Potshots at Home Schooling

[patriot]

Potshots at Home Schooling
by Jodie Gilmore

Critics of the home-schooling movement continue to snipe at parents who teach their children at home, portraying them as paranoid radicals and, now, potential terrorists.

If you can’t beat ’em, smear ’em. Apparently that is the approach adopted by critics of home schooling. One such disturbing example of a smear on the credibility of home-schoolers came in the form of the February 17, 2004 episode of NBC’s Law and Order — Special Victims Unit.

In that episode, the criminal, a home-schooling mother, was shown to be a controlling, paranoid, mentally abusive woman who convinced her older son to kill his younger brother and then attempt suicide so that the boys wouldn’t become wards of the state.

Throughout the show, with only one notable exception, insinuations were constantly being made that home schooling is the province of recluses and people who have things to hide. The show went to great lengths to draw parallels between the woman’s criminal behavior and her desire to home-school her children. Needless to say, it was a mean-spirited portrayal, obviously meant to demonize home--schoolers.

A second such recent smear occurred in the Muskegon Area Intermediate School District, in Michigan. The school district, in conjunction with the Muskegon County Emergency Services, decided to sponsor an “emergency preparedness drill.” According to the Muskegon Chronicle, the script of the mock attack called for a school bus to be overturned by a bomb, with students from the school district, especially the theater class, playing roles enthusiastically — banging on the inside of the bus, waiting to be “rescued.”

The script stated that the fictitious terrorists were a group of home-schooling radicals labeled “Wackos Against Schools and Education” who believed everyone should be home-schooled.

As soon as it learned of the drill, the Michigan Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) called the school district, stating that “[It] is offensive to millions of people who have chosen to exercise their right to homeschool. Homeschoolers have never committed violent acts against public schools or any terrorist acts.”

Faced with an outraged HSLDA, the Muskegon Area Intermediate School District Superintendent, Michael Bozym, issued an apology stating, in part: “This exercise was meant to sharpen the skills and response time of our emergency services personnel, but was unfortunately clouded by the choice of this fictional group.... We sincerely regret offending home school educators.”

In addition, the script writer, Daniel Stout, stated that the “fictional group and scenario made reference to fictional people who are against schools. This fictional group and scenario was not meant to offend any home school students. It has nothing to do with any home school -population.”

Although representatives of both the school and the sheriff’s department issued apologies for the incident, the mere fact that no one at either establishment insisted upon the removal of this ugly portrayal of home-schoolers from the script before it was used for enactment purposes further illustrates how embedded the bias against home-schoolers remains.

Why is that? Why do media people and government officials at all levels love to hate home-schoolers? It boils down to the bare fact that people who are home-schooling their children are not buying into the direction our country is being pushed. They have their own set of values and are willing to stand against the tide to uphold those values.

Indeed, according to a pamphlet published by the Phoenix, Arizona, office of the Joint Terrorism Task Force (which operates under the auspices of the FBI), “numerous references to the U.S. Constitution” is one of the ways you can spot a potential terrorist. The pamphlet also points out as potential terrorists “defenders of [the] U.S. Constitution against the federal government and the U.N.” and “lone individuals.” With this definition of what constitutes a potential terrorist, it is not surprising that the script in Michigan targeted home-schoolers.

Unfortunately, in cases such as these, something done cannot be undone. Even though the school district and sheriff’s department issued apologies, the damage was done.

[seektravelinfo]

My child is home skooled.

[mach1]

women who mother alone have
a lot of attittude to deal with from
society
it can be done but all the research
is pointing the other way
because researchers have always
been content to
be looking in particular areas
theres also supposed to be certain type of guilt
complex associated with raising a child on your own

in the tamil language, mothering means the same thing as feeding
so why should the kid go to school to feed when he can feed at home?

-

Book from Amazon

Mothering and Ambivalence
by Wendy Hollway

Synopsis

Parenting, lone motherhood and the
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social life. Wendy Hollway, University of Leeds;
Brid Featherstone, University of Bradford;
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Susie Orbach, Psychotherapist; Rozs


Book Description
Parenting, single motherhood and the breakdown
of the family are all subjects of current political
and social debate in the West, and there is little
agreement among cultural commentators on what
mothers should be, what children need, and how
those needs conflict with parental needs. The
contributors to Mothering and Ambivalence
address these issues, countering the reluctance
of current feminist literature to embrace
psychoanalytic understandings of dependency,
identity and anxiety. They use psychoanalysis
to go beyond the often simplistic claims of the
political debate on mothering. In discussions of
parenting and gender relations within families,
the authors also surmount the narrowness of
purely feminist polemics, remembering the
importance of the diverse identities for women
who become mothers.

