I do a lot of radio shows, but didn't get asked to this one. WNYC has this on today:
Home is Where the Mind Is
In the early 1980s, only a few thousand American
families homeschooled their kids. Now, an estimated million and a half
children in the US are schooled at home, and as many as two-thirds of
these children are evangelical. We’ll find out what this remarkable
rise of homeschooling means for American education. We’ll talk to Rob Reich, professor of Political Science at Stanford University, and Mitchell Stevens, professor of Educational Sociology at NYU and author of Kingdom of Children: Culture and Controversy in the Homeschooling Movement.
I've debated Rob Reich, who is fun and fair-minded,
even if he does seem to be single-mindedly devoted to keeping HSLDA in
business forever. (He's the one calling for two mandatory weeks
away from Mom and Dad to ensure socialization experiences for
homeschoolers.) Mitch Stevens is a precious natural resource: he
spent nine years studying the homeschool culture, and literally wrote the book (now available in paperback!) on the subject.
Wish I could have heard it. Maybe I'm going to have to figure out podcasting, after all.
Gee, I wonder if the oh-so poltically correct Magic Munchkin would approve if the boys spent two weeks away from their parents at Boy Scout camp? I'm sure Mr. Reich has the BSA in his crosshairs just as he does with homeschoolers!
As the Assistant Scoutmaster of my son's Christian homeschool-based Boy Scout troop, we spent a week at camp this summer. Though he didn't get away from me, he did spend a week away from his Mom and siblings. What a wonderful experience we had! Whether I were present or not, I'd gladly send him to two weeks of scout camp each year. Would THAT be good enough for MR. ROBERT REICCCCHHHHHH-uh?
(BTW Scott, expect an email from me sometime soon in connection with the Boy Scouts!)
Rob is sincere and basically well-meaning in his efforts. He says things that send me straight up the wall, but his basic audience consists of public school folks who don't view them as totalitarian rants. Take a little time to get to know him, and I think you'll find he is truly well-intentioned.
His extraordinary remedy is designed to avoid the danger of something he calls "ethical servitude," which I find to be extremely rare in the Christian homeschooling circles I run in. (I finally met a family last year that just might fall into this category, after 20 years of homeschool leadership.) The more he gets to talk to homeschool Boy Scout leaders, the more I think he'll see that his solution causes more problems than it cures.
I just wonder if Dr. Rob would change his mind if he spent any time in a Middle School Cafeteria or outside before school starts. After 9 years of teaching Middle School Special Education in an inner city public school, I have come to the conclusion that we need the opposite then for public school children. Their parents need to be forced to spend two weeks WITH their child. Though I had many parents who loved their children and worked hard to see that they received a quality education, they were not the norm. Many of these parents were not home when their child arrived from school. Many were single parent families. Many were multigenerational families. I could go on and on. If these parents spent any amount of time with the child (and middle schoolers are definitely still children in big bodies) they would see that the children needed the parent more than they did in elementary school. The children needs someone to bounce their wild ideas off of. They need someone to bring some balance into their out of balance bodies and brains. They can either choose the parent or a peer. Personally, I want my children to choose my husband and me to bring their ideas, thoughts and dreams to.
As for two weeks away? My boys are already on the waiting list, to attend for 4 weeks, one of the outstanding boys camps in South Texas and they won't be old enough to go for 4 more years
Athena, Rob has had a lot of experience in the public schools, and if he shows up here, he'll soon persuade you that he's VERY sympathetic to everything you're saying. Rob really isn't AGAINST homeschooling, but he is concerned about a particular kind of problem which he thinks might occur if homeschooling goes unregulated. He knows that I think the disease is vanishingly rare (at least, among real live homeschoolers) and the cure is worse, but I hope he'll show up and speak for himself here.
You're right Scott, it was wrong and immature to call your friend Rob "the Magic Munchkin." I repent and won't do that again. So sorry Dr. Reich!
