Stuck in a building with no light and secular, godless, atheist teachers
August 18, 2022 8:05 PM Subscribe
How Christian fundamentalist homeschooling damages children
Why did she stick with homeschooling for so long, despite her difficulties? “We were convinced that it would be better for our kids not to have an education than to be educated to become humanists or atheists and to reject God,” Garrison says.
“We became so isolated because the Quiverfull lifestyle was so overwhelming we didn’t have time or energy for socialization. So the only people we knew were exactly like us. We were told that the whole point of public school was to dumb down the children and turn them into compliant workers – to brainwash them and indoctrinate them into this godless way of thinking.”
Garrison believes that homeschooling has become so popular with fundamentalist Christians because, “there is an atmosphere of real terror among some evangelicals. They are horrified by the fact that Obama is president, and they see the New Atheist movement as a vocal, in-your-face threat. Plus, they are obsessed with the End Times, and believe that the Apocalypse could happen any day now...They see a demon on every corner.
“We homeschooled because we wanted to protect our children from what we viewed as the total secularization of America. We listened to people like Rush Limbaugh, who told us that America was in the clutches of evil liberal feminist atheists.”
So the only people we knew were exactly like us.
This, specifically, is what a healthy education teaches you to distrust.
posted by mhoye at 8:43 PM on August 18, 2022 [70 favorites]
This, specifically, is what a healthy education teaches you to distrust.
posted by mhoye at 8:43 PM on August 18, 2022 [70 favorites]
We were told that the whole point of public school was to dumb down the children and turn them into compliant workers
That's excruciatingly funny, because the christian private school I went to had us sit a literal cubicles and gave us little schedules we had to fill out every week, and put little American or "Christian" flags up on top to wait for a "supervisor" to come over so we could ask for permission to check our own work in answer books or use the freaking bathroom.
posted by JHarris at 9:01 PM on August 18, 2022 [38 favorites]
That's excruciatingly funny, because the christian private school I went to had us sit a literal cubicles and gave us little schedules we had to fill out every week, and put little American or "Christian" flags up on top to wait for a "supervisor" to come over so we could ask for permission to check our own work in answer books or use the freaking bathroom.
posted by JHarris at 9:01 PM on August 18, 2022 [38 favorites]
Ha JHarris! I went to a bit of a leftie primary school and, in the final year, we all got taken to various different kinds of nearby high schools, including one called "Life Christian Academy", which did that cubicle/workbook/flag thing. It was absolutely horrifying to our little bunch of proto-commies (who were used to attending classes only if they wished, and basically creating their own curricula).
They'd only just started using Australian flags rather than American flags.
posted by pompomtom at 9:28 PM on August 18, 2022 [17 favorites]
They'd only just started using Australian flags rather than American flags.
posted by pompomtom at 9:28 PM on August 18, 2022 [17 favorites]
I NEVER wanted to be a teacher. I think teachers are massively underpaid for the stress and responsibility they have. I know how much work is required to train as a teacher and to prepare classroom work, and I am so proud that my oldest daughter is an excellent high school teacher.
Yet these bumblefluffers think they can properly teach their children at home with no training, no planning, no oversight and no supervision. Basically another form of child abuse.
posted by Barbara Spitzer at 11:10 PM on August 18, 2022 [40 favorites]
Yet these bumblefluffers think they can properly teach their children at home with no training, no planning, no oversight and no supervision. Basically another form of child abuse.
posted by Barbara Spitzer at 11:10 PM on August 18, 2022 [40 favorites]
My christian school was two-tier. Majority of students did normal class stuff. But there were a few on the self-directed courses with the cubicles and all that.
Ours, which were under the "Accelerated Christian Education" system, were not what I'd call self-directed. Instead we had 12 workbooks in five subjects and basically told to get through them in a year.
I mentioned long ago that many of the kids that went there didn't succeed well in higher education. It's a miracle I have a Master's Degree now. Most of the people who ran the individual classrooms were decent sorts, although I have to say that once I got an issue of GamePro that I had brought in taken from me and shown to the class because of a mean-looking painting of a pirate in an ad, which got denounced as "demonic." It might have been the most fervor ever directed towards Atari Games' Skull & Crossbones.
posted by JHarris at 11:56 PM on August 18, 2022 [18 favorites]
Ours, which were under the "Accelerated Christian Education" system, were not what I'd call self-directed. Instead we had 12 workbooks in five subjects and basically told to get through them in a year.
I mentioned long ago that many of the kids that went there didn't succeed well in higher education. It's a miracle I have a Master's Degree now. Most of the people who ran the individual classrooms were decent sorts, although I have to say that once I got an issue of GamePro that I had brought in taken from me and shown to the class because of a mean-looking painting of a pirate in an ad, which got denounced as "demonic." It might have been the most fervor ever directed towards Atari Games' Skull & Crossbones.
posted by JHarris at 11:56 PM on August 18, 2022 [18 favorites]
We were told that the whole point of public school was to dumb down the children and turn them into compliant workers
With the right, it's always projection.
posted by acb at 1:08 AM on August 19, 2022 [62 favorites]
With the right, it's always projection.
posted by acb at 1:08 AM on August 19, 2022 [62 favorites]
“If they can do mathematics perfectly but they have no morals, you have failed them.”
I agree with that part, but it takes both. I was well aware of what schools taught and what they didn't. My kids spent six hours a day learning to read, write, and cipher, and the rest of the day I taught them how to treat each other, make friends, read a map, cook breakfast, manage money, walk in another person's shoes, drive a nail, and million other things. I can't imagine trying to do all that plus the reading part, and doing it while constantly pregnant has to be a nightmare. Kids deserve to learn more than one person, or even two, can teach them.
posted by Miss Cellania at 3:06 AM on August 19, 2022 [12 favorites]
I agree with that part, but it takes both. I was well aware of what schools taught and what they didn't. My kids spent six hours a day learning to read, write, and cipher, and the rest of the day I taught them how to treat each other, make friends, read a map, cook breakfast, manage money, walk in another person's shoes, drive a nail, and million other things. I can't imagine trying to do all that plus the reading part, and doing it while constantly pregnant has to be a nightmare. Kids deserve to learn more than one person, or even two, can teach them.
posted by Miss Cellania at 3:06 AM on August 19, 2022 [12 favorites]
Honestly, this bent over backwards way too far to defend homeschooling. There's an immense hubris in assuming you can replace the training in pedagogy of the dozens of specialized teachers a child will see in their lifetime.
Homeschooling is a lot of work, but it can be done well. For some children it is by far the best 'reasonable adjustment' for a disability or health condition. Parents are never choosing from the complete range of possibilities, they are always choosing from a small number of local concrete options that they can obtain a place at, travel to, and afford. For the majority of children, their local mainstream state school is a perfectly decent option and may well be the best. For some children that's not the case and homeschooling may be one of the plausible alternatives. Bad homeschooling has more potential to be damaging in some cases than bad schooling-outside-the-home. But it's not necessarily worse than being relentlessly bullied, or being forced to confirm to the wrong gender, or having unmanageable anxiety and stress due to the relentless noise and people.
posted by plonkee at 3:53 AM on August 19, 2022 [29 favorites]
Homeschooling is a lot of work, but it can be done well. For some children it is by far the best 'reasonable adjustment' for a disability or health condition. Parents are never choosing from the complete range of possibilities, they are always choosing from a small number of local concrete options that they can obtain a place at, travel to, and afford. For the majority of children, their local mainstream state school is a perfectly decent option and may well be the best. For some children that's not the case and homeschooling may be one of the plausible alternatives. Bad homeschooling has more potential to be damaging in some cases than bad schooling-outside-the-home. But it's not necessarily worse than being relentlessly bullied, or being forced to confirm to the wrong gender, or having unmanageable anxiety and stress due to the relentless noise and people.
posted by plonkee at 3:53 AM on August 19, 2022 [29 favorites]
There's an immense hubris in assuming you can replace the training in pedagogy of the dozens of specialized teachers a child will see in their lifetime.
This lines up with the belief “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge”, which has been reported as a core value in parts of the US' population since the 19th century at least. The right to inculcate whatever one thinks is right into the heads of one's children, free from the meddling of do-gooder pencilnecks from the government and here to help and their diabolical big-city agendas, has been seen as fundamental for ages, which is how America got things like Lawsonomy (tl;dr: wealthy small-town crank founds schools to “educate” the local children in his own unified theory of the universe, i.e., the early-20th-century equivalent of Time Cube), to say nothing of creationist schools.
posted by acb at 4:12 AM on August 19, 2022 [8 favorites]
This lines up with the belief “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge”, which has been reported as a core value in parts of the US' population since the 19th century at least. The right to inculcate whatever one thinks is right into the heads of one's children, free from the meddling of do-gooder pencilnecks from the government and here to help and their diabolical big-city agendas, has been seen as fundamental for ages, which is how America got things like Lawsonomy (tl;dr: wealthy small-town crank founds schools to “educate” the local children in his own unified theory of the universe, i.e., the early-20th-century equivalent of Time Cube), to say nothing of creationist schools.
posted by acb at 4:12 AM on August 19, 2022 [8 favorites]
Every time I try to read this article, it forcefully closes my browser. Which is ok, because I'm wanting it to mention racism somewhere, and I'm suspecting it doesn't? The comment about being horrified by Obama...mmm.
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:08 AM on August 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:08 AM on August 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
This article is eight years old. How much has homeschooling changed in those years? How much has the Right prevailed in tearing down public education?
Keep in mind there's a parallel homeschooling system on the left, made up of parents whose kids might be dangerously bullied in public school (for being trans or just different), or who won't be vaccinated, or who just want old-fashioned hippie unschooling. The motivations may be different, but some of the damage is the same.
Public school is not a perfect system by any means, but the more people who abandon it by choice the more likely the whole thing is to break down.
posted by rikschell at 5:13 AM on August 19, 2022 [13 favorites]
Keep in mind there's a parallel homeschooling system on the left, made up of parents whose kids might be dangerously bullied in public school (for being trans or just different), or who won't be vaccinated, or who just want old-fashioned hippie unschooling. The motivations may be different, but some of the damage is the same.
Public school is not a perfect system by any means, but the more people who abandon it by choice the more likely the whole thing is to break down.
posted by rikschell at 5:13 AM on August 19, 2022 [13 favorites]
I just wanted to say that I was homeschooled entirely until university (started taking some classes at 16, enrolled normally at 18). It was not abuse, I am more educated than most people, and although they raised me Christian, I became an atheist at 16 and am now a somewhat more vague nondualist.
Metafilter has sometimes had issues with casually dismissing homeschoolers as maladapted or undereducated, with calling their parents abusive regardless of circumstance, and generally acting like we are abstract fiction. I hope we can keep criticism in this thread focused on the real abuses which happen within homeschooling and avoid “open season”.
I'll second that. I (non religious) homeschooled our daughter from K-5, at which point we got her into a charter school, where she's doing very well. I also have two cousins who were homeschooled in a strict Christian household. Both of them are now very intelligent and well adjusted adults and, oddly enough, ultimately broke off from that ultra-Christian upbringing.
When I was homeschooling, the Facebook homeschool group posts were 50% good tips/advice/support and 50% boasting at how awesome homeschooling is and how horrid public schooling is (their capital "P" Pride rivaled Mr. Darcy's). There's a lot of shouting on both sides of this particular issue. I'm just saying that, with this at least, there's a sensible middle ground.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 5:15 AM on August 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
Metafilter has sometimes had issues with casually dismissing homeschoolers as maladapted or undereducated, with calling their parents abusive regardless of circumstance, and generally acting like we are abstract fiction. I hope we can keep criticism in this thread focused on the real abuses which happen within homeschooling and avoid “open season”.
I'll second that. I (non religious) homeschooled our daughter from K-5, at which point we got her into a charter school, where she's doing very well. I also have two cousins who were homeschooled in a strict Christian household. Both of them are now very intelligent and well adjusted adults and, oddly enough, ultimately broke off from that ultra-Christian upbringing.
When I was homeschooling, the Facebook homeschool group posts were 50% good tips/advice/support and 50% boasting at how awesome homeschooling is and how horrid public schooling is (their capital "P" Pride rivaled Mr. Darcy's). There's a lot of shouting on both sides of this particular issue. I'm just saying that, with this at least, there's a sensible middle ground.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 5:15 AM on August 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
Hippie unschooling and anti-vaccination are not as far from the fascists as one would imagine. Case in point: the wellness/QAnon nexus.
Or, to paraphrase Voltaire, “those who can believe absurdities can commit atrocities”
posted by acb at 5:19 AM on August 19, 2022 [12 favorites]
Or, to paraphrase Voltaire, “those who can believe absurdities can commit atrocities”
posted by acb at 5:19 AM on August 19, 2022 [12 favorites]
her near-constant pregnancies – which tended to result either in miscarriages or life-threatening deliveries – took a toll on her body and depleted her energy.
