Irrationality Does Not A Good Teacher Make

Last week I ran into a discussion on a popular forum about an outrageous rant against homeschooling from a blogger whom I will keep anonymous.  We’ll call her “Blogger Babe” or “BB” for short. (I don’t want to reward her meager attempt at seeking and reporting the truth.)  Blogger Babe is or has been a high school English teacher.  She drew the ire of many intellectual and academic home educators, many of whom are educational professionals themselves.  Her blog, ironically, illustrates why homeschooling parents are justified in their belief that they can do a better job educating their own children than the current public school system. 

Blogger Babe was inspired to write a piece on homeschooling because so many in her generation are now doing it that it is in her experience approaching mainstream acceptance.  BB planned to research the phenomenon of home education and then write a report about the reasons parents choose this option.  It is not clear from her article whether she abandoned her research or simply abandoned the subsequent report.  “I planned to report out why parents in our generation are deciding to homeschool en masse but I can’t do it. I can’t get past the total lack of logic.”  In either case, she conducted sketchy research, and then proceeded to lambast home educators with a biased and unsupported tirade. 

It is interesting to note that she claims to have been thwarted in her attempt by a “total lack of logic”, implying that home educators have no logical reason for their choice.  And yet, she neglects to invoke any logical line of argument to support her claim that home educators are illogical.  This is, by definition, a conundrum.  Rather than rant in return, as a logical home educator I will proceed to lay out my supported reasons why, based on her own line of argument, BB’s suitability as a teacher is suspect and, by deduction, why nearly any parent who is able to reason and who loves his children would be eminently more qualified than she to teach.  

BB is not qualified to teach even the most basic material for three reasons.

1.      She performs sketchy research resulting in poor analysis.

Based on the only information she supplied us in her article, it would appear that BB limited her research to web-based blogs, forums and communities.  We can surmise that if she had interviewed a variety of homeschoolers: those with and without college experience; those who have teaching degrees or careers as well as those who have experience in other fields or who are uneducated; those who fall on the ideological left vs. the right; those who choose academic college prep coursework vs. those who follow a Rousseauian child-centered model; those who homeschool for religious or anti-religious reasons; or those who had been successful vs. those  unsuccessful; she would have included such interviews in her article.  She didn’t.   

In her article BB rhetorically asks, “Are homeschooling parents egotistical enough to think they can know and teach Everything? Classics? Calculus? Chemistry? PE?”  But she can’t offer an answer because she never really asked the question.  Nor did BB bother to connect with any of the online course offerings, distance learning schools and interactive resources which compensate for home educators’ academic weaknesses and augment their strengths.  Consequently, BB reveals complete ignorance of the process of homeschooling, how assessments are done, and how much onus for success is assumed by the student vs. the parent.   

Just as easily as she browsed forums and homeschooling web sites, BB could have Googled for homeschool statistics, test scores and studies.  She could have phoned a handful of universities and asked the admissions directors what their experiences of the homeschool student populations have been.  Hillsdale college, for example, could have told her that formerly home schooled incoming freshman outperform public schooled freshman by large margins on entrance and placement exams. 

You would think that BB would have at least researched entities that traditionally support her view – if for no other reason than to appear to have been responsible in her reporting.  Did she mention the legal challenges to homeschool and the reasons for them?  Did she talk to the NEA, or her state’s legislature, her superintendent of public instruction, perhaps?  Had she done that, she could have then brought in some perspective from the Home School Legal Defense Association.  My guess is that she does not even know what the legal limitations for homeschool are, and why. 

In conclusion, BB shows an inability to present objective and accurate data by: 

a)     Neglecting to conduct interviews of home educators, avoiding any first-person, direct experience in her data set.

b)     Neglecting to interview any homeschooled children or formerly homeschooled adults.

c)      Neglecting to investigate the available specialized curriculum, tools and resources that facilitate the unique and demanding homeschool environment.

d)     Neglecting to include any objective third-party studies, statistics, or test results provided by such organizations as the United States Census, the National Center for Education Statistics and major American universities.

e)     Neglecting to consider any data offered by interested subjective parties such as the NEA, state governments, National Center for Home Education or the HSLDA.

f)      Limiting her research to passive observation of web-based communities. 

2.     She prejudges her subject with disdain. 

The fact that BB’s inability to complete her research or report objectively exposes her strong negative preconception to homeschooling that is made even more evident by the connotation of her word choices: 

“I can’t help but be freaked out by Facebook groups and blogs touting their homeschooling methods and group field trips. Homeschooling Co-ops are popping up everywhere encouraging the average parent that they can become both teacher and school to their brood. Sounds problematic, right? Because it is.” 

