I didn’t want to admit this, but it’s true: I only homeschool to piss off other people.
When I was sending my child to a private school, it didn’t upset anyone. Public school teachers didn’t decry my selfishness for not sending my child to our local school, and for choosing to send her to a private school. I can outsource my child’s education without pissing off anyone; I just can’t do it myself.
If I do it myself, I’m selfish, rich, bigoted, close-minded, arrogant, narrow, and damaging my child, but if I send her to an all-girls parochial school for $15K a year, I’m none of these things. How is that?
Originally, I thought it was actually because of the reasons teachers often give. They say I’ve removed one of the “high achieving” students, leaving them with the . . . others. (I know I’d probably have a greater vote of confidence if teachers didn’t sort children this way, but it probably wouldn’t be enough confidence to return my child to their “care”). I’m certain that teachers would prefer to have a greater number of “good” students in their classes, but if this were the true reason for their ire, it would be directed at private school students as well as homeschoolers [1].
On closer inspection, homeschooling pisses off teachers because it exposes credentialism for what it is: a house of cards wobbling in the wind. If it gets out that the same homeschoolers who are cleaning up on standardized tests, creativity, and spelling bees are often being taught by parents who barely finished highschool themselves, what chance does the illusion that a teaching credential is something special stand? How can the education programs that churn out certificated teachers compete with the knowledge that any Tom, Dick, Jane or Sally with a heart for it can teach h** children?
Ironically, one of the things that terrifies newbie homeschoolers with little ones is if or not they can teach their children to read and do math. I was one of these people — convinced that there was some magic that elementary school teachers had to teach reading. It was a ridiculous premise for me to hold, because it flies in the face of everything we know about reading: that it does not take a long time to learn; that it is learned at the knee of a reader who enjoys reading; that it is so simple to learn that we had to pass laws to prevent slaves in early America from learning to read. What would happen to the certification industry if this secret were let out?
Even education programs don’t want the teachers they’re training to know how simple reading is. Instead, these programs instruct young, bright people who have a heart to work with children how to make children despise reading–and learning. Instead of grappling with great literature, or the burning questions of science, or interesting math, education programs fill their time with “teaching strategies, the classroom management/school discipline methods, and measurement and evaluation processes.”
At our local university, some of the requirements to become a highschool teacher include:
EDUC 201 Introduction to Education (3)
EDUC 303 Foundations of Assessment (3)
EDUC 341 Secondary Strategies Management, Assessment (4)
EDUC 413 Content Area Reading, Management, Assessment (4)
EDUC 419 Foundations of Secondary Classroom Management (3)
EDUC 420 Admission to Professional Candidacy (1)
EDUC 426 Secondary Student Teaching 7–12 (15)
CEDP 302 Educational Psychology (5)
CEDP 363 Introduction to Special Education (4)
It’s hardly a surprise that public school teachers believe that only trained teachers can teach. That’s what they’ve been taught. And it shouldn’t be surprising that, having spent all that time and energy and money (and probably some of their best creative years as young people) chasing after this certification, that it would piss teachers off that not only do homeschoolers find what they’re offering to be lacking, but that homeschoolers often feel they can do better. Worse, still, homeschoolers have consistently out-performed publicschoolers in things like standardized tests — the very things that the schools spend inordinate amounts of time and money on, and homeschoolers do only to be in compliance with their state laws.
This also explains why I don’t piss off anyone if I send my child to a private school–they think that I am outsourcing her education to a certificated professional. Interestingly, the most exclusive and highly-regarded private schools do not hire certificated teachers, choosing, instead, to hire people who have excelled in their fields, and who have advanced degrees in their subjects of study, rather than credentials from education programs.
Our current system of education (and teacher training) is an experiment gone very wrong at the expense of generations of children. The literacy rate in our nation has spiraled downward in direct correlation with compulsory attendance laws, and yet we persist in believing that more credentials, more money, more administration, more testing, more police officers in schools, more homework, more programs, more bureaucracy, longer schools days and a wider compulsory attendance age range will somehow fix this disastrous fad.
What I don’t get is why my choice to opt-out of the system so distresses teachers. I require no goods, services, time, or money from the school system. I am a property owner and I pay my taxes, so my money is still going to the schools. I have helped lower the class size of each school system we’ve lived in. Together, these should cause teachers to rejoice at the increasing popularity of homeschooling across the nation.
I suspect, though, that the problem lies where I think it lies: that homeschool exposes the inherent problems with compulsory attendance, teacher training programs, the emphasis on high-stakes testing, standardized curricula written by committee, credentialism, and all the other trappings of modern education. I suspect that homeschooling pisses them off because if just anyone can teach their children–and do a better job than the schools (and all data points to that being the case)–then we’re the wind that will fell their house of cards.