[SoloPilot]

The real problems that public schools have with homeschoolers are A), the homeschooled students tend to learn more, and B), fewer kids in public school mean fewer teachers needed.

[Aegis]

Meh. Public school makes you tough. When your dad yells at you, you write it off; after all, by the time you are 12 he's been yelling at you as long as you've been able to walk.

When a man who is of no blood relation (say, a wrestling or footbal coach) yells at you, you realize that maybe you ARE being a dumbass and need to shape up.

Just my opinion.

[kilroy]

A), the homeschooled students tend to learn more,

i doubt that. very much.

also, quite a lot of homeschool kids tend to lack social skills that would be otherwise developed in public school (unless they are involved in other extracurricular activities such as little league or 4H).

i've known homeschooled kids who were brilliant, and their parents really knew what they were doing, but i've also known some really dumbass kids who would have turned out with a lot more knowledge if their parents hadn't wrongly thought they could teach better than public schools. depends on how much time and effort the parents put in, and how good they are at teaching, i guess.

[Prodigal Son]

The problems with the US public school system all basically come down to the fact it is a local service provided by local government through property taxes. Not all people are capable of "voting with their feet" by purchasing homes in districts with good schools. This, as everyone knows, effectively keep rich and poor separate but unequal in terms of education services.

Far better would be to simply nationalize school funding and then distribute that funding directly to parents in the form of school vouchers that they could then spend on any school in America so long as it met certain criteria. This would increase competition through consumer choice AND increase funding through federal intervention.

[patriot]

Good point Prodigal. The public school systems are in need of reform whether it be funding, or administrative.

I feel the biggest problem people have with public schools is the stringent system of conformity and punishment. My highschool, for instance, actually went to a prison (yes a prison) to take notes on discipline and such.

A lot of public schools seem like they want to force the trouble-makers to fail out instead of getting them to learn by their own devices. Given, some people are encouragable, but sometimes the school is very transparent in their disiplinary methods.

I believe I talked about B.I.C. (Behavior Improvement Center) before, where the student is disiplined by being taken out of a class for as long as the dean deems necessary. I feel this is very damaging to a student's ability to properly keep up with his or her studies. This is even more-so the case with expulsion and suspension.

After Columbine and Nine-Eleven the public schools have turned into numbers factories with extremely strict regulations and rules that are often enforced by careless administrators who themselves were never any fun to be around. They are teaching our kids to accept authority as the absolute, and conformity as the norm, and those who choose not to conform will be punished and ostrosized.

[Prodigal Son]

You raise a good point though patriot -- US public schools are on an agricultural calendar and based on an industrial model in a post-industrial world. The reason there is no reform goes beyond the right's simple answer that bureaucratic and union opposition stop it quite simply because for the rich and middle classes there is no education crisis -- their schools work because they are able to afford to live in districts that have good schools.

Imagine if every parent could spend vouchers on the school of their choice. Imagine the competition that would take place! Your kid likes math and science? How about send junior to a school that specializes in those things? Junior like the arts and the humanities? Send them to a school that places special emphasis on that. Does he or she like computer and computer programming? Send him or her that specializes in information technology. Want a school with discipline? How about to a school modeled on military academies? Local control and local monopoly conspire to both keep the less unfortunate out of the best schools AND supress what public schools can offer. The result is inequality and mediocrity.

[Buzzsaw]

That was very funny, Seeks.

I've come to the conclusion that nothing has been done about America's almost universally shitty public schools because it isn't important to us as a culture. It may be important to many people, but it's completely unimportant to others, and the mass inertia of the average perception of its non-importance keeps anything from being done.

When as a culture we actually give a shit, something will get done. You've seen how motivated Americans can be about what they think of as important, like fighting the Germans, buying cars, defending until death a fundametally flawed social security system, or watching American Idol. But the culture as a whole doesn't really value education or we would have done something by now.

Same thing goes for health care.



The same thing

[Prodigal Son]

I'm not so sure about that buzz -- the "rich" and the middle classes get generally ok education and health care so its simply not in their interest to take a risk on reform. It's interesting to note that the folks most in favor school choice are free-marketeer conservatives AND poorish urban blacks -- talk about politics makes strange bedfellows.

[Buzzsaw]

Actually, that's exactly what I mean, Prodigal.

Most of the middle class has "OK" public schools. They're reasonably safe, the kids are supervised, get something resembling an education, and are out of their parents hair all day. They should be a lot better, but Americans are happy enough with this mediocrity and don't see any reason to change. If ALL the schools were absolutely horrible, then people would give a shit and something would get done.