Remember, BB admits that her vitriolic attitiude against homeschooling prevented her from completing her research and objectively delivering her “report”.  But more striking in this quote is her choice of loaded words such as “freaked out”, “touted”, “average” and “brood”.  For me, and I am guessing that for at least some of you, these word choices conjure up the image of a homeschooling half-wit spewing conspiracy theories surrounded by twenty dirty, unshoed gremlins.  And, in fact, evidence that the majority of homeschool moms chew “backy” and swap roadkill recipes on those Facebook pages she is so “freaked out” about might redeem her piece.  But she offers no reasons that homeschool methods, field trips and co-ops are indeed problematic.  Schools have methods, field trips, and collaborative teaching.  What is the complaint?  Is a field trip somehow more enriching when a paid bus driver transports the children instead of a mom in a van?  BB just drops this charge at paragraph one and never brings it up again. 

Throughout BB’s article snide sarcasm supplants objective reasoning.  She writes:  “What a disservice to keep kids in a bubble and not allow them to experience other students’ and teachers’ ideas. It’s the ultimate control freak and fear-driven parenting behavior.”  Nowhere before this statement has the author shown that homeschooled children are isolated from other students and teachers.  But then, we have already established that her lack of research denied her the knowledge that homeschoolers are more socialized than their public schooled peers and in more positive ways.  They travel the country competing on large debate and speech teams, coordinate volunteer community enrichment campaigns through the boy scouts, participate in charities and church functions with other youth from public and private schools, perform in youth symphonies, ballet and other fine art events, and attend online classes with instructors and a chatroom full of students from ALL OVER THE WORLD.  This past year, my daughter organized and performed in a classical chamber benefit concert to help forty of her friends travel to Europe this summer for an educational tour.  Would she call that a bubble?   

Further on, the author accuses homeschoolers of using the freedom and creative exploits of homeschooling as “some excuse to shield their kids from the scary world of other people and school.”  Once again I have to explain that she did not offer a single example of a home educator trying to shield his children from anything or anyone.  But let’s assume some are.  Why would BB condemn rather than praise that action?  The lack of interest to protect vulnerable children from dangers that may risk their mental, emotional, physical and spiritual health is pervasive and typcial of our cynical culture of self-gratification and self-centeredness.  It is a perverse lie that we are bad parents who protect our children, and it is this attitude that allows a parent to send her eight year old daughter to the bus stop alone at 7:30 in the morning and then sob into the television camera after the child has gone missing.  It is parents’ responsibility to protect children.  Whether or not schools represent something from which a child should be protected is debatable, but not the point.  The author is criticizing home educators for wanting to protect their children.  She offers no evidence for or against the contention that schools are dangerous.  She expects us to understand and agree with her unstated premise that the school environment is benign.  More importantly, she attacks home educators for doing something that she has not demonstrated they do, and she does it out of sheer contempt. 

Irrationality is not conducive to good teaching; we expect teachers to present material objectively and reasonably. The tendency to hurl insults without any supporting data is an emotional and irrational behavior.  I would argue that one of the chief reasons that parents homeschool is because of the promulgation of irrational views by emotional teachers.  For example, claiming that Darwinian macroevolution is fact when scientists in the field are scrutinizing Darwin’s theory with increasing skepticism[i] is irrational.  Accusing thinking individuals of pushing “creationism” simply because microbiology and zoology provide ample direct evidence against specific aspects of Darwin’s theory is not rational.  Claiming that the “Dark Ages” was a period of intellectual, scientific and creative suppression and stagnation in contrast to the views of legitimate medieval historians is not reasonable.  Banning from the classroom the single most significant literary work ever written in context to every literary criteria just because it’s content is religious is irrational.  If a student wants to legitimately question and investigate whether an increase in CO₂ emmissions raises global temperatures, or whether the inverse is true, that natural increases in global temperatures increase CO₂ in the atmosphere, he would have to do it at home.  Very few science teachers would entertain the latter hypothesis.  If a student wants to learn why America thrived under the free enterprise system he would have to learn that outside the average American public school classroom.  

Homeschoolers are not running from school, they are running to education.  Our infamous blogger is an example of the kind of teacher that forces parents to make that choice – a teacher who teaches subjectively, irrationally, and arrogantly with disdain for the parents whose taxes pay her. 

3.     She displays a narrow view of the world, and of the opportunities within society for character growth and modelling. 

Approximately one third of BB’s article covers her unique redefinition of education.  Teachers are frustrated with the expansion of their job description.  They serve as instructor, foster parent, counselor, entertainer, disciplinarian, arbitrator, security officer, friend.  BB expects them also to play life coach.  Since when was education more concerned with “creating self” than with teaching skills and enlightening students to truth? 