And cardhouse builders hate that.
[1] According to a 2000–2001 Barna survey, home school parents are 39 percent less likely to be college graduates, 21 percent more likely to be married, 28 percent less likely to have experienced a divorce, and that the household income is 10% below the national average.
Got an email today about this post, “I think some of this stuff may have been plagiarized, it’s found everywhere on the web and various peoples websites, unless you’re the content’s creator?”
For the record, I am the original author of the material not cited above as being someone else’s.
I once ordered a freebie publication from the federal government about learning to read. It was so frightening and upsetting that if I’d believed it, I would have sent my kid to school. Luckily, I was far enough along in my homeschool journey that I just laughed it off and thought, wow, if they were right, it would be hard. Learning dipthongs and onset and offset or whatever. Ridiculous – the same ridiculous stuff I saw on my DD’s kindy test. She didn’t understand how to answer the questions — but the bizarre thing is she is learning to read. So, if we ask questions that people can’t answer, then the people will think they are unqualified. I’d like to believe these tests and pubs are written by well-meaning but misguided people who want to help and not specifically crafted to discourage others (it depends how much JTG I’ve been reading recently which conclusion I believe).
Economic protectionism or misguided uber-academia? Who knows – but I’m no longer trying to be the good girl and get the A and I’m not making my kids into that.
Just happened upon your blog! I loved your comments. I find so many stereotypes are out there about homeschooling, from the “they’re all socially inept” to “their parents are religious nuts.” It’s maddening! Homeschooling is such a viable option these days, especially with all the resources available not just in the world at large but also in the cyberworld. Ask a question, you’ll get an answer. I just read something interesting on time management, for example. And for classroom management techniques, I recently learned about Wolf Pack Classroom Management,to create a nurturing classroom for all, and to include every child all the time. This is especially great for children who feel isolated from their peers, though of course it’s important for all kids. I recommend giving it a look.
TulipGirl:
(I was thinking flowers, but now, after poking around your blog, I’m thinking Total Depravity, Unconditional Election? . . .)
🙂 On the TCK front, I met Dave Pollock in college (we lived in the same town), after my mom came home from church one day and announced that she “knew what was wrong with” me . . . it sure did sum up a lot of my experience.
DaveD:
One year (in my former life, I was a college comp. prof), I got confused (teaching 23 hours that semester; it’s amazing I wasn’t drooling on my shoes), and accidentally assigned a Rogerian essay to my English 090 classes. (090 is the third of three remedial composition courses that many highschool graduates had to take, because their schools passed them through without actually teaching them to write).
Anyway, not a few of my colleagues took me to task for doing this. They were horrified. (I was a little horrified, too, I’ll admit, when I realized the mistake I’d made, but it was really too late to change anything) . . . and then this is where my horror turns to delight:
They took to it. It was challenging, and it was hard, and they struggled . . . and they produced some of the best work any section of 090 I ever taught produced.
It was beautiful.
Bridget:
Missing the point of their training . . . 🙂
–Jen
Btw, I just read through some of your 52 Churches project. I found it interesting the place base chapels played in your upbringing, as it was a significant part of my childhood / spiritual formation as well. I haven’t read about the base chapel experience in connection with Third Culture Kid info, but I bet some interesting study has been (or could be) done.
Wow, just happened on to your blog. Hilarious, enjoyable read! Thanks!
I’ve got to say, I’m LOL at the title of this post!
Good post. You research from Barna isn’t exactly right, though. Check out stuff by Brian D. Ray and the HSLDA for a better view of the trend.
I am a “non traditional student” currently working towards becoming a high school teacher. The arrogance of the professors is astounding. To be fair, a lot of the techniques that classes like Classroom Management and Ed Psych teach are the very same ones that work so blindingly well with homeschoolers. It is the lack of the expectation of excellence, not at the school or district level, but the individual teachers who buy into things like failing hurts kids. You mostly get what you expect out of kids and if you expect little…..
DD
Fabulous post Jen.
I appreciate the Barna survey statistics too.
Kay
Hi Jen,
I think that most teachers who disapprove of homeschooling simply missed the point of their training. Education degrees don’t teach one how to teach so much as they teach one how to control a crowd. Handling 30 students who all have different needs and personalities at the same time is a far cry from what we are doing as homeschoolers. That method can work passably well for the average student who stays right where the teacher is teaching at the moment, but it cannot and never will work for any student who falls outside of the averages in either direction. The schools plain and simple were never designed to deal with that, the schools of yore didn’t keep all the students, only the one that fit there. The reason the schools are in so much trouble now is that they are shoehorning everyone into the same classrooms regardless of whether they belong there.
Anyway, my point is that I don’t claim to be able to do a teacher’s job. I only claim to be able to facilitate my children in learning their own way in their own time.
Great post.