I can say one thing for sure -- the vast majority of my liberal friends are nothing if not well intentioned. But that reminds me of that non-Scriptural proverb about "the road to hell".... My loopy-er liberal friends (and my socialist aunt) all have in common this utopian outlook that would produce great solutions to society's myriad problems as long as you don't use real people!
One good example is the decline of the schools, where well-intentioned modernistic tinkering with tried-and-true educational methods such as "hard work and discipline" have resulted in a generation of high school grads that cannot sign their own paychecks and can't find the USA on a world map. But as you show in your talk, the public schools were flawed in their foundations. Anyway, we often tell our critics that we can't possibly goof up our kids worse at home than the public schools would, and most everyone accepts that argument!
[Can't seem to make a comment without signing up for a blog myself, so I clicked on anonymous]
Happily goaded into commenting by Scott -- with whom I have deep and fundamental disagreements but for whom I also have a great deal of respect -- I would add a few things.
First, the state of public schools is a red herring in the debate over home schooling. As Scott mentions, I'm no knee-jerk supporter of public schooling as it currently exists. The real issue is the extent of state authority over education. About this, Scott and I disagree. To put it provocatively, he's concerned about state despotism over children; I'm concerned with parental despotism over children. His solution is to eliminate any and all vestige of state influence over education (at least home education). My solution is to insist on some fairly limited and non-intrusive regulation over home schooling, so that there is some small balance of authority between parents and the state over education.
Second, on the concerns about socialization. It's not that I want kids to become "well-adjusted" adults, whatever that would mean. I want instead for kids to encounter some of the diversity of beliefs and conviction that are part and parcel of our democracy. Maybe few homeschoolers are cocooned in some glass-encased universe of their parents' making, and so my concerns are relevant for just a tiny percentage of homeschoolers. So be it: then why is the homeschooling community so concerned about regulation?
(FYI -- I think you can type over "Anonymous" to write your own name.)
Anyway, the issue is exactly about the public schools as far as I'm concerned. I'm a graduate of the public schools myself and have ever reason to believe the bar has been continuously lowered since then -- academically, morally and otherwise. I live in the City of Cleveland, Ohio and by all reports, the schools are filled with drugs, violence and liberal indoctrination. As long as I still have any American freedoms, I will work five jobs before my kids darken the door of the Cleveland Munipical School District. But since I only work the one job, I don't have the $$$ to put four kids through private school, so the issue of homeschooling is at least pragmatic. We recently tried to enact school choice here in Cleveland, which would have greatly helped inner city black students get a quality education in the schools of the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland. But your "fellow travelers" in the teacher's union and elsewhere on the left labored hard to torpedo that proposition. So you folks do not leave us many educational options.
As far as diversity of belief is concerned, our neighbors, family members and other people in our community have different beliefs (and different standards of parenting) and our kids encounter these issues every time they go out to play. Meanwhile, from my own recollections, the schools are a hotbed of peer pressure, and deliver an educational agenda mandated by Planned Parenthood and censored by the ACLU. My kids therefore cannot learn about the faith of the Founding Fathers in public school, let alone openly practice their own faith. It's thus a red herring to presuppose that the schools are some sort of "forum of free inquiry" where our kids will be exposed to a diversity of ideas.
Government regulation surely has it's place. My contemporaries in Canada were defomed by thalidomide, and I'm grateful that we had an FDA to regulate that. But the issue is, God has given us these kids, to whom we are entrusted responsibility and authority, and we simply question the propriety of allowing government to supercede that responsibilty and authority, as was done e.g. in Nazi Germany. Kids might be cocooned in a glass-encased universe if they are locked away in a compound like the Branch Davidians, the handling of which gave us all a great lesson in fearing government intrusion.
Anyway, you favor state regulation, Scott opposes it. Scott and I both fear the "slippery slope" destination of statist meddling in the lives of homeschoolers. Why is it that liberals and conservatives both understand the "slippery slope" argument as it applies to their own issues, but are clueless when the shoe is on the other foot? Case in point, the fear of the slippery slope is motivating Teddy Kennedy and company to find a way to "bork" John Roberts.
