This post reviews Robin L. West, “The Harms of Homeschooling” in Philosophy and Public Policy Quarterly 29, no. 3/4 (Summer/Fall 2009): 7-11 [Available here]
West, a professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center, here provides perhaps the most blistering attack on homeschooling to be published in a reputable source in many years.
West begins with a very flawed historical account of the practice, asserting that prior to the 1980s homeschooling was “illegal, everywhere, and regardless of the parents’ motivations.” (8) This is simply not the case. In my bookI describe in detail the regulatory climate prior to the various legislative and legal initiatives in the 1980s. Though advocacy organizations like HSLDA have often claimed that prior to their heroic efforts homeschooling was illegal, such claims are false. In fact, prior to the movement activism of the mid 1980s, fourteen state compulsory education statutes said nothing at all about home based education, fifteen explicitly accepted it in one form or another, and the remaining twenty-one states allowed for “equivalent instruction elsewhere” than public schools or “instruction by a private tutor.” Responsibility for determining the acceptability of domestic education arrangements often devolved to the local school board or administrator, who might or might not be hospitable. As I describe in my book, many homeschoolers in the 1970s were able to work within the existing systems, though there were occasionally serious problems, sometimes leading to legal action.
Anyway, West makes this flawed historical argument so that she can set up next section. Why, she asks, would states willingly have ceded their responsibility to educate all citizens so abruptly to these well-organized homeschooling advocates? Her answer is that the state legislatures and courts who legalized and deregulated homeschooling in the 1980s and 1990s believed homeschooler rhetoric that falsely claimed a Constitutional right to homeschool. There is some truth to this for some states, but the reality is far more complicated than that. Again, in my book I tell the stories of several state legislative and legal battles. Homeschoolers did in fact make Constitutional claims (and still do), but with one important exception in Michigan, such claims were universally rejected by the courts. It was not the Constitutional but the statutory arguments that were more effective, and that’s because, as I said already, existing state statues governing compulsory education were often more hospitable toward homeschooling than were local school officials. In the cases where the statutes were not hospitable, homeschoolers were successful at getting new language written into the statutes. State legislatures re-wrote these laws not because of Constitutional concerns but simply in response to the powerful grassroots organizing of homeschoolers.
All of that is to say that West’s historical case is very weak. But let us press on. West proceeds to admit that homeschooling, even if it’s not a Constitutional right, has done a pretty good job overall in getting at least the self-selecting kids who take tests to do well on them. She thus doesn’t want to abolish homeschooling outright. Instead, she just wants to regulate it. Why?
Because, West argues, there are several dreadful consequences that result from unregulated homeschooling. Here they are:
First, kids who aren’t regulated are at “greater risk for unreported and unnoticed physical abuse.” (9) She has no evidence of this, but she notes that most domestic abuse is noticed by school teachers, and if abused kids aren’t in school, who will notice?
Second, kids who don’t attend school don’t have to get immunizations and thus pose a public health risk.
Third, kids who attend school are loved for who they are as individuals, not for who they are as offspring. West acknowledges that she has “yet to see studies of this” and must repeatedly describe “the ideal teacher” here, but the point seems to be that a teacher’s love is unconditional while a parent’s is contingent upon the child being his or her offspring.
Fourth, homeschooled kids (especially those of fundamentalist Protestants) risk becoming political automatons programmed by their parents to mindlessly parrot Republican talking points.
Fifth, she reiterates Rob Reich’s “ethical servility” argument that authoritarian parenting produces damaged, ethically unrealized slaves who can’t think for themselves.
Sixth, she fears (again without any evidence) that unregulated homeschooling is leading some kids to get truncated intellectual training–perhaps learning only a literal view of the Bible or maybe spending all day skateboarding.
Seventh, poor fundamentalist families living in trailer parks homeschooling their 14 children are not doing their kids any favors in terms of their future economic opportunities.
Because of these seven potentially harmful reasons, homeschooling should be more heavily regulated. How? Annual standardized testing, curricular review, and periodic home visits to make sure kids are getting immunizations and aren’t being abused.
I’ve already critiqued her historical component. How about her seven harms? Several of them have been discussed multiple times on this blog before. For a rigorous discussion of Reich’s arguments, see my posts summarizing the debate between Reich and Perry Glanzer here, and here. As I note in one of those previous posts, Reich himself has moved away from his ethical servility argument, largely as a result of increased interaction with real homeschoolers.
As for the political automaton thing, I should say at the outset that every homeschooling family will have its own dynamic and it is impossible to generalize. Having said that, one of the interesting findings I noted both in Kathryn Joyce’s Quiverfull book (which West cites) and in Rob Kunzman’s Write These Laws on Your Children is that even in the most conservative, most doctrinaire, most overbearing households, the kids often end up less radical than their parents. In Kunzman’s book especially one sees powerful examples of an extremely conservative dad gradually loosening the reins on his daughters. I might also add that I have taught several students here at Messiah College who were homeschooled for the entirety of their lives in the precise form of conservative Protestantism West is so distrustful of in this piece. Without exception so far I have found these students to be tolerant and respectful of difference, more so in fact than some of the students I teach who came from conservative Christian private schools. This is all anecdote of course, but it’s more evidence than West gives us, which is nothing.
As for the academic concern, I suppose it is plausible, and I have gone on the record several times on this blog endorsing some sort of evaluation of basic literacy and numeracy for homeschooled kids (West’s annual testing goes way too far in my view. How about once when a kid turns 12?). I can imagine some homeschoolers retorting that she should be less concerned with homeschoolers than with the tens of thousands of public school dropouts, who are far more likely to be skateboarding away their days.
A similar retort could be made to her poverty argument. If you want to talk about perpetuating the culture of poverty, it would be hard to think of an institution that has done a more thorough job of this than the urban public school. Of course you’d want to nuance that by noting that parent SES, not schooling, is far and away the best predictor of a child’s future economic status. In this section West offers one of her only appeals to actual evidence, from a USA Today article no less, which notes the NCES’ 2007 finding that homeschooling is increasingly an upper-class phenomenon. The backside-scratchin’, trailerpark homeschool stereotype she plays on here is belied by her own evidence.
That leaves us with immunizations and physical abuse, which are in my view legitimate concerns. As I have noted before, some homeschoolers do entertain conspiracy theories about immunizations. I discuss this issue in greater detail here. The bottom line is that we need more research about homeschoolers and immunization before we rush to craft policy increasing regulation.
Finally, for physical abuse. Again, I have noted on the blog before that this is a serious concern. I’m skeptical that West’s proposal for mandatory home visits would really turn up much abuse, and it would be both expensive and a scheduling hassle for all concerned. There probably are abusive parents who hide their actions behind feigned “homeschooling.” But what to do about it I have no idea. I noted in a comment on a previous post that my aunt has for decades been in social service and has dealt with thousands of child abuse cases. It is heartbreaking work that leads to a sense of hopelessness and despair. It is delusional to think that a couple of home visits would solve the problem.
In sum, this is a very weak article. West’s legal training and current academic position makes me certain that she could have crafted a more careful study of the issues. What we have here instead seems a hastily compiled litany of classic anti-homeschooler talking points by a scholar who has yet to think about these issues in a sustained and rigorous fashion. I hope this is only the first foray for West and that subsequent work will demonstrate increased knowledge of the complexities and nuances of homeschooling law, policy, and practice.
I was hoping you’d get hold of this article. Thank you for debunking it.
One quibble I’d like to mention with your own response is in regard to vaccinations. Within the homeschooling community, there is certainly no agreement on vaccinations, and my neighbor whose children go to preschool and school finds more parents questioning them than we have in our most local homeschool group.
I regularly find that there is also a whole section of homeschoolers that are ardent immunizers. They recognize that they move in circles in which status quo is questioned, and so people making choices not to send kids to school may also have other non-mainstream choices — like not vaccinating, or home birth, or homesteading — whatever. Many of these homeschoolers, when moving from state to state and entering new groups, conscientiously update their children’s vaccinations so as to provide best immunity possible, while respecting other people’s choices or other families’ specific concerns for a particular child. (There is some grumbling sometimes about the vaccinated children taking the burden of reducing the risk for the non-vaxed, but it is not a big issue).
So, I think the vaccination question needs to be examined with the understanding that along with those who choose not to vax among homeschoolers, there are also those who are more diligent than the general population, along with those who simply follow public health policy without much thought about it otherwise.
Robin West has clearly not only missed this point, but nearly everything else known about homeschoolers.
Aside from the lack of good academic work, her sneers at “under-employed mothers” seem to have a vicious personal quality. One might think “thou doest protest too much.” Many homeschooling mothers, including former professionals (and I must note she attempts to have it both ways: we are both illiterate trailer trash and underemployed women who could be doing something more with our lives), have found a great deal of personal satisfaction in our nurturing work, including self-actualization.
I have to admit when I first read this piece I thought it was a parody of anti-homeschooling rhetoric. It is stunning how little she knows about homeschooling families and the history of homeschooling.
Oh, and on testing. Once when a kid turns 12? Many homeschoolers purposely only BEGIN formal academics when children are about 12. See Raymond and Dorothy Moore’s Better Late than Early. Many parents find kids learn the formal approach to six YEARS worth of elementary school math in a few short months at 12 or 13 and go straight into algebra. This presumes kids have been involved in a rich family life that includes common mathematical literacy on a family basis, of course, but it would not mean that children whose parents have chosen to customize education in this way would necessarily pass state tests at age 12, if the tests are based on other educational philosophies, including early rote knowledge of arithmetic. I just fail to see how this could do any reasonable safeguarding without totally messing up the carefully considered approach of the homeschooling parents – that may be MORE successful for their children than a schooled approach.
As you say, such comments are anecdotal, but I know far too many successful homeschooled kids who were educated with a “better late than early” approach, that includes doing meaningful work, meaningful service, and participation in rich and functional family life, to think this is bathwater that should be thrown out with the baby. These kids go on to university and work and do just fine. By 14 or 15, you just can’t tell the difference in these kids academically, other than their natural love for learning and lack of burn-out. Well, I will admit that their desire for meaningfulness in their academics often sets them apart.
There just isn’t any minimal testing requirement that won’t interfere with homeschoolers’ efforts not to approach education in a “minimal standards” way. There are those that do it LESS so, which we have to put up with in some states, but it causes great consternation among families.
Thanks for sharing this! I keep my eyes open for articles and other things, and I enjoy reading your thoughts and responses.
~Luke
I realize that 12 is somewhat arbitrary, and there may be a few young Chestertons who even at age 12 still seem like they’re in a stupor but who suddenly wake up at 14 or 15 as autodidact geniuses. But I’m inclined to think such children would be few and far between.
The Moores were notoriously slippery about precisely what age one should begin more formal study. Sometimes they would say 10. Sometimes 8-10. Sometimes 10-12. Sometimes something like “10, 12 or even 14.”
I’m no reading specialist or brain scientist but I have frequently read of sweet spots and elasticities in brain function that need to be taken advantage of if one is to be excellent at certain activities (and reading is one such activity). Facility with musical instruments might be taken as an example. If one does not begin regular practice on violin or piano at a relatively young age there will simply be no way to catch up later, as any adult who has tried beginning piano lessons will readily attest. The same is true for ballet. Again, this is not my specialization, but I’d be worried if my kid wasn’t yet reading or able to do basic math at age 12.
