Response to Anti-Homeschooling Rant

The person who wrote the following article is running for a political position in Virginia, and this article has been resurrected.

It was originally posted here: Teacher, Revised

There is a follow-up post on the site, but it does not change the following article in the slightest.

My response for our personal situation is inserted in italics between each listing.

The case against homeschooling

By JESSE SCACCIA

Homeschooling: great for self-aggrandizing, society-phobic mother…… but not quite so good for the kid.

Interesting. I homeschool because it IS the best thing for my child.




Here are my top ten reasons why homeschooling parents are doing the wrong thing:

10. “You were totally home schooled” is an insult college kids use when mocking the geeky kid in the dorm (whether or not the offender was home schooled or not). And… say what you will… but it doesn’t feel nice to be considered an outsider, a natural outcropping of being homeschooled.

Other insults include calling someone a Jew, a nigga, gay, preppy, slut wannabe, ghetto-trash, mama's boy, low-life, beached whale - and that's what I remember in just 5 seconds thinking of public high school. As I finish typing this response here, I have already thought of more. I'm just not sure where calling someone "home-schooled" is really all that different from the fact that kids with ego issues will call someone ANYTHING (even if it makes no sense whatsoever and/or is based on false, pre-conceived, narrow-minded opinions on a topic of which they absolutely nothing) in a nasty tone of voice, just to make themselves feel better.

As for college, I had been so fed up with public school from K to 12th, that I didn't attend a dorm-college; I went community college because I found the people to be REAL - no-one setting out to persecute someone else just for the sake of persecution. More on this later.

In regards to "it doesn't feel nice to be considered an outsider": I wasn't homeschooled; and I was an outsider all through public school, despite my attempts to fit in. The author is right, it doesn't feel nice to be considered an outsider. How about we ALL (teachers, parents, bus drivers - everyone) actually TEACH our children to be respectful and considerate of others, building a community rather than ripping a person down because they are a bit different than the others.

9. Call me old-fashioned, but a students’ classroom shouldn’t also be where they eat Fruit Loops and meat loaf (not at the same time I hope). It also shouldn’t be where the family gathers to watch American Idol or to play Wii. Students–from little ones to teens–deserve a learning-focused place to study. In modern society, we call them schools.

I had some pretty interesting teachers in public school who would probably encouraged the consumption of fruit loops and meat-loaf at the same time, in class, if they'd thought of it.

Homeschooling: a child, ANY child, is learning when they are at home. Period. It happens from the time they are in the womb and hearing mom and dad's voices - patterns are already being laid for language acquisition. Many children learn basic reading skills before going off to kindergarten. Home, by its very nature, IS a learning-focused place to not only study, but to live. Historically, school as we know them are extremely recent. Until mandatory education of small children was legislated, almost everyone learned at home; and schools were reserved for much older children and for the elite.

8. Homeschooling is selfish. According to this article in USA Today, students who get homeschooled are increasingly from wealthy and well-educated families. To take these (I’m assuming) high achieving students out of our schools is a disservice to our less fortunate public school kids. Poorer students with less literate parents are more reliant on peer support and motivation, and they  greatly benefit from the focus and commitment of their richer and higher achieving classmates.

I can only speak for my family. I am not wealthy, I am not elite. Well-educated? Depends on your definition of well-educated. My mother didn't finish college until after I did, and neither of her parents had a college education; my father has some college classes but is otherwise a low-man on the totem pole; and his parents did not have college educations; we all attended public school, as well as my sisters. I went on to earn two associates degrees, a bachelor's degree (that was like pulling teeth despite my top-notch public school education), and started a master's degree. I also have Montessori teacher training at primary (3-6 years) and elementary (6-12). I am looking forward to the adolescent training (12-18).

I spent 15 years in preschool and public school and didn't feel I was really learning anything until I started college early while in high school. I made good grades through public school, but my only role in the school's social system was to lay low and avoid trouble, when I wasn't setting out to make it. Those wealthy, elite children in school with me? They were the cause of most of the trouble, because they were better than everyone else and mommy/daddy could pay to get them out of the consequences.

I spent several years subbing in the public schools - top-notch schools, inner-city schools.

I'm not seeing the service to one another in the public schools.

