Homeschooling Mantras: Part 5 of 5

Overstatement #5:  Children Will Learn What They Need to Learn on Their Own

The idea that children will learn all that they need to know through discovery and interaction with the world around them is an idea at least as old as Rousseau in the 18^th Century.  It has been promoted with some variation by the Montessori movement and provides the main reasoning for unschooling. But is it true? I have read articles about successful unschoolers, and of course there are famous examples of self-learners like Abraham Lincoln that attest to the idea.  But do these examples prove that all children in all circumstances, or even most children in most circumstances are self-motivated learners?  Is it universally true or just conditionally true?  I suspect that it is conditionally true.

My main concern is how one determines the objective.  What is meant that children will learn what they “need” to learn on their own?  Many homeschoolers would say that what they need to learn is what they are driven to learn, or what they want to learn.  They contend that the best person to make that determination is the child himself.  While I agree that input from the student is necessary for an adult to develop a suitable curriculum, I strongly disagree that the student alone should determine his coursework. 

That a child is not capable to decide for himself what he should and should not learn is so obvious that it is difficult to articulate.  Jean Jacques Rousseau believed that a child should learn in an environment free from adult interference; he should learn experientially through his own discovery from investigation and trial and error.  The idea is ridiculous on its face.  Does a baby learn his first language free from adult interference?  Would a child survive long discovering which berries in the garden were edible and which were poisonous?  Would a child be able to discover a foreign culture or the meaning of the symbol “A” without adult interference? 

The idea that a child cannot benefit from an adult who serves as teacher, lecturer and mentor disregards the exponential progress that humans have made as a result of what is called “masterminding”.  One generation of humans discovers a fact through trial and error, observation, experimentation and then shares the information in the most efficient way - through oral or written language – to the next generation who compounds the abstract concept by applying it to some other discovery, and on and on.  Humans naturally learn from one another, peer to peer as well as generation to generation.  As Newton said in a letter to Robert Hooke, “If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants”. 

If each generation had to repeat the research and learn previously discovered concepts anew through experience, human progress would stagnate.  (It’s called “reinventing the wheel” - I'm sure you've heard of it.)  You may argue that a student does not need adult guidance to pick up a book and learn about the great ideas of the past.  That is true.  But what that argument overlooks is the adult that is represented by the book.  A child did not write about that great idea.  An adult did.  Students need teachers, whether those teachers are represented by textbooks, computer programs, or human beings.  Maria Montessori would agree.  She advocated for self-motivated learning within specific conditions.  Students are self-directed within a limited choice of educational activities, but those activities are predetermined by educators for the purpose of promoting certain concepts. 

To be fair, I recognize that no one could possibly believe (Rousseau notwithstanding) that a student should be isolated from all adult guidance.  Self-directed learning is not self-generated learning.  If an unschooler asked his parents to explain a difficult concept with which he was struggling, I imagine the parent would oblige.  So I believe we can all agree that students need adult guidance.  Returning to our initial question then, is a student capable of deciding which subjects to study?  For the same reasons that he cannot learn without adult assistance, he cannot know which courses of study will take him into successful adulthood.  As a minor, he most likely does not have the responsibilities of an adult and so cannot relate to the knowledge base required of a responsible adult.

Educational expert Sir Ken Robinson contends that none of us today know what an adult twelve years into the future will need to know because of the rapid pace of change in technology and human progress.  Although it is true that we cannot predict some of the future’s technological and vocational skills, we can guarantee that human beings will still communicate abstract concepts using language, mathematical formulae, and visual data.  We can anticipate that humans will still express themselves artistically through music, dance, drama and art.  We can be certain that humans will still struggle with purpose, meaning, value, morality and other metaphysical and philosophical questions.  Some things will change.  Most things will not.

Therefore, while there is certainly room within a home-based curriculum for students to study subjects about which they are passionate, the core curriculum of language, mathematics, basic science, social sciences and the arts must also find their way into the student’s coursework.  I believe it is a home educator’s responsibility.

