Slate's out with a provocative article in which the author declares that homeschooling is antiprogressive and disruptive to society. Sounds like a winning reason to accelerate the ongoing drive for homeschooling and charter schooling alternatives to public vegetation! Could such a go-it-alone ideology ever be truly progressive—by which I mean, does homeschooling serve the interests not just of those who are doing it, but of society as a whole?
This overheated hostility toward public schools runs throughout the new literature on liberal homeschooling, and reveals what is so fundamentally illiberal about the trend: It is rooted in distrust of the public sphere, in class privilege, and in the dated presumption that children hail from two-parent families, in which at least one parent can afford (and wants) to take significant time away from paid work in order to manage a process—education—that most parents entrust to the community at-large.
And therein lies the problem: the authoress fails to understand that there is no "right" to education enshrined in our Constitution, and for good reason - the Framers believed that education is one of those functions that can be fully accomplished by individuals or collective, community groups. Government, whether at the federal, state, or local level, simply has no role to play in education. Where the authoress views education as serving the interests of society as a whole, she completely fails to grasp the fundamental point that the purpose of education is to serve the interests of the individual receiving the education; an error in comprehension that she amplifies by stating:
Nor can we allow homeschoolers to believe their choice impacts only their own offspring.
She seems totalitarian in her perspective: Nor can we allow homeschoolers to believe...?
Despite her vast sense of self-importance, she fails to understand that in America, the purpose of government is to protect its citizens from attack, to ensure that our basic rights are free from restriction, and, toward these ends, to take steps to accomplish these ends when individuals or communities are unable to do so on their own. Clearly, education does not fall into such a category.
It's worth noting that the top performers in national math/science/language/geography competitions are, as a general rule, home-schooled. In fact, California universities (who only accept students from the top one-third of high school classes) have admitted that about 2/3 of their incoming students require remedial math and English.
Contrast this with the results of standardized tests on home-schooled students, who score at the 85th percentile on average.
The fact of the matter is that the spread of home-schooling and of charter schools over the past three decades, despite strong opposition by teachers' unions (and librarians, many of whom are also unionized) is a direct result of parental disgust with the state of public education, and who care about their children.
It is also a fact that data clearly indicate that American public education showed improvement in the years following WWII - until the federal government began to get involved; after which, scores declined. This decline became evident in 1965 and accelerated after the creation in 1979 of the Department of Education. This Department now spends $20 billion per year, $200 million of which is devoted to research that is supposedly geared toward improving educational practices in public schools.
Despite these expenditures, overall performance in public school output not only has failed, by any measure, to demonstrate substantive improvement, quite the opposite has occurred.
Charter schools and homeschooling options may not be liberal, and they may not be progressive - but unlike public vegetation in America today, they are options that produce results. Small wonder that unions hate these options so deeply.
It's a hoot watching the self-proclaimed advocates of diversity and equality (nevermind that the two concepts are mutually exclusive) discriminate against those who practice alternative methods of acquiring knowledge because they violate "progressive values".
Only "progressives" can raise judgmental zealotry for their oxymoronic religion to an art form.
Posted by: fallingpianos | February 19, 2012 at 07:54 PM
Interesting, isn't it? Just take a look at the comments following articles like the one in Friday's The Zero, which notes that the Clackistani Rebels got 8,000 petition signatures in six days. The rah-rah-light-rail types inevitably show up and leave comments like "if you don't like it. move".
And they're always newly-arrived, "progressive" interlopers.
Posted by: Max | February 19, 2012 at 09:16 PM
Consider the dropout rate from public schools. Consider Lunch Nazis and Bra Inspectors
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/13/student-bra-search-case-north-carolina-_n_1273975.html
California is about to pass a bill prohibiting lunch trucks from being within 1000 feet of a school (never mind that lunch truck food is not what it used to be, and is generally a lot better than that served in school cafeterias).
Every day, the case for home schooling gets stronger.
However, I do like the tack of the article: "Liberals, Don’t Homeschool Your Kids". The rest of us willl do just fine.
"teaching children at home violates progressive values."
Yeah - they might even learn some facts that overturn the liberal philosophy.
And, as usual, they take one isolated case (Astra Taylor) and use it to mark everyone else.
Poor Astra seems to have come out OK, though: "holds an MA in Liberal Studies ...taught sociology ... isted her as one of "25 new faces to watch ... She is vegan."
That last explains a lot.
Here's anothr example t=of the liberal unmind (is she's going to say "unschooled", I'll say "unmind')
"So when college-educated parents pull their kids out of public schools, whether for private school or homeschooling, they make it harder for less-advantaged children to thrive."
See? You brighter kids have to stay in our dismal schools so the "less-advantaged" kids can do well. By copying your homework and such. And beating you up for your lunch money.
Posted by: ZZMike | February 20, 2012 at 01:00 PM
Sometimes the headlines just write themselves...Although she said in her brief... (from your link to the underwear police story).
On Homeschooling Is Evil:
I found it ironic that the authoress went to Brown. By what passes for her logic, she should have attended community college in a low-income district, because by attending Brown, she made it harder for less-advantaged college students to thrive.
Posted by: Max | February 20, 2012 at 03:30 PM
I notice that they're using the word "unschooled" (a Bad Thing).
That must mean that the word "unchurched" is also a Bad Thing.
Posted by: ZZMike | February 21, 2012 at 07:55 PM