7. God hates homeschooling. The study, done by the National Center for Education Statistics, notes that the most common reason parents gave as the most important was a desire to provide religious or moral instruction. To the homeschooling Believers out there, didn’t God say “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations”? Didn’t he command, “Ye shall be witnesses unto me”? From my side, to take your faithful children out of schools is to miss an opportunity to spread the grace, power and beauty of the Lord to the common people. (Personally I’m agnostic, but I’m just saying…)

These Biblical mandates are for those who are strong in their faith, not a small child still being trained in their faith.

And as many commenters on the original post have made clear: the government does NOT allow these children, however strong or weak may be their faith to spread grace, power, beauty, prayer, Biblical teaching, faith symbols or any of it.

So to have the religious child present or not, doesn't seem to make any difference. Except to the child who is constantly being attacked.

For us: I did not grow up particularly religious, though I had faith. Yet, I knew not to say much; and I would be surprised to see many of my classmates at church. It was a separation of school and church. So this point #7 simply holds NO water.

6. Homeschooling parent/teachers are arrogant to the point of lunacy. For real! My qualifications to teach English include a double major in English and education, two master’s degrees (education and journalism), a student teaching semester and multiple internship terms, real world experience as a writer, and years in the classroom dealing with different learning styles. So, first of all, homeschooling parent, you think you can teach English as well as me? Well, maybe you can. I’ll give you that. But there’s no way that you can teach English as well as me, and biology as well as a trained professional, and history… and Spanish… and art… and counsel for college as well as a school’s guidance counselor… and… and…

But I have an intimate knowledge of my son's academic strengths and weaknesses; I also have a wider variety of resources available to fill in any gaps in my own teaching.

My elementary teachers were generalists - they had their own strengths and weaknesses; one hopes these would balance out over the years. In my own experience, it really didn't. One teacher would presume what we'd learned from the previous teacher and would take us places for which we just weren't ready. I say "we" because the teaching was truly for the entire class - no wiggle room. If you really needed wiggle room, they provided LD rooms for that (Learning Differently) - some children were so much on the border they were constantly bouncing back and forth and this only eroded away what learning they were actually gaining.

By middle school, and continuing into high school, we had mostly specialized teachers. Great. Except that there were still times that a teacher would be teaching outside of their specialty - sometimes in very extreme cases. Long story, but I'll say this: it wasn't pretty.

At least a homeschooler can find the resources needed to ensure a quality education. There is flexibility in resources, in scheduling, in how to get from point A to point B, while the child is learning about fulfilling responsibilities in a tough situation. A bit different from just sailing through public school with everything handed to you: your schedule, your teachers, your expectations, your friends.

5. As a teacher, homeschooling kind of pisses me off. (That’s good enough for #5.)

I am a teacher. I homeschool my son. I know many teachers who have chosen to homeschool their own children. I can't speak for their reasons or situations - those are their stories to tell. I can speak for mine: I know my son could receive a good education from many of the area schools; or drive into our nearby city and send him to a Montessori school. Top-notch education. There's more to it.

As a homeschooler, general judgments kind of irritate me too. But I strive to be a bigger person than that. I strive to see both sides of the coin. And not use foul language.

4. Homeschooling could breed intolerance, and maybe even racism. Unless the student is being homeschooled at the  MTV Real World house, there’s probably only one race/sexuality/background in the room. How can a young person learn to appreciate other cultures if he or she doesn’t live among them?

Homeschooling could do a lot of things. So could public schools. Good and bad.

The nice thing about homeschooling is spending one's day out in the world. Yes, there are homeschoolers who hole up during the day and are afraid to be outside during school hours for fear of being erroneously reported for truancy - this is living in fear. I do not live in fear and I choose to raise my child not living in fear. We go out during the daytime because there is a WORLD out there. My son gets into conversations with the cutting counter associate at the fabric store; plans trips to the museums when the employees are available to answer questions and provide learning experiences that just aren't possible with a large group; join small groups of children or families on more outings than public school kids have field trips; and still have our evenings for family time, decent dinners, tae-kwon-do and other things that can only happen at those times.

We actually interact with people. My son does not have the same hardness and attitude I see in some of the public school kids. He's not always defending himself, so he is better able to be open to new friendships and interactions with a wider range of people. He doesn't see the "cliques" and the "gangs" so he just sees a person as a potential friend, without pre-conceived notions of who that person might be.

