Home is Where the Answers Are

Of all the objections to homeschooling I have heard, the one that defeats me the most is some variation of, “Well, your kids are suited for homeschooling...they are so cooperative.   My kids would never listen to me.”  This argument makes unfortunate inferences that were probably unintended by the speaker like:  “Homeschooling is easy for you because you have compliant children," (it doesn’t take effort, creativity or tenacity on your part... just luck),  “I am an ineffective parent whose unruly children do not behave or respect me,” or "Homeschooling is a departure from what is normal or natural."    

The objection is unfortunate because it is so misguided.  But how can I argue?  I cannot claim to know another parent’s child as well as he, and I certainly cannot attack his parenting skills on this basis.  Furthermore, even among the homeschooling community more agree with his objection than disagree.  And yet, I know that despite the many times I’ve heard homeschooling “experts” and supporters admit that homeschooling isn’t for every child, – every single child can learn well at home.  How can I make this outlandish claim?  Because every child does.  

Before any child enters school he learns an entire language.  Before age five most children learn social, physical and intellectual skills.  They learn manners, their ABCs, simple songs, how to walk, run, how to tie their shoes.  They learn their colors, shapes, numbers and nursery rhymes.  At least, the children in good homes do.  “But”, one might ask, “What about those less fortunate?”  Well, they learn, too.

Every child learns at home, although what they learn varies.  Children in less stable or dysfunctional homes may learn survival or coping skills.  They may learn when it is best to withdraw, act out or manipulate a situation.  They may learn how to meet their own basic personal needs and the needs of other siblings like acquiring food or seeking shelter.  They learn how to protect their families from discovery from outsiders who may threaten what little cohesion the family does have.  I know of one severely neglected child who learned to diaper herself at two years old.  

That is not to say that all children should be homeschooled.  The simple point is, learning happens.  This is the mantra of the unschooling movement, and while I personally do not follow their formal method of education (or lack thereof), I can’t disagree with their premise.  Children learn.  At home and at school, in all environments and through multitudinous ways, children learn.  Through the influence and efforts of parents, teachers and mentors and despite parents, teachers and mentors.  This is not to say that parents, teachers and mentors are irrelevant.  They may not determine whether a child learns, but they undoubtedly affect what a child learns.

I will assume that, if you are reading this blog, your children identify with the fortunate group who enjoy a healthy home environment.  You may have taught (or will teach) your child to speak, walk, ride a tricycle, dress himself, and sing a major C scale forward and backward: “Do-Re-Me-Fa -So-La-Ti-Do-Do-Ti-La-So-Fa-Me-Re-Do”.  You may have already taught her the sounds of most farm animals, that frogs lay eggs that hatch into tadpoles, and that the moon is in constant motion.  Congratulations, you qualify as a home educator!  It is not too far a leap from teaching these simple concepts to teaching formal curricula. You are a much more capable teacher than you may think you are!

A reasonable rebuttal would be that these are examples of information common to adults, every day experiences, skills and observations; teaching algebra, or biology or English grammar is another matter.  What this rebuttal misses is that parents have a unique advantage over classroom teachers.  We have the advantage of receiving our teacher’s “certification” over a much larger time frame than the professional teacher.  We tackle what we know first, and grow with our children to handle the tougher subjects when the time comes.  The parent of a preschooler has eight years to get algebra under her belt!  So, we start with number concepts and counting, and progress to operations, place value, fact families, multiplication tables, fractions, negative numbers and by the time the kids reach the middle grades we are ready with at the most a little prep to move on to algebra. 

Of course, fear drives the hesitation parents feel about taking on the awesome responsibility of formally educating one’s own child, especially those children who aim for a college degree.  Take courage.  The most brilliant minds of history were not the products of a professional education industry but initially taught by their own parents or tutors in the home.  The task is not as impossible as it seems.  Public education is a recent phenomenon in human history. 

I do grant that today the sheer volume of information that children must learn by the time they graduate high school exceeds that required of children just decades ago.  But the homeschooling parent does not teach in a vacuum, nor does he rely exclusively on his own knowledge and talents. There is a lot of help “out there” for homeschooling parents, just as there is for teachers.

