Homeschoolers are Amazing!

It's always refreshing when someone from outside the homeschooling world shares some positive thoughts about homeschooling and homeschoolers. 

Years ago, a public high school teacher friend of ours told us that he could always pick out the kids in his classes that had been homeschooled prior to entering high school.  He said that he had found that homeschooled kids had a level of social and academic maturity that went far beyond the level of maturity displayed by the other kids in his classes.  He had found homeschooled kids to be much better equipped to handle the academic AND social pressures of high school.  That sure was nice to hear from a public school teacher.  While most homeschoolers don't "need" reassurance from their non-homeschooling friends, it's sure encouraging to hear it from time to time! 

For the last several years, it has been my privilege to help administrate the social media outlets for a large homeschool curriculum publisher.  During that time I worked closely with social media expert, Ryan Egan.  Though Ryan didn't come to his job with a background rich in homeschool knowledge or experience, his focus on ministry and his passion for people very quickly became very evident to every homeschoolers that he began to interact with on a daily basis.  The homeschoolers that got to know Ryan on Twitter and Facebook soon realized that they had a great friend and advocate in him!

But it would seem that while we were being encouraged by Ryan, he was learning from us. During his time working in the "homeschool world" (he recently moved on to a new job), Ryan discovered a few things about homeschoolers.  A recent post on his blog, Homeschoolers are Amazing--What I Learned from Working for a Homeschool Curriculum Company, shares some of what he learned from us.

Let me tell you what homeschoolers aren’t:

• Unsocialized – Kill this stereotype immediately.  The majority of homeschoolers I interacted with were easy to talk to, easy to work with, and had kids that could hold intelligent conversations with adults while still being able to play with infants and toddlers.
• Behind the times – There are some incredibly tech and web-savvy people homeschooling their children.  To be honest, many were utilizing way more technology than the average family does.
• Boring – In a word….no.  Many of these families do more in one year than many families do in an entire lifetime.
• Lazy – Many people think that homeschoolers don’t work hard and just want to let their kids slide through education.  That is SO far from the case.  You would not believe the organizational skills everyone has and the immense concern for making sure their children are properly educated.

It's a wonderful...and very encouraging post!  There's more, so I would encourage you to go read the rest of what Ryan learned about homeschoolers during his years working for a homeschool publishing company!

Thanks for being a part of our world for 3 years, Ryan!   We think you're pretty amazing, too!

A Homeschooler Goes to College

Kate Fridkis, blogger at Eat The Damn Cake and Skipping School, has written for Jezebel, The Forward, the Huffington Post, and more. She lives in Brooklyn, and is writing a book about her experiences as a homeschooler.

In "A Homeschooler Goes to College" (excerpted below), Kate shares some of her experiences as a homeschooled student in the sometimes hostile, always boring college world. It's well worth reading!

I went to college when I was 18, like everyone else. But unlike other people, I had never been to school before. The first standardized test I ever took was the SAT. The day I took it was the first time I’d ever been in a high school classroom. It didn’t seem like a fun place.

I started college as a Music Ed major, because while I didn’t know what I wanted to study, I knew I liked music. The Intro to Music Education teacher, a woman I’ll call Mrs. Grimini, had taught kindergarten at a local school before joining the university faculty. She led us in songs like “The wheels on the bus go round and round!” She wanted us to share a memory of our own music teachers from kindergarten and first grade.

Everyone had one: The triangle. Holding hands in a circle. Those rainbow xylophones.

“Actually,” I said, “I didn’t go to school. But my dad is a jazz pianist?”

He played every day when I was a little kid. I used to sit under the piano and he’d ask if I could remember the melody, or he’d teach me how to play a few notes. Sometimes I sat with him on the couch in the darkened living room and we listened to Gustav Holst’s “The Planets” together, talking about how scary Mars was, and how big Jupiter was. We were almost never not listening to music.

But before I could say any of that, Mrs. Grimini interrupted me. “Home-schooled?” she said tightly.

“Yes,” I said, offering my politest smile.

“OK, you don’t need to participate.” And she moved on....(read more)

I'm Outraged!