If there's a hell specifically for women, this is what it would be like.
posted by tommasz at 5:24 AM on August 19, 2022 [9 favorites]
If there's a hell specifically for women, this is what it would be like.
posted by tommasz at 5:24 AM on August 19, 2022 [9 favorites]
Christian homeschooling: for people who think segregation academies are too liberal.
Like rikschell, I noticed that the article is from 2014. Since that time who knows how many of those children have turned 18 and begun to vote; it certainly would explain a lot. I realize that literacy tests for voting have a horrible history in this country, but I wish there were some mechanism for keeping people who are completely ignorant of how a secular democracy is supposed to work from selecting our leaders.
I also appreciate those who are defending home schooling. It can certainly be done well, and there are a lot of stories out there of exceptional people who were homeschooled (I believe Shaun White was homeschooled, for example). Which is why I specified Christian homeschooling above. There is a world of difference between parents who homeschool in order to give their children a broader range of experience than they would get in a more traditional setting, and those who homeschool in order to shelter their children from anything the parents find objectionable.
posted by TedW at 5:29 AM on August 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
Like rikschell, I noticed that the article is from 2014. Since that time who knows how many of those children have turned 18 and begun to vote; it certainly would explain a lot. I realize that literacy tests for voting have a horrible history in this country, but I wish there were some mechanism for keeping people who are completely ignorant of how a secular democracy is supposed to work from selecting our leaders.
I also appreciate those who are defending home schooling. It can certainly be done well, and there are a lot of stories out there of exceptional people who were homeschooled (I believe Shaun White was homeschooled, for example). Which is why I specified Christian homeschooling above. There is a world of difference between parents who homeschool in order to give their children a broader range of experience than they would get in a more traditional setting, and those who homeschool in order to shelter their children from anything the parents find objectionable.
posted by TedW at 5:29 AM on August 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
There are homeschooling horror stories and there are public school horror stories. Neither set of horror stories represents the norm for most people. I hope people aren't reading that article citing the worst examples of homeschooling in a specific type of family and assuming that's what most homeschooling is like. In my area, most of the people homeschooling their kids are very similar to the people who are on the PTA or the school board and whose kids are excelling in school. In some cases they're the same people at different stages of their kids' lives. Most are college-educated. Some are or used to be licensed teachers. Homeschooled kids around here tend to go to a lot of library programs, do sports, get involved in 4-H, take art lessons, go to chess club, etc. etc. If they go to school (and many do at some point) they tend to do very well. I know of more than one who started college at 16 or younger.
posted by Redstart at 5:44 AM on August 19, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by Redstart at 5:44 AM on August 19, 2022 [5 favorites]
To me, this article is more about toxic forms of Christianity than about homeschooling. More importantly, there are no formal studies, only anecdotes, so it in no way answers the question of whether homeschooling is better or worse than standard education.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 6:02 AM on August 19, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 6:02 AM on August 19, 2022 [5 favorites]
There's an immense hubris in assuming you can replace the training in pedagogy of the dozens of specialized teachers a child will see in their lifetime.
Can confirm.
We tried homeschooling when I entered high school for non-religious and mostly non-lefty reasons (for us it was a combination of family trauma, bullying in the local school system, but also the local schools weren't that great at the time anyway) and learned it takes a *lot* of discipline if you want to do it right. Having a couple of educated, well-read parents and shelves full of textbooks purchased at the library book sale isn't enough. Teaching takes skill and years of practice.
Luckily we adapted and there were some easy course changes available. After the first six months of trying to go it alone, we realized that we couldn't and tried correspondence courses. Those worked okay, but they still couldn't replace being in a room with a trained professional. That's when we discovered that the local community college had open admissions, "catch up" classes which overlapped with high school curricula, a placement test, and a cost that was within the realm of possibilities and sacrifices (and certainly much cheaper than a tutor or private school!).
So I ended up spending a few years being "homeschooled" at college. I finished up the remedial classes I needed and easily transitioned into for-credit college courses. Along the way I got my GED and graduated with an associate's degree when I would otherwise have graduated from high school. Then I took advantage of the local state university's on-the-spot admissions (all I had to do was sign a release to give them access to my community college transcript! No essays! No anxiety! I just sat down with the visiting admissions officer, he looked at my transcript, and said "You're in!") to continue my education.
Curiously, I wasn't the only one who was taking this path. I was aware of at least a dozen or so other kids my age who were also being quietly homeschooled in this manner. And when I went to take the GED, the testing center even looked the other way because technically you're not allowed to take it if you're under 18 and haven't formally dropped out of school, which technically I hadn't.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:25 AM on August 19, 2022 [10 favorites]
Can confirm.
We tried homeschooling when I entered high school for non-religious and mostly non-lefty reasons (for us it was a combination of family trauma, bullying in the local school system, but also the local schools weren't that great at the time anyway) and learned it takes a *lot* of discipline if you want to do it right. Having a couple of educated, well-read parents and shelves full of textbooks purchased at the library book sale isn't enough. Teaching takes skill and years of practice.
Luckily we adapted and there were some easy course changes available. After the first six months of trying to go it alone, we realized that we couldn't and tried correspondence courses. Those worked okay, but they still couldn't replace being in a room with a trained professional. That's when we discovered that the local community college had open admissions, "catch up" classes which overlapped with high school curricula, a placement test, and a cost that was within the realm of possibilities and sacrifices (and certainly much cheaper than a tutor or private school!).
So I ended up spending a few years being "homeschooled" at college. I finished up the remedial classes I needed and easily transitioned into for-credit college courses. Along the way I got my GED and graduated with an associate's degree when I would otherwise have graduated from high school. Then I took advantage of the local state university's on-the-spot admissions (all I had to do was sign a release to give them access to my community college transcript! No essays! No anxiety! I just sat down with the visiting admissions officer, he looked at my transcript, and said "You're in!") to continue my education.
Curiously, I wasn't the only one who was taking this path. I was aware of at least a dozen or so other kids my age who were also being quietly homeschooled in this manner. And when I went to take the GED, the testing center even looked the other way because technically you're not allowed to take it if you're under 18 and haven't formally dropped out of school, which technically I hadn't.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:25 AM on August 19, 2022 [10 favorites]
There's an immense hubris in assuming you can replace the training in pedagogy of the dozens of specialized teachers a child will see in their lifetime.
This is harsh, but I think we know what a Venn diagram of this kind of hubris and the hubris where you think you can argue with doctors and scientists about a pandemic looks like.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:30 AM on August 19, 2022 [5 favorites]
This is harsh, but I think we know what a Venn diagram of this kind of hubris and the hubris where you think you can argue with doctors and scientists about a pandemic looks like.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:30 AM on August 19, 2022 [5 favorites]
TFA is pretty nuanced, and primarily calls for better control/regulation.
It mentions Sweden as a place where homeschooling is strictly regulated, and I hope some Swedes will chime in with how this works.
Here is Denmark, education is less regulated than in the other Nordic countries -- for instance in Finland, there are no private schools and no homeschooling option -- here there are a number of different private schools and homeschooling is always an option. If your home-schooled child has disabilities, they have the same right to government assistance as a child who attends public school, including special education tools, transportation, teaching assistance etc. The council (in practice the local school board) can choose to conduct yearly examinations to control the quality, and the students have the right to get the equivalent of a GED at 15.
Here the GED has many subjects, but reading comprehension, writing, and maths all count double (I feel I am missing one subject, there might be two different math exams) and that means that even if the child fails in civics, history or religion, they can still pass the exam.
At the end of the day, most parents go with a private or public school. I'm thinking that the transparent and flexible system makes most people trust the system. I had a friend who was unschooled by his hippy parents. He'd come over to our schoolyard during breaks to play. He is very succesfull today.
That all said, I can see the need for homeschooling. I wish I had been able to homeschool my youngest, because she really didn't fit in. But I didn't have the economic or mental ressources, in spite of being a teacher (at the university level)
posted by mumimor at 6:41 AM on August 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
It mentions Sweden as a place where homeschooling is strictly regulated, and I hope some Swedes will chime in with how this works.
Here is Denmark, education is less regulated than in the other Nordic countries -- for instance in Finland, there are no private schools and no homeschooling option -- here there are a number of different private schools and homeschooling is always an option. If your home-schooled child has disabilities, they have the same right to government assistance as a child who attends public school, including special education tools, transportation, teaching assistance etc. The council (in practice the local school board) can choose to conduct yearly examinations to control the quality, and the students have the right to get the equivalent of a GED at 15.
Here the GED has many subjects, but reading comprehension, writing, and maths all count double (I feel I am missing one subject, there might be two different math exams) and that means that even if the child fails in civics, history or religion, they can still pass the exam.
At the end of the day, most parents go with a private or public school. I'm thinking that the transparent and flexible system makes most people trust the system. I had a friend who was unschooled by his hippy parents. He'd come over to our schoolyard during breaks to play. He is very succesfull today.
That all said, I can see the need for homeschooling. I wish I had been able to homeschool my youngest, because she really didn't fit in. But I didn't have the economic or mental ressources, in spite of being a teacher (at the university level)
posted by mumimor at 6:41 AM on August 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
As the parent of four homeschooled people, ages 15-27, I find this discussion both tedious in its cliched and tiresome attacks, and infuriating.
But then, what do you expect from a hubristic hippie fascist-adjacent bumblefuck blithely raising maladapted ignoramuses while somehow also being responsible for the failures of the public school system?
posted by Well I never at 6:48 AM on August 19, 2022 [8 favorites]
But then, what do you expect from a hubristic hippie fascist-adjacent bumblefuck blithely raising maladapted ignoramuses while somehow also being responsible for the failures of the public school system?
posted by Well I never at 6:48 AM on August 19, 2022 [8 favorites]
I sort of forgot the point: that I believe the cure against bad homeschooling is to build a regulative system that people feel they can trust, and also allow all sorts of private schools, both religious and secular, if they conform to certain rules. Here, some elements of civics are mandatory, and sex-ed is mandatory. I don't think anyone with any influence in this country is a creationist, but if a school introduced a creationist program, science classes would be mandatory very rapidly.
Even though I'm an atheist, both my children went to religious schools for parts of their education, and the schools were fine. The kids knew well from home what to believe in, or not. I think it is very useful, in a world where religion plays such a dominant role, to understand the beliefs of religious people and to empathize with their feelings.
posted by mumimor at 6:57 AM on August 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
Even though I'm an atheist, both my children went to religious schools for parts of their education, and the schools were fine. The kids knew well from home what to believe in, or not. I think it is very useful, in a world where religion plays such a dominant role, to understand the beliefs of religious people and to empathize with their feelings.
posted by mumimor at 6:57 AM on August 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
The article calls for standards.
I have one of the Christian homeschooled families in my extended family. Bright kids (6 of them), loving family, educated parents. Didn’t educate the girls for much (2 are unlicensed doulas with not even a GED.) None of them have been able to pursue university or college educations. I have spoken with the parents at length and basically dad, who is a *doctor* didn’t have time, mum was exhausted, they were living in a trailer building a house…on and on, every year it was, as described in the article, “we’ll get to it.” They didn’t. Two of the kids have a roofing business which is just fine, and good for them. The other kids are in high school now but failing.
The parents know they kind of failed but they kind of don’t, because they are in the community described…God’s work is more important. I don’t know. The kids seem to think they are ok but they are young still. The older 2 girls are just waiting to have babies. It’s hard to describe how prescriptive their world is. Totally in line with this article.
If they had had to have the kids tested or turn in work or something, just once a year, basic skills, it might have gone better.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:03 AM on August 19, 2022 [19 favorites]
I have one of the Christian homeschooled families in my extended family. Bright kids (6 of them), loving family, educated parents. Didn’t educate the girls for much (2 are unlicensed doulas with not even a GED.) None of them have been able to pursue university or college educations. I have spoken with the parents at length and basically dad, who is a *doctor* didn’t have time, mum was exhausted, they were living in a trailer building a house…on and on, every year it was, as described in the article, “we’ll get to it.” They didn’t. Two of the kids have a roofing business which is just fine, and good for them. The other kids are in high school now but failing.
The parents know they kind of failed but they kind of don’t, because they are in the community described…God’s work is more important. I don’t know. The kids seem to think they are ok but they are young still. The older 2 girls are just waiting to have babies. It’s hard to describe how prescriptive their world is. Totally in line with this article.
If they had had to have the kids tested or turn in work or something, just once a year, basic skills, it might have gone better.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:03 AM on August 19, 2022 [19 favorites]
Like most things in life, homeschooling can be done well, it can be mediocre, or it can be a total shit show. Sometimes it can be done well but then most of a decade into it a parent dies and a kid ends up thrust into public school completely unprepared for the social challenges of public school.