Hhhmmm, maybe I should be worried. But having had older children already pass thru this stage, I’m not! But I realize my personal sample size is small, even including all the homeschooled friends we have in the many states in which we’ve homeschooled! : )
I think that one thing about “sweet spot” is that you’re perhaps not seeing how the informal richness of family life in these homeschooling families fertilizes that sweet spot. My late reading child could recite whole passages from Story of the World recordings and was writing songs and poems with rhyme, rhythm and alliteration (by “dictation” to me) before he was 5. My late maths child was not doing long division but was talking his way thru complex patterns he noticed in numbers at very early ages. While not having progressed to testable levels, the synapses were firing.
This is what is so hard to calculate. I recognize it when I visit other homeschooling families, but it is so vitally different from what goes on in schools, I am not sure it is recognizeable from a school model’s pov. I can only speak of my children as having “acquired” these skills at the most developmentally ideal points for them. Why, for the life of me, WHY, would we think that interfering with that — the utmost sweet spot?
Why are SCHOOLS not emulating these homeschool families? This is a powerful approach to learning.
Beyond the rhetorical nature of that question, the answer is, power and status quo. Those who presume the status quo is also ideal have the power to enforce status quo on those with less power, despite the fact that the status quo’s approach to learning is that of minimal standards, and that of homeschoolers is a potential-based, developmentally appropriate approach. Oh yes, and cost. To do this in a non-family-based model would cost so much as to be unbearable.
And as a society, we are unwilling or unable to see the fallacy in the status quo. Because if we are wrong about schools, which we have thrown zillions of dollars at and staked everything on and created a gigantic jobs program for school employees with — then maybe everything we *know* about children and families and good God, what ELSE? Governments and economies too? — is also up for grabs.
Homeschoolers go there. But it is a scary place to stand, even for many of us. Nonhomeschoolers often cannot even see what we are talking about. But I have to tell you it seems really strange to hear you speak of sweet spots and not recognize that this is EXACTLY what we are doing – and think that somehow inserting a test of minimal standards would do anything but interfere with this process. It is a schooled thought, Milton!
You might be interested to know that in Texas, at least, any child in public or private school has the right to refuse immunizations for any reason. West’s argument of public health threat is not valid. Frankly, it disturbs me that she is a professor of law!
I’ve posted the letter I sent her, explaining the flaws I found in her piece, on my blog as well. She has already responded with equally flawed material, including back tracking on a few points she asserted in her original piece. I am crafting a rebuttal now, which I will post in the next day or so to my blog that includes a recommendation that she take a look at your work to see what actual scholarly study of the phenomenon of American home education looks like.
Mr. Gaither, did you send her the link to your criticism here? She needs to know this kind of vitriolic pseudo-analysis of home education will not go unanswered on many fronts.
I know that anecdotes are not data, but I was told when I visited a children’s museum that had a musical exhibition that my eldest son was very musical and that he should have some kind of music lessons. He wasn’t the least bit interested and being the unschooling mother I am I didn’t want to force them on him. When he was thirteen, he decided that he wanted to play the guitar and now, nearly two years later, he plays at a professional level. He can pick up songs in no time and he practises every day because he loves it. If I had forced lessons on him he might have developed an aversion to music, which would have been counterproductive.
As far as that sweet spot is concerned, it seems to me that the assumption is that children have to be doing some academic version of a subject to take advantage of this. Perhaps a small child playing lego or an older one playing a strategy computer game is developing those brain cells even better than by learning the times table or algebra (for instance).
Imagine if we made children start practise walking at 9 months of age because most children are walking by 14 months of age. What about those children who only start walking at 18 months? Isn’t it the same with other skills like reading and math and music (for example)? Some children are ready to start reading at 4 years of age, most of them are somewhere between 6 and 9 and then there is that small group at the outer reaches around the age of 12. We have them in the schools too, but the only difference is that late readers who go to school often end up thinking that reading is something they are bad at and become functional illiterates.
I’m actually quite surprised that such a sloppy, inaccurate article is getting published. Isn’t there such a thing as peer review process with these journals or is that only the case with scientific journals?
I’m just finished writing an essay for the translation studies component of my masters degree and I was so worried about getting my facts right and not presenting my lecturer with half-baked, inaccurate claims. It shocks me that a professor of law would write stuff like this without verifying her facts.
Many thanks, Milton, and commentators, for your comments and criticisms. My essay in PPP was a short pullout of a long project that is very much in progress, on the history and foundation of the Right to Homeschool. I argue in the large piece that the right does exist, in spite of the courts’ refusal to acknowledge it, on both first amendment free exercise and “parents rights” grounds, but that it is not absolute and that the practice requires reasonable and responsible regulation.
The legal history of this IS complicated, and I am happy to accept Milton’s nuanced corrections. Nevertheless, the general movement here is unmistakable: HOmeschooling at the discretion of the parent, for any reason and with no certification requirement, went from illegal to legal through about a twenty year period at the end of the twentieth century. What began as a secular movement became overwhelmingly religious, and is now tending back toward secular — in percentages that I clearly had wrong, just judging from my email.
I appreciate that Milton acknowledges that I am not opposed to homeschooling. The benefits of homeschooling, I believe, are well demonstrated and self evident: close one to one teaching by devoted parents. The harms, i believe, are a result of under-regulation, not of homeschooling itself. They could be addressed with responsible regulation that would not be overly intrusive on homeschooling families — as they are in some states that still regulate.
Milton also agrees that there should be some testing, albeit minimal, and that the potential for hiding abuse and avoidance of immunization requirements is serious, and needs to be somehow addressed, although he’s not clear how. That’s quite a bit of common ground. And perhaps the ethical and economic points regarding devout homeschoolers need to be treated quite separately from the more general homeschooling debate.
On testing: once a year might be too severe, but once a childhood can’t possibly be sufficient!
Thanks again for the comments
Robin West
Robin, the nature of homeschooling is that it works because parents customize. By instituting testing, you are actually implementing both a time table and a curriculum — parents must teach to the test in order for children to perform at a minimal standard on this test. I know it is very difficult to imagine the interference this presents in a family – but what you MUST do takes time from what you could do. My children might be much-better served by a read aloud of The Odyssey, but might be forced to spend time and anxiety learning rote approaches to meet education authorities’ minimal standards – while the children in their own schools languish.
No thanks. I see no proof that the schools’ outstanding and universal success with children gives them any kind of justification for interfering with what’s going on in my family successfully.
Your theory of what you THINK goes on in homeschooling is so far off-base, that, as I said earlier, I truly thought I was reading parody.
And I gotta tell you, nothing feels more patriarchal than having someone tell me that my choice not to sub-contract nurturing and educating my children makes me “under-employed.” We are real people, with graduate degrees and free lance work and goats and puppies. Some of the “best” educated kids I see are indeed those who live in trailers with dedicated moms and dads, and some of the most self-actualized women I’ve met are educational philosophers — homeschool moms. We are in McMansions on Main Street and along mountain roads and on suburban cul de sacs. Your one dimensional characterizations promulgate stereotypes.
I had to read it twice to get your logic that since teachers are major reporters of abuse, children are safer in schools. If families use HOMESCHOOLING as a route to abuse children, exactly why is it that TEACHERS see so much abuse? Aren’t these children IN SCHOOL? And therefore, provided some measure of protection? (That’s irony, if it doesn’t translate). Sadly, abuse affects all aspects of our society, and we know from reading the news that most abused children are school attenders. And by the way – just google “teacher arrested” to get an idea of the safe haven schools provide. As someone who answers calls from prospective homeschoolers, I could curl your toes with stories of bullying and intimidation children face in school – and that’s from the teachers. Schools’ inability to protect children from other students who physically hurt them and emotionally torture them is legend. A large number of the calls I receive are from parents desperate to remove their children from intolerable school situations. Many a homeschooling family is thus born.
You can see why it would seem ridiculous for homeschoolers to “accept just a little regulation” for “their own good” from a public education system with such flaws that homeschoolers are purposefully fleeing it?
History-wise? Go back just a little further, and you’ll find that education at home was the default. Compulsory attendance is a new experiment, and homeschooling families have decided they will not be guinea pigs.
And I wouldn’t give yourself points for Milton agreeing that there should be regulation. Lots of non-homeschoolers think that, but as you work it out, there is never logic or evidence to support it in real life. I’ve moved around a lot and homeschooled in both high and low reg states. In practice, the high reg states provide hoops to jump thru but no appreciable “real life” improvements in outcomes for homeschoolers. Homeschoolers may appreciate that Milton can see the inaccuracies in your work, but we’re pretty universal in our understanding that homeschool regs are interferences in our ability to do things in the best possible ways, and incredulous that those who would test us can’t use testing in their own institutions to correct the ills they project on homeschoolers.
Log in your own eye, and all that.
I am so glad I live in the state of Texas where homeschools are considered private schools and are thus not under the purview of government regulation. Regulation and testing of homeschools will not make them more effective, just as they do not make public schools more effective. And as far as abuse and immunizations are concerned, I’d like to see a study that says homeschooled children are at higher risk (of abuse or lack of immunizations) than those in public schools before any regulations are imposed. As a libertarian, I believe less government and less regulation will give us the freedoms to allow individuals to actualize their highest potential. And as far as being political automatons, our public school children are becoming such by being taught the politically correct ideology of today. The liberals are rewriting our country’s history to make us out to be nothing more than imperialist conquerors who need to apologize to every people that we’ve ever come into contact with. Children are going to be taught with a political bias by their teachers whether they be homeschooled or in public school. The concern then is the question of whether or not the government be tolerant of ideologies other than their own.
Ms. Biegalski-
You might want to take a closer look at what the Texas State Board of Education is working on these days. They are attempting, and for the most part, succeeding in infusing the Texas public education standards and curriculum with a conservative fundamentalist agenda. Not the other way around.
Children don’t need indoctrination. They need the ability to critically evaluate the competing idealogies and agendas swirling around them in order to exercise their freedoms to make an informed choice as to where they stand within the spectrum of ideas and philosophies. Any education heavily managed by any governmental system pushing any one agenda is detremental to the pursuit of knowledge and understanding, be it setting agenda laden standards in a public education system or oppressively regulating home education programs.
Robin, I appreciate your comment here. I was disturbed by the alarmist nature in the PPP article and hope that the full treatment of it in your work does not sound as emotional and poorly reasoned. I’d also be interested in seeing your legal reasoning and hope you have more comprehensive coverage of the laws regarding homeschooling. As a homeschooler, I have only focused on the laws of my own state, Virginia, and have not had the time nor inclination to research beyond that. I would caution you against relying on the HSLDA (or NHERI) for your homeschool facts — many homeschoolers disagree strongly with that organization, it’s approaches, tactics, political and religious views, and how it derives it’s data.
I’m not certain why you feel that testing is the only way to give adequate evidence of education – in Virginia, it is but one option. Another option is an evaluation with an accredited evaluator. Personally, I believe in the value of learning to take tests, but I don’t see how that ensures a literate and numerate citizenry any more than a meeting with an evaluator.