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Homeschooling Mantras: Part 4 of 5

Overstatement #3:  Standardized Testing is Irrelevant and/or Harmful

In my state it was the WASL (“Wassle”).  The state test that supposedly began as a gauge for teacher competence and magically morphed into a gauge for student competence and then finally became a graduation requirement that more than half the state’s seniors failed to meet, was so reviled by parents and educators alike, that it was tossed out in favor of a “new and improved” HSPE (“Hispie”) for high school students and MSP for the lower grades. 

I was happy to see the WASL go and skeptical that the new test would be an improvement.  This is not because I think testing is irrelevant.  Rather, this particular test came with a lot of political baggage and was obviously arbitrary.  A majority of Washington state students had never performed to the test’s standard, and when legislators put their collective foot down and made the test a graduation requirement that over 50% of the state’s seniors subsequently failed, the governor refused to enforce the requirement and encouraged the legislature to delay the state requirement by law.  “If at first you don’t perform, never mind” is an interesting twist on the old adage about perseverance.  

In the state of Washington, neither private school students nor homeschool students are required to participate in state assessment tests.  Homeschool students must be evaluated annually by a test of some kind.  (Although, that law is not enforced to my knowledge or in my experience.)  Because I am already aware of my children’s educational progress relative to their peers and to the expectations of the colleges I hoped they would eventually attend, I had no concern about their performance on standardized tests, nor any need to have them tested for my own peace of mind.  As such, the WASL was as good a test as any to meet the legal requirement and it was convenient. 

There are many reasons that my children might have struggled with the WASL.  First of all, I refused to prepare them or “teach the test”.  Some parents argued with me that to teach the test was to teach relevant concepts, so how was teaching the test any different than teaching subjects?  If you believe that the WASL competently tested developmentally appropriate material than I suppose that argument is valid.  However, if like me you believe that the WASL tested well below what could be reasonably expected of a healthy average student of a particular age or grade, then they should be able to pass the test without preparing for it.  That was my logic, anyway.  So, while my home educating peers picked up the prep packets from their local districts, I ignored the impending tests and got on with our regular coursework.  Secondly, as I discovered through reports from my children, the test was poorly written, ambiguous, required particular, popular and arbitrary methods of problem solving in addition to the correct answer in certain subjects like math, and were asked to reflect and write on ideas and topics that my children could not culturally relate to.  Third, my children are what I would consider of average intelligence.  They are what we think of as A-B students: disciplined, hard working, healthy and engaged, but not Mensa level gifted thinkers. I know that many of you will argue that “average” is a “C” student, not an “A-B” student.  But I am not using the school system’s definition, I am using a more factual definition.  Grades do not reflect intelligence.  They reflect a combination of intelligence, effort and cooperation, with effort and cooperation having far more weight than intelligence.  Often times a “C” reflects the boredom (lack of cooperation and effort) of the smartest kid in the class.  So, I stand by my assessment that my children are fairly average in intelligence.  Their SAT scores were not high enough to earn them Ivy League educations or academic scholarships, but good enough to get them in most universities.  Finally, before taking the WASL, I let my children know in no uncertain terms that I did not care how well they performed.  Had they completely failed the test, there would be no consequences at all.  There was no pressure or even encouragement to perform.  Despite all of these disadvantages, my children passed the WASL easily. 

They are not unique.  An HSLDA article from October 2004 entitled “Academic Statistics on Homeschooling” reports that homeschoolers routinely outperform traditionally educated students by over 30 percentage points.  They cite many studies to support their claim.  So what drives the opposition to standardized testing?  Why is testing one of the leading homeschool (and general education) controversies?  I’ve collected several objections to testing that I would like to address.

Tests only show how well kids take tests

Every statement that sounds true is often at least partially true.  The problem I have with this statement is the word “only”.  If you have ever studied logic or debate or if you have just thought about it enough, you will recognize that statements employing universal terms like “only”, “every”, “always”, “never”, “all” and “none” are always usually misleading.  Certainly tests show how well students take tests.  That seems obvious, doesn’t it?  But the only “testing skill” that may skew the accuracy of the test’s determined objective is the ability or lack thereof to perform under pressure in a particular environment.  (Other skills are required for successfully taking an academic test, but they are skills the student would need to succeed in the most basic educational environment:  how to read, how to follow instruction, how to use a pencil, etc. )  It is important for all children to learn how to perform under pressure in a particular environment.  But if that specific skill is not the test’s objective, and influences the demonstration of skills the test is designed to assess, then the test results will be inaccurate. 

