52 Churches

In response to this:

It sounds like HS vs. PS is like comparing a race car to a giant bus: one is smaller, easier to maneuver, but in some ways more vulnerable, while the other is bigger, slow to turn, but in some ways the safer choice.

Let’s examine the analogy.

The occupants of a school bus are carrying 30 pound book bags and have no safety restraints.
The racecar has five point seat belts, reinforced steel safety cage, and all the gear is likewise tethered.
Although their vehicle has a governor to prevent excessive speed (even if the bus needs it to avoid an accident), I’m not sure the bus the safer choice.

To draw the analogy out to its logical conclusions:

The riders who are first to board the bus are penalized by also being the last to be let off on the ride home. (These are advanced students, which I point out as the analogy was a little murky here).

The school bus arrives at its stops at an arbitrarily appointed time. If its riders are not prepared to board that very minute, the bus leaves without them. If the riders arrive early, they must stand around waiting for the bus. If the bus is late in arriving, the riders must still wait, but are often penalized at their destination for the tardiness of the bus. The racecar waits, ready, for its driver to drive.

The racecar waits for its driver. (The racecar only has a driver; it has no passive passengers).

Bus riders are not permitted to choose their own routes, speeds, companions, or destinations. The racecar driver can certainly spend h** time on a pre-determined track, but it is a choice. The open road is also available.

The racecar driver may drive, to multiple destinations, both day and night.

Wait . . . what made the school bus a “safer” option?

It’s true: I only homeschool to piss off other parents.

I don’t homeschool because I want to provide a superior education for my child; I just homeschool to piss off other parents. I don’t homeschool because the school she was in was failing my child; I just do it to make other parents feel bad about their educational choices.

I’ve chosen to put my career on hold, forgo a steady second paycheck, and spend (nearly all) my time with my kid just to rub it in the faces of parents who send their children to school.  It’s a new form of conspicuous consumption, of keeping up with Joneses, of demonstrating my fiscal and intellectual prowess.

There are three kinds of comments  I get about homeschooling from the parents I’ve pissed off by virtue of choosing to homeschooling.

First, there are the wistful, backhanded compliments.  First, they say, “I could never homeschool my child,” and then laud me as a saint, telling me all the reasons my child is “easy” or somehow specially suited for homeschooling.   This particular problem is more universal than homeschooling — it’s a conversation that parents have about parenting all the time: parents of spirited children feel they take the blame for their children’s poor behavior, but they are unwilling to give credit to parents of mature, respectful children for those children’s behavior.  There are lots of different personality types, of course, and some children are more naturally easy going and calmer than others — I’m not denying that.  But I spend a lot more time with my daughter and therefore have a lot more input into her behavior than if I sent her to school.

But a lot of the behaviors that parents of school children see (and despise) in their own children are learned behaviors that are rooted in the culture of school. John Taylor Gatto lists a few of these in his essay, the Seven Lesson Schoolteacher:

In a world where home is only a ghost because both parents work or because too many moves or too many job changes or too much ambition or something else has left everybody too confused to stay in a family relation I teach you how to accept confusion as your destiny. That’s the first lesson I teach.

The second lesson I teach is your class position. I teach that you must stay in class where you belong. . . . If I do my job well, the kids can’t even imagine themselves somewhere else because
I’ve shown how to envy and fear the better classes and how to have contempt for the dumb classes. Under this efficient discipline the class mostly polices itself into good marching order. That’s the real lesson of any rigged competition like school. You come to know your place.

The third lesson I teach kids is indifference. I teach children not to care about anything too much, even though they want to make it appear that they do. . . . But when the bell rings I insist that they stop whatever it is that we’ve been working on and proceed quickly to the next work station. They must turn on and off like a light switch. Nothing important is ever finished in my class, nor in any other class I know of. Students never have a complete experience except on the installment plan.

The fourth lesson I teach is emotional dependency. By stars and red checks, smiles and frowns, prizes, honors and disgraces I teach you to surrender your will to the predestined chain of command. Rights may be granted or withheld by any authority, without appeal because rights do not exist inside a school, not even the right of free speech, the Supreme Court has so ruled, unless school authorities say they do. As a schoolteacher I intervene in many personal decisions, issuing a Pass for those I deem legitimate, or initiating a disciplinary confrontation for behavior that threatens my control. Individuality is constantly trying to assert itself among children and teenagers so my judgments come thick and fast.

The fifth lesson I teach is intellectual dependency. Good people wait for a teacher to tell them what to do. It is the most important lesson, that we must wait for other people, better trained than ourselves, to make the meanings of our lives. . . . This power to control what children will think lets me separate successful students from failures very easily. Successful children do the thinking I appoint them with a minimum of resistance and decent show of enthusiasm. . . . Bad kids fight this, of course, even though they lack the concepts to know what they are fighting, struggling to make decisions for themselves about what they will learn and when they will learn it.