3. And don’t give me this “they still participate in activities with public school kids” garbage. Socialization in our grand multi-cultural experiment we call America is a process that takes more than an hour a day, a few times a week. Homeschooling, undoubtedly, leaves the child unprepared socially.

My son interacts with a wider range of people on a minute to minute basis than I ever did in public school. Period. I learned how to sneak notes during class as my socialization. My son wants to talk to someone? He finds the appropriate time and place and does so. I learned to be hard and defensive before letting someone into my little bubble. My son is learning to be open to new people and ideas. I learned to judge before knowing anything; my son is learning to explore an idea before forming an opinion. I learned that grudges can be held for years in some cases; and in other cases, you just move to a new school and start all over - no consequences at all. My son is learning there are consequences to choices, good and bad, and he is learning the art of true forgiveness.

Yes, historically, the public schools were established specifically for socialization. With our technological age and cars, even people way out in the country have greater opportunities for socialization than our early American counterparts. Homeschoolers are just as socialized as the public school children.

Studies have shown that homeschoolers are just as or more socially adjusted to the real world and better prepared for college level studies than their public school peers. One could use the argument about the wealthy kids being homeschooled (from #8 above), but that argument negates this one. Wealthy families allegedly have greater access to all sorts of social options, since their parents are highly educated and will be sure their children have the best of the best, so of course they will be socialized just fine. It's the non-wealthy kids we have to worry about. And the studies have taken care of evaluating the outcomes of these children.

2. Homeschooling parents are arrogant, Part 2. According to Henry Cate, who runs the Why Homeschool blog, many highly educated, high-income parents are “probably people who are a little bit more comfortable in taking risks” in choosing a college or line of work. “The attributes that facilitate that might also facilitate them being more comfortable with home-schooling.”

More comfortable taking risks with their child’s education? Gamble on, I don’t know, the Superbowl, not your child’s future.

Again, I can only speak for myself. I choose to homeschool my son because it is the safest gamble. Every choice I make as a parent is a gamble. Every single one. I know of one lady who sent her children to the local elementary school because it was so lovely, the teachers were fantastic, the children just blossomed there. But they went on to middle school and it got ugly. In high school, one of the children was shot at school (this was in the days "before" all the school violence was in the press). He died. She took a gamble. And lost her son.

Anything could happen while we are at home and I would wish afterward, "If only we hadn't been home at that time; he'd still be alive."

Getting into my car is a gamble. Staying home is a gamble. I'm talking immediate life-or-death risks.

Every single decision a parent makes is a gamble - is this the right thing to do? Right thing now? Right thing in the long-term? Or am I ruining my child for life?

Big picture: That gambling has a name: parenting.

Homeschooling parents are arrogant. They have weighed the options and actually made a conscious decision. Many public-school parents have done the exact same thing. They have weighed the options and made a conscious decision. I'm not going to bad-mouth them. As long as they have made a conscious decision, I choose to be respectful.

I only ask the same respect in return.

Parenting is a gamble; let's respect one another for the risks we ALL take.

1.  And finally… have you met someone homeschooled? Not to hate, but they do tend to be pretty geeky***.

*** Please see the comments for thoughts on the word ‘geeky.’ But, in general, to be geeky connotes a certain inability to integrate and communicate in diverse social situations. Which, I would argue, is a likely result of being educated in an environment without peers. It’s hard to get by in such a diverse world as ours! And the more people you can hang out with the more likely you are to succeed, both in work life and real life.

The homeschooled children I know are friendly and outgoing. The adults I've met who were homeschooled are friendly and outgoing. I can actually have a conversation with all of them (from children to adults) that has a sense of peace about it. It is SO hard to break through the barriers of some of the children who have developed a rough exterior, an attitude, a defensiveness against other children and especially adults.

I find the same result from children who attended Montessori schools.

I can relate to these people very easily; where I find it draining to work through the exteriors in those who have been hardened. It's rewarding when we do break through, but it is heart-breaking too - this hard exterior just isn't necessary. The constant come-backs and attitude just aren't necessary.

So I guess I don't see the geekiness - because I see a definite and clear ability to integrate and communicate in diverse social situations.