You are a much more capable teacher than you may think you are, and you do not have to be an “expert” educator.  We parents often presume that today’s teachers are wellsprings of knowledge.  But certified teachers are actually practitioners of methodology, more sociologists than instructors.  In order to manage classrooms of many children with various personalities, diverse cultures and a range of skill levels, teachers may be appropriately expert in child development, conflict resolution, standards and benchmarks or learning styles but less so in actual subject matter.  Today’s teachers need not be grammarians, historians or philosophers.  Some may be, but many are not.  After all, material resources provide subject matter.  Generally, today’s teacher’s facilitate learning, but they do not teach in the classic sense of the word.

Home is the most natural place for all children to learn.  It is the first classroom for most American children.  Why should that change just because the child has reached the age of six?  Your children can learn at home.  They already have.

Image: photostock / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Managing Your Homeschool Schedule

by Susan A. Howard

Many times over my ten years as a home educator, I tearfully swore I would quit.  I wasn’t organized enough, I wasn’t educated enough, I wasn’t accountable enough and I was chronically exhausted.  At the very beginning of my homeschool “career” I read a horrible homeschool preparation guide that warned me of the rigors of homeschooling and my own potential inadequacies.  Consequently, I feared that I would destroy my children’s future, and the only thing that mitigated that fear was the recognition that my own education contributed less to my competence and success as an adult than the influence of my parents’ modeling.  My parents were good communicators, engaged intellectuals and avid readers whose example conditioned me to use good grammar, calculate accurately and utilize encyclopedias.  Formal schooling, at least in my case, was not the silver bullet that so many tout it to be.

But the reason for my poor self-image as a home educator was really not my education or my intelligence, but rather my time management skills.  Had I been a professional teacher or paid tutor I would have external requirements - the expectations and scheduling of a third party - to keep me accountable.  Lacking those externals, I had to somehow put together a schedule to which I would consistently adhere.  This required me to weigh everything that we did as a family in terms of its affect on our homeschool goals.  Understanding how to evaluate and incorporate a variety of interests, obligations and and chores into the homeschool environment did not come immediately or naturally.  In fact, many of the ideas I will share with you below are ideas I only wish I’d implemented, hindsight being much clearer as we all know.  Sometime we learn more from failure than success.  Managing our homeschool schedule is an art that has developed over ten years time and continues to develop as I prepare for my preschoolers to enter the homeschool experience.

One may anticipate that the most time consuming aspect of homeschooling is teaching. In fact, those new to homeschooling will soon discover that the biggest drain on the homeschool family’s schedule and budget is maintaining the household.  When a family spends the bulk of their waking hours out of the house, they impact the spaces and resources of external institutions – work places and schools.  Utilizing one’s own home as the workplace or school leaves an astonishing amount of mess that janitors clean up after for those who work outside the home.  We suddenly have more meals to prepare and clean up after, more sweeping, vacuuming, surfaces to wipe down not to mention the accumulation of books and materials in use every day! Then there is the consumption you just take for granted in other spaces – utilities, for example. It sounds almost ridiculous to mention, but it really has an impact, and the bigger the family, the bigger the impact.

So, balancing the homeschool schedule is a matter of efficiently completing household chores, school subjects, extracurricular activities and social events.  Let’s deal with the simplest tasks first: household chores.

1.  Share the burden.  Include your students as household and homeschool team members

Your children can benefit tremendously by necessarily becoming a member of the household maintenance team, and you can enjoy some much needed assistance.  Their traditionally-schooled peers spend much of their time away from home and family, and often do not learn simple life skills like preparing meals, maintaining a budget and using an ATM machine.  My parents came from a very private generation.  Consequently, I was not privy to our family’s financial position, aware of its burdens nor how my parents managed to support their family of six.  I entered adulthood a financial incompetent and suffered a great deal for my ignorance.  Had I been given the responsibility of keeping the pantry stocked within a set food budget, creating menus (a great time and money saver, by the way), paying the utility bills once a month,  or maintaining the family cars, those tasks would have been less daunting when I struck out on my own, and my parents would have had more time to attend my weekend volleyball tournaments.  By including your children in running the household and the budget you can contribute to their development as competent adults, their maturity, their work ethic and time management skills, and maintain the household simultaneously!

