Home Schooling: "Not Just For Scary Religious People Anymore"
That's a line from Buffy The Vampire Slayer with which Glenn Reynolds led off his US Today piece on home schooling, which is increasingly becoming acceptable and palatable to "regular people." Reynolds writes:
The fact is, Americans across the country -- but especially in large, urban school systems -- are voting with their feet and abandoning traditional public schools, to the point that teachers are facing layoffs. Some are going to charter schools, which are still public but are run more flexibly. Some are leaving for private schools. But many others are going another step beyond traditional education, and switching to online school or even pure home schooling....New York's public school system is indeed notoriously inadequate. And, like most public school systems (or public systems of any kind), it's run more for the convenience of the staff and bureaucrats than for the benefit of parents or kids. Some kids do fine anyway, of course, and some parents aren't in a position to pursue alternatives. But for many parents, traditional schooling is no longer the automatic default choice.
That makes sense. Traditional public schools haven't changed much for decades (and to the extent they have, they've mostly gotten worse). But the rest of the world has changed a lot. The public who eagerly purchased Henry Ford's Model T (available in any color you want, so long as it's black!) now lives in a world where almost everything is infinitely customized and customizable. That makes one-size-fits-all education, run on a Fordist model itself, look like a bad deal.
For "notoriously inadequate" public school systems, as I argue in a new "Broadside" from Encounter Books, The K-12 Implosion, the risk is that the outflow of kids will turn from a trickle into a flood. At some point, it's a death-spiral: As kids (often the best students) leave because schools are "notoriously inadequate," the schools become even more notoriously inadequate, and funding -- which is computed on a per-pupil basis -- dries up. This, of course, encourages more parents to move their kids elsewhere, in a vicious cycle.
Does this mean the end of public education? No. But it does mean that the old model -- which dates to the 19th Century, when schools were explicitly compared to factories -- is at risk. Smarter educators will start thinking about how to update a 19th Century product to suit 21st Century realities. Less-smart educators will hunker down and fight change tooth and nail.
More on home schooling from The Economist.
The first question is where is public education in the federal constitution? Tertiary: where is the Department of Education listed in the U.S. Constitution?
The second question is where is public education defined in your state's constitution?
Then the next question why are you limited to a school by your domicile's zip code or home's location? Are you limited to a coffee shop, grocery store, department store or any other commercial act by your zip code or home's location?
Do you work in the same zip code as you live in?
If you work at home, why can't your kid learn at home as well?
What if your child was at home the day of the Sandy Hook shooting -- would they be a target?
Just asking questions to provoke thought.
Jim P. at January 9, 2013 10:25 PM
With the internet many alternatives exist, especially to help/ suppliment the at home schooling. the Khan institute is great at this. Public school is run by union thugs an unchanging dinosaur.
The few homeschooled kids I've met were very well educated. As many detractors will claim , un-socialized, I'd use a different term, differently socialized. They were polite, independent, and often went against the grain. Three characteristics often lacking in the public schooled students.
Joe J at January 9, 2013 11:37 PM
@Jim: Nowhere, of course. Public education has always been run by local communities. It is only relatively recently that the feds have stuck their ugly nose into local education. The answer to the rest: normally, your local community funds the local schools from local taxes. Local kids have no right to attend schools managed and funded in a different community. That, at least, is how the schools are supposed to work.
The problem is the usual one: bureaucracies ultimately lose sight of their real purpose, and instead focus on growing their own power. The only important employees of a school are the teachers; with few exceptions, the teachers are not involved in the administration. Hence, the administrative bureaucracy ignores the real needs of the classroom.
Teachers' unions are no better. Initially, they had a genuine purpose. But again: individual teachers are not involved in the union bureaucracy, and ultimately the union focuses solely on growing its own power.
The only solution is to starve the bureaucracies. In the context of the current system, vouchers are probably the only way to handle this. If the public schools want to retain any customers, the administration will have to become more efficient, and the unions will have to support teacher quality. Otherwise, the public schools will not be competitive, and will ultimately cease to exist. Of course, you can expect both groups (school administrations and teachers' unions) to argue loudly against vouchers, because - whatever else happens - vouchers will destroy their power.
a_random_guy at January 10, 2013 1:16 AM
Good luck with that starve the beast theory. The power to levy property taxes, whether you use the school system or not, makes that point moot.
It's getting to that "ultimately" that is going to hurt.
MarkD at January 10, 2013 5:17 AM
I love this trend. I'm a former public school teacher, degreed and everything, now working in a non-education job because I had to get out of teaching. I love the kids, but the system was killing me.
I was home-schooled myself in the upper grades, for health reasons, and so I'm involved in the home school "movement." Based on my experiences in both the home and public school circles, I don't think home school is super-awesome, I think that public school is so dreadful that it makes home school LOOK fantastic.