Ok.  But is there nothing else the test can tell us?  A student who scores on a standardized test in the 90^th percentile for math, and in the 30th percentile for reading, would know that any pressure he felt from taking the test affected him more in the area of reading than in math.  The test would verify that he is more competent in math than in reading and that his mathematical reasoning exceeds that of most of his peers at least in the specific areas tested.  Whether or not the student can benefit from this knowledge or whether this is information he did not already know is beside the point.  The test is assessing more than his test taking skills.

Tests are not reliable

…and we are?  I don’t know about you, but I am not certain I can accurately assess my children’s strengths and weaknesses.  I don’t think most people can accurately assess their own.  When I was in college my mother insisted I would make an excellent teacher and I thought she was insane.  Here I am twenty five years later teaching my own children and loving it!  If doctors cannot accurately diagnose many illnesses and disorders, and teachers cannot accurately assess whether or not a particular student has a learning disability, if psychologists cannot accurately assess whether someone has a personality disorder or a mental illness why are we dismissing something as benign as a written test simply because it may not be 100% accurate.  I wouldn’t expect it to be.  I would simply expect it to give me sense of how my child is doing.  The inaccuracy of any given test on any given day is the reason that colleges will allow student to take the SAT more than once.  It is no secret that tests can offer skewed results.  Tests should be used only as one piece of the assessment puzzle and should be combined with other data in determining the progress and skill set of any student. 

Tests only show how well kids have prepared for that particular test, and my children need to focus on material not reflected in the test.

This two-part complaint assumes first that only those who prepare for a test take it.  My kids never prepare for standardized tests because that would defeat my purpose for the test.  I use tests to verify for myself that I am sufficiently preparing my kids beyond average expectations.  It doesn’t tell me whether or not my kids are performing up to their potential, or as well as they “should” by some standard I adhere to.  It only tells me that I am sufficiently keeping them above mainstream standards.  (The SAT and ACT have a different purpose for us, and so for those tests my kids have prepared.)  As long as the test is taken cold, it will give students an idea of the concepts they have internalized – the concepts they really know.

In response to the second part of the complaint, most standardized tests assess skills that all children, regardless of interest, personality, talent and future plans require to participate in society.  The skills normally tested are basic.  No standardized test designed to assess progress in primary or secondary school is going to ask students about the half life of plutonium, or real estate law or how to perform a triple lutz jump on the ice.  If my child has a strong interest in geology or history or veterinary science, his interest should not keep him from learning basic math and language skills. 

The tests must be administered in an unfamiliar environment.

Barring a disability, humans adapt naturally. A healthy student who cannot adapt needs the opportunity to practice.

The methodology does not conform to my child’s learning style.

Learning styles show a propensity toward processing information received in a particular manner – most commonly either aurally, visually or kinesthetically.  They do not necessarily process information exclusively in a particular manner.  Most people utilize multiple methods for receiving, comprehending and processing information.  Some students’ learning style will give them an advantage over other students but then so will their intelligence, history, upbringing, personality and a host of other factors.  So, again, use standardized tests as a gauge rather than a rating.

My student has a disability that prevents him from completing the test within the required time, or under the conditions that the test is administered.

This is the easiest objection to address.  By law (the Americans With Disabilities Act) standardized tests must accommodate the needs of learning disabled and handicapped children. (My student will be unable to finish etc.)

I am not interested in changing your mind about whether or not your children should be tested.  Hopefully, I have relieved some minds from needless worry regarding testing.  My main objective is to discourage home educators from forwarding arguments that are poorly supported, weak or untrue.  If you have an aversion to testing, I understand.  It is your right, and in states that do not compel homeschoolers to test it is (happily) not even your issue.  But I applaud those who simply want to make sure they are responsibly gauging their children’s progress, and do so with an objectivity that recognizes the benefits and limitations of any and all evaluative media.

Homeschooling Mantras: Part 3 of 5

Overstatement #2:  Government Has No Business in Education

Many home educators resent having to pay taxes for the education of other children.  I wonder if these homeschooling parents have ever considered the resentment of single adults paying taxes for the education of children that were not their own.  What about elderly or childless couples?  And, what about the couple who has only one child, paying for their neighbors 2.3 children, or the family of eight children taking their unfair share of the tax dollars for themselves?

