Home Schooling for Everyone
Proponents of home schooling, and their usual allies in the school choice and voucher movement, are often from the Christian conservative populations. School choice advocates usually appeal to this group with talk about the more religious and faith-based instruction that will become available when school choice is introduced across the country.
All of this is true, of course. And welcome -- consumer choice, after all, is what drives a service-provider towards excellence and high standards.
Of course, not all parents are Christian conservatives. Some are African American activists, and they're a fast-growing part of the home school movement. From today's Chicago Tribune:
Minorities make up nearly 15 percent of the approximately 2 million home-schooled students in the country, according to the National Home Education Research Institute, whose founder and president, Brian Ray, has been studying home schooling for 27 years.
Although numbers reflecting the trends and demographics of home-schooled children are hard to come by — for example, in Chicago, parents who choose to home-school are not required to inform the school district — experts and leaders in the field say there is no doubt that minority participation is growing.
"You'll hear that, all over the country, from people who organize home-school conferences," Ray said. "It's clearly rising."
Why is this? Well, in one part of Chicago, is about instilling racial pride:
"Families feel like the American education system does not teach African-American children," said Porter-Ollarvia, a Country Club Hills mom of three. "A lot of times in textbooks, you'll see 'Dick run, Dick go,' Jane and Jack and Jill. But you won't see African-American names like Zarifah and Muhammad. And a lot of times our children need to see their names and have a point of reference and see themselves in the books."
Home-schooling experts say more African-American families are choosing to school their children at home, opting out of public schools, which critics say may be not only failing their children, but also in some cases shortchanging them of their history.
School choice, home schooling, vouchers -- all of these movements have brought some good things to education reform. But the test, really, is going to come when parents start schools (or band together in a home-school consortium) to focus their instruction around a set of principles that others might not like so much. I'm in favor, basically, of this kind of market chaos, because I think it'll sort itself out quickly, and in the meantime will force local public schools to improve. But it's not going to be without friction. The education reform movement talks a lot about freedom and choice and parental control. What happens when all of those things combine to form a school -- maybe it's a very conservative Christian school; maybe it's an African-American pride academy; maybe it's a madrassah -- that makes some of us nervous?
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Jul '10
Re: Home Schooling for Everyone
But Rob, who will teach these kids about Lincoln's gay lover? And how the Muslims invented all the neat stuff, like, um, plastic sporks?
Nov '10
Re: Home Schooling for Everyone
Mine is a homeschooling family, and I am in a county that has a pretty significant homeschooling association. What I find interesting about the home school association meetings is the diversity of the people there. I mean, northwest Washington isn't all that racially diverse, but in terms of world view, we've got our share of whack-jobs (myself included). What we homeschoolers seem to have in common is a distrust of anyone else teaching our young children anything. We tend to have a strong sense of the world from our own perspective, and don't want to leave it to chance that it'll get passed on. Far from keeping our children insulated from the world, it prepares them better for it.
My oldest is 17 and doing his final two years of High School at the community college. His Facebook post this morning was "Help! I'm surrounded by liberals!". I'd say a 17 year old who knows what a liberal is, and how to identify one in the wild, is better prepared than most.
Re: Home Schooling for Everyone
Thanks, Ken -- I think your experience confirms what I've always intuitively thought -- parents who go to all of that effort to home school their kids do a passionate and thorough job of it.
Somewhere, of course, there's a home-schooled kid who was taught by liberal parents who just posted, "Help! I'm surrounded by right wing nuts!"
Dec '10
Re: Home Schooling for Everyone
Excellent question: Madrassahs what to do? Not sure what you mean when you say "these things will sort themselves out" but if you are implying that eventually the FBI will arrest the people responsible for running any madrassah that teaches kids to hate the US to the point of wanting to kill innocent American citizens then I guess I agree with you. Otherwise, I'm no libertarian, there need to be some kind of government standards governing the content of the education and, of course, standardized testing.
Dec '10
Re: Home Schooling for Everyone
Rob, excellent post here. I am in grad school and went to public schools growing up, but my parents recently took my two youngest sisters out of their local grade school, homeschooled them for a year or so, and now they both attend a private Christian school in the area. We are the definition of a conservative, evangelical family. Dad's a pastor. Mom's a housewife. I'm the oldest of 6 kids. 3 dogs. Life-sized cardboard cut out of Ronald Reagan standing next to the TV in our basement.
My parents sent 4 of their six kids through the public school system because they wanted their children to be "in, not of" the world. But eventually it reached a point where, after a series of disturbing and disappointing events involving political correctness at my sisters' school, my dad was told he couldn't come to Career Day because he was a pastor. My parents aren't reactionaries but they had had enough. School vouchers are the way to go. The proof will be in the pudding. Conservatives, religious or otherwise, will have the better schools. This will attract parents to our schools and our cause.
God bless.
May '10
Re: Home Schooling for Everyone
Rob: I know a little about homeschooling as my wife (mainly) and I homeschooled our 5 children K-12. The four able-bodied ones all either served or are serving in the US Military. The fifth is blind and developmentally disabled (and she benefitted greatly from homeschooling, as she would have been eaten alive in government school "special ed").