“More important than the actual material was that my best teachers illustrated for me how they think. What they valued. How they chose to live and how I could choose to as well when I graduated to adulthood… The teachers your children will encounter will be excellent examples of character sprinkled with a few non-examples but we need all of those perspectives to question our beliefs, confuse, irritate, inspire, uplift, and finally create ourselves. One parent teaching at home can’t do that.” 

Equally troubling to me is the author’s anemic definition of “character”.  Character, by her description, has nothing to do with universal values such as honesty, integrity, self- sacrifice, compassion, generosity, tenacity or courage.  Good character to BB is nothing more than the open expression of one’s choices.  But character is not about creating a persona, or developing a lifestyle.  Character is not about empowerment.  It is about goodness.  It is about right and wrong.  It is a matter of values not experiences, judgments not encounters. 

Furthermore, are teachers really the only people we come across in life who have the capacity to inspire, challenge, and stretch us?  What about extended family, pastors, neighbors, coaches, boy scout leaders, bosses and coworkers, authors of Great Books…what about bloggers?  What about entertainers, world leaders, the guy who delivers the mail?  Our blogger might scoff.  What does the mailman know about life?  What indeed.  Well, what does a janitor know about medicine?  

I’ve just learned about a janitor, Vivien Thomas, who learned medicine on his own while working for a respected surgeon and ultimately pioneered the first heart bypass surgery with no more formal training than his high school diploma. He was eventually awarded an honorary doctorate from Vanderbilt University.  I guess BB would have been one of those who sought to keep Thomas in his place, sweeping floors for a living.  He wasn’t an “expert”.  He wasn’t trained. 

“…teachers are experts who know more than you,” BB states, flatly. 

They know so much more than the collective “you” - i.e. anyone who reads her blog – that they are indispensible for teaching not only math and geography, but also the meaning of life itself.  Even those whom she considers bad teachers offer children invaluable opportunities for growth in her worldview. 

“I also had one abusive high school teacher who belittled me every day in front of the class to the point that I wouldn’t speak anymore in her room… After months of her cruelty, I asked her what I did to deserve her hatefulness and she backed down because she was and is a coward. In her ugliness she taught me about my strength.” 

God forbid she start reading the news.  She may learn that some teachers actually abuse their students in more nefarious ways than belittling them in class.  Wesley Cherniak ring any bells?  By BB’s logic, a student could learn a lot of positive things from Mr. Cherniak’s behavior, and so is lucky to have encountered him.  I bring this up not to make light of Mr. Cherniak, not to claim that we parents should fear teachers, nor to indict teachers over any other profession.  Adults of all walks of life do evil things.  Rather, I mention this only to argue that BB’s slavish praise of the teaching profession is not balanced.  Teachers are not uniquely indispensible.   

I will grant BB that we can and should find the positive in all situations in which we find ourselves, to turn bad experiences into learning experiences.  But we do not have to seek out such experiences.  They are an inevitable part of everyone’s life.  And then, I would be remiss not to point out that her appeal for making lemonade from lemons directly contradicts her earlier statement in which she admonishes parents from isolating their children.  If we can draw lessons from experiences with ugly, cowardly, abusive teachers, can we not also draw lessons from overprotective parents? 

Finally, who wins the debate if I disagree with BB’s definition of character?  Perhaps I think that it is more important to remain loyal to the values with which one was raised than to redefine oneself?  Perhaps I think that my children should be influenced by persons I believe have more character than the teachers at my local public school?  Shouldn’t I decide that for my own children, and allow BB to decide that for hers?  What makes her right and me wrong?  Therein lies the beauty of living in a free country.

To sum up, BB is not qualified to teach children because she has an insular view of the world and a distorted view of personal character. 

4.     The author exhibits poor critical thinking and deliberative discourse skills

I think I have adequately shown that our blogger has put forth a very weak argument.  Emotional hyperbole does not make a persuasive case and her piece lacks any semblance of logical thought.  We can give her the benefit of the doubt and surmise that she is feeling threatened and defensive.  But then, doesn’t she demonstrate a complete lack of prudence in posting this drivel rather than handing off to a few friends first, or hiding it in the bottom drawer for a week while she gathers her composure?

  
In the end Blogger Babe quips, “You know that one saying, ‘Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach’. Here is my revision: Those who can teach, do. Those who can’t, homeschool.”  She says this, totally unaware that a growing number of university and college professors, parents with multiple degrees, and public school teachers are homeschooling their own children. 
 
Would you really want someone with this attitude influencing your child?   

“…These false teachers are bold and arrogant and show no respect…they attack with insults anything they do not understand.”  ~ 2 Peter, Chapter 2: 10- 12 

  

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[i] Dissent From Darwinism 'Goes Global' as Over 600 Scientists Around the World Express Their Doubts About Darwin's Theory

 

Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology

Image: Michal Marcol / FreeDigitalPhotos.net