The purpose of public education is not to offer students opportunity for success nor parents a financing option for educating their children.  Public education exists to meet the needs of the civilization, the common good, the community at large.  A strange perversion of individualism, tainted by relativistic ethics has overtaken our culture.  As a result everyone operates within society from a position of “what’s in it for me?”  But public education isn’t about you, it is about the community. 

The idea is very simple.  If all children within a society are given an equal opportunity to learn, the society will suffer less crime and enjoy greater economic output, greater progress, cultural cohesion and most importantly, the ability to competently sustain a democratic republic.  For about a century public schools in America did just that.  Then, the cultural degradation that slowly resulted from a combination of bad and erroneous ideas from folks like Darwin, Freud and Marx and tumultuous 20^th century events such as devastating war, worldwide depression and the spread of communism eroded our collective perspective on truth, morality and personhood.  Naturally, these influences negatively impacted educational content and behavior.

I do not object to funding the education of “other peoples’” children, but funding the poor and in some ways harmful education of “other peoples’” children.  I mind paying taxes for the compulsory promulgation of propaganda, pseudo-science, and materialism. I don’t mind paying taxes so that future politicians, teachers, business leaders and neighbors can make informed political decisions and behave with a certain amount of civility and responsibility.  I don’t mind paying taxes so that future adults will contribute significantly to the economic growth of my community and nation.  None of us should.  To live in common with other individuals, sharing space, resources and culture, we must agree to shoulder some collective burdens. 

Rather than fight exclusively for the benefits of our own children, we would do well to fight for the educational benefits of all children, even as we withdraw our own children from the system.  Our first responsibility is to our families, but that does not mean we have no responsibility to the community at large.  Government schools do make sense in a democratic republic – the citizenry is the government, and insofar as the citizenry involves itself in civic affairs it will have an impact on government schools.  Frankly, we have more to fear from our culture than our government, history notwithstanding.

There are only 2.3 million homeschooling children in the United States out of nearly 80 million in traditional school settings.  Those remaining 78 million children will comprise the community in which our adult children live.  We have a stake in everyone’s future.

Homeschooling Mantras: Part 2 of 5

Overstatement #1:  "The home school should not be school at home!"

I dabbled in homeschooling a bit when my children were very young, the two eldest being in second grade and kindergarten.  It wasn’t anything like traditional school.  We gardened, dissected plants, collected bugs and frogs, played phonics and math games, read aloud curled up in blankies and followed along with a Bob Ross style PBS drawing program as our art lessons.  But that was preschool, really.  In Washington, children younger than 8 are not legally required to attend school, and my children were already above grade levels for reading and math.  Once they began private Christian school, I naturally expected them to perform to specific standards, which they mostly did.

Then came an educational crisis having to do with the incompetence of my children’s school staff, and I was convicted to pull my two eldest out of school entirely.  I had already tried public schools, and was never impressed with my own public education growing up.  My parochial high school was a mixed bag of good and bad experiences, as I expect most traditional school environments are.  But the crisis I faced was not something I could work with – a staff of teachers who simply refused to communicate directly to me that one of my children - an "A" student was suddenly failing. They expected my child to do that for them.  They sent notes home with my daughter and actually expected her to give them to me.  When they did not hear back from me, they neglected to follow up.  Now, this does not excuse my daughter from avoiding to tell me she was having trouble in school.  But her teachers were responsible for following up.  When I suggested that they should have done so, they replied that they simply didn’t have to time to follow up with all the students with whom they had difficulties.  Really?  There was obviously something more wrong with this school than my individual complaints.  So, I took a very blind leap of faith.

In the middle of my daughter’s seventh grade year I made a split-second decision to pull both my children out of that school and bring them back home, and found myself panicked over what to do next.  I hadn’t had the opportunity to prepare.  All the typical fears homeschooling parents grapple with were compounded by the sudden circumstances.  I did not have time to research the best homeschooling methods, curricula, support options, etc.  So, I looked back on my own education, copying what I remembered as good and modifying what I remembered was not so good. 