2.  Determine your educational and parenting goals for your children/students.

The second step in managing your homeschool schedule is to determine what your goals are for your children.  It is my belief that all children should prepare for college, regardless whether they actually attend college when the time comes.  No mentally healthy child of average intelligence is incapable of succeeding in college prep academics.  Many people would argue this point with me but I adhere to my opinion.  There are levels of academic pursuit that do require superior intellectual talent.  High school level physics doesn’t fall into that category.  But other goals of equal or greater value than academics may appeal to your family.  I, for example, want my kids to be relevant and contributing members to their community and nation.  My children should also develop good Christian morals and discipline.  Finally, I place value on my children finding the artistic and recreational pursuits through which they can fully enjoy their creative humanity:  fine arts, photography, music, performance, or competition.  You must determine those goals for your family.

3.  Evaluate which courses and activities are essential to your goals, and incorporate relevant activities into the home school curriculum.

Having identified your goals, you can then choose the school subjects that promote them, and evaluate the activities that dominate your calendar in terms of their contribution to those goals.  My homeschool schedule accommodates a college preparatory curriculum, as our priority.  After the lesson plans for those courses are entered into the schedule, I can then work in other activities.  I co-founded a local grassroots political organization to advocate for particular ideas and candidates.  Because I want my children to become good citizens, I incorporated my political endeavors into their homeschool experience.  They accompanied me to meetings, made signs for rallies and campaigned on street corners.  On one occasion our organization interviewed a local candidate to determine whether we would endorse him.  My daughter not only attended the event, but addressed the candidate with her own concerns, adding considerably to the conversation. 

In another instance, I direct the choir at my church, which provides an opportunity not only to model our responsibilities to our faith community, but also provides an opportunity for my daughter to practice her piano performance skills.  Providing liturgical music at church services is an important experience that augments my daughter’s music education, and reflects well on her high school transcripts.

4.  Limit each activity to the minimum time needed to benefit from it.

Of course, there is only so much time in the week to include extracurricular activities along with academics, chores and “down time”, regardless of how worthy the activities are.  You can either cut out those activities that do not advance your goals, or you can rotate activities seasonally.  You may have to do both.  Rather than singing in the church choir year-round, perhaps your children could join the Christmas choir.  Have your athlete choose one or two sports, rather than three or four.  A debater could engage in speech summer camp rather than competitive speech club during the school year.  If you limit your activities seasonally, everyone can have their various needs met without risking the academic schedule and your sanity.

5.  Adopt a scheduling method that works best for you: daily planner, software program or online service.

Knowing then which subjects and activities will dominate your week, your next task is to find a scheduling tool that works for you.  There is no shortage of scheduling methods: a refrigerator calendar with a simple to-do list, a paper-based homeschool day planner,  spreadsheet software and even a full service online organization and record keeping service like LessonMinder.com.  Methods are individual, and although I have my opinions on which solution is best, the most important thing is that you have a solution of some kind.  Too many homeschoolers resort to boxes of graded (and sometimes ungraded) assignments and could not report to a third party how their children are progressing until they have succeeded at some standardized test.

The beauty of an online service like LessonMinder.com is that after set up is complete, maintaining records, grading and providing convincing and professional quality documentation that will keep the doors open for your children to access higher education and financial aid, is easy and reassuring.  By simply correcting assignments and entering grades into the same online day planner that your children use to keep track of their daily assignments, you are also automatically if not unconsciously building a cumulative GPA, generating an official transcript and keeping your children on track.  Additionally aided by the curriculum suggestions, recommended book lists and homeschooling resources, a LessonMinder.com account is well worth the small monthly service fee.  But whether or not you track your students by calendar, notebook, software package or online service, have some kind of daily planner is essential.