I’d also love to hear more discussion about the state’s legitimate interest in education and how best to ensure that. I’m always curious to learn how private schools are regulated and why they are free from the concerns that plague homeschooling.
Finally, I think when you mention the “children of the over-educated and under-employed suburban mothers who simply would prefer to do this work for themselves than delegate it to the state” you show a fundamental lack of comprehension (and interest) for why many choose to homeschool. Simply stated, a homeschool education can be richer, deeper, and more individualized (and often has little to do with religion or conservative politics, which seem to be your greatest concerns). To comment on the mothers seems to underscore the emotional nature of the piece and sounds more like an attempt to ignite the Mommy wars than a reason why homeschooling should be regulated. It strikes me as poor reasoning that one moment you seem disturbed that homeschoolers are not accredited to teach their children and then you comment that some of us are overeducated (but I understand that advanced degrees are not teaching credentials. However, most homeschooling mothers have fewer than 30 children in their families, so perhaps they don’t really need teaching credentials. Which raises the question of what teaching credentials are and what they are for – a question no one ever seems to examine, they just seem to assume that homeschoolers should have them).
Thank you, Milton, for calling my attention to this article and for providing a forum for comments.
Glad to see Robin West entering into conversation here. As someone who has also sought to engage homeschooler advocates, I know how even small criticisms can open one up to a flood of email, much of it thoughtful but a small amount spiteful, closed-minded, and even hate-filled.
I would not give as much ground as West does in her reply. Social scientists know so very, very little about homeschoolers: about their religious motivations (if any), about the academic performance of homeschooled children, about the trajectory of homeschooled students after grade 10 or grade 12.
Lack of evidence on these matters is not itself any strong reason to regulate, as if a desire for social science evidence were itself a reason to impose regulations. But it does mean that appeals to claims such as “homeschooling works!” and “West should focus her attention on public schools!” are misplaced.
Milton, thank you. Much to chew on and think about.
I’m a secular homeschooler. I really prefer logic and evidence as proof of things. And I have yet to see the logic or proof that regulation works. There are many examples of regulation that already exist, and it has not yet been shown that regulations reduce abuse or deal with any of the other assertions in your article.
Homeschooling is on the rise. But it’s not because of abusive parents wanting to hide things, or because of an anti-immunization frenzy. The rise is caused by the school system pushing out families who really want to do the best for their kids, but cannot accomplish it. And most of the families who are deserting the schools have been pushed a lot before they finally get pushed over the edge. This has been slowly building up over the past 5 – 10 years and it’s not getting better. (This is also a significant part of why we’re seeing a rise in non-religious based homeschooling.)
I think research into why parents leave school would be very revealing. When I field calls from families wanting to know how to homeschool, they share stories not only of various forms of physical and psychological abuse, but abuse of authority and lack of schools seeing their kids for who they are. Instead, it’s a race to see which kids can fit into the mold of what is expected of them and the parents and the kids can no longer hold out in the rat race.
The increase of regulations, testing, mandates, and benchmarks hasn’t made schools better. These top-down efforts haven’t fixed problems of meeting individual children’s needs. It certainly hasn’t helped many kids in the most need of help. If these fixes don’t help school, how can they ever help homeschoolers? Why insist on a solution that has not shown to consistently work? And that’s just for student achievement. That’s not counting all of the failed attempts to keep abusive teachers out of the system, abusing and molesting children right under the noses of all of the regulations and watchful eyes of everyone in school. It just doesn’t add up. There is a huge missing piece of logic of how the system, which can’t even keep these abusive teachers out of schools, can possibly do a fair and adequate job of finding the bad homeschool apples without an enormous burden on the 99.9% of the other homeschooling parents.
Homeschooling is not perfect. But regulation is not the answer. I have my suspicions of what the answer is, but it’s not government regulation on testing results or benchmarks. If that worked, failing schools would be very easy to identify and fix. And we’d very rarely see problems with teachers not doing their job, or worse, harming students.
It’s my hope that Robin West is on a true search for helping children and our society. If so, then we can move on beyond the tired old conversation of left vs. right and rethink education entirely, and get away from measuring and educating-by-numbers schooling. Instead, we all need to work towards finding a way to educate our children in the true sense of the word, so they can live full lives and make our American society a better place one child at a time.
Thanks for this. As I wrote on the Life Learning Magazine blog, I hope progressives like Robin West will stop taking uninformed potshots at homeschoolers and, instead, work towards fixing public education.
I disagree with Mr. Reich’s statement that “Social scientists know so very, very little about homeschoolers: about their religious motivations (if any), about the academic performance of homeschooled children, about the trajectory of homeschooled students after grade 10 or grade 12.”
There are many sources for this information, from my initial research. Perhaps not the same volume as there is for children in public education, but there is data available.
I also must add, that when a social scientist or other researcher/scholar begins by publishing an academically weak piece pushing vicious stereotypes that is filled with insults aimed at mothers and children, that researcher is going to have an understandably hard time gaining the cooperation and trust of the homeschooling community to collect social data. If someone at the grocerey store punches me in the gut and kicks my kids while I’m there, you better believe I’ll be finding a new grocerey store to go to from now on and publicly sharing my distrust of and concern about that location with the rest of my community.
Maybe if social researchers started from a place of honest academic curiosity as opposed to beginning from the “Homeschoolers Suck” corner, they’d be able to collect that data they seem to bemoan they don’t have enough of.
Rob, it’s true that engagement of any “group” on the internet will indeed bring a percentage of small-minded hate-filled stuff, along with thoughtful responses. Internet published material certainly attracts all kinds, whether you are speaking of homeschooling, discussing saying “Happy Holidays vs. Merry Christmas,” or advocating for a favorite dog breed.
You said, “Lack of evidence on these matters is not itself any strong reason to regulate, as if a desire for social science evidence were itself a reason to impose regulations. But it does mean that appeals to claims such as “homeschooling works!” and “West should focus her attention on public schools!” are misplaced.”
I don’t get the logic here. I don’t think anyone has said West should focus on public schools. We’d sure rather her get her information and presentation straight on what is known and what is un-knowable about homeschoolers though. We’d rather her not promote stereotypes and take swipes at us.
I think the point in mentioning schools is that tools used in failing public schools, supposedly to insure success, should not be seen as relevant tools as safety nets for homeschoolers. Testing, for example, has not yet been shown to create success for all the students in the venue for which they were designed. Why would homeschoolers submit themselves to them, knowing real harms of the process in their families, in the absence of evidence that they would improve outcomes for their children? Should we be less evidence-based than those who study us?
Perhaps it is frustrating for those who would regulate or study homeschoolers that while some populations willingly acquiesse to educational authorities, academics, and other experts, homeschoolers resist in the absence of evidence – especially while experiencing their own personal success.
So, I’m not saying West or anyone else should study public schools. I’m saying that those who study any population should not presume that school-based instruments or approaches have any place in families. This belies understanding of the difference between learning and schooling and between families and institutions.
Those who would study or regulate homeschooling in the mistaken ways we keep seeing seem to me to be advocating using a measuring stick designed to assess the height of horses in order to evaluate Mozart’s music or the quality of a relationship or the amount of diversity in the woods near my house.
Not. Relevant.
However, there seems to be this big hammer, and homeschoolers seem to be sticking out all over the place and in need of hammering. And so academics hammer away, without having lived the life. Truly, if researchers did this to a native island culture, they’d be seen as violating all kinds of ethical research guidelines.
A quick search brought me to this statement, for instance, from an abstract at Springerlink about cultural considersations in doing research among an aboriginal culture:(http://www.springerlink.com/content/n207113475v448t7/ )”Researchers need to be cognisant of the history of exploitation within communities and the associated ongoing cultural dyslexia that characterises our society. We argue that cultural dyslexia is a result of dissonance, institutional racism and positivist research and management approaches that are preoccupied with “evidence”, data quality and outcomes and too often lead to the objectification of participants.”
That’s just the first hit I came to, but I must say that homeschoolers are certainly resentful of being continually objectified by researches who are preoccupied with data, evidence, and outcomes.
We are PEOPLE, who are living effective, high-quality lives, and who are willing to protect the aspects of our lives that give us the freedom to raise committed, educated, responsible citizens – who are children we LOVE. We are not a collection of stereotypes. We are not Fundamentalist Protestants, brow-beaten women, child abusers, or over-educated (now that’s a really odd one in this context), any more than the Native Americans first encountered in North America were uncivilized savages with wrong color skin.
Our kids go to college, start businesses, travel internationally, create art, win international science fairs, and write software. They also make mistakes, have emotional challenges, and struggle with finding appropriate career paths. We are well-off, impoverished, and middle class. Many of us have graduate and professional degrees, but one of the mysteries of homeschooling is that some of us also never finished college and STILL produce college graduates ourselves. Now that would be an instructive study. We are Muslim, LDS, mainline Protestant, Catholic, Fundamentalist Evangelical, neo-pagan, Jewish, and secular.
While HSLDA and its ilk may have succeeded in portraying homeschoolers as one way, it is the job of those who would study or regulate homeschoolers not to buy their lobbying effort.
And unfortunately, this has also created an unwanted but much-needed job for homeschoolers, who must constantly correct inaccurate portrayals to address the promulgation of stereotype. And we have a lot going on! Those of us who aren’t making money from scare-mongering in regards to homeschooling like HSLDA are taking care of families and working hard for no pay with no infrastructure to try to counter those in ivory towers and school superintendents’ offices.
But if we don’t do it, and if researchers and would-be regulators don’t bother to get their facts straight and conduct themselves ethically, we will continue to be objectified, and we will continue to balk when those who would objectify us would also like us to willingly line up for further, and misplaced, objectification thru regulation.
Ok, well, I see while I was writing, someone else DID say that researchers should focus on public schools.
Here’s a link to a response:
http://tingthinks.wordpress.com/2009/12/23/robin-west-law-professor-and-author-of-controversial-anti-homeschooling-article/
I have to agree – I’m in multiple local/regional homeschool groups and don’t know where the fundamentalist evangelicals are that Robin is so concerned about! I mean, we have a few in our group, but they are just part of the diversity – there’s just no monolith as it has been portrayed.
Ms. West, it seems that you spent a lot of time researching the subject of homeschooling, only to come to the same conclusion you started with and that Robert Reich (alas, not the good one ;-)) espouses. The so-called harms of homeschooling are completely imaginary and alarmist. That is why you have no data to back up your opinion that more regulation is needed. What you have is a fear of people who are doing something you don’t particularly like, and whose children are outside the influence of people whose values you prefer. It’s an ideological problem, not a legal one.
(And I say this as a secular, progressive homeschooler. I’m not afraid of people who homeschool for religious reasons.)
It’s not very compelling to read, over and over again, the words of people outside the homeschooling community who reluctantly concede that, well, sure, I suppose legally we have to let them homeschool, but they’re a little creepy, those people who like spending all day with their kids, so let’s just write some laws to keep an eye on ’em.
All I can think is that this point of view comes from some latent Calvinistic view of humanity, as well as a fear of people who have just a bit too much freedom. There must be something wrong, after all, with people who have the self-confidence to march to their own drummers and who don’t want or need “the experts” to check up on them.