IMHO, the media is a much greater threat to our children than homeschooling. The late liberal NYU professor Neil Postman showed that the "sound bite"-driven media news culture has shortened the American attention span and thereby eroded public discourse to the level where democracy cannot truly be practiced. I hope we can agree that a homeschool family that studies and discusses history, current events and popular ideological debate is producing better-equipped kids than a public school family that plops down before the idiot box night after night.
[My solution is to insist on some fairly limited and non-intrusive regulation over home schooling, so that there is some small balance of authority between parents and the state over education.]
I can see where there are some who homeschool that take issues to the extreme. I personally do not have a problem with state regulations either. I mean they do make me drive the speed limit and stay on one side of the highway.I guess where I get frustrated where regulations have to be made for the minority who fall into the extreme category.
Is there such a thing as non-intrusive regulation? I don't mind the state telling me what subjects need to be taught or how many days we need to have school but then proof is always needed so that they know it is happening.
If I had my wishes, my children would be in a private school but in the area where we live they are priced way past our family means without my going back to work and the point is for me to be a stay at home mother. (and with twins that doubles). But the private schools (at least where we live) are not culturally diverse either so it would still be up to me as a parent to expose my children to different cultures and different people. (I have an advantage in that I have a Master's Degree in Education, am a state certified teacher and have weighed all sides of the issues before we chose to homeschool. It was not a knee-jerk reaction on our part. Just like in public education, in homeschooling education there are as many different types of families and reasons for homeschooling as there are families. ) We have chosen a curriculum that is not a church/religous base curriculum. I still read the Bible to my children daily but I would do that if they were in public school too. Maybe I am the exception and just don't know it.
I had a student in Public school, whose mother would just not send him to school. In 6th grade, he missed 111 out of 180 days of school and failed due to absences. The courts ordered his mother to pay a fine and regulated his attendence as he repeated 7th grade. He passed 7th grade the second time around and in 8th grade was back to missing school again once the courts were not forcing him to school. There are always going to be people in the extreme. The majority of parents in our school made sure that their children attended regularly. Would the students have been there if attendence were not manditory? I think most of them would have been but I can not be sure.
Do regulations have to alway be made so that the few who do not follow the norm keep up with the norm?
I appreciate the fact that Dr. R recognizes that most parents are doing what is needed to give their children a diverse education. That is more than many articles and reviews I have read. He asks,"then why is the homeschooling community so concerned about regulation? " I my opinion they are concerned because there does not seem to be just a little regulation. It goes to the extreme. If we can regulate a little, isn't alot even better.
I am one of those liberals but I prefer the term Democrat that gets talked about. Thank you all for being a part of the conversation. When we have different people with different opinions discussing the issues and respecting each others opinions then things can really get accomplished.
Rob Reich said above:
"The real issue is the extent of state authority over education. About this, Scott and I disagree. To put it provocatively, he's concerned about state despotism over children; I'm concerned with parental despotism over children."
Provocative for sure - you're both wrong then, about what we need to be debating. I am concerned about actual children, and thankfully despotism (in 21st century America) doesn't even make the Top 100 on my list of immediate, real-life, daily concerns for them or their survival or their souls.
I know that you both are fathers who thus are responsible for addressing all those direct, real-child concerns too, so having had this same esoteric and intensively divorced-from-reality debate with you both before, I suggest this time you respond the way we mothers do instead.
Let's stop debating who has more right to teach them NOT to think for themselves -- my answer is no one, case closed -- and be more concerned about finding ways to help them learn to think critically without any despotism whatsoever! Then they can protect themselves from despotism, without being "ethically servile" to their parents OR the State. (Not to mention a biased press, propaganda from any source or their own peers and fellows, at any age.)
I just read a scholarly review of a new book in this regard (see below) making the point that most classroom teaching and learning is "non-thinking practice" rather than critical thinking -- comprised as it is of commonplace "defining, telling and believing."
From the review:
"Boostrom believes that students can benefit from inquiring into the
distinctions between learning to 'receive truths' and to 'seek meanings
in our lives.'