6.  Develop a consistent routine of flexibility

Many homeschoolers – especially unschoolers – bristle at the idea of a day planner and a routine.  They believe that children need the time and flexibility to have ideas develop naturally and pursuits spontaneously engage them.  They are right.  But allowing for down time and flexibility does not necessarily conflict with maintaining a strict routine.  What some of these advocates for freedom and spontaneity do not recognize is that as creatures of habit, human beings respond well to routine, especially children.  They like the security that comes with knowing what comes next, and what is expected of them.  Predictability is as comforting as spontaneity is exciting and both comfort and excitement are positive experiences.  Besides, routine is not necessarily synonymous with rut, monotony or banality. 

There are many ways you can turn a regularly scheduled activity into a cherished and anticipated time.  A friend of mine starts every morning very early.  Her children and she are schooling by 6:00am, but if you were a fly on her wall you might not have noticed.  Before six, “Mary” gets up, makes her coffee and two cups of hot cocoa and meets her two children back in her bed.  There, the three snuggle up with their cozy beverages and warm blankets and read aloud Sophocles, or the Founders, Shakespeare or Lord of the Rings…whatever they happen to be assigned for reading.  Then they talk about what they have read and after an hour or so they go downstairs for a warm, home cooked breakfast.  They dress, do their chores, which may include cleaning out the chicken coop and feeding the horse, and then shower and change for the rest of their day.  By 8:00 in the morning they are wide awake and fully engaged.  Once a week her son takes flying lessons and will soon acquire his pilot’s license, and every Saturday her daughter rehearses with the Seattle Youth Symphony.  A routine like that can hardly be considered a rut.

But acknowledging the importance of flexibility, how would one schedule unscheduled time?  One year, I experimented with the four day work week idea.  We only schooled Monday through Thursday.  Friday – all day – belonged to my kids.  No chores, no required school work, no obligations of any kind.  Just as often as not, my children chose to use the day to lighten their workload on school days.  They slacked off a bit during the week and made it up on Friday.  That was fine with me because they had made their own decision about it, and that was partially the point – giving them some reasonable control over their own scheduling.  My friend, mentioned above, reserved mornings for chores and school work, and left afternoons free for her children to disappear into the backyard fort, into a good book, or whatever else interested them.  Then evening scheduling kicked in once again with ballet, boy scouts and Tai Kwon Do.

7.  Experiment and Enjoy the Adventure!

Every homeschool environment is unique.  It is one of the things that makes home schooling the best educational option for all children.  The education is personalized, targeted and one-on-one.  There is no one solution that works.  Experiment.  Be creative.  Don’t worry about trying new things, and changing course.  You have to find the way that suits your family and your children.  So rather than worry about your own lack of discipline and the chore of scheduling, engage the task as an adventure of discovery.  That’s what this journey is all about!

Image: Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

A Sea of Remote Islands: The New Isolation

What do the following vignettes have in common?

• A group of neighborhood children playing tag in the street;
• A family of five sitting down to dinner;
• A passionate discussion between young people around a campfire;
• A crowded community dance. 

They were all once common in American life, but are increasingly rare. I find it very ironic that as the world has gotten smaller, and tools designed to connect us, from the telegraph to the Internet, have progressively grown to define our global, technology-oriented culture, individuals have become more isolated from one another. I started thinking about this when I discovered a social network web site dedicated to bringing like-minded people together.

My family structure is atypical. There is a thirteen year span between my third and fourth children, and then a fifth follows another, two years behind. So I have two sets of kids – three young adults and two toddlers. Finding other women with whom I can relate in my unique circumstance is difficult. So, as a way to meet new friends, I started an online group for moms in my area who have similar family compositions.

Poking around this group web site, I started to find highly segmented, targeted groups of people: Wiccan homeschoolers of Asian descent, Miniature Schnauzer-loving Conservative Democrats, the six-fingered senior citizen group, and of course mine, the moms-over-40-with-huge-age-gaps-between-children group. While browsing these groups, a sudden feeling of loss came over me. Although on the one hand it is great that we have services to help us find a community in which we can belong, especially when our individualist culture has destroyed the traditional neighborhood and our new found moral relativism has dismantled the cultural homogeny of an earlier time, there is on the other hand a problematic consequence.  We are fostering a society of isolated individuals who circulate in evermore microcosmic groups and more narrow and superficial relationships, creating cultural isolation that in some respects narrows to the point of narcissism.