Good outcomes can happen in any educational modality that is taken seriously, but to generate those outcomes the people doing the work must be operating in good faith and willing and able to make the necessary effort.
posted by wierdo at 7:03 AM on August 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
Good outcomes can happen in any educational modality that is taken seriously, but to generate those outcomes the people doing the work must be operating in good faith and willing and able to make the necessary effort.
posted by wierdo at 7:03 AM on August 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
So I was home taught for two years, partially because my mother was deep into the whole Focus on the Family mindset at the time, partially because they couldn't afford to keep us in private school, and partially because my brother and I were not doing so hot in said private schools. How home teaching us would make it all better still evades me, but it did mean two years of me blazing through the English/Mathematics/Social Studies workbooks, ignoring the Bible workbooks, trying to do "science" experiments with whatever we had in the house, giving myself spelling tests (yeah, that didn't work), and watching a lot of Emergency! reruns, because they were on at the same time as our "lunch".
Recently, my mother, who did actually go back to school and get a Masters's in Education, retired from her job as an elementary-school principal. My grandmother wanted us to tell stories of how great it was when she taught us.
Yeah, I didn't say anything. Somehow, I don't think anyone wanted my in-depth research of L.A. Paramedics from the 1970s.
posted by Katemonkey at 7:07 AM on August 19, 2022 [18 favorites]
Recently, my mother, who did actually go back to school and get a Masters's in Education, retired from her job as an elementary-school principal. My grandmother wanted us to tell stories of how great it was when she taught us.
Yeah, I didn't say anything. Somehow, I don't think anyone wanted my in-depth research of L.A. Paramedics from the 1970s.
posted by Katemonkey at 7:07 AM on August 19, 2022 [18 favorites]
Yeah, my interest in posting this was to highlight the culture of fundamentalist Christian homeschooling, which is reactionary and as tiny frying fan mentioned deeply born from racism and misogyny and a fear of losing their children to the secular world. When I was first pulled out of school, it was because the public school was teaching evolution and my mother didn’t want me to be taught that. I was homeschooled with the sort of fundamentalist curriculum and attitudes described in the article until 8th grade. I was briefly in a private school and then public school in high school, and then homeschooled again because of health issues because my school literally forced me out. The principal told my mom to homeschool me.
There are legitimate reasons to homeschool and legitimate ways to homeschool but this article is not about that. It is about a specific reason and brand of homeschooling that is deeply harmful to children.
I also want to say while I appreciate stories of homeschooling success, I am also someone who would be described as a very intelligent and educated and well-adjusted young adult. I got straight As in college and am getting my PhD with almost the same grades and success. I attributed that for a long time to my homeschooling education, because it taught me to be very independent. My mother’s “teaching” was to give me a textbook and a workbook and leave me alone. She didn’t even check in to see if I was doing my homework until the end of the semester where she would yell at me if I hadn’t finished it. So I learned to be completely self-directed and disciplined on my own. If I hadn’t done that, I would absolutely be one of the very undereducated kids in the article.
It wasn’t until therapy I realized that the fact that I learned to act like an independent adult about my education at age ten was… not a good thing, actually. I come off as extremely competent because I am, because I never learned that I could ask for help so I have always done everything on my own. This has caused a lot of other problems in my life that are invisible to other people, who by and large see me as incredibly intelligent and talented.
And even with my success at educating myself there are huge gaps. I got to grad school psychobiology and realized I had never once in my life learned how electricity worked. I had not the remotest idea and needed my partner to give me a crash course in electrons. I also got no American history whatsoever. We did this world history (mostly focusing on Biblical history) program and never got past the Renaissance because my mother decided that was enough and she didn’t want to keep buying the books so I would read the Bible for my history class instead. My home economics class (which I realize few kids get these days but it was a requirement back then) was my mom taking me shopping for groceries once, showing me how to use cup measures, and then just entirely giving up. I struggle to add basic numbers quickly and accurately, though given enough time to double check I can usually figure it out—and I was ahead in math in 1st grade when my mother pulled me out of school.
All this to say that looking at homeschooled kids on the outside doesn’t necessarily give you an accurate picture of whether homeschooling was good/bad/something else in this particular case. It is complicated and something we definitely need more research on. Hopefully we can agree that pulling your kids out of school to teach them Young Earth Creationism is bad, though.
posted by brook horse at 7:14 AM on August 19, 2022 [47 favorites]
There are legitimate reasons to homeschool and legitimate ways to homeschool but this article is not about that. It is about a specific reason and brand of homeschooling that is deeply harmful to children.
I also want to say while I appreciate stories of homeschooling success, I am also someone who would be described as a very intelligent and educated and well-adjusted young adult. I got straight As in college and am getting my PhD with almost the same grades and success. I attributed that for a long time to my homeschooling education, because it taught me to be very independent. My mother’s “teaching” was to give me a textbook and a workbook and leave me alone. She didn’t even check in to see if I was doing my homework until the end of the semester where she would yell at me if I hadn’t finished it. So I learned to be completely self-directed and disciplined on my own. If I hadn’t done that, I would absolutely be one of the very undereducated kids in the article.
It wasn’t until therapy I realized that the fact that I learned to act like an independent adult about my education at age ten was… not a good thing, actually. I come off as extremely competent because I am, because I never learned that I could ask for help so I have always done everything on my own. This has caused a lot of other problems in my life that are invisible to other people, who by and large see me as incredibly intelligent and talented.
And even with my success at educating myself there are huge gaps. I got to grad school psychobiology and realized I had never once in my life learned how electricity worked. I had not the remotest idea and needed my partner to give me a crash course in electrons. I also got no American history whatsoever. We did this world history (mostly focusing on Biblical history) program and never got past the Renaissance because my mother decided that was enough and she didn’t want to keep buying the books so I would read the Bible for my history class instead. My home economics class (which I realize few kids get these days but it was a requirement back then) was my mom taking me shopping for groceries once, showing me how to use cup measures, and then just entirely giving up. I struggle to add basic numbers quickly and accurately, though given enough time to double check I can usually figure it out—and I was ahead in math in 1st grade when my mother pulled me out of school.
All this to say that looking at homeschooled kids on the outside doesn’t necessarily give you an accurate picture of whether homeschooling was good/bad/something else in this particular case. It is complicated and something we definitely need more research on. Hopefully we can agree that pulling your kids out of school to teach them Young Earth Creationism is bad, though.
posted by brook horse at 7:14 AM on August 19, 2022 [47 favorites]
I realize that literacy tests for voting have a horrible history in this country, but I wish there were some mechanism for keeping people who are completely ignorant of how a secular democracy is supposed to work from selecting our leaders.
That's what public education is supposed to be for, right?
posted by wellifyouinsist at 7:22 AM on August 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
That's what public education is supposed to be for, right?
posted by wellifyouinsist at 7:22 AM on August 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
I am glad the thread has stabilized. It's worth being careful to differentiate between calling for standards vs. being against homeschooling, as well as being careful when we discuss bad examples not to blur the lines between subsets of people and homeschoolers as a many-varied group with different outcomes.
I mean, I do have a cousin who only narrowly graduated high school and mixes homeschooling his kids with being a volunteer youth pastor at a homophobic church and selling MLM products. And those kids turned out right around your least generous guess. But I also have a very close and brilliant friend who homeschooled her funny, smart kids up to this year and they're still carefully documenting their backyard poultry farming, casually tossing off references to college level reading, wearing out their library cards, and designing their own science experiments. I know her oldest, a nonbinary AMAB kid who wears makeup and feminine clothes and has a bf, sure misses being left to mind his own business instead of being picked on. (Divorce closed the door to homeschooling, as she had to return to the outside workforce.)
Outcomes vary, for sure. It's good to talk about how we can nudge people to better ones.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:34 AM on August 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
I mean, I do have a cousin who only narrowly graduated high school and mixes homeschooling his kids with being a volunteer youth pastor at a homophobic church and selling MLM products. And those kids turned out right around your least generous guess. But I also have a very close and brilliant friend who homeschooled her funny, smart kids up to this year and they're still carefully documenting their backyard poultry farming, casually tossing off references to college level reading, wearing out their library cards, and designing their own science experiments. I know her oldest, a nonbinary AMAB kid who wears makeup and feminine clothes and has a bf, sure misses being left to mind his own business instead of being picked on. (Divorce closed the door to homeschooling, as she had to return to the outside workforce.)
Outcomes vary, for sure. It's good to talk about how we can nudge people to better ones.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:34 AM on August 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
I was raised in a very conservative fundamentalist Christian family, and often describe myself as a "recovering Christian." So much of this article resonates with me. And, yeah, basically so much of the reason that fundamentalist Christians distrust the public education system is because it DOES teach you to think critically and draw your own conclusions, and under that kind of enlightened, thoughtful examination, the house of cards that is fundamentalist Christian belief simply cannot stand.
posted by xedrik at 7:35 AM on August 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by xedrik at 7:35 AM on August 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
It’s worth noting that this article is from 1994 - I suspect the prevailing underlying problem is the same, as well as the attitude that it’s better for your kids to have an incomplete or even incompetent education than a godless or wrong-godful one. But at the same a lot has changed in the last decade (even before Covid) in terms of how many resources are now available to people who choose to homeschool.
It used to be that parents had to scrape together materials and time to teach their kids from their own understanding of the texts. But now there are whole curricula available (many of them from fundamentalist Christian publishers, so there’s no nasty evolution or mature-themed literature to get in the works) - and a lot of it is available through online courses where there’s even qualified instruction.
I’m sure the root problem is the same, and that the attitude- which is the truly pernicious problem - hasn’t gotten any better. But I’d like to believe that the easy access to better tools we have today is (even inadvertently) leading to less harm being done to today’s fundamentalist Christian kids than at the time this was written.
posted by Mchelly at 7:51 AM on August 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
It used to be that parents had to scrape together materials and time to teach their kids from their own understanding of the texts. But now there are whole curricula available (many of them from fundamentalist Christian publishers, so there’s no nasty evolution or mature-themed literature to get in the works) - and a lot of it is available through online courses where there’s even qualified instruction.
I’m sure the root problem is the same, and that the attitude- which is the truly pernicious problem - hasn’t gotten any better. But I’d like to believe that the easy access to better tools we have today is (even inadvertently) leading to less harm being done to today’s fundamentalist Christian kids than at the time this was written.
posted by Mchelly at 7:51 AM on August 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
Literacy rate heatmap
Homeschooling heatmap
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, about four out of five U.S. adults (79%) have medium to high English literacy skills. These literacy levels are sufficient to compare and contrast information, paraphrase, and make low-level inferences. This means that about one in five U.S. adults (21%) have low literacy skills, translating to about 43.0 million adults.
How is this not a national emergency? This is a disgrace! If you look at UNICEF numbers, most countries are close to 100% literacy. The ones that aren't have serious problems and the US is one of them.
This explains so much.
posted by adept256 at 7:52 AM on August 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
Homeschooling heatmap
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, about four out of five U.S. adults (79%) have medium to high English literacy skills. These literacy levels are sufficient to compare and contrast information, paraphrase, and make low-level inferences. This means that about one in five U.S. adults (21%) have low literacy skills, translating to about 43.0 million adults.
How is this not a national emergency? This is a disgrace! If you look at UNICEF numbers, most countries are close to 100% literacy. The ones that aren't have serious problems and the US is one of them.
This explains so much.
posted by adept256 at 7:52 AM on August 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
Mchelly, did you mean 2014? Because this article is from 2014. There was a plethora of resources when I was growing up. That didn't change the way fundamentalist Christians approached homeschooling.
Here's an article from 2022, btw.
posted by brook horse at 7:56 AM on August 19, 2022 [5 favorites]
Here's an article from 2022, btw.
posted by brook horse at 7:56 AM on August 19, 2022 [5 favorites]
I think we can consider what is not described in the article well-defended at this point.
posted by adept256 at 7:59 AM on August 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by adept256 at 7:59 AM on August 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
How is this not a national emergency?
Your literacy map is specifically for English literacy. Yes, a few of the states on the "low" end of the list are states with educational deficiencies (Texas, Florida), but New Jersey is cited as having the 3rd best public schools. All five of those low states (CA, FL, NJ, NY, TX) have high rates of immigration and large populations that speak a non-English language in the home.
The highest English literacy, on the other hand? Highly homogenously white states: NH, MN, ND, VT, SD.
Literacy itself is so high in this nation that rate of immigration is the major confounder. On the other hand, literacy is not the same as critical thinking/reasoning skills.
posted by explosion at 8:33 AM on August 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
Your literacy map is specifically for English literacy. Yes, a few of the states on the "low" end of the list are states with educational deficiencies (Texas, Florida), but New Jersey is cited as having the 3rd best public schools. All five of those low states (CA, FL, NJ, NY, TX) have high rates of immigration and large populations that speak a non-English language in the home.
