I was just now reading what seems to be the most uninformative and misleading article about homeschooling called Home Schools Run By Well-Meaning Amateurs by Dave Arnold, the head custodian for a public school in southern Illinois. It comes to us from--where else?--the web site of the NEA. While the disclaimer at the bottom says that the author does not necessarily reflect the views of the NEA, it's up on their web site for a reason: misinforming parents and teachers about homeschooling.

Setting the Record Straight
With "education" in the name, you'd think that the NEA would do its homework. Yet here are some glaring errors in the piece.

Misrepresenting the competition
Perhaps the oldest trick in the book, misrepresenting the competition with straw man arguments and then kicking the stuffing out of them is a logical fallacy that requires familiarity with the subject in order to spot it. Unfortunately, Arnold's presumed audience--parents and teachers curious about homeschooling--have no such familiarity. Thus, when Arnold tells his readers that homeschoolers don't care about socialization, the audience believes him.

Most homeschooling parents and organizations find plenty of opportunities for socialization. No parent wants to turn out a child that doesn't know how to interact with other people. Diversity within families, churches, and extra-curricular groups like Boy Scouts and community sports leagues all provide ample opportunity to a homeschooled child for socialization. Interestingly, most children in such a beneficial social environment end up being more self-controlled and mature than their public school counterparts.

Arnold even makes the mistake of misquoting a web site article by taking their remarks out of context. "'What about socialization?' he quotes, 'Forget about it!'" Arnold fails to give an accurate reference for the site he quotes, but after some digging, I turned up the article in question at http://homeschoolcentral.com/new.htm. Here is the context of the statement:

What About Socialization?

          Forget about it! The whole point is to carefully choose your child's social interaction. Socialization does indeed affect your children. Choose wisely those influences you want in their lives. The truth is, your children will get plenty of socialization from the neighborhood kids, church groups, and other outside activities. Beware! Don't spread yourself too thin. Try to keep outside activities to a minimum, they can really add stress to your life. Concentrate on your family learning together and having fun!

Clearly, parents aren't being told to neglect socialization. Quite to the contrary, they are advised that socialization affects their children and they need to choose wisely the influences they put in their child's life. This is a form of control afforded to parents by a homeschooling environment but one that’s impossible to find in a public school.

Belittling the competition
By the title of the article, Arnold implies that homeschooling parents are amateurs with no formal training. "Whether it is window-washing, bricklaying or designing a space station. [sic] Certain jobs are best left to the pros. Formal education is one of those jobs."

I had a car that was fairly dependable and inexpensive. Because I worked in an area prone to smog, an emissions test was required every year as part of its licensing. One year, it failed. I took it to one repair shop. I paid $300 in repairs and the car wouldn't pass emissions. I took it to the orignal repair shop and then to another shop. $200 later, the car still would not pass emissions. Finally, at the advice of a friend, I took the car back to the dealership. They gave it back to me after I tendered $150 with a clean bill of health and a clean emissions record. It turns out that all they needed to do was clean the carbon out of the engine. The problem with a "leave it to the pros" belief is that it gets expensive. A lot of people claim to be professionals and charge the money they think they can get, but only a few are truly experts in their field.

On one point Arnold and I agree: it is impossible to be an expert in everything. Parents are not full experts in all academic subjects, but they are the foremost authority on the subject of their children. They know each child's temperament, his natural abilities, his trained skills, and even what he likes for dinner. They understand what drives their child and what stops him cold. By the second day of class, you're lucky if the teacher even knows your name. Over the course of the year, a teacher must learn each child, usually 30 or more different subjects, each of which much more complicated than an academic subject. By the next year, a teacher is starting all over again with a new class, burying old teacher-child relationships that had just gotten underway. It's far more beneficial for a teacher to be an expert in a child than an expert in science or language arts. Subjects like math or reading are straightforward enough for someone who has learned the matter themselves in their own schooling. More advanced subjects like calculus or physics can be addressed by a tutor, if it comes to that. Tutors are much more flexible and a parent, the child's expert, is still in control of the overall relationship.

Perhaps the most offensive aspect of Arnold’s article is when he calls parents gullible for buying curricula from web sites for homeschooling families. Arnold pronounces,

It’s obvious to me that these organizations are in it for the money. They are involved in the education of children mostly in the hope of profiting at the hands of well-meaning but gullible parents.

Profit, for all its evil and non-socialist connotations, is how we feed and clothe ourselves in today’s society. Profiting by selling curricula that parents can use to educate their children in the way they want should be applauded, especially in a free market society. I suppose if the companies gave curricula away, Arnold might argue that you get what you pay for.

Follow The Money
Indeed, many more companies are in the business of education than just those catering to homeschooling families. Once glance at EducationWorld.com tells you that there is plenty of money to be made, especially when you have the school administrator’s eyes and ears.

There is money to be made in public schools, and not just by selling curricula and teaching aids. A lot of the money is made off the public. After all, it’s “their” school. In Washington, as much as $125,944 is spent on a student from kindergarten to graduation, working out to an annual charge of $1,605 for every man, woman, and child in the state. Where does that money go? Books and desks can’t be that expensive. If they are, I’m in the wrong business.

Teachers unions and a genuine lack of fair competition contribute to a bloated, ineffective public education system. The NEA makes other unions look bad by sabotaging the competition, spreading lies and misinformation, and wallowing in massive amounts of money.

According to a Wall Street Journal editorial from January 3, 2006,

…the NEA's top brass lives large. Reg Weaver, the union's president, makes $439,000 a year. The NEA has a $58 million payroll for just over 600 employees, more than half of whom draw six-figure salaries. Last year the average teacher made only $48,000...

I know from experience and research that it’s tough to live the middle class life in any city over 100,000 on less than $48,000 per year, which is where most teachers work. Still, the NEAs latest public relations slogan is “Great public schools for every child.” They never mention their price tag. Troubling is the revelation in the same editorial about special interest groups being funded by the NEA,

The NEA gave $15,000 to the Human Rights Campaign, which lobbies for "lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equal rights." The National Women's Law Center, whose Web site currently features a "pocket guide" to opposing Supreme Court nominee Sam Alito, received $5,000. And something called the Fund to Protect Social Security got $400,000, presumably to defeat personal investment accounts.

Perhaps the most problematic is the NEA’s investments in EPI and PFAW,

…last year the NEA gave $45,000 to the Economic Policy Institute, which regularly issues reports that claim education is underfunded and teachers are underpaid. The partisans at People for the American Way got a $51,000 NEA contribution; PFAW happens to be vehemently anti-voucher.

This is where leaving it to the professionals has gotten us. According to the latest disclosure by the government, the NEA’s total receipts for their national headquarters in 2005 was $341,239,670. Clearly, they are not underfunded. If anything, they understand that to keep your money coming, you need to invest some of it in keeping others out of the way. They will hang on to their position at the expense of everything else, especially underprivileged students who have no school choice.

That any education organization would choose to keep their students ignorant is reprehensible and vile. It’s also short-sighted. Minorities especially are warming up to the concept of homeschooling. No matter how tightly the NEA squeezes its grasp on education, families with a viable option will continue to slip out of public schools. Even charter schools, despite their rough start, are giving public schools competition, though they are based on similar models. Clearly, the NEA is in trouble and it’s only a matter of time.

• Send to a Friend!