I created a school space in my home with desks and materials, posters and equipment.  I bought shelves on which I started to stock curricula, how-to books, workbooks and reference materials.  And, having fond memories of that back to school shopping spree, I took the kids to Staples and stocked up on new pencils, erasers, compasses and whimsically designed Peachie folders.  Then we started drilling grammar, practicing handwriting, memorizing poetry, completing math problems and writing essays.  I was recreating school at home.  I didn’t know that such a thing would be wrong until one homeschooler told me it was. 

After awhile I started to notice the same criticism popping up in books and articles, web sites and home school conference presentations.  I don’t remember ever hearing a good reason for why I should abandon my little schoolhouse-at-home.  It was said that the traditional school environment would stunt creativity and self-motivation.  It would take the joy out of learning.  But I wonder now if the objection to the schoolhouse environment is more a matter of fashion.  Some homeschoolers and especially unschoolers see themselves as the anti-school crowd.  It is just not “good form” to set up your anti-school homeschool to look and operate as a school.  Ok, I get that.  And if the messages people derived from my behavior as a homeschooling mom were more important than my children’s education I would consider their criticism.  But I do not believe that the data supports the idea that the traditional school model – a desk, a textbook and a teacher – stunts creativity and self motivation. 

It is not the method of schooling that is failing our children, but rather a complex combination of social, cultural and political perspectives that use the method to teach an agenda inconsistent with real learning.  The problem is not as simple as the manner in which data is communicated to and retained by students.  There are so many things wrong with traditional education today that it is difficult to enumerate them.  I’ll list just a few.  There are more.  In general, today’s classroom is plagued with:

• Centralized political influence tied to federal dollars that make demands unsuited to the conditions of individual school districts.
• Inaccurate textbooks written by unqualified editors who are not specialists in the subject that the content covers.
• Good teachers who are restricted in how they can present material and discipline their classrooms.

• Bad teachers who are protected from any corrective discipline.
• Students who routinely manipulate a culture of adults – parents and educators alike – who are afraid to demand, require, expect, judge, punish and even often times reward.
• The distraction and competition of technology and entertainment
• Highly diverse student populations
• Political considerations – pressure from special interests and the federal government

We could spend many words analyzing each of these problems and coming up with many others.  My point is simply this:  requiring your student to sit at a desk for an hour, read from a textbook, or practice math on a chalkboard does not spoil his educational experience, nor diminish the effectiveness of homeschooling, especially when such an environment is augmented with more active, physical and creative learning experiences.

Educational expert Sir Ken Robinson famously contends that governments around the world created public schooling in the 19^th century to meet the needs of the industrial revolution.  Although one could argue that the United States public school system grew organically out of the community school model, his logical assumption proves nonetheless valid.  Even so, that fact does not mean that public schools are ineffective.  The history of education in America simply denies that contention. 

My parents were born just before the baby boom generation and slightly after the WWI generation.  Their public education was superb.  Both of my parents are avid readers.  While neither is a professional speaker or writer, they both exhibit excellent written and oral communication skills.  They both have deep knowledge of history, are disciplined and reasoned thinkers, and are highly creative.  They dance and have an appreciation for classic music and high art.  They are not exceptional for their age.  They simply enjoyed an education that was not marred by political correctness, relativism, multi-culturalism and experimental educational methodology.  The example is anecdotal, I acknowledge.  But I find these characteristics consistent with many others in their generation.

Another example that the problem with education lies in content more than style is an experience I had as a junior in high school.  I attended a Catholic girls’ high school in the eighties.  It was considered an academically rigorous school into which I tested toward the bottom of the acceptable range, and my classmates were noticeably and at times annoyingly brilliant.  And yet, when given a vocabulary test that had been written in the early 60’s for eighth graders every single one of my classmates failed.  My 11^th grade English teacher was trying to demonstrate for us that standards and expectations had even by then declined dramatically, and that we should take note and demand as much of ourselves as we could.  If was a lesson that has stayed with me ever since.

Schools can work.  They just often don’t.  And I believe that is the main reason homeschooling exists and will continue to grow.  Rather than turning our back on everything that looks like traditional education, why not use what works and modify what doesn’t?