A friend put a major damper on my day when she sent me a link to a poll in my local newspaper on Saturday morning.  I just get so riled up by stuff like this.  Here's the poll:

The recent death of 14-year-old Matthew Degner from Berwyn in a house of squalor has raised questions over how government officials can help children living in social isolation. Should families who are home-schooling their children be required to register with the state?

Yes, the state needs to know who these children are

No, the law allows families to keep this information private

Home-school families should establish a registry of their own

Neighbors must do more to socialize with families who keep to themselves

First.  None of the possible responses accurately express my desired response.  Second.  There is no provision for responding publicly to the poll.  That's very irritating.  So I wrote to the editors and shared my thoughts.  I started by asking a few questions...

1. Should the fact that this one child died in a "house of squalor" be the catalyst for regulation of an entire movement which is statistically more successful (socially and academically) than the public school system in America?  
2. Isn't it likely that there are public school children living in squalor, neglect, and abuse?  How has "knowing who these children are" helped them?  
3. And what about the kids that are "living in social isolation" in public schools.  There's no isolation worse than being in the middle of a group of people who ostracize you, ridicule you, and bully you.  How did being "registered by the state" help the children who have taken their own lives as a result of living in this kind of isolation day after day? 
4. Your poll intimates that the entire homeschooling movement should share the burden of guilt in the death of this child.  The next time a child commits suicide as a direct result of being bullied by his school peers, will you publish a poll that places the burden of guilt at the feet of the institution of public education and call for greater regulation of that entire institution?
5. And what about the next time a public school child dies as a result of parental neglect/abuse, are you prepared to publish a poll that implies the child's school was complicit in the tragedy and should be more heavily regulated? 

Because this poll was published with no facts or information of any kind, it leads its uninformed readers to draw the conclusion that greater regulation will save the lives of hundreds of thousands of abused and neglected homeschool children.  What caring person wouldn't click the button next to "Yes, the state needs to know where these children are?"  The reality is that most of "these children" are already registered by the state.  The vast majority of abused, neglected children in the United States are not homeschooled children.  They are children who attend public schools.  The state of Illinois, where this tragedy took place, has huge problems with their public schools.  The Illinois schools do NOT have the time, the manpower, or the money to address their own problems, let alone solve the perceived problem of the "danger" facing the children of the homeschool movement.

I am outraged when I read "news" that contains blatant (or thinly veiled) suggestions that tragedies like the death of Matthew Degner are a.) the result of homeschooling, and b.) preventable by the creation of more government regulation.  It is nothing more than a fallacious attempt to sway public opinion for the sake of encouraging higher levels of government intrusion into our lives. Sadly, our world is full of abusive, neglectful parents.  That is indeed a tragedy.  And as sad as it is, the school system is not a social services agency.  It's teachers are not sociologists.  They are paid to teach children.  Giving the schools the responsibility and the power to protect children from their parents is a very troubling trend. This poll takes advantage of the death of a child and uses it as a rallying cry to call for even greater levels of control. 

They should be ashamed.

Dear Steve Cuckovich

Dude, you decided to deduct points from your student’s grades for extending the common courtesy of saying “bless you” to another student who sneezes in your classroom. That’s fierce, man! Your Will C. Wood High School health students must be bummin’. So what if the original meaning of the phrase is outdated? Over time, its meaning has changed to a common courtesy extended between members of a decent, caring society. Don’t be such a square, man. You’re trying to nip the practice in the bud. You should be encouraging it.

I cannot help but wonder how saying “bless you” after someone sneezes is disrespectful and disruptive in the classroom. That is SO Gay! You claim that this has nothing to do with religion. You have a problem with just this one phrase. It sounds to me like you have an axe to grind. Is “gesundheit” verboten, too?

Your students and their parents are not happy campers. They probably think that grades should be based on academic performance and not on a student’s ability to conform to the whims of an individual teacher. Psyche! But what’s more disruptive to a learning environment, a sneeze followed by a blessing, or a teacher making a big deal over the use of a phrase that is not vulgar and wishes another student good health? Your behavior, and the righteous indignation it evokes in your students, is far more of a distraction to learning. You need to learn to chill, dude. Don’t have a cow.