The highest English literacy, on the other hand? Highly homogenously white states: NH, MN, ND, VT, SD.
Literacy itself is so high in this nation that rate of immigration is the major confounder. On the other hand, literacy is not the same as critical thinking/reasoning skills.
posted by explosion at 8:33 AM on August 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
When comparing different systems, such as European health care and US health care, always resist the urge to compare the worst of one to the best of the other, and push back on those who would.
posted by hypnogogue at 8:57 AM on August 19, 2022
posted by hypnogogue at 8:57 AM on August 19, 2022
Ferreous: There's an immense hubris in assuming you can replace the training in pedagogy of the dozens of specialized teachers a child will see in their lifetime.
Ah ὕβρις, it's flattering to be compared to Achilles. We did a controlled experiment over educating the kids: first we had a single boy, who had a wide experience of school-based education - 8 schools, 4 countries. Then 18 years later we had a couple of girls, who never went to school. They were doing okay at home, taught themselves to read just after turning six, so we let them at it.
Q. And the results?
A. Girls pull up their socks, boy did not.
By which I mean, those three people are now adults, very different, but they are kind, do well in pub quizzes and each has a well-tuned crap-detector. It's hard to tell from the finished product [all of whom having half their genes in common] who missed out on the training in pedagogy of the dozens of specialized teachers.
posted by BobTheScientist at 8:57 AM on August 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
Ah ὕβρις, it's flattering to be compared to Achilles. We did a controlled experiment over educating the kids: first we had a single boy, who had a wide experience of school-based education - 8 schools, 4 countries. Then 18 years later we had a couple of girls, who never went to school. They were doing okay at home, taught themselves to read just after turning six, so we let them at it.
Q. And the results?
A. Girls pull up their socks, boy did not.
By which I mean, those three people are now adults, very different, but they are kind, do well in pub quizzes and each has a well-tuned crap-detector. It's hard to tell from the finished product [all of whom having half their genes in common] who missed out on the training in pedagogy of the dozens of specialized teachers.
posted by BobTheScientist at 8:57 AM on August 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
Yet these bumblefluffers think they can properly teach their children at home with no training, no planning, no oversight and no supervision. Basically another form of child abuse.
Don't most parents raise their children with no formal training, no oversight and no supervision? Kids growing up in foster care, institutions, or otherwise "under the eye" of social agencies, are the only kids not being abused?
posted by cinchona at 8:59 AM on August 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
Don't most parents raise their children with no formal training, no oversight and no supervision? Kids growing up in foster care, institutions, or otherwise "under the eye" of social agencies, are the only kids not being abused?
posted by cinchona at 8:59 AM on August 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
Some context that might be helpful is that the Quiverful movement is based on the Bible verse "Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them."
This is often interpreted as having as many babies as possible (true) but also one's sons are one's arrows - at the base this is a kind of eugenics movement designed to outbreed everyone else. Homeschooling your own army gives you a degree of control. (My relatives are not in this particular movement, but the principles apply.)
posted by warriorqueen at 9:07 AM on August 19, 2022 [8 favorites]
This is often interpreted as having as many babies as possible (true) but also one's sons are one's arrows - at the base this is a kind of eugenics movement designed to outbreed everyone else. Homeschooling your own army gives you a degree of control. (My relatives are not in this particular movement, but the principles apply.)
posted by warriorqueen at 9:07 AM on August 19, 2022 [8 favorites]
Yes, a few of the states on the "low" end of the list are states with educational deficiencies (Texas, Florida)...
California as well. It's always one of the lowest-ranking states on lists of public school quality.
posted by cinchona at 9:13 AM on August 19, 2022
California as well. It's always one of the lowest-ranking states on lists of public school quality.
posted by cinchona at 9:13 AM on August 19, 2022
Not sure if this is a derail or not, but since the thread is still veering a bit into homeschooling pro-or-con rather than strictly about fundamentalist-homeschooling, there's also the pitfall of fundamentalist schooling per se - for example, when you look at what some of the ultra-Orthadox yeshivas in New York get away with in barely teaching a secular education at all. It's mostly with boys, since girls are often expected to hold down real jobs to support the family, but many of them get very little exposure to science (don't need it), nothing related to the internet (too corrupting), and some of these kids come out of years of full school days barely knowing English at all. On another spectrum, the Amish community stops school at 8th grade (except for teachers, who get to go to an Amish high school equivalent), the only science they learn (I believe) is geography, and whether they learn history at all seems to vary by community. And definitely no modern literature.
Homeschooling itself may be a bit of a red herring here.
posted by Mchelly at 9:38 AM on August 19, 2022 [11 favorites]
Homeschooling itself may be a bit of a red herring here.
posted by Mchelly at 9:38 AM on August 19, 2022 [11 favorites]
One of those homeschooled kids here. My parents chose to homeschool for a mix of academic rigor and Christian values. I think my mom became more fundamentalist *after* beginning to homeschool, as that was the majority of other people doing it in our area.
My parents are well educated, college degrees, I believe my mom actually had a certification to teach in her home state. I think she did pretty good at it up till junior high or so. I had to fill in gaps on things like evolution and sex ed (got a very basic intro to both, I think there was a video involved so parents didn't have to be embarrassed saying anything themselves, and the intro to evolution was more of a historical "this Darwin guy created this widely accepted theory but the Bible tells us the truth," which was more than a lot of the homeschool kids I knew received).
My dad's teaching style was to drop a large and complicated book on our laps and expect a college level report in a few weeks. I can't imagine my writing was very good, but I certainly put together 30 or 40 pages when I needed to. He's a very good teacher actually, just childhood education isn't his thing.
I got ridiculous amounts of uncensored access to the public library and also found a sport I liked around Junior High age. While self directed learning can leave gaps, I went through every book they had on a bunch of subjects that caught my interest over the years (castles, so many castles) and the time on the sports teams gave me engagement with peers and taught me a decent amount about socializing. I was still a weird kid.
I feel I turned out alright, but it took me years to get over the huge chip on my shoulder I had about being "smart" over my public schooled peers and I struggle with the same things Brook Horse mentioned - asking for help is an admission of failure, and I learned early that I was not allowed to fail, so it's a real existential crisis when I come up against things I can't do on my own.
I'm not religious and avoided marrying any of the bonnet wearing girls from co-op.
posted by jellywerker at 9:56 AM on August 19, 2022 [5 favorites]
My parents are well educated, college degrees, I believe my mom actually had a certification to teach in her home state. I think she did pretty good at it up till junior high or so. I had to fill in gaps on things like evolution and sex ed (got a very basic intro to both, I think there was a video involved so parents didn't have to be embarrassed saying anything themselves, and the intro to evolution was more of a historical "this Darwin guy created this widely accepted theory but the Bible tells us the truth," which was more than a lot of the homeschool kids I knew received).
My dad's teaching style was to drop a large and complicated book on our laps and expect a college level report in a few weeks. I can't imagine my writing was very good, but I certainly put together 30 or 40 pages when I needed to. He's a very good teacher actually, just childhood education isn't his thing.
I got ridiculous amounts of uncensored access to the public library and also found a sport I liked around Junior High age. While self directed learning can leave gaps, I went through every book they had on a bunch of subjects that caught my interest over the years (castles, so many castles) and the time on the sports teams gave me engagement with peers and taught me a decent amount about socializing. I was still a weird kid.
I feel I turned out alright, but it took me years to get over the huge chip on my shoulder I had about being "smart" over my public schooled peers and I struggle with the same things Brook Horse mentioned - asking for help is an admission of failure, and I learned early that I was not allowed to fail, so it's a real existential crisis when I come up against things I can't do on my own.
I'm not religious and avoided marrying any of the bonnet wearing girls from co-op.
posted by jellywerker at 9:56 AM on August 19, 2022 [5 favorites]
Just looking at the pull quote and seeing "humanist" used so casually as an epithet makes me want to, I don't even know, swing heavy things in directions.
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 10:08 AM on August 19, 2022 [12 favorites]
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 10:08 AM on August 19, 2022 [12 favorites]
If I recall, the only thing we had to do to homeschool was to submit a copy of our curriculum to the town for approval. For our extremely naive first year of homeschooling we put together an extensive document, handed it in and then......nothing. No one reviewed it, there were no comments or criticisms or suggestions, and we never heard anything back.
So for the next two years while I was at the community college, we didn't submit anything and still nothing happened. My father really relished the idea of having to explain to the truant officer that I was holding a full-time load of college-level classes, but no one ever came to check up on me.
I think religious-homeschooling really harms homeschooling by making it radioactive. I can't be sure if that's why no one from my town ever bothered to regulate our homeschooling, but I wouldn't be surprised if they just had a whole hands-off policy because they don't want to risk a fight. I think some oversight of homeschooling is needed and would probably be helpful given how quickly we got in over our heads, but I just don't see it happening if the majority of homeschoolers already have a chip on their shoulder about secular society.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 10:23 AM on August 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
So for the next two years while I was at the community college, we didn't submit anything and still nothing happened. My father really relished the idea of having to explain to the truant officer that I was holding a full-time load of college-level classes, but no one ever came to check up on me.
I think religious-homeschooling really harms homeschooling by making it radioactive. I can't be sure if that's why no one from my town ever bothered to regulate our homeschooling, but I wouldn't be surprised if they just had a whole hands-off policy because they don't want to risk a fight. I think some oversight of homeschooling is needed and would probably be helpful given how quickly we got in over our heads, but I just don't see it happening if the majority of homeschoolers already have a chip on their shoulder about secular society.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 10:23 AM on August 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
I can't be sure if that's why no one from my town ever bothered to regulate our homeschooling, but I wouldn't be surprised if they just had a whole hands-off policy because they don't want to risk a fight.
That's really it. Fundamentalists are one of the few groups that politicians can rely on to vote. And (there's that quiver again), they tend to come in droves. Which makes it very hard to touch them.
posted by Mchelly at 10:51 AM on August 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
That's really it. Fundamentalists are one of the few groups that politicians can rely on to vote. And (there's that quiver again), they tend to come in droves. Which makes it very hard to touch them.
posted by Mchelly at 10:51 AM on August 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
Metafilter has sometimes had issues with casually dismissing homeschoolers as maladapted or undereducated, with calling their parents abusive regardless of circumstance, and generally acting like we are abstract fiction. I hope we can keep criticism in this thread focused on the real abuses which happen within homeschooling and avoid “open season”.
Yep. My wife and I were both certified teachers. My oldest did not do well in public school. We pulled her out and homeschooled her. She spent a gap year in Morocco studying Arabic courtesy of the State Department and is now a junior in a large state school. When she finishes, she'll have tripled majored in Arabic, linguistics, and neuroscience.
I think religious-homeschooling really harms homeschooling by making it radioactive. I can't be sure if that's why no one from my town ever bothered to regulate our homeschooling, but I wouldn't be surprised if they just had a whole hands-off policy because they don't want to risk a fight. I think some oversight of homeschooling is needed and would probably be helpful given how quickly we got in over our heads, but I just don't see it happening if the majority of homeschoolers already have a chip on their shoulder about secular society.
This so much. When I first started homeschooling it was kind of neat: there would be big get-togethers with homeschoolers from all over the area. You'd get some people who were doing it for religious reasons. The moms would show up in long skirts and keds, whose kids were always neatly dressed, in little polos and shorts. You'd get others who were waaaaay over on the other side of the political spectrum: gay couples with purple hair whose kids were rag-tag, band shirts, or pokemon apparel.
It was kind of neat, because you'd get this vibe where everybody was there because they loved their kids and just didn't think they were doing the right thing by letting the public system handle their individual kids. I didn't agree with many of them on a lot of things. But there was definitely a sense of caring. And the kids? The kids just all got along. They had a good time with each other.
My kids are older now, and don't often attend group stuff. They have friends, but they don't meet a ton of new people. It doesn't worry me. How many kids in a regular high school meet a ton of new people before they graduate?
But I do get the sense that it's weirder now, more divided. Which kind of sucks because when I was there, it was like the one thing that people could all use as a starting point toward finding some commonalities with each other, even if we were on opposite ends of the spectrum politically. Again, I didn't agree with most of the people I met, but it felt like we were all still part of something together. I haven't felt that way in a long time.
posted by nushustu at 10:52 AM on August 19, 2022 [5 favorites]
Yep. My wife and I were both certified teachers. My oldest did not do well in public school. We pulled her out and homeschooled her. She spent a gap year in Morocco studying Arabic courtesy of the State Department and is now a junior in a large state school. When she finishes, she'll have tripled majored in Arabic, linguistics, and neuroscience.
I think religious-homeschooling really harms homeschooling by making it radioactive. I can't be sure if that's why no one from my town ever bothered to regulate our homeschooling, but I wouldn't be surprised if they just had a whole hands-off policy because they don't want to risk a fight. I think some oversight of homeschooling is needed and would probably be helpful given how quickly we got in over our heads, but I just don't see it happening if the majority of homeschoolers already have a chip on their shoulder about secular society.
