Worries about the long-term impact on public education
By Diane Glass, Syndicated Columnist / Seattle
Times
11.29.05
See,
related, Home-schooling
in the modern world: Success of home-schooled children at the Seattle
Times.
Here’s the problem with looking at short-term studies on home-schooling.
Positive scholastic outcome of a sample of home-schooled children isn’t the only
issue.
Here’s
the problem with public schools. Scholastic outcomes are sacrificed to other
issues.
You have to think about the long-term effects of what this trend means for the
future of education and the segregation of our school system over ideology.
Which
ideology? The ideology of self-sufficiency or the ideology of government
schools? There’s plenty of ideology to go around.
A paper presented at the American Educational Research Association in 1991
reported that there were generally two kinds of parents who choose
home-schooling for their children: the extremely religious and the "New
Age." Both choose home-schooling for ideological reasons.
And
that’s somehow worse than choosing public schools for financial reasons?
Home-schooling is not about how public schools teach so much as what they teach.
Parents who choose home-schooling want to instill in their children their own
deeply held beliefs.
True
for some. I presume there’s nothing unlawful about parents instilling deeply
held beliefs in their children no matter where they attend school.
Most of these parents are willing to take on traditional roles of male
breadwinner and female caretaker to accomplish this end. It makes you wonder if
the intensity of this commitment isn’t so much about a good education as it is
about political inculcation. One benefit of a secular education is its exposure
to diverse views. This is something home-schooling may not offer if a parent
considers secular exposure a detriment.
Something
illegal about political inculcation, is there? If so, public schools are in a
heap of trouble. As for being exposed to diverse views, how often do public
schools unbiasedly expose students to the viewpoint of the
bread-winner/caretaker structure of families and society? In truth,
homeschooling can offer students a greater diversity of viewpoints than public
schools, which must avoid many points of view out of concerns for political
correctness. If homeschooling parents choose to exclude some viewpoints, they’re
doing nothing less than what public schools do.
Then there’s the question of a parent’s aptitude. Parents may have the right to
control their child’s education, but do they have the right to practice an
occupation without any skill?
There’s
an indictment of public education. If parents have no skill to teach, then what
did they do for 13 years in government schools? If it weren’t possible for one
generation to pass on knowledge and skills to the next generation without
college-degreed professionals, mankind would still be living in caves and trees
(with apologies to Intelligent Designers).
If parents, or the recent trend of the home-school neighborhood group, lack the
range to leap from studying geometry to English literature, a child will miss
out on a topic that could have proved valuable to her future.
And
for every movie, class disruption and test-preparation day in a public school,
students similarly miss out on potentially valuable topics. Some topics in
public schools may well be worth missing. But whether a student
"misses" a topic or not, how much can it matter as long as the student
has sufficient knowledge and skills to earn a living? No student learns every
topic. 90% of what students do learn is forgotten in short order. What’s most
important is to learn the process of learning and to have the skills needed for
independent learning.
I know from experience that a teacher’s passion for a topic is just as important
as the topic itself. That passion is more often found in teachers who pursue
this as a career.
Wow!
I wonder where she gained all the experience needed to conclude that career
teachers have more subject-matter passion than non-career teachers? In my
experience, career teachers are just as likely to be burnt-out and unengaging as
they are to be passionate. Roll the dice and pray your child gets the right
teacher.
We also have to consider what this means for the future of public education.
University of Illinois professor Chris Lubienski contends that home-schooling is
not only a response to deteriorating public schools, but a cause of its decline.
Schools should be given the chance to respond to public needs, he argues. Home-schooling
doesn’t help the public good, just the individual. And our future is about
all children, not just our own.
It’s
not only an insult, but it’s profoundly ignorant to decree that homeschooling
doesn’t help the public good. These parents financially support public schools
while sparing the system the costs of educating their children. They freely hand
over their money, but not their children’s lives. And that’s what really irks
the collectivists. They are so afraid that individualism and independent
thinking will disrupt the collective. No child is deprived an education through
the existence of homeschooling. Customized, personal education is the hallmark
of excellence, but public schools need a federal special education law to force
them to do it for a mere 12% of students.
Every system has advantages and disadvantages–strengths and weaknesses.
Homeschooling is no panacea and neither is public education. Anyone who believes
diversity and tolerance are strengths must believe that the overall education of
all children is strengthened by the co-existence of homeschooling and public
schools. Anyone who believes in strength in numbers or might makes right
probably believes otherwise.