The Original Kit at January 10, 2013 5:30 AM
How timely that this is the one of the topics today. This morning, my husband, a teacher, informed me of a change administration is making to his school that I think is abhorrent. This new policy puts even more pressure on the teachers, utilizes more resources (that they don’t have), and puts more stress on the kids. And, it’s guaranteed to fail. Gauranteed. So, what’s the point? Well, to make it appear as if they are doing something, anything, to increase their scores, of course. I can’t get into the details really, but it’s one of those changes that’s a “let’s show them that we’re DOING something” type of change instead of “let’s find a way to make this a better school” solutions. Change for the sake of change, basically.
I find that the most ineffectual schools are the ones that have little to no parental and local citizen involvement. I find it very telling that I am more upset about this upcoming change that negatively effects the students at the school my husband teaches at than the parents and members of that community are. I don’t even have kids or live in that county so I have no stake in the public education system there, at all, really. However, I recognize the importance of educating the future generation properly. These kids are the ones that will be running our country (what’s left of it, anyway) in the future. I also recognize the undue burden we place on teachers. And, since my tax dollars are used for public education despite my not having any kids in it, I do feel responsible, as a citizen, for our public education system.
This, however, doesn’t seem all that uncommon. Those with the most to lose are their own kids and these parents seem to be perfectly content to let the kids take the hit so long as they continue to get their free (to them) babysitting and parental substitute services.
Here’s what’s wrong with our education system... Lazy, uninvolved parents. Blame ineffective teachers, unions, and the over-reaching government all you want, and there is certainly PLENTY of blame to share there, but until the parents start giving a damn about their kids education, it won’t change. At least, not for the better. And, what's worse is that these parents are completely ignorant themselves. They will continue to vote for the politicians that make these changes because they like to vote for warm, fuzzy, idealical candidates who promise unicorns when all they really have to offer is a pile of horse turds because it's the "easy" path for them. The other candidate might actually hold them accountable, and we can't have that can we?
Congratulations, parents. You’ll be responsible for the next generation of illiterate adults that enter the world with no skills, ability for cognitive thinking, or the real capacity to contribute to society. But, maybe that’s the point. Who wants to put the work into rearing self-reliant adults these days? Not when you’ve got daddy government to take care of you.
Sabrina at January 10, 2013 6:02 AM
"Then the next question why are you limited to a school by your domicile's zip code or home's location? "
In my area it's well known that, if a slot is available, you can get your kid transferred to another school if you tell the school board the right kind of story. And any child that can pass the requisite test can get transferred to a magnet school, of which there are a bunch now.
Here's the trend that I see: public schools in the better neighborhoods are still doing fairly well, but in the not-so-good neighborhoods, enrollment is plummenting. The pattern: certain subsets of middle-class parents are pulling their kids out of public school and putting them into a variety of alternatives -- magnet schools, charter schools (actually not too many of those around here yet), traditional private schools, Khan-type academies, informally organized co-op schools run by parents, or home schooling.
As that happens and slots in the better public schools open up, some parents from the lower economic classes get their kids transferred to these schools. That is emptying out the poor-performing schools. I'm thinking of one high school in our area which has always had a poor reputation, but during the baby-bust years of the 1970s, it was full. Now it's less than half utilized, and the school board is talking about tearing down parts of it to save on maintenance costs. The other thing that is happening is that, as the parents from the lower economic classes who give a damn get their kids transferred to better schools, the lowest-performing and most troublesome kids are getting concentrated in the worst schools.
I will say that Sabrina has a good point -- one of the things that marks the lowest-performing schools is that concentration of students whose parents wouldn't bother sending them to school at all if it weren't for the truancy officers. Teachers' unions are a huge problem, but in the neighborhoods where the good schools are, the parents have more or less fought the union to a standstill. However, there is also this: the combination of the school board, parental fear, and unionized teachers makes it pretty difficult for adults -- particularly those that don't have children of their own -- to get involved. When I was a child, any adult that was interested could sit in on a classroom, if they made arrangements with the principal first. It happened pretty frequently and it helped keep everyone on the straight and narrow. These days, if I -- a middle-aged male with no children of my own -- dared to suggest that I should be allowed to do that, they'd have me arrested for child molestation before I even made it to the parking lot.
Cousin Dave at January 10, 2013 7:14 AM
Let's make this perfectly clear.
In New Jersey, teachers are forced to pay the union. This amounts to taxpayer subsidy in the millions per year. This money does NOT get to any classroom.
Radwaste at January 10, 2013 8:17 AM
Talking about public schools as though they were one monolithic beast is pointless. Lots of public schools are very good. Those schools tend to be in areas with a strong tax base and educated, involved parents. Schools in poor neighborhoods aren't doing as well, and I'm not sure homeschooling those kids is the answer. The parents are often poorly educated themselves, and if both parents are working, they don't have the time to be educating their children. Never mind if there's only one parent there to begin with.