The sixth lesson I teach is provisional self-esteem. If you’ve ever tried to wrestle a kid into line whose parents have convinced him to believe they’ll love him in spite of anything, you know how impossible it is to make self-confident spirits conform. Our world wouldn’t survive a flood of confident people very long so I teach that your self-respect should depend on expert opinion. My kids are constantly evaluated and judged. . . . Self-evaluation, the staple of every major philosophical system that ever appeared on the planet, is never a factor in these things.

The seventh lesson I teach is that you can’t hide. I teach children they are always watched by keeping each student under constant surveillance as do my colleagues. There are no private spaces for children, there is no private time.

School is like starting life with a 12-year jail sentence in which bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned. I teach school and win awards doing it. I should know.

To Gatto’s points:

We don’t have a ghost home, because we’re not all headed off in different directions.  We’re also a multi-generational home, as my parents’ retirement plan was “move near Jen,” and they now live with us.  My inlaws are following suit, and buying property just a few miles down the road.

Second, Farmerteen doesn’t have to “know her place” because she isn’t sorted against 30 other children, arbitrarily grouped together by age.  Homeschooling has allowed us to minimize her weaknesses while capitalizing on her strengths.  We don’t have to hold her back in history because she’s struggling in math.  We don’t have to hold her back a whole grade because she’s struggling in one subject.  We’re not even really sure what “grade” she’s in anymore . . . some stuff she’s far beyond her 7th grade peers, and in others, she’s not.

Third, she can take all the time she needs to complete whatever project she’s working on.  Sometimes, in history, for example, she gets excited about a certain event or person, and she veers away from the chronological history book to spend some time exploring the specifics of a person, place, or event.  We’ve got a flexibility that only the choicest schools come close to duplicating.

Fourth, Farmerteen is not emotionally dependent on us for her self-worth.  She’s well-versed in, and has ample opportunity to exercise, her civil rights under the US Constitution.  Most children her age are trapped in schools for 12 years, learning how little the Constitution matters to them or to their teachers.  Their civil rights are trampled over and over again until they just give up.  Our dwindling participation in the democratic process (our spiraling voter turnout) is a direct product of a compulsory education.  Schools give lip service to the Bill of Rights, right up until the point a student tries to exercise them.

Fifth, she is not intellectually dependent on us.  We certainly provide a lot of encouragement, structure, and input into her studies, but she does not rely on us to bring meaning to her life.

Sixth, her self-esteem is not provisioned on our input (and, for those parents out there who think Farmerteen is just an “easy” child — this is where she shines . . . she doesn’t take anything at face value, and she’s interested in arguing every little thing.  For a while, we called her “Pointless Lawyer Baby” because, even as a toddler, she would argue with any (and every) statement we ever made.

Finally, Farmerteen has a lot of private time and space to develop an inner life.  She has plenty of time alone to think, explore, and discover.  She has time to evaluate the things she reads and hears and studies, to play around with them, and to share them.  Here, too, is one of the riches of her character and personality: she thinks about her interactions with others, she ponders the meaning of life, she draws connections between experiences and studies and prior knowledge, and weaves together these things, reflecting on what has happened, and what she’d like to have happen in the future.

I’ve long resented my (four) highschools for the time they robbed from me.  I’ve long maintained that I’d have had a much fuller, richer education with an MTA pass and a library card to the Boston Public Library than I did slogging through each of the (different) sets of required courses the highschools prescribed.  (My senior year, I had to take both senior PE and freshman PE, because my first three highschools required fewer than four years of phys. ed.  I’m sure that was time well-spent).

The second kind of comments I get from other parents are the “what about [insert school-based activity]?” comments. What about the prom? What about sports? What about math?

Often, these questions are simply ones of curiosity . . . many people cannot imagine a childhood without school, which is not surprising, since we’ve had compulsory attendance laws for several generations, many families have two parents in the workforce, and homeschoolers are still in the minority–it’s very difficult for people to create a mental picture of what a day in the life of a 5-18 year old might include, if it weren’t school.   But much of the time, what actually underlies this line of questioning is the premise that, if children aren’t in school, they’re being robbed of an irreplaceable cultural experience — and the people who are robbing them are their own parents.

It’s difficult, in those moments, not to point out that it is the majority whose childhoods are being squandered.

Here’s what my child is missing:  Farmerteen is missing the opportunity to be placed with a teacher who does not understand her unique combination of strengths and weaknessses.  Sure, she might win the teacher lottery every few years and get a winner, but anyone looking back on their own school experience with any honesty, will see a long list of poor matches, punctuated by two or three gems.