Stevo, you’ve rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. You’ve brought national attention to yourself, and not the good kind. You made Drudge!You’ve brought unneeded attention to your Vacaville, California, high school. I bet your principal just loves that. It’s time to read the writing on the wall. Rather than promising to find another way to punish your students for blessing one another other than deducting points from a grade, it might be time to throw in the towel. Make like a tree and leave. More and more, people find attitudes like yours grody to the max. It’s one of the reasons why the number of homeschoolers in this nation is growing.

10-4 good buddy,

Arby

Wake Up, Homeschoolers! Socialization Isn’t Just Important. It’s Everything!

If you think that “socialization” is important for the development of your homeschooled children, think again. It’s not just important. It’s everything! So says a retired Canadian public school teacher in a letter-to-the-editor of the Edmonton Journal. While discussing the recent Concordia University and Mount Allison University study that revealed Canadian homeschoolers academically outperformed their public school counterparts, Donna Martyn wrote, “Succeeding academically is probably less than 15 per cent of the value of public schooling. It is, however, a desirable byproduct.”

It’s a desirable byproduct. Like Spam.

So, what is important in Canadian education? It isn’t academics and it isn’t “the moral benefits of homeschooling.” The value of a Canadian public school education is that “when children come together at an early age, they are to be taught to learn, work, share, play (and otherwise cope) - in groups. Not just any group, but a microcosmic group of their fellow children - products of the society of which they are to become a part.” According to Ms. Martyn, “Home-schooling deprives children of the chance to do just that.”

A “microcosmic group.” They must have small class sizes.

Maybe Americans just don’t understand our cousins to the north. Maybe Canadians don’t interact inter-generationally. It is possible that peer groups remain intact for the life of the Canadian citizen with very little contact with Canadians outside of their age group. That’s why it is so important that “children must learn to get along with people of their own peer group.” It “is essential if they are to become functioning members of Canadian society.” Homeschoolers have a different understanding of what it means to prepare our children to participate in the greater world outside of the home.

If Donna Martyn is correct, I have to wonder about the curriculum content in Canadian public schools. Are they wasting valuable resources on reading, writing, and arithmetic if academics are only a 15% byproduct of a K-12 education? Is reading and math just a clever ploy to distract young children while they really learn to stand in line or share toys?

“No, Johnny, we are not carrying a one to the tens column when we add nine plus six. We are sharing the one with the tens column. Learning to share is important.”

The absurdity of Donna Martyn’s educational philosophy is clear. Her philosophy is the polar opposite of the “whole child” concerns Linda wrote about in yesterday’s post. Ms. Martyn doesn’t appear to be concerned about the intellectual development of children at all. It is a dangerous approach to education that reduces a human being to a simple cog in a societal wheel, depriving children of the ability (and quite possibly the desire) to become dynamic, well-rounded, moral, and successful adults. Her goal is for children to cope.

Maybe it’s a Canadian thing. I’ll take homeschooling.

Paying Attention to the "Whole Child"--Something Homeschoolers Already Knew

Homeschooling is successful for a boatload of reasons. And some of its success may have something to do with a homeschooler's understanding of this: Testing is often a poor measure of academic success. A child's success as a student simply cannot be quantified by a grade received on a test. Yet in an academic culture that values test scores above all other measures, children who possess strengths and skills that cannot be measured by a test are at a distinct disadvantage. Marilyn Price-Mitchell, the sociologist who recently wrote The Fallacy of Good Grades was right on the money when she drew these conclusions in her article:

"Parents can make a difference by paying attention to the "whole child," - not just the child who attends school each day but to the child who participants in family life, reaches out to others, thinks creatively, acts wisely, collaborates, and shows respect. Parents have the capacity to nurture these qualities in children, to let them know they are more than a test score.

"We may be living in an age that is obsessed with numbers, but that doesn't mean we have to teach our children to measure their self-worth by grades or test scores alone. In fact, parents are in a position to nurture psychological literacy and help develop the internal strengths that determine a meaningful life." (emphasis mine)

Sadly, in an article that focuses heavily on parental influence in instilling necessary skills into children, the inherent strength of the homeschool environment to accomplish what the public school environment cannot (even with all its self-awarded superiority) is never mentioned. Homeschooling, by nature, provides an academic and emotional environment that is, at its very core, all about "paying attention to the 'whole child'." Parents who spend every day teaching their children are naturally in a position to nurture those qualities that matter...helping their children know that "they are more than a test score."