In the normal course of the day, except in cases of extreme crisis like national disaster, or large scale threat, we focus almost exclusively on ourselves.  We drive as if the road was our private domain.  We walk down city streets with earbuds in our ears, our eyes glazed over by inner thoughts generated by the musical theme in our heads.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve turned around in a store in response to someone addressing me, only to find that they were talking into a cell phone ear device, having a very private conversation in a very public place.  Our fellow man has become window dressing, just another product on the shelf,  the potted plant on the sidewalk. 

We see evidence of our detachment in the erosion of common courtesy in public.  Men spit, anywhere, anytime.  Middle-aged men fail to offer seats to the elderly on subways and commuter trains. Adults swear in front of young children.  People talk through movies in the theatre, or sing along loudly at a $100 concert by their favorite performer, totally unaware that those sitting next to them paid to enjoy the performer, not the off-key fan.  And why not?  Who are you to tell me what to do?  I have a right to this and that.  You see, it is all related to our highly customized pursuit of our own interests, goals and desires in disregard of those who really don’t exist except as window dressing.  This is not a new complaint, of course.  Big cities have had this problem for as long as there were big cities.  But this attitude can now be found in all corners of America – even the smallest of towns.  I live in a town of about 30,000 and witness this behavior daily.

The customized, personalized lifestyle counteracts the positive impact of diversity – the ability or at least the opportunity to practice relating with others, particularly those who have different perspectives.  I don’t have to deal with people with whom I disagree, do not understand or do not like.  I do not have to consider ideas with which I am uncomfortable.  I do not have to be made to feel that I am wrong, or misinformed.  I have personalized everything in my life – my entertainment, my politics,  my education, my relationships and even my religion.  Everything and everyone that does not fit my mold is expendable.  The result is that our nation is increasingly fractured not just politically, as has been the most recent charge, but socially as well.

The fracturing of our society is certainly not a new phenomenon. We have always struggled with divisions based on race, ethnicity and social status. But our niches are growing more myopic and our personal environments more controlled. Consequently, we can cut ourselves off from general society far more effectively than in the past.

So, what does any of this have to do with homeschooling? Well, the fractured society impacts homeschoolers even more than the general public because although they are better socialized than the average traditionally schooled child, their parents must work harder to create peer opportunities for them. As I mentioned in a previous blog, many communities, particularly small towns, revolve around the public school system and homeschoolers are often observing from the sidelines. Because of their unique lifestyles, they must form community around homeschool co-ops, religious institutions, or online groups. These methods of building community tend to create far narrower homogeny than the neighborhoods of yesteryear.

I know that many home educators would argue that their children are more exposed to cultural diversity because they have the ability to travel and focus more thoroughly on social and cultural topics. But it isn’t cultural diversity that we are losing. We are losing something much deeper.  We are losing the the cultural cohesion and diversity in relationships that allows us to trust one another and rationally weigh opposing ideas.  Instead of healthy debate, instead of learning from one another, we hold the higher ideal of leaving well enough alone, of not offending each other with our differences of opinion.  So we remain quietly divided.  Consequently, it is more difficult for us to sustain the Democratic Republic that gave rise to diversity in the first place. As a fractured nation, fewer citizens make decisions based on the general good, or the good of the nation. Too many focus on the needs and desires of particular niche groups, or of our own very individual needs and desires.

I have seen this particularly in homeschool coops and forums that try to form community around a philosophy, educational style or religion.  Like everyone else, my family sees the benefit of forming relationships and fostering a sense of belonging with like-minded people.  But that further isolates us into subcultures of a subculture.  In combination with the many isolating lifestyle choices our culture already pushes on us – like Facebook, customized playlists and network gaming, the pervasive concept of relativism which fits very nicely in an individualistic philosophy, and the necessary technological resources that facilitate home education like online courses and computer based instruction, homeschooling reduces our natural opportunities for balance. 