But because schools are "good enough", the mass of opinion is leave it as is. People may bitch and grumble, but there is no hope of any real change. It simply isn't important.

The people discussing sweeping change like in this thread are on the fringe. The mass of opinion is in the center--inertia.

[SoloPilot]

Kilroy:

Are you saying that dumbass kids learn better from dumbass teachers?

In some states, parents who want to homeschool have to take some of the SAME EXAMS that teachers take, but they have to pass the first time -- teachers have three tries over a period of a couple of years, if they fail the first time.

That means that, in those states, ALL homeschool teachers have passed their exams, while not all public school teachers have passed their exams.

How much more "social skills" practice do kids get when they are told to sit down, don't talk to the other kids, and do their work?

[Skirita]

portraying them as paranoid radicals

Well my little brothers are all homeschooled and while this is not always true, in my family's case, I agree. See, I rebelled against my father's ultra-evangelical Pentacostalism and my mother's bipolar overprotective psychosis in high school. My parents convinced themselves it had something to do with the outstanding art magnet school I was going to (ranked #2 school in the STATE) and not the fact that I was too smart to accept their wacky Christo-fascism. I graduated from public schools but all the younger ones (there's a 21 year age gap between me and the youngest) are locked up in the house all day, with the exception of an occasional karate class. My sister graduated as a home-schooler and now she doesn't even want to go to college because she has no peers or teachers to influence her. Everything she knows, she learned from the Internet.

Far better would be to simply nationalize school funding

Prodigal - Nationalize education? Where exactly in the Constitution does it say that the federal government is in charge of education?

Your national education scheme is nothing more than a bandaid. People like you always play the class warfare card, because it isn't politically correct to diagnose the REAL problems: parental irresponsibility and our culture's misplaced priorities.

I feel particularly qualified to chime in on this because, wouldn't you know it, I teach high school kids. Furthermore my dad is a struggling self-employed sole-provider and we lived on the "wrong side of the tracks" when I was in high school. I went to a "ghetto" high school (2% white non-hispanic) for my freshman & senior years, but unlike the overwhelming majority of my peers, I *gasp* did my homework. Unlike the majority of my peers, my parents set very high academic standards for me. Because of this, I was able to attend that outstanding art magnet school, even though it was 45 miles away in downtown, a 90 minute commute on public transit. I made the effort. Left my house at 5:30AM, got home around 5:30PM... then went to work until 9PM and still managed to graduate with an 'A' GPA.

And I saw firsthand that the dominant attitude in that primarily African-American high school was the Jesse Jackson "I'll never be successful because the Evil White Man will keep me down, so I won't do any work; instead, I'll try and 'make it' through football/basketball/etc, and besides, I can always fall back on the federal gov't" thing. In my AP classes, the percentage of African-Americans was disproportionately low, in the 10% range. But we all went to the same local elementary and middle schools, so unless you believe in genetic inferiority, I think that speaks volumes about cultural differences.

Some jackass on here will probably call me racist, but its not racist to point out fucked up priorities.

Regardless of where they live, anyone in Miami (the Poorest City in the US per capita, two years in a row) can attend any of the following excellent public magnet programs:

New World School of the Arts
#1 school in the state, offers programs for all visual and performing arts (drawing, painting, photography, theatre, dance, etc.)

Design & Architecture Senior High
was #2 when I went there, offers dual-enrollment courses in Architecture, Graphic/Industrial Design, Fashion, etc.)

Marine & Science Technology Academy
ranked in the top 5, offers courses in marine bio, oceanography, etc.

Coral Reef Magnet High School
Outstanding new school located in the ghetto that offers AP programs in all the liberal arts and humanities. Ranked in the top 5 statewide.

The School of Advanced Studies
Located on campus at Miami-Dade Community College. Students earn their Associate in Arts degree while in high school, taking any electives they want, without paying college tuition at what has long been ranked the best community college in the US.

Not to mention the numerous magnet middle schools, the work-study and executive internship programs you can take in high school, etc.

The caveat is that students have to make the effort. Nationalizing public education won't solve shit. If anything, it will dumb down standards so that everyone passes.

The locally funded education system is fine. Your "let the government do everything, including being a good parent" attitude is what's fucking it up. You won't see that in University of Illinois poli-sci classes because those are big kids who want to be there, Prodigal, but I see it everyday working with high school kids.

[Buzzsaw]

Great post, Skit.

The finished good suck because the raw material product is shit.