And if they have nothing to hide, why not let “the experts” come into their homes and inspect their children? (Of course, this home visit idea is the easiest to refute. If people like Ms. West are so concerned about child abuse, why are they forgetting about all the children from birth to age 5 or 6 who are at home with their parents? Shouldn’t we have someone visit every household in which children don’t attend a public institution to make sure the children aren’t being abused? I mean, honestly, even private schooled children — watch out for those Catholics — could be suffering abuse this very minute!)
//The benefits of homeschooling, I believe, are well demonstrated and self evident: close one to one teaching by devoted parents.//
That’s it? Just one benefit after all that research? There are many, many more, as most homeschoolers can attest. If nothing else, it’s a joyful way to live!
I suggest you do more reading and more hands-on investigating. You have a lot to learn about homeschooling and homeschooling families.
Yeah, had to giggle at that one benefit – one on one teaching? First of all, in many homeschooling families I know, there is very little “teaching” that would be recognizable, despite the huge amount of “learning” going on. The “tutor effect” is a nice side impact of the rest of what we’re doing, but would be no means be cited as primary by a lot of homeschoolers.
It’s interesting to note that home education has such a high level of acceptance in societies like the USA, Great Britain, Canada, etc. that even the most fervent anti-homeschooling types wouldn’t dare suggest banning it outright, unlike in Germany where the mantra is “We can’t dare allow homeschooling because it would lead to parallel societies, which is absolutely unacceptable in a pluralistic society”. But I’m waiting for Milton to bring that up in one of his (hopefully) next blog postings.
It’s also interesting that home educators are seen as being “ideological”, yet the ideology that underlies the acceptance of the institution of “school” as it has existed for about the last couple of hundred years is obvious only to those who reject this model because it is so deeply engrained in our social psyche.
Ms West, I hope that you didn’t take my comment above personally. It was not meant to be spiteful. As a home educating mother I am used to hearing the kind of stereotypes and inaccuracies that were in your article, but coming from an academic background as well, I am a little disillusioned at the lack of accuracy in such a piece of academic work. What kind of mark would you give one of your students who submitted an essay that was so poorly researched and filled with unfounded suppositions?
Even if homeschooling is dominated by fundamentalist Christians, why should that justify regulating home education? It should be completely irrelevant. I thought that there was supposed to be a separation of church and state. Now, one of the reasons intrusive government regulation is being proposed is because of our faith.
West claims to be concerned with the safety and academic progress of children, but I’m not buying that argument at all! That’s just a ruse. Read West’s other work, and you’ll find that she’s not an expert on education or child safety. Rather, her anti-home education article is motivated by her desire to advance feminist theory. So this is why she derides fundamentalist Christians who she thinks are more likely to impede the progress of feminism.
For those home educators who are feminists or who don’t have a strong opinion on the subject, I would argue that regulation is a threat to you as well. Many home educators have posted on this blog good reasons why regulations are harmful. The only addition I would make is that people do better when free, and that government had better make a very good argument to justify any regulation. The burden of proof is on the government to justify restricting our freedom, and not on us to justify keeping our freedom. Secondly, I would argue that restrictions on home education may seem palatable at first, but will become onerous later.
Finally, I certainly don’t have any urge to prove to a government bureaucrat that my kids are doing well academically. I already test them. Why is my testing considered less reliable than a government issued test? Why the distrust of the public and individual freedom? I’m not using taxpayer funds to finance my home education like a public school does. The funds stay within my home and so should the accountability.
“on the history and foundation of the Right to Homeschool. I argue in
the large piece that the right does exist, in spite of the courts’
refusal to acknowledge it,”
I’d go back to Pierce vs Society of Sisters – it’s always good to
start at the foundation.
“but that it is not absolute and that the practice requires reasonable
and responsible regulation.”
The state has an interest in education.
“Homeschooling at the discretion of the parent, for any reason and with
no certification requirement”
I understand that private schools use uncertified teachers yet they
often produce outstanding results. I also understand that brilliant
college professors wouldn’t be able to teach in public schools without
certification. Does certification imply a better education?
“went from illegal to legal through about a twenty year period at the
end of the twentieth century.”
If I were writing a paper, I’d put a citation on the evidence for this.
Listing a bunch of sources at the end is just hand-waving.
“What began as a secular movement became overwhelmingly religious, and
is now tending back toward secular – in percentages that I clearly had
wrong, just judging from my email.”
Anyone that did their homework would know about the unschooling
movement that predated the large religious movement to homeschooling
and the reason for that movement. You would also know that these two
groups did not necessarily get along that well in the 1990s.
“The harms, i believe, are a result of under-regulation”
In my state, the regulations in opening a private school are minimal
and there is no requirement on taking state assessments. Our math
curriculum frameworks and the state assessments were driven to the
point of almost requiring a particular curriculum which many feel is
actually harmful towards students in learning mathematics. It is
fairly easy to find criticisms of state assessments and these
criticisms often come from teachers, school board members and college
professors.
“They could be addressed with responsible regulation that would not be
overly intrusive on homeschooling families – as they are in some
states that still regulate.”
If you want to make an argument that there is a problem here, provide
statistics on the problems and at least some anecdotal evidence. Then
make an argument as to why the regulation would solve that problem.
As you may know, a lot of laws are poorly written because legislators
have to write laws in areas that they are grossly unfamiliar with. In
my state, adding aggressive regulation would only drive homeschoolers
underground defeating the purpose of legislation to regulate.
“Milton also agrees that there should be some testing, albeit minimal,”
I don’t know who Milton is but I would just put out materials that
homeschoolers could use to evaluate their kids.
The homeschooling argument against educational malpractice and abuse
is that parents that didn’t want to put in the effort and expense to
teach their kids would just send them to the local schools where they
would be out of the way. It’s not a 100% argument but should cover
most cases.
> and that the potential for hiding abuse and avoidance of immunization
> requirements is serious,
If you were abusing your children, would you want them around your
house all day bother you for food and other things?
Our state has a religious exemption for immunizations.
“On testing: once a year might be too severe, but once a childhood
can’t possibly be sufficient!”
Our local school district offered us the opportunity to have our
children tested with the state assessments. I asked them how long
it would take and they said that they took six days. That would
be a logistical nightmare for us and an incredible waste of time.
I declined.
We do have required homeschooling evaluations in our state. My
approach is just to write up a page of accomplishments which the local
district accepts. When we get a new assistant superintdent, I just go
in for a chat. Usually we chat about education in general; not
homeschooling. I guess that puts them at ease.
Homeschoolers save taxpayers $120,000 per student. I don’t see why
public policymakers want to add to the burden of homeschoolers given
how much homeschoolers already contribute to their local taxpayers.
Homeschooling is a massive, massive subject area. The dearth of
literature on homeschooling makes it easy to write an essay using
the literature out there while getting it completely wrong. One
would think that someone with a Phd would ask for a review by an
expert in the area, or maybe even a practictioner before putting
their name to the essay for publishing. That’s common practice
where I work.
“West claims to be concerned with the safety and academic progress of
children, but I’m not buying that argument at all! That’s just a
ruse. Read West’s other work, and you’ll find that she’s not an expert
on education or child safety.”
That’s rather interesting but it is an ad hominem point. A poor piece
of research can be argued simply on the merits.
However I was curious about the writer’s perspective on the Duke
Lacrosse Case as it is a litmus test of sorts when I read writings of
feminists associated with the case. Her paper was about law and
literature with an emphasis on Duke and Durham. She dispassionately
gets some of the facts right but there’s a lot left out. The Duke
Lacrosse Case was another one of the incredibly complex cases of
interested parties doing what they thought was in their own
self-interest and others that so easily believed a lie and a
conspiracy.
What suprised me was that West didn’t say anything about the Gang of
88 which would seem to me to be her compatriots. They got it so wrong
in a public way – it would be natural to comment on them. Perhaps she
didn’t want to portray feminists in a negative light.
The earlier Kunzman blog entry does a nice job of explaining the minimal testing issue.
I read Milton Gaither’s mini-bio and found his book in one of my libraries (Boston College) and will take a look at it when I have a chance.
[But it does mean that appeals to claims such as “homeschooling works!” and “West should focus her attention on public schools!” are misplaced.]
Many homeschoolers say that homeschooling works because it does. For them. The self-selection issue cannot be resolved. Given that, perhaps we should just tell those that would change public policy to prove that homeschooling doesn’t work.
Public policy decisions should work first on issues that affect the most people or incur the greatest expenses. At least that was what they said in my Quality Engineering class. Getting public schools working again would provide some moral authority for those critical of homeschoolers. Unfortunately, I think that many in the public policy realm have effectively given up on our public schools.
Going after strawman homeschoolers is far easier.
It appears that the author has been traveling around the country giving the presentation below:
Saturday Evening, April 3
Group Session GXII — 6:00-8:00 p.m.
GXII-A. North American Society for Social Philosophy
6:00-8:00 p.m.
Topic: Sexuality and Justice
Chair: Jeff Gauthier (University of Portland)
Robin L. West (Georgetown University)
“Religious Rights as Protected Wrongs: The Case of Homeschooling”
Perhaps Ms. West would care to provide us with her notes for these presentations with such an interesting title.
Robin,
I trust that few of the previous comments will seem like trolls, and I intend not to be one myself. As a homeschooled kid for 12 years, an author of a homeschooling book (“The Homeschoolers Guide to College” on amazon) and now 27 years old, I’d like to think I’m in a decent position to understand how homeschoolers think. Perhaps I’m not aware of your background and previous research – have you any personal connections with homeschoolers?
It is true, however regrettably, that the extreme minority of parents will use the label of homeschooling as a means for child abuse. Those kids will not be reliably seen by a teacher or third party. Regulation, however, would not prevent the same from continuing to happen. If the respective social services can’t do it with the general population, how can we expect them to treat homeschoolers differently? Does that warrant a large-scale regulation when so many other issues have been raised at the public school alternative? I can’t recall the exact HSLDA survey (take its methodologies and samples with a grain of salt), but I recall one of the results saying something about states with low or high regulation. The results were statistically identical for all states, whether they were considered ‘high-regulation’ states or ‘low-regulation’ states.
As for testing, I’ll step on some toes when I support testing. In North Carolina, we were tested once a year as a way of showing academic growth – and every year we were in the 90th percentile or higher. It was simply a formality; we weren’t ‘taught to the test’ or any such thing.
K,
My point agrees with yours: that students will be indoctrinated in the ideology of their teachers no matter who educates them. This will occur in public, private, and home schools and in any state (even TX, which has remarkable freedoms for homeschooling families).
Kendra
> I trust that few of the previous comments will seem like trolls, and I
> intend not to be one myself. As a homeschooled kid for 12 years, an
> author of a homeschooling book (“The Homeschoolers Guide to College”
> on amazon) and now 27 years old, I’d like to think I’m in a decent
> position to understand how homeschoolers think.
Okay, nice backhanded slap there. Then follow it up with a plug for
your book. For those homeschoolers or public/private schoolers
interested in college, I highly recommend College Confidential. I
know Cafi Cohen from Home Ed and she’s highly regarded but I don’t
know who you are.
How many kids have you raised? How many legislators have you called
trying to change state policy? Do you participate in the legislative
processes at the state level for homeschooling?
> Perhaps I’m not aware of your background and previous research – have
> you any personal connections with homeschoolers?