This so much. When I first started homeschooling it was kind of neat: there would be big get-togethers with homeschoolers from all over the area. You'd get some people who were doing it for religious reasons. The moms would show up in long skirts and keds, whose kids were always neatly dressed, in little polos and shorts. You'd get others who were waaaaay over on the other side of the political spectrum: gay couples with purple hair whose kids were rag-tag, band shirts, or pokemon apparel.
It was kind of neat, because you'd get this vibe where everybody was there because they loved their kids and just didn't think they were doing the right thing by letting the public system handle their individual kids. I didn't agree with many of them on a lot of things. But there was definitely a sense of caring. And the kids? The kids just all got along. They had a good time with each other.
My kids are older now, and don't often attend group stuff. They have friends, but they don't meet a ton of new people. It doesn't worry me. How many kids in a regular high school meet a ton of new people before they graduate?
But I do get the sense that it's weirder now, more divided. Which kind of sucks because when I was there, it was like the one thing that people could all use as a starting point toward finding some commonalities with each other, even if we were on opposite ends of the spectrum politically. Again, I didn't agree with most of the people I met, but it felt like we were all still part of something together. I haven't felt that way in a long time.
posted by nushustu at 10:52 AM on August 19, 2022 [5 favorites]
Just looking at the pull quote and seeing "humanist" used so casually as an epithet makes me want to, I don't even know, swing heavy things in directions.
And yes to this. Why in heaven's name is fundamentalist Christianity so opposed to people? It's such a weird death-cult.
posted by nushustu at 10:53 AM on August 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
And yes to this. Why in heaven's name is fundamentalist Christianity so opposed to people? It's such a weird death-cult.
posted by nushustu at 10:53 AM on August 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
Just to clarify, Old Order Amish schoolteachers do not go to high school. They do go to "teacher meetings" and learn from more experienced teachers; they also usually have access to lesson plans and curricula from past years to draw on. They are not, to my knowledge, ever sent to high school, unless this is a new phenomenon in the most progressive communities. However, a young woman (men are very rarely teachers) is not selected to be a teacher if she was not known to be a good "scholar" (student) herself, as well as having a personality that would lend itself to classroom management.
I find it interesting that the Amish are brought up--while most Amish families send their children to private Amish schools, homeschooling is almost unheard of in Amish culture. Amish school is very much about building up the child as a member of the group and the community--rural one-room schools did this job well, in Amish parents' minds, but consolidated schools did not, at which point Amish families formed their own schools. Homeschooling would be too isolationist and proud, not to mention distracting Mom from the important work of homemaking.
posted by epj at 11:06 AM on August 19, 2022 [5 favorites]
I find it interesting that the Amish are brought up--while most Amish families send their children to private Amish schools, homeschooling is almost unheard of in Amish culture. Amish school is very much about building up the child as a member of the group and the community--rural one-room schools did this job well, in Amish parents' minds, but consolidated schools did not, at which point Amish families formed their own schools. Homeschooling would be too isolationist and proud, not to mention distracting Mom from the important work of homemaking.
posted by epj at 11:06 AM on August 19, 2022 [5 favorites]
Epj, thanks for the clarification. When I grew up (in Lancaster County, PA), the teacher program was always referred to as high school to us non-Amish folks, so I just assumed that that was what it was called. They probably just said it that way to give us outsiders a frame of reference.
posted by Mchelly at 11:28 AM on August 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Mchelly at 11:28 AM on August 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
I think the thing that people are talking past is that our society doesn't give a shit about kids. Kids deserve nutritious food, loving parents, adequate and appropriate education, etc. but there are basically no tools set up to make that happen. It's down to the parents, even if they are bad at parenting or simply struggling with poverty. A child needs parents who care about them AND have time and resources for them, and as far as I can tell, many parents can do one or the other but not both.
So I feel like the Christian or homeschooling element is not very important here when the actual problem is that this society doesn't give a shit about kids. If we cared, we'd put some resources into it. As it is, the schools, school lunches, WIC, CPS, the foster system, the public library, children's health, and so on are so close to the wire and so underfunded that it's really clear where society's priority is.
Many homeschoolers are reacting to a system that is fundamentally broken-- it's similar to the thread about chiropractors, where we learn that people go to quacks because they can be seen today by a person who cares for an affordable price, which solves a lot of problems...except for not being real medicine. Homeschooling offers individualized and potentially very high quality education...except nobody is checking that you're doing it adequately or at all.
posted by blnkfrnk at 11:49 AM on August 19, 2022 [11 favorites]
So I feel like the Christian or homeschooling element is not very important here when the actual problem is that this society doesn't give a shit about kids. If we cared, we'd put some resources into it. As it is, the schools, school lunches, WIC, CPS, the foster system, the public library, children's health, and so on are so close to the wire and so underfunded that it's really clear where society's priority is.
Many homeschoolers are reacting to a system that is fundamentally broken-- it's similar to the thread about chiropractors, where we learn that people go to quacks because they can be seen today by a person who cares for an affordable price, which solves a lot of problems...except for not being real medicine. Homeschooling offers individualized and potentially very high quality education...except nobody is checking that you're doing it adequately or at all.
posted by blnkfrnk at 11:49 AM on August 19, 2022 [11 favorites]
I am one of those “liberal feminist atheist” public schoolteachers that they warn you about. I’m actually very supportive of people who choose homeschooling for whatever reasons! This includes Christian fundamentalist parents. I’ve taught at the college level as well and can say some of my very best students were homeschooled in Christian families. Just as we can’t assume someone is better or worse educated due to a public or private schooling background, we cannot assume someone is better or worse educated due to a homeschooling background. I respect all types of schools: parents are trying to do their best in this hard world and having different values certainly doesn’t make them automatically bad parents or bad educators. Each school form has its pros and cons.
posted by smorgasbord at 1:04 PM on August 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by smorgasbord at 1:04 PM on August 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
Christian fundamentalism automatically makes you a bad parent. Hundred percent, full stop.
Maybe an extreme stance but it’s one I take from decades of experience. Others are free to disagree.
posted by brook horse at 1:20 PM on August 19, 2022 [14 favorites]
Maybe an extreme stance but it’s one I take from decades of experience. Others are free to disagree.
posted by brook horse at 1:20 PM on August 19, 2022 [14 favorites]
Christian fundamentalism automatically makes you a bad parent. Hundred percent, full stop.
Maybe an extreme stance but it’s one I take from decades of experience. Others are free to disagree.
Yeah I disagree because I think it really all depends. I grew up in a non-religious family with a hardcore born-again atheist mother and a Christian father who doesn’t believe in organized religion. I feel lucky to have grown up without religious trauma but, understandably, I’ve found myself more open than many who did grow up in super devout and/or repressive households did this very reason. I’m sorry that it was such a painful experience for you and I’m glad you have found a worldview and life that feels right for you.
I think that while the article is focused on fundamentalist Christian homeschooling, many of us are discussing it more as Christian homeschooling, which is related but certainly very different.
I have an ex-girlfriend — I’m a woman myself— who grew up in a conservative Southern Baptist home and suffered a great deal for being queer and eventually atheism. My heart goes out to her for that! However, it’s maybe not ironic that she applied the same dogmatic, closed minded religious fervor of her youth to her atheist, calling anyone who identifies as Christian as bad and everything about it as awful: all believers as stupid, all leaders as evil, and beyond. Clearly we weren’t a good match for many reasons but, again, I have to respect her experience even if I don’t agree with her views.
As a sponsor of a middle school LGBTQ+ group, I have to sometimes gently remind people that they can think whatever they want but that there are many interpretations of Christianity (and other religions, of course!) They can believe or not believe whatever they want and their experience is valid… but also understand that the Christian label, just like the queer label, is not just one thing. That maybe their particular church is unwelcoming but plenty of others are. I’m so glad that even some fundamentalist people are rethinking their views to be more inclusive of diverse gender identities and sexual orientations. We’ve got a long way to go but here’s to progress like the people in the article who shared their journeys.
posted by smorgasbord at 1:57 PM on August 19, 2022 [5 favorites]
Maybe an extreme stance but it’s one I take from decades of experience. Others are free to disagree.
Yeah I disagree because I think it really all depends. I grew up in a non-religious family with a hardcore born-again atheist mother and a Christian father who doesn’t believe in organized religion. I feel lucky to have grown up without religious trauma but, understandably, I’ve found myself more open than many who did grow up in super devout and/or repressive households did this very reason. I’m sorry that it was such a painful experience for you and I’m glad you have found a worldview and life that feels right for you.
I think that while the article is focused on fundamentalist Christian homeschooling, many of us are discussing it more as Christian homeschooling, which is related but certainly very different.
I have an ex-girlfriend — I’m a woman myself— who grew up in a conservative Southern Baptist home and suffered a great deal for being queer and eventually atheism. My heart goes out to her for that! However, it’s maybe not ironic that she applied the same dogmatic, closed minded religious fervor of her youth to her atheist, calling anyone who identifies as Christian as bad and everything about it as awful: all believers as stupid, all leaders as evil, and beyond. Clearly we weren’t a good match for many reasons but, again, I have to respect her experience even if I don’t agree with her views.
As a sponsor of a middle school LGBTQ+ group, I have to sometimes gently remind people that they can think whatever they want but that there are many interpretations of Christianity (and other religions, of course!) They can believe or not believe whatever they want and their experience is valid… but also understand that the Christian label, just like the queer label, is not just one thing. That maybe their particular church is unwelcoming but plenty of others are. I’m so glad that even some fundamentalist people are rethinking their views to be more inclusive of diverse gender identities and sexual orientations. We’ve got a long way to go but here’s to progress like the people in the article who shared their journeys.
posted by smorgasbord at 1:57 PM on August 19, 2022 [5 favorites]
I think that while the article is focused on fundamentalist Christian homeschooling, many of us are discussing it more as Christian homeschooling, which is related but certainly very different.
Cool. I've only talked about Christian fundamentalism.
calling anyone who identifies as Christian as bad and everything about it as awful
Yeah, that's why I specified Christian fundamentalism.
They can believe or not believe whatever they want and their experience is valid… but also understand that the Christian label, just like the queer label, is not just one thing
Right, I have queer Christian friends and don't make any assumptions about Christianity generally.
That maybe their particular church is unwelcoming but plenty of others are ... I’m so glad that even some fundamentalist people are rethinking their views to be more inclusive of diverse gender identities and sexual orientations.
It is by definition not a fundamentalist Christian church if it is accepting to LGBTQIA+ identities. Fundamentalists believe in biblical inerrancy and infallibility, typically specifically the KJV translation. The bible condemns homosexuality, and while there are plenty of Christians that rightfully argue that this has been misinterpreted from context or mistranslated, Christian fundamentalism rejects this. Someone who rethinks their views on this issues is no longer a fundamentalist.
"Christian fundamentalism" does mean something very specific and it sounds like you might not be very familiar with that history. Please understand that discussing Christian fundamentalism is very different from discussing Christianity as a whole; I understand those have been conflated but let's not try to further do so
Do you possibly mean "evangelical Christian"? I think that might better encapsulate the social group you're talking about. Evangelical Christianity and Christian fundamentalism are also often conflated, but they are also not the same thing (though often overlap).
posted by brook horse at 2:35 PM on August 19, 2022 [14 favorites]
Cool. I've only talked about Christian fundamentalism.
calling anyone who identifies as Christian as bad and everything about it as awful
Yeah, that's why I specified Christian fundamentalism.
They can believe or not believe whatever they want and their experience is valid… but also understand that the Christian label, just like the queer label, is not just one thing
Right, I have queer Christian friends and don't make any assumptions about Christianity generally.
That maybe their particular church is unwelcoming but plenty of others are ... I’m so glad that even some fundamentalist people are rethinking their views to be more inclusive of diverse gender identities and sexual orientations.
It is by definition not a fundamentalist Christian church if it is accepting to LGBTQIA+ identities. Fundamentalists believe in biblical inerrancy and infallibility, typically specifically the KJV translation. The bible condemns homosexuality, and while there are plenty of Christians that rightfully argue that this has been misinterpreted from context or mistranslated, Christian fundamentalism rejects this. Someone who rethinks their views on this issues is no longer a fundamentalist.
