So some Moron at the Washington Post just penned an intellectually bankrupt article on homeschooling. The absolute tripe that Big Media churns out these days is so deplorable I'm literally pained to read it.
Three Smart Rules for Home School Regulation
Homeschooling is the sleeping giant of the American education system. There are at least 1.7 million children being taught at home, a rough estimate because good data is hard to find and the number has been growing about 9 percent a year for the last decade. Home-schooling parents and their concerns don’t show up often in our debates over public schooling. They are too busy getting through the day, both making a living and teaching their children. We will likely hear more from them as they serve a larger and larger portion of the nation’s schoolchildren.
Some public school educators I know are uneasy about this. They don’t know home-schooling families well. They worry those kids are being ill-served by well-meaning but inexperienced parents....
WHOA right there!
Who the bleep put *public school educators* in charge of MY CHILDREN???
Given that most of them come from the second lowest quintile of academic performance themselves....the fact that they have ANY KIDS under their charge is scary enough.
Now they get an opinion on homeschoolers that should be weighed in possible homeschooling regulation????
Putting aside my personal homeschooling stance, this article's very premise is hollowed out of all logic.
This is what kills me. People today simply cannot think for themselves - of course, mostly on account of their Big Education upbringing.
At this moment, pols and pundits are arguing over which mortgage securities should be *bailed out* or made whole by newly minted currency. Meanwhile, the argument that Big Government has no place WHATSOEVER in the housing market can't even get an audience.
At this moment, pols, pundits, and narrow-brained doctors are arguing over big, super-big, or ginormous government run healthcare. Meanwhile, the intellectually superior notion that medicine would be completely fine on its own in a de-politicized market can't get any play either.
And, getting back to this ludicrous article, it's not enough for me or anyone else to wax indignant and assert that the government agents of Big Education have no dominion over the education of my children.
No, it's totally backwards.
It's me and the rest of us taxpayers who are in charge of *public school educators*!
And, not for anything, this *inversion of power*, and the havoc it would wreak, was predicted from the get-go.
From one of my favorite John Taylor Gatto excerpts:
In 1839, thirteen years before the first successful school compulsion law was passed in the United States, a perpetual critic of Boston Whig (Mann’s own party) leadership charged that pro-posals to erect German-style teacher seminaries in this country were a thinly disguised attack on local and popular autonomy. The critic Brownson allowed that state regulation of teaching licenses was a necessary preliminary only if school were intended to serve as a psychological control mechanism for the state and as a screen for a controlled economy. If that was the game truly afoot, said Brownson, it should be reckoned an act of treason.
"Where the whole tendency of education is to create obedience," Brownson said, "all teachers must be pliant tools of government. Such a system of education is not inconsistent with the theory of Prussian society but the thing is wholly inadmissible here." He further argued that "according to our theory the people are wiser than the government. Here the people do not look to the government for light, for instruction, but the government looks to the people. The people give law to the government." He concluded that "to entrust government with the power of determining education which our children shall receive is entrusting our servant with the power of the master. The fundamental difference between the United States and Prussia has been overlooked by the board of education and its supporters."
7 comments:
maybe step back and appreciate that you have the right to homeschool your kids?
and be sure you're up for homeschooling through to the end. don't be surprised if you find yourself wanting to spend a little less time with them from the ages of say 13 to 17...
but i'm sure you'll tell me that your homeschool ways will prevent that awkward/rebellious phase from happening....
right, and that's what i thought about the terrible twos (which are now threes)
Youthful rebellion is perfectly natural.
However, it used to be that 15 year olds wanted off the farm. They wanted their own plot - and a wife.
They were itching for grown-up responsibility.
Send your kids to school (to create space?) and they will join the *youth culture*. You'll lose them forever AND they won't be hankering for any part of the adult world - save for your car keys, your credit card, and your home equity to pay for their year long camp, aka "college".
Even Will Durant said that schools main appeal was that they *relieve parents of their children*.
It's only fair that children who were raised by daycare facilities, nannies, and *school systems*....that when their chance comes, that they shutter the parents who OUTSOURCED them off to nursing homes.
You know, it's better for them *socially* anyway to be amongst their 'old coot' peers. This is the optimal way to handle burdens in a self-centered age.
Just yesterday I had a friend justify sending his kids to *school* with, "You don't know my son....he can't sit still. He can't be home all day."
The child is also very advanced in math. That kid will be absolutely tortured locked in a school classroom for the next 12 years. And he'll move out at age 18 with no meaningful relationship with his parents or siblings - just like the rest of us of this past generation.
AuP: Appreciate the RIGHT? Listen to yourself.
Look: I've HSed four children. First: graduated with a civil engineering degree, got an MBA at the same time,and was head-hunted by many corps before choosing his current employer, which had led him to world-wide travel, lucrative salary. Second: working on his PhD in Economics. Is teaching, researching while finishing up his education. Third:in college now, going to divinity school when finished with degree. Fourth: At home, independent study, though 14, will soon be taking classes at the local community college.
No 'rebellion' from any of them, thank you.
'Rebellion' is what comes from not expecting enough of our children. Rebellion is what comes from locking our children up with age mates from the age of five on. 'Rebellion' occurs when we allow bad teachers access to our kids.
Been there, done it, AuP. BTW: I am not a college grad. My husband works in a factory.
I encourage ALL parent to seriously consider educating their own kids, esp in the early years.
C,
Platonic idealism. aka Commie-think.
Anon,
Um, I don't care about your subjective assessment of your kids life. Interesting that you use achievement within the institutional framework as measurement of your success with homeschooling. Tell me about their relationships with other people? How many people love them, or like them? Are they complete people?
Maybe they are. I'm not insinuating they are not. I'm just saying that those are the results that I would look to assess before saying homeschooling is "effective" or not.
FYI, I was busting the nutz of the Cnut in my post. My kids are 3 and 1 and we're seriously considering homeschooling. I happen to think it's pretty cool that homeschooling is an option to us parents that are so inclined. My sister (a born again Christian and Dead Head and former HORRIBLE student) tried to homeschool her kids and could not get through it.
I think this is ludicrous. I enjoy a very happy and strong relationship with my parents and I wasn't home schooled. I think it's foolish to make such blanket assumptions that children have to be home schooled in order to have a functional relationship with their parents.
MsJess,
Have you ever heard the saying:
For example is not proof.
???
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