Google, dude.
——————-
Spent some time on the research databases and I read Glazner’s critique
of Reich’s book and Reich’s response in reverse order. It seems like
the two are talking past each other in some areas.
I think that researchers generally agree that the state has an
interest in the education of the child. Reich is way over there on how
far that extends to and I get the feeling that he is contemptuous over
homeschooling.
At any rate, the regulation wars are won in the trenches; not in
academia.
Chris, that’s great that you scored in the 90th percentile. However, I’ve long felt that average and below average kids deserve the advantages of homeschooling as much as those who score high, and perhaps benefit from it more. Touting high scores will not do homeschoolers any good as more mainstreamers enter homeschooling. If we use them to support homeschooling when scores are high, you can bet they will be used against homeschooling if the scores drop.
Keep in mind that in NC, those scores do not have to be submitted to any governing body.
One approach towards what Reich would like would be to use a carrot approach such as offering homeschoolers free college courses. Many homeschoolers like the idea of college over middle-school and high-school as the environment is frequently better with students or their parents paying the bills directly, and older and more mature student populations.
Some Massachusetts community colleges offer free courses for homeschoolers and that would encourage them to get the testing required to get into these programs. The Accuplacer is commonly used for testing. It’s all computer-based and only takes a few hours and can be done in one sitting.
At younger ages, perhaps states could offer free accredited online courses requiring testing to get into the courses or providing the testing function within the course itself.
Homeschooling factoid for today: the AP Female Athlete of the Year was homeschooled.
I’m sure Milton Gaither has a deep and subtle understanding of the history and implementation of homeschooling in the USA, but on historical and other grounds, this critique of Professor West’s article is not up to the job.
Gaither attributes to West the view that “the state legislatures and courts who legalized and deregulated homeschooling in the 1980s and 1990s believed homeschooler rhetoric that falsely claimed a Constitutional right to homeschool.” I did not see that claim anywhere in the published article, however. In fact what was claimed was that the shift happened “in response to massive political pressure”, not courtroom victories nor actual persuasion. For West to say that this constitutional right was “adamantly asserted” is not to say that it was believed; indeed, West very clearly observes that “courts, and particularly the federal courts, have never granted the existence of the “right to homeschool.”” In the same respect, political pressure arising in part from the belief in some quarters that public health care would involve death panels is responsible for Democratic compromises on the health care bill; but this is not to say that any Dem politicians believe the death panel rhetoric.
So it’s unclear why Gaither believes himself to be correcting West when he writes that “with one important exception in Michigan, such claims were universally rejected by the courts”, and that it was grassroots political pressure that did the trick.
Anyhow, West has already quite properly accepted those of Gaither’s historical observations that are real clarifications of fact and emphasis. But the haste to overlook the accuracy and the frequently careful qualifications of her claims, and to stretch some differences of emphasis into the (frankly baffling) claim of a “very weak” historical case, is something of a red flag for lack of charity.
This concern is borne out as the rebuttal continues. West having written very clearly, throughout the article, of her support for the right to homeschool, Gaither summarizes her attitude as “She thus doesn’t want to abolish homeschooling outright.” Would we say that someone who believes that medical practitioners should be regulated doesn’t thereby want to “abolish” medicine “outright”? The wording is beyond infelicitous; it’s notably slanted language. On its own it might be dismissible as a slip, but here it’s part of a trend. The rebuttal continues in the same vein. West argues that wholly unregulated homeschooling generates “harms”; Gaither’s needling gloss on her view attributes the claim of “dreadful consequences”. And West goes to great pains to contrast the “love” a child receives at home with the way s/he is “regarded… respected… valued” as a student at school. Yet Gaither depicts this clearly drawn contrast as: “kids who attend school are loved for who they are as individuals, not for who they are as offspring… the point seems to be that a teacher’s love is unconditional”. The gloss is quite literally the exact opposite of what West writes with unmistakable clarity.
I have no doubt that a careful analysis of West’s (obviously imperfect) paper, and a close extended look at the details of the concerns she presents in a few short paragraphs, would be a real contribution. Gaither may well be someone who could yet do this. But whatever its virtues, the reply here strikes me as edging towards more heat than light, and has a few too many red flags for uncharitable or inaccurate representation of the critiqued view.
OK, you make three points. Here are three rejoinders:
1. On the history, my points are first that West is mistaken to assert that homeschooling was illegal prior to the 1980s. It wasn’t. The second point was the Constitutional thing. I’m at home now (it’s Christmas eve and we’re going away soon) so I don’t have the article with me, but I’m sure she did say something about the Constitutional argument. If I remember after the holiday I’ll look it up and quote it for you.
2. On my rhetoric, I suppose it’s a judgment call whether or not I was too flippant in my summaries of her views. If you read her article the same could be said of her rhetoric there. Perhaps I might have expressed a phrase or two more felicitously, but frankly I was (as were many of those responding here) rather stunned by West’s claims and the lack of evidence she had for them. My incredulity is indeed represented in the way I summarized her position.
3. Finally, on that issue of a teacher’s love vs. a parent’s…you’ll notice that’s the only one of her harms I didn’t try to address in my critique. You think I summarized it wrong. Maybe I did. I HOPE I did, for when I read it I couldn’t believe she was actually claiming what it sounded to me like she was claiming. Unlike you I found that paragraph very difficult to follow. Again, I don’t have the text in front of me right now. When I get back to my office after break I’ll try to quote this paragraph here in its entirety so readers can decide for themselves what West is saying.
> Gaither attributes to West the view that “the state legislatures and
> courts who legalized and deregulated homeschooling in the 1980s and
> 1990s believed homeschooler rhetoric that falsely claimed a
> Constitutional right to homeschool.” I did not see that claim
> anywhere in the published article,
From the article:
“But that short answer doesn’t explain why states did it, or put
differently, why the political campaign to pressure them to do it was
so spectacularly successful. Education, after all, is typically
describes as a core, and possibly the core, state responsibility. Why
were the states so willing to turn the reins over to parents? They
acted, at least in part, because of the belief, held by religous
parents and proclaimed by their advocates, that a constitutional right
required the states to do so. Specifically, the parents and their
advocacy groups argued that religious parents had a free exercise
right, grounded in the First Amendment, to educate their children as
they see fit, in private, at home, in accordance with their religous
beliefs, and with no oversight by or even interaction with state
authorities. In the face of this adamantly asserted constitutional
right, and strapped for cash in any event, the states ceded
responsibility for what had previously been a core state function …”
The danger in gross aggregation of individual state behavour is that
you miss the details.
From the original article:
“The short answer to how it happened is simply that in the 1980s, all
fifty state legislatures, in response to massive political pressure
from religious parents and their lobbyists, legalized
homeschooling. They either passed “homeschooling statutes” that
explicitly allow the practice, or they amended their “compulsory
attendance laws” so as to create exemptions for parents who shoose to
homeschool, or they clarified existing laws”
Well, this statement is false. One only need to look at the
ultraconservative and overtly religious state, Massachusetts:
Homeschooling is permitted by case law in the Care and Protection of
Charles.
Thanks for your reply.
Milton Gaither: “I’m sure she did say something about the Constitutional argument”
Well, I pointed out that she said “something” about the Constitutional argument: she said only that it was “adamantly asserted” by many lobbying for homeschooling — as Michael Moy’s helpful extended quote quite clearly shows. And she said that the lobbying (“one way or another”) was effective. What she did not say, and what you attributed to her, is that the claims about a Constitutional right to homeschool were believed by politicians or by courts. On the contrary, she very clearly noted that the courts were not persuaded of such a right.
If West had meant to say that legislators or the courts were persuaded of the claimed Constitutional right, it would have been rather simple for her to have said as much. Correcting her for something she did not say — indeed, for something she explicitly denies, in part — was not a confidence-inspiring beginning to the critical analysis.
Michael Moy: “The danger in gross aggregation of individual state behavour is that you miss the details.”
Agreed, absolutely. On the other hand, that’s generally the difference between short articles and long books. Noting the detailed exceptions to the generalizations is a valuable service (and seems welcome to Professor West); but hardly shows that the generalizations aren’t broadly correct.
> she said only that it was “adamantly asserted” by many lobbying for
> homeschooling – as Michael Moy’s helpful extended quote quite
> clearly shows. And she said that the lobbying (“one way or another”)
> was effective. What she did not say, and what you attributed to her,
> is that the claims about a Constitutional right to homeschool were
> believed by politicians or by courts. On the contrary, she very
> clearly noted that the courts were not persuaded of such a right.
It seems to me that Gaitner made a conclusion that politicians
believed when it is possible that they saw the numbers and just did a
political calculus. Perhaps West could simply clarify what she meant.
Regarding the claim that the courts were not persuaded of such a right:
[We now examine the parents’ contention that the approval process of
G.L. c. 76, Sec. 1, infringes on their right to educate their own
children, a right protected by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United
States Constitution. General Laws c. 76, Sec. 1, requires that ” very
child between the minimum and maximum ages established for school
attendance by the board of education … attend a public day school in
[the] town [where the child resides] or some other day school approved
by the school committee … but such attendance shall not be required
… of a child who is being otherwise instructed in a manner approved
in advance by the superintendent or the school committee….” The
Canton school committee does not dispute the parents’ right to educate
their children at home. Commonwealth v. Roberts, supra 159 Mass. at
374, 34 N.E. 402 (allowing instruction by the parents provided “it is
given in good faith and is sufficient in extent”). However, the school
committee does require that the parents submit to them a home
schooling proposal, outlining, among other things, the curriculum,
materials to be used, and qualifications of the instructors, for its
approval as required under G.L. c. 76, Sec. 1. The parents argue that
such approval infringes on their rights under the Fourteenth Amendment
to control the upbringing and education of their children. (FN8)]
Care and Protection of Charles, Supreme Judicial Court of
Massachusetts, Norfolk Argued Nov. 6, 1986. Decided March 2, 1987.
The parents appeared to be arguing an unconditional right while the
courts agreed that there is a conditional right to homeschool. The
actual result is a fuzzy approval process which more or less works
reasonably well based on comments that I’ve read from Massachusetts
homeschoolers.
> On the other hand, that’s generally the difference between short
> articles and long books.
The universal quantifier in mathematics and logic is an upside-down
capital A and it’s frequently referred to as a _forall_. We try to
be precise in mathematics and engineering.
Let’s take a look at a passage in one of West’s long books:
“Religious fundamentalists use the power of their protected rhetoric
underscored by their right to religious freedom to home school their
children in the lessons of contempt for those who do not share their
faith.”
(Re-imaging justice: progressive interpretations of formal equality,
rights, and the rule of law, Ashgate Publishing, 2003, page 82.)
That’s a pretty broad generalization for a long book. Perhaps West
was attempting hyperbole.
> Noting the detailed exceptions to the generalizations is a valuable
> service (and seems welcome to Professor West); but hardly shows that
> the generalizations aren’t broadly correct.
One doesn’t use a universal quantifier for a generalization.
From the article:
“The short answer to how it happened is simply that in the 1980s, all
fifty state legislatures, in response to massive political pressure
from religious parents and their lobbyists, legalized homeschooling.”