"Christian fundamentalism" does mean something very specific and it sounds like you might not be very familiar with that history. Please understand that discussing Christian fundamentalism is very different from discussing Christianity as a whole; I understand those have been conflated but let's not try to further do so
Do you possibly mean "evangelical Christian"? I think that might better encapsulate the social group you're talking about. Evangelical Christianity and Christian fundamentalism are also often conflated, but they are also not the same thing (though often overlap).
posted by brook horse at 2:35 PM on August 19, 2022 [14 favorites]
I know this is a very personal topic and I respect that. I feel like it’s become less of a discussion about the article and more a personal debate, with a lot of defensiveness and assumptions, namely that I’m wrong and ignorant because my interpretation is different. That’s fine but I’m not comfortable continuing to discuss when it’s aggressively clear there’s only one right answer for many posters participating. I will pass on any making further comments in this thread. I’m happy to just read along now and appreciate everyone sharing!
posted by smorgasbord at 2:53 PM on August 19, 2022
posted by smorgasbord at 2:53 PM on August 19, 2022
One thing specific to Christian fundamentalists and a large subset of the quiverfull movement is that one of the most fundamental reasons for homeschooling that they rarely will say to outsiders is to avoid mandated reporters.
There is this belief that prayer, if done sufficiently fervently and in sufficient quantity will somehow reform abusers and eliminate any lasting harm to the abused. They don't really distinguish between "reasonable" corporal punishment and savagely beating kids. They believe that the state is just itching to take their kids away, which is part of the persecution complex so many fundamentalists and evangelicals have, but turned up to 11.
posted by wierdo at 4:00 PM on August 19, 2022 [17 favorites]
There is this belief that prayer, if done sufficiently fervently and in sufficient quantity will somehow reform abusers and eliminate any lasting harm to the abused. They don't really distinguish between "reasonable" corporal punishment and savagely beating kids. They believe that the state is just itching to take their kids away, which is part of the persecution complex so many fundamentalists and evangelicals have, but turned up to 11.
posted by wierdo at 4:00 PM on August 19, 2022 [17 favorites]
On a more general education/schooling note, I think I may have a viewpoint and some thoughts that are worthwhile here.
My educational path has been non-standard, and I think it's relevant so I'll give a brief overview.
I learned how to read at home from my mother before I went to kindergarten. I attended public school kindergarten and first grade at a small Texas elementary school, kindergarten was pretty good, first grade not so much. From 2nd grade to 6th grade I attended Amarillo Montessori Academy, I'm not sure if it had a better academic program than other Montessori schools or it was just that I was a fast reader with a good memory and I learn quickly, but I seem to have absorbed a **LOT** of education there.
In 7th grade I went to a public middle school for around one semester. I was bored stiff, I'm not exaggerating when I say that everything they were teaching in 7th grade was stuff I'd learned years prior. I was also bullied. So with my parent's consent I quit to "homeschool" until I was 18.
Scare quotes around "homeschool" because my homeschooling consisted of me reading more or less whatever I felt like, which included pretty much all of the World Book encyclopedia, some academic books, and a whole fuckton of science fiction and fantasy. I also taught myself how to program during this time [1] starting with a Pascal compiler for the IBM PC Jr that was pirated for me by a friend of the family.
After I turned 18 I went to the local community college, took their placement test and was put into Algebra 1, Freshman Comp, and the other classes all the incoming freshmen who'd graduated high school took.
My homeschooling, which was a sort of 6 year vacation from anything even resembling formal education and a whole lot of goofing around, didn't harm me but I don't think it really helped me either. I think I could have grown intellectually a LOT more if I'd had better or more guidance. I don't think I'm engaging in self aggrandizement to say that it probably wouldn't have worked for most of the population. I'm a fast reader, I've got a great memory, and I'm curious as hell. I read for fun. I read Wikipedia for fun today, I read the encyclopedia for fun back then. Most people aren't like that.
My partner is a Texas accredited High School English teacher, and I'm a Texas accredited 4-8 Generalist with one year teaching 8th Grade science as my only classroom experience so far.
I've also got a 16 year old son who has mental issues and is doing extremely badly in public school.
**********
American public education sucks. Ask any teacher and they'll tell you the same. The teaching staff (mostly) is doing their best, but they're underfunded, over crowded, the curriculum is iffy at best, standardized testing is crushing real education in favor of teaching the test, sports (especially football) are prioritized over learning, and the schools are madhouses filled with kids who mostly hate being there and do their best to disrupt every class they attend.
Homeschooling sucks too. I got out of it with a modestly OK primary education and thrived in college basically because I'm glib, I write pretty OK, I'm moderately smart, I read fast, and I had a background education from that Montessori school.
Christian homeschooling sucks worse than secular homeschooling, I don't have direct experience there but I've got friends who went through it and it sucks horribly.
We need to completely rethink our entire education system. It evolved from the even worse education system of the 19th century which was basically just having children memorize, word for word, various "lessons" from a textbook with no emphasis on understanding or getting the bigger picture. And it evolved under pressure from capitalism to produce factory workers.
I don't know what exactly we need to do. But I know what we're doing isn't working.
I think we should be focusing a lot more of our academic energy on elementary school, grades 1 to 6, and preschool. Kids that age (mostly) learn like sponges and will absorb a lot more than we give them credit for and a lot more than our rote learning system gives them.
We need to set a goal of 100% literacy and devote the resources it takes to help the kids who don't learn to read learn. Around 30% of children will learn to read, quickly and well, using just about any method at all. Phonics. Dick and Jane. Whatever, 30% of the kids will just get reading no matter what. Another 30 to 40ish percent will learn reading with more or less difficulty using just about any method. Phonics. Dick and Jane. whatever. They'll struggle but they can and will get it. And the last handful need a lot of 1 on 1 time and attention or they'll never learn to read beyond functional illiteracy at best.
Way I figure it, a person who can read can learn anything else by reading. A person who can't read isn't going to be able to learn other things nearly as well/easily.
I also think we need to acknowledge that a big function of school, especially later middle school and the entirety of high school, is basically babysitting. Keeping the hulking teenagers from hanging around pool halls all day and so on. There's more than just babysitting of course, but we need to acknowledge that's part of what's going on. A big part.
It'd be nice to say "well let's go less structured, let kids learn at their own pace, and if they don't feel like doing English Lit or math or whatever then that's fine they can learn later". And that is flat out guaranteed to result in minority children being pushed right out of real learning, so that's a non-starter.
Any solution we have will involve more money, and a **LOT** more money spent in poor (which largely means minority) places.
Smaller class sizes is a great starting place. It also requires more teachers which requires more pay for teachers.
But most important we must ask, other than reading what do we actually want kids to learn in school?
I'd argue that we could break it down into a few broad categories, ranked in order of importance.
1) Reading. Absolute top priority and you spend all the resources it takes to get every kid reading
2) Learning how to find and use online resources, how to evaluate online sources, how to identify bunk, and how to type. We can leave out a lot of memorization because learning how to quickly look up info is more important than memorizing.
3) Basic life skills. How to swim. How to change a tire, manage your finances, apply for jobs, how to cook. And, in PE instead of football how about we teach everyone how to fall? Falling kills and injures a horrifying number of people every year, literally every martial art ever invented teaches people how to fall safely, why the hell are we not making that part of our PE curriculum instead of dodgeball or whtaever?
4) Basic math with an emphasis on calculators focusing more on how to use math and when you'd need to than memorizing multiplication tables and learning how to do long division by hand. How to do a rough estimate so you can tell when the answer from the calculator seems really wrong and you know you ought to double check. [2]
5) Not being an ignoramous. Knowing the basic stuff about geography, space, a broad overview of world history, what science is and why it works, and whatever of the other trivium we can cram into their heads.
And then the real problematic one, because of the problem of minority kids being pushed firmly away from it if it isn't mandatory.
6) Advanced classes for people who have the interest and aptitude to prep them for higher education.
Obviously that's my list, other people probably have very different lists. But we need to have a nationwide conversation about education, what we want out of it, and how to get it done.
Because what we're doing? Cramming thousands of hormonal little darlings into a tight space where they sell each other drugs, beat each other up, fuck wherever they can, and far too frequently commit sexual assault that goes unreported?
Yeah, that's not working.
I don't know what will work.
Homeschooling, Christian or secular, won't work.
Pumping public school money into corporate charter schools damn sure won't work.
Online only education? Yeah, I like the idea but it doesn't work. So nope.
And this is my unsatisfactory ending. I have no plan forward, not even a fairly solid idea of what education should look like in the future. But it can't be what we've got now.
wierdo I agree strongly. One of the HUGE benefits of public schooling is that it gets kids into the presence of mandatory reporters most weekdays and if a parent is neglecting a kid, or abusing a kid, there's a much better chance of finding out than if the parent can keep the kid locked away "homeschooling".
I taught 8th grade science for one year in a very poor, very white, school district. In that time I made one report of neglect and one report of abuse. In one year. Every year my partner gets a handful of teenagers, mostly girls but not all, who tell her about their abuse, physical, emotional, and sexual because they've come to trust her.
The Quiverfull movement and a lot of other fundamentalist Christian sects are strong believers in beating children, they have an incentive to keep their kids away from mandated reporters who might see the marks or other signs of abuse.
[1] Well.... sort of. The foundations had already been laid back in Montessori school where they had some old TRS-80 Color Computers and LOGO. I got my intro to beginners Lisp teaching the turtle how to make squares which doubtless set the seeds for why I grew into programming so easily.
[2] I once knew a person who had their multiplication tables memorized perfectly. He and I were talking about how much paint we'd need based on the square footage of some walls and he had no fucking clue how to calculate the square feet based on the length and height of the walls. He could tell me that 8x20 was 160 without having to think, he had no idea that you'd need to multiply the height of the walls by the length to get the area.
posted by sotonohito at 5:02 PM on August 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
My educational path has been non-standard, and I think it's relevant so I'll give a brief overview.
I learned how to read at home from my mother before I went to kindergarten. I attended public school kindergarten and first grade at a small Texas elementary school, kindergarten was pretty good, first grade not so much. From 2nd grade to 6th grade I attended Amarillo Montessori Academy, I'm not sure if it had a better academic program than other Montessori schools or it was just that I was a fast reader with a good memory and I learn quickly, but I seem to have absorbed a **LOT** of education there.
In 7th grade I went to a public middle school for around one semester. I was bored stiff, I'm not exaggerating when I say that everything they were teaching in 7th grade was stuff I'd learned years prior. I was also bullied. So with my parent's consent I quit to "homeschool" until I was 18.
Scare quotes around "homeschool" because my homeschooling consisted of me reading more or less whatever I felt like, which included pretty much all of the World Book encyclopedia, some academic books, and a whole fuckton of science fiction and fantasy. I also taught myself how to program during this time [1] starting with a Pascal compiler for the IBM PC Jr that was pirated for me by a friend of the family.
After I turned 18 I went to the local community college, took their placement test and was put into Algebra 1, Freshman Comp, and the other classes all the incoming freshmen who'd graduated high school took.
My homeschooling, which was a sort of 6 year vacation from anything even resembling formal education and a whole lot of goofing around, didn't harm me but I don't think it really helped me either. I think I could have grown intellectually a LOT more if I'd had better or more guidance. I don't think I'm engaging in self aggrandizement to say that it probably wouldn't have worked for most of the population. I'm a fast reader, I've got a great memory, and I'm curious as hell. I read for fun. I read Wikipedia for fun today, I read the encyclopedia for fun back then. Most people aren't like that.
My partner is a Texas accredited High School English teacher, and I'm a Texas accredited 4-8 Generalist with one year teaching 8th Grade science as my only classroom experience so far.
I've also got a 16 year old son who has mental issues and is doing extremely badly in public school.
**********
American public education sucks. Ask any teacher and they'll tell you the same. The teaching staff (mostly) is doing their best, but they're underfunded, over crowded, the curriculum is iffy at best, standardized testing is crushing real education in favor of teaching the test, sports (especially football) are prioritized over learning, and the schools are madhouses filled with kids who mostly hate being there and do their best to disrupt every class they attend.
Homeschooling sucks too. I got out of it with a modestly OK primary education and thrived in college basically because I'm glib, I write pretty OK, I'm moderately smart, I read fast, and I had a background education from that Montessori school.
Christian homeschooling sucks worse than secular homeschooling, I don't have direct experience there but I've got friends who went through it and it sucks horribly.
We need to completely rethink our entire education system. It evolved from the even worse education system of the 19th century which was basically just having children memorize, word for word, various "lessons" from a textbook with no emphasis on understanding or getting the bigger picture. And it evolved under pressure from capitalism to produce factory workers.
I don't know what exactly we need to do. But I know what we're doing isn't working.
I think we should be focusing a lot more of our academic energy on elementary school, grades 1 to 6, and preschool. Kids that age (mostly) learn like sponges and will absorb a lot more than we give them credit for and a lot more than our rote learning system gives them.
We need to set a goal of 100% literacy and devote the resources it takes to help the kids who don't learn to read learn. Around 30% of children will learn to read, quickly and well, using just about any method at all. Phonics. Dick and Jane. Whatever, 30% of the kids will just get reading no matter what. Another 30 to 40ish percent will learn reading with more or less difficulty using just about any method. Phonics. Dick and Jane. whatever. They'll struggle but they can and will get it. And the last handful need a lot of 1 on 1 time and attention or they'll never learn to read beyond functional illiteracy at best.