My sister-in-law tried homeschooling my nephew for several years. Today, he's barely literate, in part because she wasn't very disciplined about it and in part because SHE's barely literate. He would have been better off even in a poorly run public school. Another parent I know tried but just didn't have the stamina to continue. Other kids are doing fine with it, but those kids frequently come from the kinds of homes where they probably would have been fine either way.
MonicaP at January 10, 2013 8:49 AM
In other words, MonicaP, it's really hard to cope with the offspring of people who shouldn't have reproduced in the first place.
Yeah, I know. I think this is the root cause of most of our problems. I'm still wearing my tinfoil hat and trying to figure out how to get birth control into the water.
Teachers are expected to be social workers.
Pirate Jo at January 10, 2013 10:18 AM
Home School is often a tragedy. Too many of the teachers are ignorant themselves. I cringe at hearing some aquaintances are home schooling, when they can't manage a household budget, read a contract, write a proper sentence, have no sense of history before their own lifetime,abhor science, and always wait for the movie instead of reading the book. Some manage to learn a little from teaching, but mostly it is the blind leading the blind. There should be some qualifications, as some are home schooling and do not possess a HS diploma. Learning to deal with (or be inspired by) a variety of people is a part of real school, as is finding out who you are when your parents are not around. Many of these kids are getting no education at all, and guess who will be supporting them in the future?
bmused at January 10, 2013 10:42 AM
@Pirate Jo, Writer Theodore Sturgeon envisioned a designer edition sexually-transmitted virus with one effect-it coated all ova and sperm with a protein that rendered everyone sterile. It could easily be temporarily defeated-If a couple wanted to make a baby, both had to eat some odd food combination every day for 6 months. (I can't remember, Kale and canteloupe, tofu with sweet potatos...) The payoff: No more UNWANTED children. Creating life becomes an intentional act.
So put on that tinfoil tam-o-shanter and start thinking virus! I wish I could remember the name of the story, which appeared in Omni magazine. It's one of the best ideas ever. IMO.
bmused at January 10, 2013 11:02 AM
What Sabrina said. It's not the schools, it's the students and their families. Oh, and a couple decades of schools doing backflips trying to close the achievement gap by making school Fun and Relevant! When those very students at risk are the ones who would benefit the most from traditional rote memory and drill. At least they'd have some skills under their belt. As it is now they learn neither skills nor concepts.
Instead, the teachers have to teach them "concepts" and elicit "creativity" in creatures who can't speak in sentences or count on their fingers yet.
And yeah, I am not comforted by the thought of the illiterate teaching their own kids. It's probably like, we watch TV together and talk about stuff. Maybe.
carol at January 10, 2013 12:44 PM
@Pirate Jo,
I've thought of the birth control in the water too since the early nineties.
It's so against my libertarian ideals but with so many children unplanned by at least one parent...
Katrina at January 10, 2013 12:46 PM
Posted by: MonicaP at January 10, 2013 8:49 AM
Posted by: Pirate Jo at January 10, 2013 10:18 AM
Posted by: bmused at January 10, 2013 10:42 AM
____________________________
Brilliant comments from all three of you.
I was just flipping through the book "So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids" by Diane E. Levin Ph.D. and Jean Kilbourne Ed.D. (Jul 21, 2009) and it's pretty frightening/depressing. As the authors point out on page 162, the main difference between modern parents' calls of alarm and the famous complaints uttered by Socrates is that, in the words of media expert George Gerbner: "for the first time in human history, most of the stories about people, life, and values are told not by parents, schools, churches, or others in the community who have
something to tell, but by a group of distant conglomerates that have something to sell."
E.g., I'll bet in the 1970s and even 1980s, few parents had to deal with five-year-olds asking about the terms "oral sex" and "blowjob," which they heard not even from the news, but from their classmates!
Yet another reason I can't imagine having kids.
I really don't want to have to deal with schools full of kids who divide themselves into the sexy and non-sexy cliques even before kindergarten, not to mention kids whose parents buy them pretty much anything if the kids cry for it long enough - such as obscene T-shirts or mini-hooker outfits. I mean, if ALL parents said "fine, so long as you earn it by doing extra chores - and I will only pay you a dollar a day," I suspect MOST kids would stop demanding this or that status item pretty fast!
(And, as I've mentioned before, I also wouldn't want my kids to be surrounded by classmates who are otherwise smart and friendly but who do not read challenging books for fun - without pictures, for example - and see nothing wrong with that; they might even label kids who read as anti-social, since it's a solitary habit. Or whose PARENTS see nothing wrong with letting kids play video games all day once their chores and homework are done.)
lenona at January 10, 2013 3:58 PM
"I cringe at hearing some aquaintances are home schooling, when they can't manage a household budget, read a contract, write a proper sentence, have no sense of history before their own lifetime,abhor science, and always wait for the movie instead of reading the book."