If one applies reasonable common sense, one can see that there are
religious states and states where religion doesn’t play a big part in
politics. One would consider Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and
many other states to fall into this category. We might even use the
blue versus red idea. Would it seem reasonable that a state where
religious issues weren’t high on the political list storming the
Capitol over religious issues?
My recollection of the history of homeschooling in my state is that
it wasn’t a religious matter.
From the article:
“First, courts, and particularly the federal courts, have never
granted the existence of the “right to homeschool.”
_have never_ would be the negation of the existential quantifier in
predicate calculus and I think that most would agree should not be
used in a generalization. Perhaps most, vast majority, many, etc.
would be more precisely vague.
—————
Regarding Reich, Kingdom of the Children, suggests that the large flow
of religious conservatives in the 1980s was due to the loss of a tax
benefit to either private schools or private school parents. If that
is the case, then one way to get children back into schools would be
to reinstate that tax benefit.
—————
The book referred to above may give the reader a better view of West and
her ideals. There is a review of the book at
http://www.bsos.umd.edu/gvpt/lpbr/subpages/reviews/west704.htm
which is rather interesting. She makes some interesting points about
current problems but the feel of her proposed solution framework
has that ivory tower feel.
Massachusetts is not the only example where her sweeping historical claims are clearly false.
Texas and Oklahoma passed no legislation to “legalize” home education in the 1980s. Provisions in their state constitutions already provided for home education as a form of private education. It was NEVER illegal to begin with. Government authorities still harrassed (and occassionaly continue to harass) home educating families, but it was not illegal.
There is also case law in at least Illinois and Indiana that dates to the first half of the 20th century, where home education was deemed legal in that state by the courts under the state’s original, existing compulsory education laws. Again, wasn’t ILLEGAL to begin with and did not need to be “legalized” in the 1980s.
You can see my citations and explanations of these examples at: http://diosadotada.homeschooljournal.net/2009/12/22/an-update-on-the-continuing-dialog/
How many specific explanations of the complex and individual legal histories of home education in each state does it take before someone can clearly see that the West article contains plainly false statements (like the one Michael Moy quotes above) about the legal history of homeschooling?
The Boston Globe, September 20, 199, Monday, City Edition
Home-school battle tests state, parental rights;
Vermont single mother, authorities in standoff over schooling for son, 15
Ellen Barry, Globe Staff
Page B1
On Wednesday, in response to a petition from prison officials, Judge Michael Kupersmith released Maple, 36, from the Chittenden County Jail after two weeks, on the condition that she deliver her son to the court for a needs assessment Friday morning, or pay $100 a day in fines for every day he is absent. Maple left town and did not show up for the hearing, although she had scheduled an appointment for today with a specialist for an independent assessment of Trevor’s needs, she said.
…
But the 100 disabled students who are home-schooled must also have Individualized Education Plans, or IEPs, which must be administered either by school officials or by approved third-party tutors. When Maple failed to arrange for an IEP, her rights as a parent ran out, Kupersmith said in a statement prepared for the hearing at which he released her.
————————-
This judge believed that parents have a conditional right to homeschool.
————————-
A good background article for West would be from The Boston Globe, August 15, 2004: READING,WRITING & RIGHT-WING POLITICS THIS FALL, CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIAN HOMESCHOOLERS WILL HIT THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL FOR GEORGE BUSH AND OTHER CANDIDATES WHO SUPPORT THEIR POLITICAL AGENDA. WHY AREN’T LIBERAL HOMESCHOOLERS FOLLOWING SUIT? by Steve Grove.
It provides some background on the “inclusives” that don’t make it into the news and uses Mitchell Stevens’ (NYU) research to make various points that should give West some pause for the basis of her beliefs.
While only two states had home-schooling statutes or regulations in 1980, 37 states had adopted such laws by 2001.
(Home Schooling Debate, Rachel Cox, CQ Researcher, January 2003)
The cite on homeschooling being illegal before the 1980s was from Yuracko. Yuracko is generally more precise with her comments than is West.
“Although homeschoolers are a diverse group, the
movement has come to be defined and dominated by its fundamentalist Christian majority.”
West’s language is far more provocative and imprecise.
Unfortunately Yuracko cites another work for homeschooling being illegal before the 1980s so figuring out where this error comes from involves pointer chasing.
The idea that homeschooling was illegal everywhere before the 1980’s has been pushed by those who stood to benefit from looking like they were the heroes who made it legal. (See HSLDA).
There were, in fact, some prosecutions of homeschoolers for violations of compulsory attendance laws in some states – people considered it to be illegal. In other states, like those mentioned here, it was not ever considered to be illegal.
Sweeping generalizations about illegality across states are just incorrect. Many times, this is because those outside of homeschooling presume that certain sources are legitimate when they are not. Researchers in all fields must look at who is telling the story and what their bias is, rather than either adapting or reacting to the bias of their sources.
And then it gets passed on as everybody does a survey of previously published works, and round and round we go.
“Home-schooling is a fairly recent phenomenon. When Ronald Reagan came to power, in 1981, it was illegal for parents to teach their own children in most states. Today it is a legal right in all 50 states.”
Economist; 2/28/2004, Vol. 370 Issue 8364, p32-33, 2p
Homeschooling was common in the United States before the nineteenth century, but by the early 1980s the practice was illegal in most states. n2 Since then, homeschooling has enjoyed a dramatic rebirth. n3 Today, homeschooling
is legal in all states. n4
Yuracko
“The short answer to how it happened is simply that in
the 1980s, all fifty state legislatures, in response to massive political pressure from religious parents and their
lobbyists, legalized homeschooling. They either passed
“homeschooling statutes” that explicitly allow the
practice, or they amended their “compulsory attendance
laws” so as create exemptions for parents who
choose to homeschool, or they clarified existing laws
such that homeschools would be classified as a species
of “private schools” or “church schools” and thereby
be legal under statutes legitimating those institutions.
State after state, one way or another, decriminalized
homeschooling throughout the course of that decade.”
West
The Economist is the source of the quote. It doesn’t provide a citation for that information. I do not know whether or not the statement is true but I have a feeling that it would require a considerable amount of effort to verify independently.
Yuracko simply reproduced the information.
It appears that West took excessive liberties.
The packet that West referred to (not sure if here or if on another board) appears to be something for a course that she is teaching in the spring. I would recommend just using Yuracko’s work as it comes across as a well-done piece. I disagree with some aspects and found a few errors but it’s what I would expect of good research.
Yuracko’s work provides inline citations, shows minimal bias, backs up arguments and uses reasoned analogies. She also uses Stevens as a source.
I don’t find Stevens to be a reliable source at all.
Michael Moy: “Regarding the claim that the courts were not persuaded of such a right…Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts… ”
West wrote that the federal courts were not persuaded. The SJCM is a red herring. Precision, etc.
“The universal quantifier in mathematics and logic is an upside-down capital A and it’s frequently referred to as a _forall_. We try to be precise in mathematics and engineering.”
Well, it’s hard to see the point of this, except as an irrelevant (and, FYI, unsuccessful) attempt to establish some intellectual authority.
“One doesn’t use a universal quantifier for a generalization.”
“Generalization” is ambiguous between the sort of thing you’d use a universal quantifier for, and the sort of thing that admits of exceptions but is broadly correct. But never mind. West has quite rightly acknowledged that Gaither’s reply adds some necessary nuance. You are perfectly correct about claims such as West’s, that “over the course of the last thirty years, “homeschooling” has gone from illegal—meaning criminal— in all fifty states, to fully legal, and from heavily regulated, when allowed, to either completely unregulated or only lightly regulated, everywhere.” She’d have done better to leave out the the criminal claim, to note the gray zone in which legally discouraged or outwith-policy practices can live, and make her claim (merely!) that homeschooling has gone from widely prohibited by law or policy at some level or other, to almost universally permitted without oversight or regulation.
Would her overall arguments be weakened in any way you can specify, through being so qualified?
I should add that I’m being deliberately flat-footed and tongue-in-cheek about the federal-state court distinction. I do take the point that West both giveth and taketh away on the matter, moving from the seemingly absolute “never” to the list of (so far as I can tell correct) qualifications and weakenings needed to make the generalization true as far as it goes (“the doctrine is messy… with only a few exceptions… constitutionality of mandatory attendance laws… regulations governing legalized homeschooling, against claims that parents have a constitutional right
to homeschool _that would invalidate those laws_…”). But if one is going to beat the drum about precision, it behooves one to acknowledge that those qualifications and allowances were given, after all.
> West wrote that the federal courts were not persuaded. The SJCM is a
> red herring.
“First, courts, and particularly the federal courts, have never
granted the existence of the right to homeschool.”
West, page 8
> Precision, etc.
Perhaps you should have the actual document open to review before
you comment.
> Well, it~s hard to see the point of this, except as an irrelevant
> (and, FYI, unsuccessful) attempt to establish some intellectual
> authority.
I’m an engineer, not an intellectual. We learned this in a course on
artificial intelligence. Many people make forall arguments which can
simply be refuted with a counterexample. I would expect a scholar to
have taken a basic course in logic, debate and reasoning but then
again, scholars are just people. Scholars don’t have to build bridges
so I guess that they can play fast and loose but let’s not allow too
much leeway when we’re talking about making big changes to the lives
of a lot of people.
> She~d have done better to leave out the the criminal claim, to note
> the gray zone in which legally discouraged or outwith-policy
> practices can live, and make her claim (merely!) that homeschooling
> has gone from widely prohibited by law or policy at some level or
> other, to almost universally permitted without oversight or
> regulation.
I don’t even know that I’d go that far.
I would like to see an example in even one state that homeschooling
was prohibited by law or policy at any level at any time in US history.
I would also disagree that homeschooling is universally permitted
without oversight or regulation. The two states that I am most
familiar with are regulated. That gets rid of the “universally”
part. At least as a quantifier.
> Would her overall arguments be weakened in any way you can specify,
> through being so qualified?
Let’s say a student turned in a paper with no inline citations, was
riddled with claims that you knew to be in error and played fast and
loose with references. What would you do with that paper?
I have problems with a good bit of what she wrote. To go into those
areas would take a good amount of time. What would be preferable is
a redo by the author with proper research. Some of the depictions
is laced (to be generous) with political and what appears to be
personal bias.
“These families are not living in romantic, rural, self-suffi- cient
farmhouses; they are in trailer parks, 1,000- square-foot homes,
houses owned by relatives, and some, on tarps in fields or parking
lots. Their lack of job skills, passed from one generation to the
next, depresses the community~s overall economic health and their
state~s tax base.”
I’d really like to see the source for this.
I would also expect to see opposing views for her position on
regulation along with reasoned arguments against regulation.
If we look at the previous article “Constitutional Rights for
Nonresident Aliens” by Alec D. Walen, we see his argument for
extending protections to nonresident aliens along with his
quotation of the argument against his position. Persuasion
is often improved with the appearance of fairness.
> I should add that I~m being deliberately flat-footed and
> tongue-in-cheek about the federal-state court distinction.
I will continue on in a droll way.