Way I figure it, a person who can read can learn anything else by reading. A person who can't read isn't going to be able to learn other things nearly as well/easily.
I also think we need to acknowledge that a big function of school, especially later middle school and the entirety of high school, is basically babysitting. Keeping the hulking teenagers from hanging around pool halls all day and so on. There's more than just babysitting of course, but we need to acknowledge that's part of what's going on. A big part.
It'd be nice to say "well let's go less structured, let kids learn at their own pace, and if they don't feel like doing English Lit or math or whatever then that's fine they can learn later". And that is flat out guaranteed to result in minority children being pushed right out of real learning, so that's a non-starter.
Any solution we have will involve more money, and a **LOT** more money spent in poor (which largely means minority) places.
Smaller class sizes is a great starting place. It also requires more teachers which requires more pay for teachers.
But most important we must ask, other than reading what do we actually want kids to learn in school?
I'd argue that we could break it down into a few broad categories, ranked in order of importance.
1) Reading. Absolute top priority and you spend all the resources it takes to get every kid reading
2) Learning how to find and use online resources, how to evaluate online sources, how to identify bunk, and how to type. We can leave out a lot of memorization because learning how to quickly look up info is more important than memorizing.
3) Basic life skills. How to swim. How to change a tire, manage your finances, apply for jobs, how to cook. And, in PE instead of football how about we teach everyone how to fall? Falling kills and injures a horrifying number of people every year, literally every martial art ever invented teaches people how to fall safely, why the hell are we not making that part of our PE curriculum instead of dodgeball or whtaever?
4) Basic math with an emphasis on calculators focusing more on how to use math and when you'd need to than memorizing multiplication tables and learning how to do long division by hand. How to do a rough estimate so you can tell when the answer from the calculator seems really wrong and you know you ought to double check. [2]
5) Not being an ignoramous. Knowing the basic stuff about geography, space, a broad overview of world history, what science is and why it works, and whatever of the other trivium we can cram into their heads.
And then the real problematic one, because of the problem of minority kids being pushed firmly away from it if it isn't mandatory.
6) Advanced classes for people who have the interest and aptitude to prep them for higher education.
Obviously that's my list, other people probably have very different lists. But we need to have a nationwide conversation about education, what we want out of it, and how to get it done.
Because what we're doing? Cramming thousands of hormonal little darlings into a tight space where they sell each other drugs, beat each other up, fuck wherever they can, and far too frequently commit sexual assault that goes unreported?
Yeah, that's not working.
I don't know what will work.
Homeschooling, Christian or secular, won't work.
Pumping public school money into corporate charter schools damn sure won't work.
Online only education? Yeah, I like the idea but it doesn't work. So nope.
And this is my unsatisfactory ending. I have no plan forward, not even a fairly solid idea of what education should look like in the future. But it can't be what we've got now.
wierdo I agree strongly. One of the HUGE benefits of public schooling is that it gets kids into the presence of mandatory reporters most weekdays and if a parent is neglecting a kid, or abusing a kid, there's a much better chance of finding out than if the parent can keep the kid locked away "homeschooling".
I taught 8th grade science for one year in a very poor, very white, school district. In that time I made one report of neglect and one report of abuse. In one year. Every year my partner gets a handful of teenagers, mostly girls but not all, who tell her about their abuse, physical, emotional, and sexual because they've come to trust her.
The Quiverfull movement and a lot of other fundamentalist Christian sects are strong believers in beating children, they have an incentive to keep their kids away from mandated reporters who might see the marks or other signs of abuse.
[1] Well.... sort of. The foundations had already been laid back in Montessori school where they had some old TRS-80 Color Computers and LOGO. I got my intro to beginners Lisp teaching the turtle how to make squares which doubtless set the seeds for why I grew into programming so easily.
[2] I once knew a person who had their multiplication tables memorized perfectly. He and I were talking about how much paint we'd need based on the square footage of some walls and he had no fucking clue how to calculate the square feet based on the length and height of the walls. He could tell me that 8x20 was 160 without having to think, he had no idea that you'd need to multiply the height of the walls by the length to get the area.
posted by sotonohito at 5:02 PM on August 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
Because what we're doing? Cramming thousands of hormonal little darlings into a tight space where they sell each other drugs, beat each other up, fuck wherever they can, and far too frequently commit sexual assault that goes unreported?
Yeah, that's not working.
I get why we do it, but being a kid in school is one of the only times in our life that we're segregated into really narrow age ranges; there's like one adult for every, what, 20/30 kids, and they're there to instruct, not socialize.
So when you're, say, 9, your ideas about the world are almost entirely made up of:
- What your parents/nuclear family think
- The media you consume (maybe controlled by said parents)
- Whatever an overworked adult has time to formally teach you
- The knowledge base & ethical guidelines collated by your fellow 9-year-olds, which is probably... not great
I don't know what to do about it but I really think this fucks people up.
posted by taquito sunrise at 6:50 PM on August 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
Yeah, that's not working.
I get why we do it, but being a kid in school is one of the only times in our life that we're segregated into really narrow age ranges; there's like one adult for every, what, 20/30 kids, and they're there to instruct, not socialize.
So when you're, say, 9, your ideas about the world are almost entirely made up of:
- What your parents/nuclear family think
- The media you consume (maybe controlled by said parents)
- Whatever an overworked adult has time to formally teach you
- The knowledge base & ethical guidelines collated by your fellow 9-year-olds, which is probably... not great
I don't know what to do about it but I really think this fucks people up.
posted by taquito sunrise at 6:50 PM on August 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
the thread is still veering a bit into homeschooling pro-or-con rather than strictly about fundamentalist-homeschooling, there's also the pitfall of fundamentalist schooling per se - for example, when you look at what some of the ultra-Orthadox yeshivas in New York get away with in barely teaching a secular education at all.
Yes, I've been following Abby Stein's advocacy for enforcement of the already existing standards on ultra-Orthodox Yeshivas. She went to one, so she knows how they are not meeting what is required for private schools.
The real issue is about setting some minimum standards and enforcing them - whether with private schools or home schools (which are really just tiny private schools). Children should have a right to a certain level of education like basic literacy, numeracy, and fluency in the official/main language of the wider community.
posted by jb at 7:03 PM on August 19, 2022 [8 favorites]
Yes, I've been following Abby Stein's advocacy for enforcement of the already existing standards on ultra-Orthodox Yeshivas. She went to one, so she knows how they are not meeting what is required for private schools.
The real issue is about setting some minimum standards and enforcing them - whether with private schools or home schools (which are really just tiny private schools). Children should have a right to a certain level of education like basic literacy, numeracy, and fluency in the official/main language of the wider community.
posted by jb at 7:03 PM on August 19, 2022 [8 favorites]
It is indeed ironic that in attempting to avoid what they claim was an unbalanced curriculum, they've implemented the very thing they claim to be avoiding... albeit, just on the OTHER side of the scale. This is one of those illustrations where the pot is calling the kettle black.
As far as minimum standards go... Why not just make the homeschool kids pass those "no child left behind" assessment tests? If they fail, their curriculum clearly isn't working. Right?
posted by kschang at 10:56 PM on August 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
As far as minimum standards go... Why not just make the homeschool kids pass those "no child left behind" assessment tests? If they fail, their curriculum clearly isn't working. Right?
posted by kschang at 10:56 PM on August 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
Any solution we have will involve more money
It will help immensely if the schools aren't funded based on property tax districts. That's how poor districts get broken down buildings with no libraries and rich districts get schools with A/C and swimming pools.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 6:06 AM on August 20, 2022 [9 favorites]
It will help immensely if the schools aren't funded based on property tax districts. That's how poor districts get broken down buildings with no libraries and rich districts get schools with A/C and swimming pools.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 6:06 AM on August 20, 2022 [9 favorites]
I was - thankfully very briefly - a victim of the Christian fundamentalist movement to homeschool to avoid "ungodly" things being taught. It was only for 3-4 months but my experiences echo others, with no testing standards, poor supervision, and very poor lesson design (for example, I was given a French English dictionary and a French copy of the Bible to translate - KJV, naturally - and that was my French lesson every day). Math was a few workbooks scrounged from somewhere, and if there were other topics taught I can't recall them.
My mom didn't seem to see how badly she was failing us in that experiment, but my dad fought hard to get us back in school. Thankfully there were no issues catching up (we certainly hadn't learned anything). My mom's sister "succeeded" at homeschooling her kids, if you can call it that - they never entered the school system. Since there are limited job opportunities for people without even a high school diploma, they both became roofers. Nothing wrong with that job, but it's a hard one and it's really sad that they were forced into that life rather than choosing it.
I know people always get really defensive in these threads (and often justifiably, after being lumped together with what should really be called homechurch instead). Homeschooling with the goal of providing a safe environment or higher quality education is a million miles away from homeschooling out of fear your kid will be taught evolution, or sex ed, or critical thinking. Or out of fear they'll be given vaccines, which was also a factor for my mom. The problem is that everyone thinks they're doing the former, and way too many kids suffer as a result. I think it would go a long way towards preventing abuse if homeschooling required annual passing of standardized tests to be allowed to opt out of public school.
posted by randomnity at 10:45 AM on August 20, 2022 [8 favorites]
My mom didn't seem to see how badly she was failing us in that experiment, but my dad fought hard to get us back in school. Thankfully there were no issues catching up (we certainly hadn't learned anything). My mom's sister "succeeded" at homeschooling her kids, if you can call it that - they never entered the school system. Since there are limited job opportunities for people without even a high school diploma, they both became roofers. Nothing wrong with that job, but it's a hard one and it's really sad that they were forced into that life rather than choosing it.
I know people always get really defensive in these threads (and often justifiably, after being lumped together with what should really be called homechurch instead). Homeschooling with the goal of providing a safe environment or higher quality education is a million miles away from homeschooling out of fear your kid will be taught evolution, or sex ed, or critical thinking. Or out of fear they'll be given vaccines, which was also a factor for my mom. The problem is that everyone thinks they're doing the former, and way too many kids suffer as a result. I think it would go a long way towards preventing abuse if homeschooling required annual passing of standardized tests to be allowed to opt out of public school.
posted by randomnity at 10:45 AM on August 20, 2022 [8 favorites]
Home schooling can be done well. Doing it well is hard work. Having success is a combination of hard work and good luck.
Oklahoma is one of the easiest states in which to do homeschooling in whatever fashion or for whatever reason you like. Unschooling? Sure! Fundamentalist Christian protect the kids from evil secularism at public schools? Fine! Home-school because your kid is too far ahead and will be bored at a formal school? Go for it!
We home-schooled our kids for a good while, mainly because they started reading so early, and knowing what a bored kid will do in a classroom. We used the "what your (x) grader needs to know" books to build a curriculum. We paid for them to take standardized tests so they could get used to that sort of thing, and to confirm that they were learning. We joined a home-school collective to pool resources for some topics.
The youngest decided she wanted to go to public school starting in grade 6. The oldest watched closely for that first year, then decided she also wanted to go to public school and did starting in grade 9. The transition wasn't completely smooth sailing, but they both succeeded.
It worked out for us, but I saw so many ways it could go wrong.
posted by coppertop at 11:38 AM on August 20, 2022 [5 favorites]
Oklahoma is one of the easiest states in which to do homeschooling in whatever fashion or for whatever reason you like. Unschooling? Sure! Fundamentalist Christian protect the kids from evil secularism at public schools? Fine! Home-school because your kid is too far ahead and will be bored at a formal school? Go for it!
We home-schooled our kids for a good while, mainly because they started reading so early, and knowing what a bored kid will do in a classroom. We used the "what your (x) grader needs to know" books to build a curriculum. We paid for them to take standardized tests so they could get used to that sort of thing, and to confirm that they were learning. We joined a home-school collective to pool resources for some topics.
The youngest decided she wanted to go to public school starting in grade 6. The oldest watched closely for that first year, then decided she also wanted to go to public school and did starting in grade 9. The transition wasn't completely smooth sailing, but they both succeeded.
It worked out for us, but I saw so many ways it could go wrong.
posted by coppertop at 11:38 AM on August 20, 2022 [5 favorites]
I wonder why school is able to stir up so much anger but so little money.
What do you think school is for?
When I am angry about something the way others get angry about this, it's because I think someone is shirking an obligation to society. What obligation are fundamentalist homeschoolers shirking?
People like to say that kids have a right to an education. On whom do they have a claim for this? Where does the buck stop?
posted by eirias at 8:50 AM on August 21, 2022
What do you think school is for?
When I am angry about something the way others get angry about this, it's because I think someone is shirking an obligation to society. What obligation are fundamentalist homeschoolers shirking?
