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 19th 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 11th 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?
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