"To succeed in the 21st Century, students need a multitude of abilities that go beyond internal character and reading, math, and science skills. Today's young adults must be able to adapt to change, problem-solve, innovate, and manage large quantities of knowledge. To do so, they must learn to think critically about complex issues. How do we test critical thinking in schools? We don't. In fact, most schools don't even teach critical thinking skills, the art of analyzing and evaluating thinking with a goal of improving it."

Isn't it strange that a system that fails to instill the most valuable skills and qualities is esteemed as superior to a system that has been proven to be better equipped to instill those same qualities? Stranger still is the illogical reality that critics of homeschooling (did you read Arby's recent post) often bypass questions concerning academic development, and instead choose to raise questions of social development when addressing the effectiveness of homeschooling. And strangest of all is the ludicrous line of thinking that insists that the most valuable function of the public school system is raising socially capable people, when in fact, that very system seems to find its greatest "success" in instilling the most negative social values that children could ever acquire.

I am continually baffled that in the face of a growing body of evidence that public schools are failing in every way, people still seem to think that homeschooled children are missing out on something of critical importance in their development into capable members of society.

Does any of this make sense to you?

Hey, Homeschoolers! Where Do You Send Your Children To Learn To Be Bullied?

I’ve always been staunchly opposed to homeschooling because I think schools, public or private, teach kids how to function in society as much as anything else.

-Kara Moore

Author Kara Moore listed her reasons for preferring a public school education over homeschooling in a benign essay titled “Is homeschooling the wave of the future?” on the Charleston Daily Mail’s Mommyhood Blog page. There’s nothing in her writing that is particularly troublesome for the homeschooling community. She isn’t an activist bent on outlawing home education. Mrs. Moore stated that her children are in a “quality” public school, and that if they lived in an area of the country like “Memphis or Washington, D.C.,” she might be more aware of a need to homeschool. She invested no time defining what makes a “quality” school or why Memphis and D.C. area schools fail to meet that standard. Her ultimate concern is whether or not public schools are simply a baby-sitting service while maintaining that (wait for it) “there’s an important socialization aspect of school.” Then, in the comments section of her post, she revealed the value of a public school education based on her memories of school life and the lessons she learned. None of them are academic.

She wrote:

I mean things that happen outside of lesson plans. I mean getting up at 6:30 to wait for the bus and sitting in pep assemblies and dealing with mean girl cliques and learning to eat school lunches when you’ve always been a picky eater, learning to take standardized tests in freezing cold classrooms, dealing with teachers who seem to have it out for you, or worse, who bore you. When I list them, they sound like the worst parts of school, but those are things that really prepare you for living in society with others. IMHO.

She added:

Though I want to be clear that I think there’s an excellent chance you’re right and I’m wrong.

I’m always fascinated by the “learn to deal with bullies” concept as expressed above. Where do people think members of “mean girl cliques” go to at night? Do they head home to sit and wait for the dawning of a new day in order to return to school and be a mean girl? Most bullies don’t leave their meanness in their school locker when they leave school at the end of the day. They participate in society outside of school, bringing their meanness to Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, church youth groups, athletic teams, the local park, etc. Homeschoolers get to learn to deal with jerks after school, where it isn’t a distraction to learning.

Most of the things that Kara Moore described as being valuable learning experiences are, in fact, simply distractions that prevent meaningful learning from taking place. Pep assemblies? Teachers who bore you? Teachers who dislike you? If that’s what people remember the most from attending 13 years worth of public schooling, then there is something seriously wrong with public education. Most students mentally tune out of classrooms where they dislike a teacher, or where they know a teacher dislikes them. And if taking tests in a cold classroom is critical to the academic and emotional development of my children, I will gladly turn off the furnace this February when my kids take their Iowa tests.

I educate my children at home because I want them to receive a high quality academic education. I want them to learn history without the political biases many public school teachers bring to the classroom. I want my children to master the skills they are being taught. I want them to learn critical thinking skills. Their education is tailored to their areas of interest as well as their overall ability levels and discipline specific ability levels. Why would I send my children to school for any reason other than receiving the best possible education? Preparing them to interact with society once they leave home? That’s a parent’s job.