In this frame, 'Thinking does not settle anything; it unsettles' (p.
137), which is a part of the reason that non-thinking is so difficult to
disrupt. . ."
I think this intentional unsettling of commonplace classroom defining,telling,and believing is precisely what's desired and required by us all, to avoid despotism from ANY source.
JJ Ross, Ed.D.
Visit "The Thinking Parent" at:
<www.ParentDirectedEducation.org>
*Thinking: The Foundation of Critical and Creative Learning
in the Classroom* by Robert E. Boostrom
Teachers College Press, New York
ISBN: 0807745693, 175 pages, Year: 2005
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0807745693/teacherscolleger>
Reviewed by Anne Slonaker -- August 30, 2005
<http://www.tcrecord.org/PrintContent.asp?ContentID=12137>
Rob, let me introduce a dear friend and remarkably thoughtful lady, Dr. JJ Ross, who can be charming when she doesn't jump in and stomp on all my toes at once. JJ, Rob. Enjoy!
By the way, folks, if I can break free from shocking stories about kids locked in cages, I'm going to promote this conversation to a new thread at the top of the blog.
Scott wrote:
"JJ! How Bolton-esque! I'm surprised."
Remember that old definition, about a conservative being a liberal who's been mugged? Today I'm wondering if a Bolton is a diplomat who's had it up to HERE and hasn't found any other way to disrupt the non-thinking . . .
JJ, I'm in full agreement with you. Let's have a discussion about the constructive measures necessary to get children to think for themselves.
The reason for discussing homeschooling is that an answer to that question can be given in pedagogical, curricular, and institutional ways. That is, there are (probably) several different pedagogical approaches, several curricular avenues, and several institutional arrangements that will foster independent critical thinking.
The reason I want to focus attention on homeschooling, as it is currently practiced, is that it is the single most worrisome institutional arrangement for educating children to be critical thinkers. This is not -- I hasten to add -- because parents generally speaking are motivated to impede critical thinking. (In point of fact, I think that a homeschool environment could in practice be one of the most effective ways to foster critical thought and autonomy.) This is because homeschooling proceeds in many states now without any check whatsoever on parents' educational activities. One of the bare minimum conditions of creating critical thinkers, it seems to me, is that the school environment (public, private, or homeschool) engage children with views different from those of their parents. But this idea is what seems to drive some homeschoolers nuts. JJ and Scott, would you sign on to this idea?
Now, I am quite sympathetic with some of the concerns of other commentators, namely, that the actual environment in public schools is so rife with material consumerism, sexed-up pop culture, and an anti-academic ethos, that the public school can be not merely a lousy environment in which to learn critical thinking but a downright oppressive environment. If this were the only educational option available to me in my town, I too would look for alternatives. But in doing so, I would emphatically not press for unregulated homeschooling environments.
As I've said now dozens of times in many different places, I'm not against homeschooling. I'm against unregulated homeschooling. To suggest that a degraded public school environment leads to a demand that homeschools be unregulated is to me a total non sequitor.
okay i know i am coming into this a little late but will somebody PLEASE
read the definition of socialization...seriously people that drives me nuts! the word that "they" are looking for is NOT socialization but Socialize. please oh please oh please start correcting them right now!the perfect environment for a child to be socialized IS at home as it is a function of one generation passing on values and beliefs to the next...this butchering of the english language must be stopped! not only that but i posted recently that socializing is VERY frowned on IN school i don't have a clue how to do the whole linking thing otherwise i would link to the post(i believe it was titled "The age old question defined") and one would think that if parents did not have a socializing effect on their children they would all show up for school drooling, in diapers, and without the ability to speak, share or generally care for others. argh...okay i'm done now.
I just listened to the broadcast -- you should really make the effort, Scott. It's easy -- just an MP3 that can be played by just about any audio software. If you have trouble, I can burn a CD for you.
Scott, what's the source for the claim that Reich supports a mandatory two weeks away from parents for homeschooled kids? I'm intrigued but can't find a source for it anywhere (even after slogging through 22 pages at NHEN...). Thanks.
