people wanted to come over); life is returning to normal. Expect new posts very soon!

Homeschooling or Homefooling Q1: Teacher Qualification February 16, 2008

(Editor’s note: This is one of a series of questions about homeschooling that will all be posted with answers. Eventually.) 

Question 1. The Education/Ability of the Parent/Teacher. In my state, home schooling parents don’t need a teaching degree or even a bachelor’s degree. I believe some states do require this. A person with a bachelor’s degree is not necessarily smarter than a person without one, but there should be some kind of teacher’s training especially for children with special needs. School teachers have to have degrees so that they know how and what to teach, and no matter how great the parent is, parenthood doesn’t automatically make great teachers.

Parental education – or lack thereof – has absolutely no effect on one’s ability to teach one’s own children. The anecdotal evidence for parents successfully teaching their children at home is overwhelming. After all, when Stanford University admits more homeschooled than high schooled teens (relative to number of applicants), you’ve got to figure that those parents are doing something right. Desire to learn and love of learning have a far more profound effect than a teaching credential; and those who choose to educate their children at home have this in abundance. The other thing parents have in overflowing abundance is a desire to give their children the best and a knowledge of their own children’s abilities and interests. (Yes, we all know parents who do not desire to give their children the best, but let’s face it: if you want to bring your children home and spend all day, every day, with them, you are a parent who enjoys your children and wants to give them good things.)

Besides, every teacher and school administrator knows that the biggest predictor of a child’s academic success is the level of parental involvement. And what is homeschooling but total parental involvement! The truth is, if you’re clever enough to be online finding and reading things you want to find and read, you’re clever enough to be your child’s teacher. (And here you are, reading this!)

Completely apart from parental qualification, we place far too much credence in teaching credentials. Granted that the majority of teachers are people who care deeply about children and their education; but there are also more than you might suspect who are there simply because they couldn’t decide on a major, and teaching is easy with summers off; or who couldn’t qualify for a more difficult major (sad to say, in any given university the college of education is generally one of the easiest to get into, and has the fewest requirements [see *comment]); or who thought they wanted to teach and discovered too late, after receiving their degree, that they don’t really enjoy working day after day with someone else’s children, but lack time or money to prepare for a different vocation. So, simply having teaching credentials is a far cry from a guarantee of being a good educator.

As the holder of a bachelor’s degree in elementary education myself, I can assure you, dear readers, I was in classes with all of the above students, none of whom I would want teaching any of my children anything. I can also unequivocally inform you that teacher training does not consist of “what to teach” as the questioner assumes. Since the teacher trainee is in college, the teacher trainee is assumed (baselessly, I must regretfully inform you) to have the basic content knowledge needed to pass on to the students. Without naming names, I would like to state here that it was the extreme dearth of knowledge displayed among my fellow teacher trainees (the inability of many to write a grammatical sentence comes to mind) that first sent me scurrying to the library to discover John Holt, a fellow educator who is often named the father of the homeschooling movement.

No, the truth is that teacher trainees are taught classroom discipline, and crowd management, and record-keeping, and tricks for capturing the attention of thirty bored pupils, and a little (a very little) about child development and learning styles, but zero content. Now, learning about child development and learning styles has some merit, but most of it is common sense, and it is amazingly easy to find anything more you wish to know on your own in any number of accessible books on the subject.

In fact, it was my class on child development that sent me scurrying back to the library to find Raymond and Dorothy Moore, also fellow educators who are frequently termed the grandparents of homeschooling. I was feeling a serious disconnect when I would leave my child development class, where I learned that children develop at different rates (what a shock!) and are cognitively ready to learn skills such as math or reading at different ages, and proceed directly to my elementary language arts class, where I was taught how to start all of my first-grade children on the same material regardless of their ability or development levels.

What happens to a child who is unready to read at age six, but forced to try? The sad result is that by age nine or ten, when his brain has matured to a point of readiness, his educational experience thus far will have convinced him that that he cannot read and wouldn’t enjoy it even if he could; his teachers and parents are convinced also; and he very likely has a mental block about reading and may never read beyond a second-grade level. And yet this is unfortunately what trained teachers are required to do by the nature of their institutional employment: pressure all children to perform at the same level at the same age, and label them as defective if they cannot.