Go back to those thrilling days of yesteryear, 1998 to be precise, and read Cato Institute Policy Analysis #294: Homeschooling Back To The Future http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-294.html. You will find a very good discussion of the two main streams of homeschooling thought: The "Idealogues" being the one apparently typically associated in the public consciousness with Christian Conservatives (the rightmost fringe of which is affectionately known as the "Denim Jumper" wing), and the "Pedagogues" who "dislike the professionalization and bureaucratization of modern education." Even way back then, Cato reported "Americans of different races, socioeconomic backgrounds, and religions homeschool. Holt Associates describes its clientele as individuals who 'live in the country, city, suburbs, small towns. Some are single parents, combining working outside the home with homeschooling.'"
(to be continued)
Re: Home Schooling for Everyone
Welcome, R.J. -- I just noticed the Joined in Dec. 10 on your profile pic -- and I think your parents' experience is going to be matched across the country in the next few years. It's going to be messy, I think, but I have a lot more faith in the education standards and rigor of parents who voluntarily take this on than I do a thousand corpulent, smug school boards.
May '10
Re: Home Schooling for Everyone
(continued)
To the question about homeschool madrassah and other boogeymen, I say fine. I can hardly insist on liberty for myself and chains for someone else.
Of course there are wacky outliers, like white supremacist homeschoolers. And someday probably radical Islamist homeschoolers. But on balance, the more people who opt out of the government school system and demand that public funding for education be separated from public provision of education. It's way past time for vouchers and letting parents have the final say in how their children are educated.
I estimate conservatively that educating 5 children (one special needs) K-12 saved the state $624,000 (6 children x 13 years x $8000/child-yr) 6 children because a special needs child gets double funding. PLUS in that time period I paid over $100,000 in property taxes. So the state is maybe $724,000 to the good for our having homeschooled our children. I would love to have had just a fraction of that to spend on materials, equipment, and activities.
May '10
Re: Home Schooling for Everyone
Instead, now my income and property taxes are going to be raised, in substantial part to pay pensions for public school employees.
Dec '10
Re: Home Schooling for Everyone
Rob Long
Welcome, R.J. -- I just noticed the Joined in Dec. 10 on your profile pic -- and I think your parents' experience is going to be matched across the country in the next few years. It's going to be messy, I think, but I have a lot more faith in the education standards and rigor of parents who voluntarily take this on than I do a thousand corpulent, smug school boards. · Jan 4 at 2:17pm
Thanks, I have been listening to the podcast for months and finally collected the change under my sofa cushions and joined the Ricochet family. You guys are doing a fantastic job. My profile pic is of GK Chesterton, btw.
It's funny that with all these true-blue conservatives on the site that I find myself agreeing with you, as Lileks puts it "a squishy RINO", more than anyone else.
I was out in Los Angeles recently and kept thinking "Maybe this is the Starbucks Rob Long spends his $3.47 at???" Or if I saw a man parked in his car on the phone I'd wonder "Maybe that's RL calling into the Ricochet podcast?"
Keep up the great work!
Dec '10
Re: Home Schooling for Everyone
Well, I've endured the American public school system and managed to stumble into mathematics. Frankly, I want my early education to be considered a handicap under ADA.
Even higher education isn't much better. While my competition had subsidized schooling entirely in the field of their choice, I had summer jobs and breadth requirements and couldn't go to the best school because I had to chase a scholarship. All in all, it worked out for me, but I can't imagine how many American potential scientists and engineers the system chases away.
It's not surprising that math and science is being imported at such a high rate. America is producing lawyers and China is producing nuclear scientists -- theirs and ours.
Dec '10
Re: Home Schooling for Everyone
No, as I recently commented on a separate subject, "My youngest expressed deep concern for what we, in Florida, were going to do when the Flood from Global Warming came, I had him dig a hole. He came up with limerock, full of sea shells. I could attempt to prove to him that where we live, near the highest part of Florida, was once under the sea. I explained to him that we would manage and I had it under control.
Yesterday, he said to me, “I know you don’t care about pollution and stuff, but do you think we are killing off animals”? My entire career is based upon wildlife conservation and pollution management, but because he knows I am the conservative parent, he assumes I don’t relate to man’s impact upon wildlife."
I can't change these reactions on his part, but I can work towards changing our existing schools. We walk a narrow line; we want our kids to respect their teachers, but our teachers tell my kids that, because I am a conservative, I don't care about pollution or wildlife preservation. So here is what I do. (contd)
Dec '10
Re: Home Schooling for Everyone
We have an average mix of kids; some pretty smart, some not so much, despite our keeping them from chewing on lead-based paint. I know that, on average, their teachers are not very smart, but I can't undermine their authority over the Boyz in the classroom.
