Okay, now that I have a little time, I am going to rant a little about that anti-homeschooling post I was talking about yesterday.
Since kestrel9000 has since backpedaled from his original agreement with the statement that, “home schooling does more damage than it does good, and should not be allowed to be a continued practice,” I’m going to turn from his post and, instead, look at a few of the comments made there.
Maybe there is a distinction
I’m an educator and I’ve interacted with homeschooled students who come to me for private music lessons. There is a “right” way to homeschool such as mataliandy mentions downthread and there is the fundy way. There are plenty of legitimate homeschoolers out there. I’ve seen plenty of homeschoolers who go on to be successful in college and in their adult lives. The distinction should be made between Christofascist homeschooling and people who have children who do not fit into their school system for whatever reason.
And the comment by mataliandy referenced above…
As a homeschooling parent…
I have to say the brush is awfully broad.
I agree that the dominionists and others who teach revisionist history, creation “science,” and other junk academics are harming their children.
However, in our homeschooling, we use real literature, the actual constitution, field trips to science museums, aquariums, Washington DC, and other places involving real history & science, we do actual science experiments, involve math in everyday activities, and so on. We talk A LOT about current events (heh, probably true of all kossacks), and historical precedents. We talk about peoples’ perceptions, and how the media manipulates what we think. We also go out of our way to keep the kids involved in community and sports activities, ensuring they spend time with kids of all ages and diverse socio-economic & ethnic backgrounds.
In short, though we provide a different experience from the school model, we provide a great deal of depth, and (I hope) do a good job of educating our kids.
In the mean time, we happily pay our school taxes, so other kids can get a decent education, even if their parents can’t or don’t want to do what we do.
Translation: If you agree with us, you should be allowed to homeschool, but if you don’t, then, no way.
I would like to think that the problem with that line of thinking is self-explanatory, but the blogosphere continues to chip away at my idealistic naivete on a daily basis, so I will attempt an explanation.
There is a “right” way to homeschool … and there is the fundy way.
Determining one’s fitness to homeschool based on whether or not you agree with their ideology and/or religious views is wrong for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which is that you might not be the one deciding the fitness criterion in the future.
I mean, do you really want that line drawn when you want to homeschool, but the people deciding the acceptability standard are not like you?
I cannot believe there are actual participants in our democratic process that are so exclusive in how they think rights should be appropriated.
News flash: There is this little thing called Freedom of Religion that actually prohibits the government from disallowing certain parents to homeschool because they hold religious view you oppose.
*Deep breaths* …Charity suddenly remembers the downside to political blogging…
What I find funny is that what mataliandy describes is exactly what many “fundy” homeschooler do, in addition to teaching young earth creation and providential history.
So now what? How are you going to weed out the “bad” ones, huh? How will you separate out those using the “fundy method” if their kids can parrot back all of the facts you want them to know, but still believe what their parents believe? What then?
Here’s the thing, despite watching hours of “real” science videos and reading “real” science books from our secular library on evolution my kids still believe that God is creator, that He created man, and that we do not share a common ancestor with apes.
Oh yeah, and I didn’t tell them that.
I have actually tried to play Devil’s advocate and open their minds a little bit on the issue. I don’t fully know how to reconcile God and science. The Bible provides an insufficient account to know exactly what happened, so I don’t pretend to know all of the answers.
The bottom line is that they can pass all of the secular science tests that you could possibly throw at them, but they will likely still emerge from their homeschool experience believing in creation.
So how are you going to stop us from infecting our children with the fundy virus?
Here’s a word of advice; ripping them out of their home and putting them back in the public school that failed to meet their needs will only drive them further away from your world view.
The thing that really peeves me about this is that there are homeschoolers out there who refuse to recognize that all parents have a right to homeschool, not just the ones that attend the local Democracy for America meet-ups.
Okay, rant over. We now resume regularly scheduled bland, homeschool mommy blogging.