Children who are brought up on highly customized and personalized education, individualized single-user entertainment and controlled environments may suffer a number of unintended consequences - narcissism, narrow-mindedness, detachment, rigidity, and a tendency toward tribalism - if our tendencies toward isolation are not actively resisted.  There are steps that we can take to counter these potential consequences.

1. Limit your family’s participation in online social networks and go meet real people.

While it seems that social networks allow us to remain more connected to those we care about, it in fact reduces relationships to meaningless superficiality with meaningless banter, self-focused updates, and a misleading notion that we are "keeping in touch". Instead of replacing real friendship with a user-interface, use the interface to schedule real time to be physically present with those you care about. Teens are especially taken in with the perception that they are present to their friends when they interact over social networks. Recent studies, however, are documenting negative psychology consequences to the use of social networks among young people.

2. Actively engage your neighbors in sit down dinners, and small scale entertaining in the home.

I know how busy you are! I've been unsuccessful in organizing a neighborhood Christmas party for the past ten years! But there are ways we can multiply the benefit of entertaining at home by planning events that serve multiple purposes. For example, several years ago, in an attempt to get to know some of my parishioners from church while also providing an opportunity for my daughter to get more practice in piano performance, I scheduled an Arts Party. Everyone was encouraged to bring a poem, song, speech, play, or other talent to share with the rest of the guests. It was a great time that my guests still talk about today.

3. Participate in community events through the library, local YMCA, food bank, Boys and Girls Club, Senior Center or other community organization.
Volunteering provides wonderful opportunities for young people to gain work experience, and give to the community. But it also exposes them to a variety of lifestyles, circumstances and people.

4. Commit to participating in a community-oriented charitable cause at least once a year.
Every community has some kind of annual charitable or cultural event - even the smallest of towns. Whether it is a concert series, a cancer run, a community drama troupe, a Miracle League - volunteers are needed everywhere, and charitable causes are great ways to branch out and make connections.

5. Seek out homeschool organizations, coops, and programs with diverse but open memberships.

Rather than looking for homeschool groups that limit membership to certain philosophies, religious perspectives or learning styles, find diverse groups in which you can share your beliefs, perspectives and interests openly. Aside from situations you find particularly harmful to your children's well-being, diversity in relationships is healthy.

Remember that the health of our communities affects the health of our regions, states and ultimately our nation. The health of our nation affects the welfare of every individual who resides here. As homeschoolers we can have a positive impact locally and across the continent.


Image: Simon Howden / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

It’s About Learning, Not Earning

A September/October Saturday Evening Post article by Diane Ravitch, Research Professor of Education at New York University and a historian of education, was a case study on the problem of education. I do not mean that she presented a case study on the problem of education in her article, but in fact the article and Ms. Ravitch herself is a case study on the problem of education.

What is the first thing you think about when you think of “education”? If you are a parent, like me, with school aged children, or you are not in the field of education you probably freely associate education with a subject, like math, or a child sitting at a desk. Maybe you recall the smells of tempera paint and paste or the pangs of walking into class having left your essay at home. In other words, you think of school and of learning. That is not the kind of thing that Ms. Ravitch and other educational experts are referring to in phrases such as “What is good for education?” or “Education in America”.  They are referring, instead, to the profession and institution represented by the term “education”. And therein lies the problem.

Education (“schools”) in America will never improve until educational professionals disassociate their careers and their industry from the process of learning. To them, learning is inextricably linked to the education industry. When the industry declines, children fail to learn and when the industry grows, children succeed in learning. But we have ample evidence that this direct relationship does not exist. The education industry has been growing wildly with per student annual spending commonly above $10,000. Yet anyone who tries to argue that the public school system is providing even an adequate education for the majority of American children is disconnected from reality. The body of evidence that gets the most attention is standardized test results. But we also have graduation statistics, drop out rates, college success statistics that rate homeschoolers well above public schooled children, examples of homeschoolers demonstrating superiority in competitive endeavors like national spelling bees, and college entrance exam results. Then, to make the point even more poignant we can look to the growth of charter schools and homeschooling, a direct result of the loss of faith in public schools.