People like to say that kids have a right to an education. On whom do they have a claim for this? Where does the buck stop?
posted by eirias at 8:50 AM on August 21, 2022
What obligation are fundamentalist homeschoolers shirking?
Their obligation to their children as autonomous members of society they have a responsibility to, rather than property they have absolute authority over.
posted by acb at 9:24 AM on August 21, 2022 [5 favorites]
Their obligation to their children as autonomous members of society they have a responsibility to, rather than property they have absolute authority over.
posted by acb at 9:24 AM on August 21, 2022 [5 favorites]
You could argue that fundamentalist homeschoolers are not shirking any duty, at least not knowingly, but that they themselves were failed by the adults responsible for educating them when they were children. If someone believes everything in the Bible is literally true, that says something about the quality of their education. Maybe blaming them for teaching their kids their own beliefs is like blaming someone raised in poverty for raising their own kids in poverty.
posted by Redstart at 9:51 AM on August 21, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Redstart at 9:51 AM on August 21, 2022 [1 favorite]
Their obligation to their children as autonomous members of society they have a responsibility to, rather than property they have absolute authority over.
I don’t think this answers the question I meant to ask! Obligation to do what? What things must education contain, what features must it have, that their version does not?
I’m an atheist so this type of education isn’t something I would promote personally. I do think as a culture we tend to shoot from the hip where children are concerned. My own knee-jerk position is that the buck stops with the parent, and sometimes third parties will just nope out of participating meaningfully, and the parent just has to figure it out anyway, because the fact of their parenthood created an obligation that they really can’t discharge to someone else. In a normal year these situations are a small minority that normally gets ignored in these conversations, but of course a lot more parents got a
taste of it in 2020. I’d gotten so inured to the view that educating my kid is my problem, and only my problem, that I was totally unprepared for how controversial this position became.
posted by eirias at 10:16 AM on August 21, 2022 [1 favorite]
I don’t think this answers the question I meant to ask! Obligation to do what? What things must education contain, what features must it have, that their version does not?
I’m an atheist so this type of education isn’t something I would promote personally. I do think as a culture we tend to shoot from the hip where children are concerned. My own knee-jerk position is that the buck stops with the parent, and sometimes third parties will just nope out of participating meaningfully, and the parent just has to figure it out anyway, because the fact of their parenthood created an obligation that they really can’t discharge to someone else. In a normal year these situations are a small minority that normally gets ignored in these conversations, but of course a lot more parents got a
taste of it in 2020. I’d gotten so inured to the view that educating my kid is my problem, and only my problem, that I was totally unprepared for how controversial this position became.
posted by eirias at 10:16 AM on August 21, 2022 [1 favorite]
Redstart, definitely not all fundie homeschoolers in my region (honestly I'd hesitate to say even many of them?) are the product of the same kind of education they give/inflict on their own children. A lot of educated, intelligent offspring of liberal or at least sane parents go off the rails and do the kind of things described in the article.
And my sample size is largish because I was raised adjacent to that environment (homeschooled but not by fundies)
posted by ngaiotonga at 4:55 AM on August 23, 2022
And my sample size is largish because I was raised adjacent to that environment (homeschooled but not by fundies)
posted by ngaiotonga at 4:55 AM on August 23, 2022
I keep going back to this question of what education is for and what it is, exactly, that children have a right to. I think the best answer is a fuzzy one, something like: your parents have the obligation to see that you are trained up in a way that gives you a community you can join, so that you are protected when they die. That's my attempt at a culturally universal answer. There exists some culture around you, some group larger than a family; it will have norms you should learn and skills you should master so that you can contribute usefully. A parent who does not make you do those things, has by some measure failed.
I bring this up for two reasons. One is that by some lights I suspect that these extreme religious homeschoolers believe they are doing right by their child, by training them to be part of a culture. Is that culture good enough to get by in, in modern America? I feel skeptical too -- it feels a bit like planting a sapling in two inches of topsoil. But it feels "safe" to criticize the practice of people who are on the fringes of the white majority in a way it would not feel safe to do for other minority cultures. And today we look with justified horror upon attempts in the recent past to extract children from other cultures and replace that culture's training with that of the dominant culture here in North America. I think there is some subtle point here that is not as obvious as it sounds. Yes, of course I would prefer girl children learn to read but I'd also like some way to draw the line that did not feel subtextually hegemonic.
Two is that -- and I guess maybe this is not a new point in this thread but I want to emphasize it so that people see the human side of this -- the people I know who have homeschooled, or have considered homeschooling, have largely done it because they struck out in getting other people to help. I've seen so many bright kids run into brick walls their families didn't understand, and for some of these kids homeschooling became the only way to meet the parental obligation. Maybe it's just that I have a high density of sloppy nerds like me in my social circle, people whose own social skills couldn't get their kid over the first hurdle in kindergarten, I don't know, but the thing is: those third parties who manage formal schooling really don't have to play ball with parents. Even public schools can decide your kid is too much work, and "quiet quit" their way out of educating them meaningfully (an IEP is only paper in the end), or put them on some disciplinary track that leads inevitably to juvie, or what-have-you. The buck stops with you and if you find yourself in this situation, well, you'd better learn quickly what the best path is for teaching your child the skills they need to join that society. Maybe it's hiring lawyers to get those third parties in line. Maybe it's moving to a place with better third parties (I know one family that is doing this right now, and one that's considering). Or maybe you can't afford to do any of that and homeschooling is what you're left with. So when people go off on homeschoolers I bristle and think, jesus, you really have no idea what some families go through. My own particular kid is very very happy in school and I am thankful. It wasn't always thus.
posted by eirias at 10:15 AM on August 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
I bring this up for two reasons. One is that by some lights I suspect that these extreme religious homeschoolers believe they are doing right by their child, by training them to be part of a culture. Is that culture good enough to get by in, in modern America? I feel skeptical too -- it feels a bit like planting a sapling in two inches of topsoil. But it feels "safe" to criticize the practice of people who are on the fringes of the white majority in a way it would not feel safe to do for other minority cultures. And today we look with justified horror upon attempts in the recent past to extract children from other cultures and replace that culture's training with that of the dominant culture here in North America. I think there is some subtle point here that is not as obvious as it sounds. Yes, of course I would prefer girl children learn to read but I'd also like some way to draw the line that did not feel subtextually hegemonic.
Two is that -- and I guess maybe this is not a new point in this thread but I want to emphasize it so that people see the human side of this -- the people I know who have homeschooled, or have considered homeschooling, have largely done it because they struck out in getting other people to help. I've seen so many bright kids run into brick walls their families didn't understand, and for some of these kids homeschooling became the only way to meet the parental obligation. Maybe it's just that I have a high density of sloppy nerds like me in my social circle, people whose own social skills couldn't get their kid over the first hurdle in kindergarten, I don't know, but the thing is: those third parties who manage formal schooling really don't have to play ball with parents. Even public schools can decide your kid is too much work, and "quiet quit" their way out of educating them meaningfully (an IEP is only paper in the end), or put them on some disciplinary track that leads inevitably to juvie, or what-have-you. The buck stops with you and if you find yourself in this situation, well, you'd better learn quickly what the best path is for teaching your child the skills they need to join that society. Maybe it's hiring lawyers to get those third parties in line. Maybe it's moving to a place with better third parties (I know one family that is doing this right now, and one that's considering). Or maybe you can't afford to do any of that and homeschooling is what you're left with. So when people go off on homeschoolers I bristle and think, jesus, you really have no idea what some families go through. My own particular kid is very very happy in school and I am thankful. It wasn't always thus.
posted by eirias at 10:15 AM on August 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
My big problem with homeschooling (especially of the fundamentalist variety) is how unregulated it is. Sure, lots of people give their kids rigorous education tailored to their child's needs. But in most states, there is ZERO enforcement of the most bare-bones standards of education. Kids can make it to the age of 18 without ever learning long division, or paragraph breaks, or sampling bias.
Worse, in my opinion: a homeschooled child can go for months without speaking to any adults they aren't related to. It's a tragic fact that an abusive family pulling children from school and 'homeschooling' can be a death sentence. Because there's no longer routine and structure, and the children aren't seen and spoken to by people who are not family.
posted by kkar at 1:30 PM on August 23, 2022
Worse, in my opinion: a homeschooled child can go for months without speaking to any adults they aren't related to. It's a tragic fact that an abusive family pulling children from school and 'homeschooling' can be a death sentence. Because there's no longer routine and structure, and the children aren't seen and spoken to by people who are not family.
posted by kkar at 1:30 PM on August 23, 2022
Redstart, definitely not all fundie homeschoolers in my region (honestly I'd hesitate to say even many of them?) are the product of the same kind of education they give/inflict on their own children. A lot of educated, intelligent offspring of liberal or at least sane parents go off the rails and do the kind of things described in the article.
They may not have been educated in exactly the same way they're educating their kids, but I would say their education failed to do what education ought to do if they could end up as fundamentalist Christians. As far as I'm concerned, critical thinking is one of the most important parts of education, quite possibly the single most important thing. Unfortunately, schools don't do a great job of teaching it. If you don't want people to latch onto stupid ideas that ruin their kids' lives, you need to teach them how to recognize a stupid idea when they come across it.
posted by Redstart at 6:56 PM on August 23, 2022
They may not have been educated in exactly the same way they're educating their kids, but I would say their education failed to do what education ought to do if they could end up as fundamentalist Christians. As far as I'm concerned, critical thinking is one of the most important parts of education, quite possibly the single most important thing. Unfortunately, schools don't do a great job of teaching it. If you don't want people to latch onto stupid ideas that ruin their kids' lives, you need to teach them how to recognize a stupid idea when they come across it.
posted by Redstart at 6:56 PM on August 23, 2022
They may not have been educated in exactly the same way they're educating their kids, but I would say their education failed to do what education ought to do if they could end up as fundamentalist Christians.
Number one, that seems a bit no-true-Scotsman to me, and number two, this is exactly the kind of reasoning that drives people with these beliefs out of the school system. You’ve just said basically that one of the goals of school should be to extirpate their culture. I’m not in that culture, I don’t have any personal stake in preserving it, but can’t you see how parents who are and do would be leery to entrust their kids to adults who say that sort of thing out loud?
posted by eirias at 8:05 PM on August 23, 2022
Number one, that seems a bit no-true-Scotsman to me, and number two, this is exactly the kind of reasoning that drives people with these beliefs out of the school system. You’ve just said basically that one of the goals of school should be to extirpate their culture. I’m not in that culture, I don’t have any personal stake in preserving it, but can’t you see how parents who are and do would be leery to entrust their kids to adults who say that sort of thing out loud?
posted by eirias at 8:05 PM on August 23, 2022
Oh yeah, I agree, that is exactly why they don't want their kids in public school. But there's no way you can make school into something they'd feel good about and also have it meet the needs of everyone else.
posted by Redstart at 8:49 PM on August 23, 2022
posted by Redstart at 8:49 PM on August 23, 2022
there's no way you can make school into something they'd feel good about and also have it meet the needs of everyone else
There was a time when I heard stuff like this as a parent, albeit for very different reasons. This is why I feel compelled to defend homeschoolers — there will always be families to whom schools say, this place is not for you; to meet your needs would not serve the needs of the many. Even those who are not formally allowed to say this, do. These families are edge cases, yes, but there will always be edge cases, so our attitude needs to be “how can we best support the children and families whose needs we’re choosing not to meet?” State standards and assessments could definitely play a role here, I’m not knocking those. Just trying to be another voice pointing out that we have to care about the edge cases and that trying to shame them out of existence just plain won’t work — many of them have been shamed enough.
posted by eirias at 9:41 AM on August 24, 2022
There was a time when I heard stuff like this as a parent, albeit for very different reasons. This is why I feel compelled to defend homeschoolers — there will always be families to whom schools say, this place is not for you; to meet your needs would not serve the needs of the many. Even those who are not formally allowed to say this, do. These families are edge cases, yes, but there will always be edge cases, so our attitude needs to be “how can we best support the children and families whose needs we’re choosing not to meet?” State standards and assessments could definitely play a role here, I’m not knocking those. Just trying to be another voice pointing out that we have to care about the edge cases and that trying to shame them out of existence just plain won’t work — many of them have been shamed enough.
posted by eirias at 9:41 AM on August 24, 2022
We're on the same side here. I homeschooled my kids. I'm not enthusiastic about introducing a lot more control and regulation to homeschooling and I'm uncomfortable with telling anyone there are things they're not allowed to believe or teach their kids to believe. My ideal version of education (which is definitely not the version most kids get in public school) would give people critical thinking skills that would be likely to lead to them rejecting fundamentalist Christianity but would stop well short of telling anyone their beliefs are wrong. And I'm willing to let other people choose a completely different educational ideal for their kids as long as they're not pushing it on my kids.
posted by Redstart at 10:22 AM on August 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Redstart at 10:22 AM on August 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
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