Now, explain to me why any caring parent would want to have such training?

Homeschooling or Homefooling? February 16, 2008

Many moons ago, when Themestream was a bright and shining star on the internet horizon, I came across an article there entitled “Homeschooling or Homefooling?” which posed some queries and opinions that are fairly typical of people wondering about this whole homeschooling thing. I answered the questions there and, since Themestreme is sadly no more, reproducing the Q&A here seems like a worthwhile endeavor. It was a long article, and the replies make it much longer, so I will break it up by putting one Q&A in each blog post.

Before we start, I’d like to say I don’t mean to attack anyone who questions homeschooling, but I do hope to answer some of these reservations and perhaps dispel a few myths about homeschooling for a few people. Oh, and I also have to say before writing this that both of my parents and my older sister are teachers (not to mention I have an elementary education degree myself), so I know first-hand that the majority of teachers are dedicated, caring people who truly want to help children learn. It is the institution of schooling that is at fault, rather than (for the most part) the teachers.

keeping up with the bob joneses January 18, 2008

Many homeschoolers, often newbies but sadly often not, panic if their child is not exactly on the school’s schedule, is “behind.” Let’s leave the question of just what “behind” really means for another day and assume for the sake of argument that every child really does need exactly 12 years of schooling before starting college or adult life, and address the question on the face of it.

What if your child really is behind? What if you have a 2nd grade child who is exactly one year behind, but doing okay, or one year behind, but really struggling? Again assuming, for the sake of argument, that every child really needs exactly 12 years of schooling, if you teach your 2nd grader at a 1st grade level, or even [pause here for your horrified gasp] give her a year off and then start teaching your 3rd grader at a 1st grade level, well …

… SO WHAT?

Yes, really. So what? If every child needs exactly 12 years of schooling, then all that means is, your child will graduate at age 19 instead of 18. Or maybe 20 instead of 18. What is so awful about that? My goodness, just think of all the kids in college who take far longer than four years to complete their degrees, finishing college at 26, 28, or later. Does that hurt them? (Let’s not even begin to talk about others, like the VP, who finished their doctoral degrees well into their 40s, with four children in tow!)

Well then why would it hurt your child to start college a year or two later? She’ll still be finishing college when about half of the rest of them on the “6 year degree plan” are finishing. So what would it hurt? Especially if, by relaxing a bit, you can help your child to be not only knowledgable in “book learning” but in life learning, if she can learn that she is important first as a person and not as a grade in someone’s gradebook.

If your child is struggling with some elementary school concept, try relaxing. Try remembering that you are teaching a child, not a curriculum. Try remembering that raising her to be a caring, compassionate individual who has a strong sense of her own self-worth is more important than the number of answers she got right on a quiz. Try remembering that teaching her that you care about her more than her grades will give her the best start in life, and is the best way to motivate her to get good grades. Try remembering that, even if her “exactly 12 years of schooling” starts a year late, or even two years late, all that means is, you get the blessing of another year of her company before she starts her adult life.

It is not worth destroying her vision of herself as a strong and capable person who enjoys learning, just to keep up with the Bob Joneses.

And later, we’ll talk about those “exactly 12 years of schooling,” okay?

listening to language January 18, 2008

Did you know you can google “Italian radio” or “French radio” and find a lot of FREE internet radio stations in those languages? COOL! I got curious and started looking for a language to stump it. Found Italian, French, Swedish, Irish, Swiss, Hungarian, and MAORI. I stopped trying after Maori.

Ai-yi-yi January 18, 2008

The 10yo Tank and the 6yo Pistol are playing some kind of superhero game with stuffed animals. Tank is getting agitated: “You can’t be invincible, that’s not fair!” Pistol is getting a little weepy, insisting that he wants to be invincible, that it is not unfair! As I am starting to intervene, it occurs to me that Pistol has no idea what “invincible” means.

So I turn to Tank: “Does he mean invincible or invisible?”

Tank: “He means invincible and it’s not fair, then we can’t even play a game!”

Mom to Pistol: “Tell me what invincible means.”

Pistol: “Well, they can’t see him, and …”

Mom gives A Look to Tank.

Tank, looking slightly abashed: “Well, he needs to fix his grammar!”

Mom, abandoning the field, doesn’t even try to fix Tank’s “grammar.”