> I do take the point that West both giveth and taketh away on the
> matter, moving from the seemingly absolute -Y´never¡ to the list of
> (so far as I can tell correct) qualifications and weakenings needed
> to make the generalization true as far as it goes (´the doctrine is
> messy~ with only a few exceptions~ constitutionality of mandatory
> attendance laws~ regulations governing legalized homeschooling,
> against claims that parents have a constitutional right to
> homeschool _that would invalidate those laws_~¡). But if one is
> going to beat the drum about precision, it behooves one to
> acknowledge that those qualifications and allowances were given,
> after all.
I had to look up the concept of legal doctrine as I was unfamiliar
with the term but it refers to case law. I haven’t seen that the
case law in this area is messy – it seems consistent in the cases
that I’ve looked through. You might praise the rest of that paragraph
but the rest of that paragraph then repeats the error that state
legislators in all fifty states decriminalized homeschooling.
Perhaps you could more precisely state how each of your claimed
items weakens the opening sentence. Please use diagrams if possible
as I can be slow at these things. Predicate calculus would be an
ideal means of precise communications.
I know that most of the comments here have become about the legal and historical issues in the article, but the claim that simply shocked me was Ms. West’s third potential harm in the article, which I don’t think is easily summarized. She says,
“Third, public and private schools provide for many
children, I suspect, although I have yet to see studies of
this, a safe haven in which they are both regarded and
respected independently and individually. Family love
is intense, and we need it to survive and thrive. It is
also deeply contingent on the existence and nature of
the family ties. Children are loved in a family because
they are the children of the parents in the family. The
“unconditional love” they receive is anything but
unconditional: it is conditioned on the fact that they are
their parents’ children. School—either public or private—
ideally provides a welcome respite. A child is
regarded and respected at school not because she is her
parent’s child, but because she is a student: she is valued
for traits and for a status, in other words, that are
independent of her status as the parent’s genetic or
adoptive offspring. The ideal teacher cares about the
child as an individual, a learner, an actively curious
person—she doesn’t care about the child because the
child is hers. The child is regarded with respect equally
to all the children in the class. In these ways, the school
classroom, ideally, and the relations within it, is a
model of some core aspects of citizenship.”
Having been a professional teacher in both public and private schools and now being a homeschooling parent, this whole paragraph simply confuses me and does not match my experience in any way. What evidence can be cited for this? It seems to me that in neither example is the love “unconditional.” She says parents love their children because they are their children. But teachers love their students because they are their students. Is that not also a relationship that, if it didn’t exist, would mean the teacher didn’t love the student? I would also like to question that teachers do love all their students. As a teacher, I loved many students, but I cannot honestly say I loved every single one of them. The role I think Ms. West might be trying to highlight is that a teacher is an adult who can love a child’s achievement much more objectively than a parent and can often have a greater impact on the child’s work as a result. A child may take much more pride and pleasure in the praise of a teacher than a parent who s/he feels “has to love me.” But I think aunts, uncles, ministers, scout leaders, extracurricular teachers and friends of the family often serve this role at least as often as classroom teachers for all children, schooled and homeschooled.
Finally, Ms. West seems to be dismissing the family love. While I keep in touch in many former students because I care about them greatly, I cannot pretend that what I feel for them is even an iota as important as what their parents feel for them, or what I feel for my own children. While children may need outside role models and mentors, even for children in school, I think the love of the family is much more important.
Here’s another anti-home education news article that deserves a response:
http://miller-mccune.com/news/don-t-tread-on-me-i-home-school-1686
I’m wondering… so if West said that it homeschooling was illegal in the 1980’s… well, when did it become ILLEGAL? Because as far as I knew…homeschooling was legal in previous centuries. So hm… when did that change. … did it?
I can’t stand those biased judgments and criticisms from anti-homeschoolers.
Mr. Gaither –
I am so glad I found your blog! I agree with mostly everything, but I would like to politely disagree with your assertion that music (violing/piano) must be started young or the student will never catch up. My homeschooled daughter was 11 when she took her first piano lesson and at the age of 16 she made her orchestral debut as a soloist with a large, metropolitan symphony. Her teacher, a former concert pianist, also began at the age of 11. Several of her master class teachers (all professors of music at conservatories across the nation) have commented that a late start is often a very successful one. Ballet (I also have a budding ballerina on my hands) might be a bit different since it involves physical training and muscle development…..even so….I’m sure there are success stories with late starts in ballet, as well.
I have also found that a late start in academics has benefitted my children and other children I know. I have taught at a small homeschool co-op, and one of my students (age 15) had been completely unschooled and, while he was extremely well read, had never had any formal grammar. His essays were provoking and extemely thoughtful, yet his sentences did not begin with capital letters. I pointed this out to him. Once. And only once. He said, “Oh, okay.” And that was the end of that. He went away to college at the age of 16 and is doing very well (even made an A in Freshman Composition).
I know people will say that these are exceptions to the rules, but in my experience they simply are not.
Anyway, thank you so much and I look forward to continuing checking in on your blog!
You may be right Carol. I’m no brain scientist. 11 may still be young enough to develop those fine motor skills piano excellence requires. I was thinking in my comment of adults I know who have tried to start playing piano with very limited success. Same thing for adults who have tried to learn to read (or, to use myself as an example, to learn a new language!). I don’t know when the point of no return would be for piano, ballet, or other specialized skills. I know that I started taking piano lessons in 2nd grade and became pretty accomplished, but when I tried to pick up guitar in college I could never get my fingers to fly over the fretboard like I wanted them to no matter how long I practiced. Thanks for your comment, by the way! I appreciate your kind tone.
> It seems to me that in neither example is the love
> “unconditional.” She says parents love their children because
> they are their children. But teachers love their students
> because they are their students.
That’s a good point. There are so many problems with this article and I don’t care to dig out all of the sources to see if she just made this stuff up, took liberties with other sources or if her sources are even accurate.
That said, teachers might have conditions for their love. How about paycheck, benefits and pensions?
Milton, my son commented to me that maybe you just didn’t have the talent for guitar. He says that plenty of brilliant guitarists started playing in their mid to late teens. I just looked up about Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton and they both started at the age of about 15 (Eric Clapton was given a guitar at the age of 13 but put it aside because it was too difficult for him then).
Sorry, I hope you didn’t find my comment (or reporting of my son’s) to be rude. I mean it with all due respect, being totally untalented at any musical instrument myself.
Earlier I posted the following:
“West claims to be concerned with the safety and academic progress of children, but I’m not buying that argument at all! That’s just a ruse. Read West’s other work, and you’ll find that she’s not an expert on education or child safety.”
That’s not an ad hominem argument because I’m not claiming her ideas are wrong because of who she is. Her ideas have already been proven wrong by others on this blog. However, what I am saying is that we should look at who she is to reveal her motivation.
I don’t want to waste time debating someone on the details of homeschool statistics or homeschool legal history when that’s all a feint attack of theirs. The real issue is freedom, and I’d rather expose their true intention to take that away from us.
Here’s another example: West argues that “authoritarian parenting produces damaged, ethically unrealized slaves who can’t think for themselves” (ethical servility). That criticism is nothing other than the Authoritarian Personality Structure as described by the neo-Marxist Institute for Social Research (Frankfurt School).
I want to point out how much of her article reveals her true motivation, which likely isn’t for the care and concern for children that she claims. No matter how much West tries to dress up her anti-Christian bigotry, let’s expose that first. The other points she makes can be refuted better by bloggers here, including Gaither of course.
Well done, C. Munny!
//West argues that “authoritarian parenting produces damaged, ethically unrealized slaves who can’t think for themselves” (ethical servility). That criticism is nothing other than the Authoritarian Personality Structure as described by the neo-Marxist Institute for Social Research (Frankfurt School).//
Not to mention that public schools are not exactly bastions of freethinking and anti-authoritarianism. What does Ms. West think 12 years of compulsory, authoritarian schooling produce?
Milton – I think, based on when the other pianists who play at my daughter’s level started, that 11 is considered quite a late start. Most of these kids were playing at 3 or 5. I probably wasn’t quite clear about why I brought this up – but it was the testing at age 12 thing…..My point is that my kids have all done well with late starts at various things, both academically and otherwise. My 15-year-old son didn’t read at all until he was 11 (and believe me – we TRIED) and then he read Lord of the Rings for his first book. He attended public school through 1st grade. When he couldn’t read by the middle of first grade he was pulled out of reading and sent to “reading fluency” – which was basically to work on his speed. Sort of funny since he couldn’t read at all, much less, read quickly. So they timed him while he did any number of things – none of which included reading and all of which annoyed the teachers. He was supposed to begin Special Ed for 2nd grade – and that was when we decided to homeschool him “to catch him up”. Our intention was to put him back into school. Of course, that never happened. He wasn’t caught up until probably this year – 9th grade. He has a language processing disorder and even though we tried various programs, one after another, what it seems he really needed….was time. And time is something that the schools cannot give, nor is it something that tests will wait for. If he were tested at the age of 12 we would have been deemed homeschooling failures – when in reality – what we were doing worked beautifully – but it took awhile. In school? He would have fallen through the cracks and his self-esteen would have suffered greatly.
I won’t bore you with the details of when our other children began reading, but let it suffice to say that none of them were on the schools’ timelines – either way too early or way too late. And ALL of them are avid recreational readers of everything under the sun.
I try not to be too hard on people who are against homeschooling because, to be perfectly honest, I didn’t agree with it at all until I realized it would benefit my own family. But while I won’t argue with them (they’re entitled to their opinions) I certainly have a hard time ignoring any attempts that might be made to take away my right to do what I deem is best for my children. And for that reason I am so grateful for the eloquent way in which you defend homeschooling!
As for the child abuse issue that is brought up over and over again – are only school-aged children abused? If we are to put children in school to avoid abuse in the home, why aren’t babies simply removed at birth? School isn’t protecting a 6-week-old baby who is shaken.
Here in Texas, I love the freedom I have to homeschool. My mother was raised on a ranch that was so far away from the nearest school, she was homeschooled, along with her brother, until they moved to town when she was in high school. And she did fine, went to college, got married, enjoyed a career….without any state testing or interference from legislation. So there is a long history here in our state of families educating their own children, as there is in the entire country (as you point out in your book).
Anyway – again, thank you! I’ve ordered your book and can’t wait to read it and discuss it with homeschooling (and non) friends.
What about the claim that “95% of child abuse referrals come from school teachers”? That is VERY different from the stat given by the National Clearinghouse on Child Abuse and Neglect Information website. That found that only 16% of reports of suspected abuse or neglect came from teachers. 44% of reports came from relatives, friends, or neighbors.
Do some abusers claim to be “homeschooling” to cover up abuse? Sadly, yes. But nearly all of the tragedies I’ve heard about were kids who were enrolled in government-run schools and then removed to “homeschool” AFTER the child welfare authorities got involved with the family.
Just chiming in as another over-educated and under-employed mother, who could be doing something better with her life. As I sit here, in my large suburban home, and watch all of the other over-educated and under-employed women in my neighbourhood send their kids off to school and then enjoy a leisurely jog, some shopping time, and tea with the gals over at the book club, I have to wonder why I do this to myself.
Oh yeah. It’s not all about me.
I have kids who have needs that were not being met in school, so I’m looking after them myself. They’re doing really well at home, by the way. Thanks for your concern.
I do question whether this article is, in part, another version of the Mommy Wars (as at least one other poster mentioned — I’m afraid I wasn’t able to read all the comments, but most of those I did read are excellent).