The problem with the educational system is further exacerbated by the professional educator’s belief in his unique and exclusive qualification in defining and assessing learning success, evidenced by a comment made by the head of Washington D.C.’s union Nathan Saunders in an interview with John Stossel. “I know my kids are learning by the look in their eyes.” A ninth grade student may not be able to correctly identify the Civil War president on a multiple choice history test, but a professional educator can see the student’s progress through that twinkle in her eye!

People like Mr. Saunders and Ms. Ravitch assume a certain level of expertise and ownership that they believe commands respect and endows them with control. Their advice must be heeded, their ideas implemented, their demands met. And I can sympathize with the attitude. After devoting large amounts of money, time and dedication to one’s career, most professionals would not want laymen to challenge what they believe they know. Legitimate criticism of a veteran educator or education “expert” by a “man on the street” might suggest that their decades of effort were irrelevant, obsolete, wasted. It weakens their credibility. An expert with no credibility is oxymoronic.

But the consequence that educational experts fear the most is the effect criticism has on their job security and their earnings. If the public believes that the education industry is no longer essential to the learning process, they will no longer support the exorbitant funding increases cities across the nation and the federal government have been granting year after year to the public school system.

So rather than admitting that their industry is a bloated one, that it wastes large amounts of money, and fails to run efficiently, that its unions demands are unreasonable, that its certification requirements are in some cases unhelpful, unwarranted and ineffective, that its fear of competition prevents innovation and creativity, the industry blames testing. They blame a lack of funds. They blame the culture. They blame educational choice. And, as with Diane Ravitch’s article, they offer no evidence. No data. No sources for their opinion that these things are in fact to blame.

Their tendency toward self-protection and desire for job-security is easy to understand, easy to relate to. But education does not exist to give individuals career options. This is exactly where the layman departs from the professional educator. The institution of education exists to teach children, a task that it is demonstrably failing based on every reasonable criteria including testing, statistics, college course offerings, and the observations of parents, employers, teachers and administrators alike.

Many, especially teachers, might argue that teaching and learning are two opposing sides of the same coin, and a failure to learn does not necessarily indicate a failure to teach. That is true. In nearly every class of children, regardless of the talent, dedication and passion of the teacher, someone will fail. Sadly, some children are simply not equipped, not supported, not free to succeed. But no reasonable person would define some as a majority or even a large minority. In April of 2007 the state of Washington postponed until 2013 the requirement for seniors to pass the now defunct state math and science assessment as a condition of graduation because the class of 2008 failed the test in large numbers. Understand, this was not an academically rigorous test, but designed to assess basic knowledge. Yet 44% failed the math portion and 62% failed the science.

Large numbers of teens in America drop out of high school. Large numbers of teens are illiterate. Most high school aged Americans have no working knowledge of history, no familiarity at all with the great philosophical ideas of Western culture, and very little understanding of civics or economics. And even if they become financially successful in life, their ignorance contributes to the slow steady decline of republican democracy, America’s cultural morality and the pursuit of truth. In 2005 Bill Gates blasted U.S. high schools in a speech to the National Governors Association for not adequately preparing 66% of the nation’s children for citizenship and the workforce. And while parents, students and society at large certainly do bear some of the blame, this is not simply a failure to learn.

On the other hand, we are not talking about failures that can be attributed specifically to teachers, either. The educational establishment would want us to believe that educational critics are blaming teachers. We aren’t. We are blaming the bureaucracy and institutional culture within which teachers operate that ties learning success directly to education industry growth rather than classroom support, discipline and high standards. We are blaming the association of learning failure with industry streamlining, accountability, competition, challenge, and loosening of monopolistic control. What’s good for the bureaucracy is not good for the kids. If it were, our children would be the best educated kids on the planet.

Special note:  Since writing this article, I have come across a newly published book that makes the same point.  Although I have not yet had the opportunity to read it, and incorporate any of its supporting data into this article, I thought that my readers may be interested in doing more research on their own. Check it out:  Push Has Come to Shove: Getting Our Kids the Education They Deserve--Even If It Means Picking a Fight by Dr. Steve Perry

Image: Arvind Balaraman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net