That's not what I observe from most of the home-schoolers around here. I've done a bit of tutoring for them, and from what I've seen, most of them are 2-3 years ahead of their peers in public school. I don't doubt that there are some bad apples among the home-schoolers -- but public schools crank out millions of illiterate morons every year, too.
Cousin Dave at January 10, 2013 5:53 PM
Sabrina, I don't know, a mystery change which you guarantee is armagedon, but no one else sees it that way. Sure some parents don't care, but most do, they are either believing whet they are doing is the right thing, or don't see other choices.
Instead of them not caring, I see it more as parents don't see it coming out the way you do whether, because they are misinformed by unions, ( a huge thing in the last DC election) admin, or perhapse they are right.
Joe J at January 10, 2013 6:49 PM
My nephew is homeschooled because he couldn't fit in when he started kindergarten. Of course, that is the fault of the parents who never let him see others including family. They homeschool him through an online program. He should be in fifth grade this year, but he tests at first grade for reading and second grade for math and science. I know neither parent helps him or makes him put forth the effort though, and neither were good students themselves, nor that bright.
I think homeschooling is good for some kids, but only if the parents are actually intelligent and will put forth the time required to teach them what they need to learn. I'd like to homeschool my kids up until junior high or maybe high school age, but it's just impossible for me to do with my full-time job. I'm afraid their education would suffer because of it. I'm going to send them to private school assuming I'll be able to afford it without major financial hardship.
BunnyGirl at January 11, 2013 12:08 AM
Joe J.
(I am keeping it vague because my husband wishes to maintain some anonymity.)
I am not exaggerating about the negativity of this, and other recent changes and the lack of attention by the parents. I can concede that perhaps, some are either being told by administration and the union that all these changes are good or they are too ill-informed to know any better, but for the most part they truly just don’t care. The ones that do have transfered thier kids out. I am not saying this change is Armageddon, but it’s one more change they’ve made that is adding to the decline of that school. This decision reeks of desperation and I know it will fail because they’ve tried something like it before and it failed, miserably, which makes it even more absurd. And, how can any policy that puts more stress on the already over stressed teachers and funnels resources away from the students be good? They keep making decisions like this and things are just getting worse. I know the intentions behind these policies are good, but well… we know where good intentions lead.
I have an interesting perspective being the spouse of a teacher. While I can’t give a detailed report of what it’s like in the classroom, I can say without a shred of a doubt that every decision that has been made regarding the current education policy and teaching procedures thus far has only made good teachers’ jobs harder and has not made education any better. The policies have NOTHING to do with teaching. They have everything to do with maintaining order, increasing bureaucratic power and increasing test scores thus increasing funding.
My husband, though not perfect, is a good teacher. Unfortunately, his hands are tied by the union and the administration as to how he gets to teach. He grows increasingly frustrated every year. He says he can’t even call what he does “teaching” anymore; it’s babysitting. He’s at a point where he is contemplating leaving teaching and going back to the 9-5 type job he had before teaching. He’s expected to “teach the test”. Nothing more. They are severely understaffed and there is virtually no community or parental support and they are required to teach to the lowest denominator, most of whom don’t speak English. A lot of his kids come to school hungry and unprepared, and they don’t do their homework. Hubby has taken to keeping snacks (which is technically illegal), extra supplies (out of pocket), and two different sets of language dictionaries in his classroom so he can communicate with his Spanish and Haitian students. This is entirely the fault of the parents. There is only so much a teacher can be reasonably expected to be responsible for. Yet, the teachers are the ones continually being held accountable for the failings of the education system. When are we going to start holding parents accountable?
Sabrina at January 11, 2013 7:25 AM
My experience with home schooled and co-op schooled kids has been a mixed bag.
One thing I have noted is even the good home schooled kids seem to have odd holes in their knowledge. For example, one knew nothing of the Greek philosophers (e.g. no Plato or Socrates) and even the name Aristotle they thought was Aristotle Onassis - the shipping guy.
The Former Banker at January 11, 2013 9:09 AM
If he's keeping language dictionaries in his class so he can communicate to the Spanish and Haitian students, that is his first big mistake.
Children learn languages far more quickly than adults, and if he's speaking to them in their language, he's handicapping them. He'll slow down their English language fluency and virtually ENSURE their continued lack of progress.
You don't take the easy track on language, the best language instructors mandate THAT language ONLY in their class, and the students pick it up as they go along.
Not a lot you can do about parental indifference, that is what it is.
Indifferent parents create indifferent students more often than not.
Robert at January 11, 2013 1:23 PM
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