I show them the statistics for SAT scores and allow them to notice how low they are for the various Colleges of Education, plus I explain that that may not be a fair representation, as many atheletes are included in the Physical Education programs. Then, just as they are getting that gleam in their eyes, thinking that maybe they are smarter than their teachers, I remind them that even people with lower college SATs are smarter and more experience than (fill in the blank) a fifth grader. This doesn't work too well with the Senior, but you get the idea. "Oh! Your teacher is that incorrect? Huh. Show me that spelling test from last week". It works. My parents were inflicted with many smart kids, but every single day (when he was home from overseas), he asked me, "What did you teach your teacher, today". What he meant was, "Shut up".
Nov '10
Re: Home Schooling for Everyone
Steve in Texas (on the border): Excellent question: Madrassahs what to do? Not sure what you mean when you say "these things will sort themselves out" but if you are implying that eventually the FBI will arrest the people responsible for running any madrassah that teaches kids to hate the US to the point of wanting to kill innocent American citizens then I guess I agree with you. Otherwise, I'm no libertarian, there need to be some kind of government standards governing the content of the education and, of course, standardized testing.
· Jan 4 at 12:40pm
I reject the notion of K-12 standardizations at any but the most local levels.
Jun '10
Re: Home Schooling for Everyone
I think there is already much home and charter school activity that I would consider troubling. It's hard for me to believe that the children of Islamberg, NY are toddling of to the local public school. And a glance at the first page of their website shows you where their heads are.
And in your own neighborhood, Rob, La Academia Semillas del Pueblo is teaching using Aztec math and teaching the Nahuatl language. The Director said "We don’t want to drink from a White water fountain, we have our own wells and our natural reservoirs and our way of collecting rain in our aqueducts"
Just the tip of many anti-American teaching icebergs.
Re: Home Schooling for Everyone
A few qualifiers for the concerns about intellectual and/or ideological narrowness that could grow out of school vouchers and home schooling.
Short of the extreme examples (such as madrassas), my experience has been that most home-schooled students are so intellectually aggressive that they have a very sturdy grasp of belief systems outside of their own. In fact, I've seen more than one demolish an intellectual adversary by demonstrating that they had a better understanding of their antagonist's point of view than the antagonist did.
As for the extremes, whether it be black nationalists or Islamic extremists, I'm tempted to believe that anyone who grows up in that hothouse environment is going to be exposed to those ideas (and steered towards them) regardless of whether they're part of their official curriculum or not. That's not to say that we shouldn't be concerned about those kinds of educations, simply to remember that there's only so much that can be controlled by outsiders.
May '10
Re: Home Schooling for Everyone
Pardon me for making several bold generalizations.
A child sent to public school is relentlessly prosletyzed to the official state religion of atheistic materialism (with it's Darwinian evoloution creation myth) from the day they walk into the classroom at the age of 5, to the day they walk out the door when they graduate high school or drop out. They are drilled in diversity, climate change, self esteem, almost anything other than math, science, English, and American exceptionalism.
Their socialization to the norms of civilized society is accomplished in Lord Of The Flies fashion by their peer group none of whom know any more about those norms than any other.
They are subjected to whatever fad absorbs the education establishment at the moment, and are captive to the constructs of long dead philosophers (John Dewey et al).
If the discharge of my responsibilities as a parent to see to the education of my children as I see fit requires that I allow other parents to see to the education of their children as they see fit, then so be it.
While liberty may be abused by some, it's a risk I'm willing to take.
Dec '10
Re: Home Schooling for Everyone
Ken Owsley
Steve in Texas (on the border): Excellent question: Madrassahs what to do? Not sure what you mean when you say "these things will sort themselves out" but if you are implying that eventually the FBI will arrest the people responsible for running any madrassah that teaches kids to hate the US to the point of wanting to kill innocent American citizens then I guess I agree with you. Otherwise, I'm no libertarian, there need to be some kind of government standards governing the content of the education and, of course, standardized testing.
· Jan 4 at 12:40pm
I reject the notion of K-12 standardizations at any but the most local levels. · Jan 4 at 5:22pm
Hypothetically then: You would be OK having a local standard created at say, a voucher eligible madrassah, that led vouchered students to hate you and your children because of your Christian values?
May '10
Re: Home Schooling for Everyone
Steve in Texas (on the border)
Hypothetically then: You would be OK having a local standard created at say, a voucher eligible madrassah, that led vouchered students to hate you and your children because of your Christian values? · Jan 5 at 11:19am
I know the question was directed to Steve, but my answer is "yes."
This already happens anyway to a greater or lesser extent where Christian students who dare to speak out or live out their faith in public schools, has been for a long time (I cite my wife's experience as a for instance, and can provide other anecdotal data).
And as local areas become majority Muslim (Dearborn for example) the public schools will begin to be even more hostile to Christian (and Jewish) students.
Since parents have the ultimate responsibility for the education of their children, parents should have the ultimate authority over what and how the children are taught. They should not be forced to pay extortionate taxes then either forced to send their children to a school where de facto they have virtually nothing to say about any significant aspect of the education or pay again for a private school.