When I was a young and childless lawyer, I confess I did wonder about those women who stayed home with their kids. Weren’t they sufficiently driven to DO something with their lives? Then I became one of them (a surprise, even to myself), and of course, those working mothers who carried on with their careers and off-loaded their parenting to strangers soon became the object of my disdain. (One lawyer I once knew had to hire a whole team to cover off her big-time lawyer obligations — day nanny, night nanny, weekend nanny….can you believe it?!)
Of course I have my tongue in cheek here…but only a little. I often think that we women are very hard on people who make a different choice when it comes to raising children. After all, it’s our biological imperative, and the choices we make say a lot about us — or so we think, which is why we are so quick to shoot down those whose choices so sharply contrast our own.
I appreciate your concern, Ms West, that, as an over-educated woman stuck in the home I might not be achieving self-actualization (if that really WAS your concern), but I can assure you that I am thriving just as well as my kids are. I love this job — and it is way more challenging, and way more gratifying, than slogging away as a trial lawyer. Mind you, in those days people actually paid for my advice — today my young “clients” won’t even take it for free!
The other posters here have done a great job dispelling so many of the myths raised and perpetuated in your initial article, so I won’t belabor that. I would be most happy to engage in a dialogue with you as part of your ongoing research. My (rather pathetic) blog is linked to my name, above.
I am just now finding out about this article and am pleased by the responses and rebuttals. Those of us who are the fundamental Christians that she so mistrusts do need to remember to pray for Ms. West. Pray, of course, that the Lord will bring someone into her life who will share Jesus with her, pray she meets Jesus personally, and pray that she meets home schoolers and will develop an honest and accurate picture of home schooling – and who knows, maybe some day she will become one of our biggest advocates! Wouldn’t the Lord enjoy to do just that!!
I’m another highly educated mom working here at home as my son’s teacher. I have noticed, as I meet other homeschooling families, that a lot of them are homeschooling because of some learning disorder or other issue with the child. If the child is quirky and bullied, can’t keep up, has a delay, then the parents start homeschooling. I haven’t met a lot of people who decided to homeschool for religious reasons or because they assumed they’d be better teachers than the teachers are. (I have met some moms who I thought would be lonely without their kids around, though.) The only reason I homeschool: public school didn’t work out. My child’s teacher made him feel awful about his (minor) learning disability and made him cry every day. It’s a top notch public school with excellent test scores, but it wasn’t a good fit for a kid with a learning disability. My son is now doing great academically. I do use the same texts and workbooks as the school does and I do make him do the work. He could drop back in to school at any time if something happened to me, and he wouldn’t be behind the other children. THAT is important to me and I’ve made sure of that. Frankly, I’d rather let the school do it’s job and do supplemental, fun, educational stuff with my kid on weekends rather than homeschool. My kid could use the extra stimulation public school provides. Homeschooling is a lot of work, probably because I don’t unschool and let him learn from daily life, which would be tons easier on both of us. We do lots of experiments, supplemental classes, field trips, group activities, etc, but I still think he’d be better off in public school. I’ve visited several schools recently and I was amazed at the things that are always being used as (excuse the cliche) “teachable moments.” And yes, there is a certain kind of socialization and place the world that public schooled students get/have that homeschooled kids just don’t. I visited schools and stayed all day to watch, and I could then see what my kid was missing out on. However, until my son outgrows or works around his learning disability, he’ll be home where he’ll learn free of torment and ridicule. Anyway, maybe homeschooling parents don’t need to be judged. Most of us are doing the best we can as the situation presents itself. I do have to make one off-topic comment. The inclusion of every child in school these days sure makes the classroom unpleasant. Screaming, desk-throwing, violent children who have little ability to learn at level are included ALL day. I am hoping that by the time my son goes back to school, those children will be back in a place where they can be educated at a level that actually helps them and the classes are free of the uproar they cause. God bless their parents, but whoever came up with the inclusion rules has absolutely lost their mind.
This is off-topic, but I wanted to say that J’s comment about unschooling belies its reality. She said,” Homeschooling is a lot of work, probably because I don’t unschool and let him learn from daily life, which would be tons easier on both of us.”
This doesn’t have much to do with how unschooling works, and contributes to the thought that unschooling is un-everything.
Many unschoolers have full, busy, goal-oriented lives that take a lot of work. They are unschoolers because they are Not.Doing.School. In helping their children facilitate their learning thru the lens of their interests and proclivities, unschooling parents and their kids are not merely learning “from daily life.” They are more likely pursuing American Sign Language because of their kids’ interest in communicating with hard of hearing and deaf folks; they are becoming master gardeners because of their interest in horticulture; they are members of the local astronomical society because of their interest in the universe. They are constant readers/writers/thinkers, who are in pursuit of librarians and their wonderful books and in pursuit of musicians and their wonderful music and mathematicians and their wonderful maths.
Unschooling for those in their earliest years may be about learning colors by sorting socks or learning measurements by baking cookies, but an off-handed comment that implies unschoolers aren’t presenting their families with challenging lives is a misrepresentation of that educational approach.
Frankly, most of the homeschoolers I know “get” this, and even if they are not unschoolers themselves, would not venture such an implication. It only provides fodder for those who seem to willfully broadbrush all homeschoolers as anti-intellectual. The truth is, the unschoolers who unschool with abandon and goals seem to be operating more like a whole family pursuing graduate degrees than anything resembling “school” – it can be very stimulating.
At the same time, an unschooling family might also be rightly proud of supporting its aspiring auto mechanic/entrepreneur, dancer, cook, surveryor or horse trainer. Preparing for any of these courses of life can also be demanding, and unschoolers would certainly not expect that daily life, “easy” and unshaped to meet the goals necessary for those vocations, to do the job.
All this said, I celebrate J’s homeschooling in a way that meets her family’s needs – not that she needs my celebration. I’m just so glad we can all do what works.
[…] by a vocal, organized, and powerful homeschooling population (as many of the comments posted under my review of Robin West’s recent article illustrate). Rob Reich in particular has for many years been the whipping […]
The National Home Education Research Institute posted a good response to Robin L. West’s Harms of Homeschooling:
http://www.nheri.org/Latest/The-Harms-of-Homeschooling-Where-Are-the-Premises.html
You know, I just re-read this thing by West. The tarps in the parking lots (as one of the places homeschoolers live) is just so far out. I’ve been in a lot of homeschooling communities and groups, and nary a tarp in sight. So bizarre. Now, I could describe for you some of the abodes that schooled families live in in my community that would break your heart. I thought on reflection, I might find more understanding of West’s work. It just seems weirder and weirder the more I read it.
Well, there are some things to be said in West’s defense. Maybe most of us posting have snug homes, computers to post replies, and the best homeschool books and products. But there are people out there who don’t. I remember reading a newspaper interview with a lady who had been home schooled and it was clear that she was shockingly illiterate. Apparently she had been kept home and not really educated much at all. My dad has neighbor kids who were home schooled and when they got to the local community college, they flunked intro classes and dropped out. They did not have basic skills to get through college. Therefore, my dad thinks home schoolers are letting their kids goof around and not teaching them what they need to know to make it in life. Maybe this West lady has seen a few bad examples and she’s worried about those kids, not criticizing the middle class folks with the resources to make sure their kids get an education. I’ll bet you there are some folks who are not giving their kids a good education at home. Sometimes people don’t even know that they don’t know stuff, if that makes sense. Plus, they have other worries and time gets away from them, and boom, they end up with a kid who can’t read well or do basic math.
We’re talking about research here so anecdotal evidence and personal bias should have been rooted out of the article.
I have a nephew that went to public schools and flunked out of community college too. There are lots of top 10% public school kids that flunked out at my son’s university. Do I think that all kids in public school are harmed?
The underlying assumption by the pro-regulation crowd is that the state can objectively set standards without being political. However, an honest analysis of how states have been testing their students in public schools proves that states cannot be trusted. In an effort to qualify for federal funds allocated by the No Child Left Behind law, states have lowered the test standards. Clearly they manipulate tests to get the desired results, merely creating an image of success. What would stop the states from administering a different test to homeschoolers for the purpose of getting results to advance some political agenda?
The bottom line is that there will always be some anecdotal evidence to mislead the public into thinking that homeschoolers are failing. Don’t fall for it! Overall, homeschoolers are doing very well, and and those few states that require testing haven’t benefited homeschoolers at all. Required testing has impeded the academic progress of homeschoolers by wasting their time.
Finally, I have to wonder if the pro-regulation crowd wants to impose restrictions on homeschoolers because it seems that homeschoolers have an “unfair advantage” over public school students who have to endure NCLB testing. Do they think that there is an achievement gap between homeschoolers and public school students that needs to be bridged? Impeding the academic progress of homeschoolers would bridge that gap! And that’s the kind of egalitarian political agenda that homeschoolers won’t tolerate.
If one of the goals in home schooling is to prepare your child for college (whether he ultimately decides to attend or not), it is wise to get him used to standardized testing. SATs and ACTs are required, I understand, by most colleges and universities.
I partner with Christian Liberty Academy in Illinois to home school my children. CLA requires that students take the California Achievement Test each year. I do not prepare my children for the CAT. (Since we are ex-patriots, I do not have to be accountable to anyone.) I have found the results to be helpful in planning my curriculum. Taking the CAT each year helped my children to be comfortable taking standardized tests and to know how to pace themselves for the SATs.
My older children did use Barron’s books to prepare for the SATs and did very well. They both received scholarships for their SAT scores and are thriving in American universities.
If preparing your child for college is not one of the goals of your home school, getting your child used to standardized testing may not have much value.
Federal stimulus money has helped avoid drastic cuts at public schools in most parts of the nation, at least so far. But with the federal money running out, many of the nation’s schools are approaching what officials are calling a “funding cliff.”
With state and local tax revenues still in decline, the end of the federal money will leave big holes in education budgets from Massachusetts and Florida to California and Washington, experts said.
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Is this going to generate an influx to homeschools from public schools?
Vicki, my college age children, homeschooled all their lives, all entered college without taking ACT or SAT tests and are doing very well. One began college with community college, which for many 4 year schools “erases” the need for testing, either with an A.S. degree or a particular minimum number of successful semesters. The other simply attended a 4 year school that did not require testing and was quite interested in his unique experiences made possible by home education. So it just depends. Certainly there are schools that require these tests, but I know many homeschoolers who never take them and don’t miss a beat in college admissions. The bottom line of this matter is “don’t assume” – talk to the colleges you’re interested in and find out their requirements. We’re really glad we didn’t waste time or money on the tests or test prep as they would have been superfluous in the case of our kids.
We’ve also found this amazing thing: despite the fact that we opted out of all standardized testing once moving to a state that allowed us to do so, our kids have absolutely no problem adjusting to testing in college.
Thanks, Win, for your comments. As I live outside the United States, I don’t always know all the options available. Glad your kids are thriving, too!
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Really interesting stuff. I am just diving into the legal requirements for homeschooling in the different states and provinces (in Canada) and am intrigued by it all. I am glad you so thoughtfully addressed the child abuse issue. I agree with you completely that so far, no one has come up with anything that sounds like a workable solution. Thanks for this excellent blog — I look forward to reading it regularly!