Every few weeks, an op-ed piece or blog post spouting anti-homeschooling rhetoric gets the attention of homeschool groups across the country and, predictably, we jam up email lists and send out letters to the editor and descend in large numbers on blogs.
And every once in a while, I'll stick a small comment about it on my blog, but I seldom do my own spouting about it just because by the time I can sit down and spout, whatever I would say has been said.
But Jesse Scaccia's The Case Against Homeschooling had enough ignorance and arrogance crammed into one small blog post that I'm going to go ahead and spout. Possibly at length.
First, though, I want to address some of the ignorance that homeschoolers at the other end of the homeschooling spectrum chose to leave in their comments on Jesse's blog. Because I hate it when other homeschoolers perpetuate the stereotypes that lead to mindless diatribes like Jesse's.
There were several comments that caught my attention, but the exerpt below pretty much sums them up...
"And, gee, we know public schools have no problems at all with racism or intolerance or, for that matter, anti-Christian attitudes, liberalism, socialism, communism, homosexuality, “free love”, drug use, anti-Americanism, reverse racism, affirmative action, waste, fraud, low standards, stupidity, and ignorance, right?"Seriously, homeschooling person, did you have to go there? Couldn't you just have addressed Jesse's points or at least his pitiful grammar without sinking to his level and seeming to confirm that, yes, homeschoolers are, in fact, intolerant paranoid bigots?
Next time, if you want to advocate for homeschoolers? Don't. Please.
Now, since most of the homeschoolers I know are not sterotypes, I'm moving on. To Jesse.
Jesse, are you really a teacher? Because I was. For years. My husband still is. And most teachers I know don't sit around sharing Deep Thoughts about homeschooling. They don't sit around the teachers' lounge trashing homeschoolers. They have other things to worry about. If they did have Deep Thoughts about homeschooling and for some reason felt like sharing, most of the teachers I know would learn something about it
before making a very public statement seeped in ignorance. Because it's damned embarrassing to get publically humiliated. Which you have been.
At least spend fifteen minutes of your time googling homeschool blogs before making dumbass assumptions.
On to your points (some edited for space):
10. “You were totally home schooled” is an insult college kids use when mocking the geeky kid in the dorm (whether or not the offender was home schooled or not). Um, yeah. So...? That says a lot more about the kids using the insult than the geek.
9. Call me old-fashioned, but a students’ classroom shouldn’t also be where they eat Fruit Loops and meat loaf (not at the same time I hope). It also shouldn’t be where the family gathers to watch American Idol or to play Wii. Students–from little ones to teens–deserve a learning-focused place to study. In modern society, we call them schools.You're old-fashioned. Okay. Not really. You are, however, narrow-minded. My kids don't eat Fruit Loops, but they do eat in the same room where they learn. They play wii in the same room where they learn. They sleep in the same room where they learn. Because they learn everywhere. Sometimes we sit at the table and do what you probably view as work. Sometimes we even use a textbook. Sometimes they cover the living room floor with cardboard and tape and marbles, because that's learning, too. Sometimes they spend hours curled up on their beds, or my bed, reading. Sometimes we learn in the woods by the river and sometimes we learn in DC. Or at the beach. Or in the van. You remember how schools used to take field trips? We get to do that. A lot.
8. Homeschooling is selfish.My first responsibility is to my children. I'm not sacrificing them to a system that is not working. I can work on reform on the outside while my husband works on it on the inside, but, in the meantime, I guess I'll be a little selfish. For my kids. But, to be clear, we're not even close to wealthy. We barely hit middle class.
7. God hates homeschooling. The study, done by the National Center for Education Statistics, notes that the most common reason parents gave as the most important was a desire to provide religious or moral instruction. To the homeschooling Believers out there, didn’t God say “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations”? Didn’t he command, “Ye shall be witnesses unto me”? From my side, to take your faithful children out of schools is to miss an opportunity to spread the grace, power and beauty of the Lord to the common people.We're secular homeschoolers, as are most families we know. So your argument in that regard is a FAIL. From the viewpoint of a Christian homeschooler, I would bet that your argument would fare no better because the Bible also instructs you to pluck out your eye if it causes you to sin.
6. Homeschooling parent/teachers are arrogant to the point of lunacy. For real!Given the arrogance in your entire post, I think I'll just leave this alone. Your own lunacy (as well as bad grammar, especially in the part I did not quote--are you really an English teacher? With a degree in English?) speaks for itself.
5. As a teacher, homeschooling kind of pisses me off. (That’s good enough for #5.)Just for the purpose of clarity, being a teacher does not automatically mean that homeschooling is going to piss you off. That's your own personal issue.
4. Homeschooling could breed intolerance, and maybe even racism. Unless the student is being homeschooled at the MTV Real World house, there’s probably only one race/sexuality/background in the room. How can a young person learn to appreciate other cultures if he or she doesn’t live among them?Homeschooling
could breed intolerance and maybe even racism. It could. I've seen it. But the worst intolerance and racism we've witnessed has been in public school. The racism my daughter and the handful of other black students in her class faced in second grade from their teacher, unchecked by the school, is a large part of why we finally decided to homeschool. Our homeschool group is more diverse than her school was. Homeschooling alone doesn't lead to racism and intolerance. People do. And if parents are going to teach their children bigotry, they're going to do it regardless of where their child is educated.
3. And don’t give me this “they still participate in activities with public school kids” garbage. Socialization in our grand multi-cultural experiment we call America is a process that takes more than an hour a day, a few times a week. Homeschooling, undoubtedly, leaves the child unprepared socially.This shows an astounding ignorance. You need to learn more about homeschool communities and the opportunties we have available to us. My kids are disturbingly well-socialized.
2. Homeschooling parents are arrogant, Part 2. According to Henry Cate, who runs the Why Homeschool blog, many highly educated, high-income parents are “probably people who are a little bit more comfortable in taking risks” in choosing a college or line of work. “The attributes that facilitate that might also facilitate them being more comfortable with home-schooling.”
More comfortable taking risks with their child’s education? Gamble on, I don’t know, the Superbowl, not your child’s future.Hmm. Risks and actual learning vs. a curriculum shaped around a poorly designed standardized test.
1. And finally… have you met someone homeschooled? Not to hate, but they do tend to be pretty geeky***.Really? That's an argument against homeschooling? Because what? Geeks don't exist in public school? And uh...you haven't met my kids.