Farmerteen is missing out on the opportunity to have her civil rights trampled while being taught to be a “good citizen.”  Here is our local school district’s Student Rights and Responsibilities, which include things like:

Pupils to Obey – Requires pupils to comply with rules established for the government of schools, to do assigned discipline, to pursue required courses and to submit to the authority of teachers, subject to such disciplinary action as school officials shall determine.
Closed Campus – Students are required to remain on the school grounds from time of arrival unless officially excused.
Cooperation with School Personnel – Students must obey the reasonable instruction of school district personnel.
Need to Identify Self – All persons must, upon request, identify themselves to school personnel in school buildings, grounds, buses, bus stops, or school-sponsored events.
PROHIBITED ACTS/OFFENSES AND DEFINITIONS – The following acts/offenses are among those that violate district policies and school rules and regulations and shall be cause for disciplinary action, suspension or expulsion. These acts may include, but are not limited to:
Disobedience/Defiance– Refusal or failure to obey.
Disruptive Dress – Dress and appearance that is considered disruptive to the educational process as specified in the student handbooks.
Failure To Do Assigned Detention – Willingly not showing up for detention.

No one but the students question the validity of these rules (and the students soon learn that questioning the rules is against the rules, that the appeals process is rigged, and that there is no actual recourse, because the law compels their continued attendance).

Finally, there is the dreaded “s” question/comments: What about socialization? and My child needs to be around other children; *he’s so social.”

Mind you, this is a question that I’m often asked by people who know me and Farmerteen, or who have at least been in our general vicinity for a chunk of time, and have had the opportunity to observe that neither of us are shrinking violets. I wonder what social deficit they see in Farmerteen, but then I realize they’re only parroting a question they’ve heard, working under a paradigm in which they can’t imagine a child between the ages of 5 and 18 doing anything during the day other than school.

But the question is a thoughtless one.

Ironically, it’s often asked by a person whose child was approached by mine and invited to join the group.

What they really mean to ask is a series of questions:
Can your child get along with other children? Is your child shy? Does your child do anything socially awkward that would make h** a target for teasing by other children in a school situation? Does your child have any friends? Can your child make friends? How does your child meet other children to be friends with?

Some homeschool children are socially awkward, in much the same way that some public school children are socially awkward. My husband (public schooled) was one of these; our daughter is not. The difference between a socially awkward homeschooler and a socially awkward public schooler is that the homeschooler is not penalized for being socially awkward. The homeschooler has the opportunity to develop social graces in a setting where h** faux pas are not held against h**.

That is the difference in socialization between public school and homeschool.

So there it is. I homeschool to piss off other parents. I want them to feel badly about themselves and the educational choices they made for their children; second, I want to confuse them about what it is that we do; and, finally, I want to make them concerned for the social life of my daughter–you know, the tall girl over there–the one who is leading the group of kids she just met in an adventure game in the park, making sure everyone is included? –yeah, that one.

An answer to the question School Discipline: Is It Ever Okay to Physically Restrain a Student?

Yes. If physical restraint is the only way to prevent a student from physically harming to another person, it is not only “okay,” but necessary to physically restrain the student.

But this article asks a different question–if or not physical restraint is appropriate in the case of a verbal assault.

I think answer to the question of if or not a security guard should be allowed to “physically restrain a middle-school student for a viscous verbal assault?” lies in the answer to this question:

Should the security guard be allowed to physically restrain a colleague for the same offense?

In Oatey’s somewhat vague recounting of the events, the child in question “told the security guard that ‘he [the child? the guard?] fucked his [the child’s? the guard’s?] mother’ after being told numerous times to be quiet and walk away.”

Whichever it was (“I fucked your mom” or “You’re a mother-fucker”) obviously upset the security guard, whose initial response (Be quiet. Go away.) wasn’t wholly inappropriate. (But does beg the question — what precipitated this exchange?)

But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that, feeling frisky and put out because I feel he’s acting like a jerk, I, an adult, tell this security guard that I think he’s a “mother-fucker.” He’s likely to take the same offense to my comment, but he’s not likely to attempt to physically restrain me, now is he?

And I think that’s where the answer to this question lies: not in the socio-economic make up of the neighborhood of the school, the particulars of the student’s genealogy, or the unfortunate criminal activities of other students. Verbal assault (or, as a citizen of the United States of America might call it, “the exercise of free speech under the Constitution of the United States of America”) is not sufficient reason to resort to physical assault (which is what my lawyer would probably consider laying hands on me).

The guard in question did manage to prove, conclusively, that he is indeed a mother-fucker (in the colloquial sense that he’s a jerk). He also managed to aptly demonstrate to this particular student, those who witnessed the exchange, and any who have heard of it, that physical force is an appropriate response to speech you don’t like.

* * *
I was asked, in a follow-up comment, what I thought the right course of action would be.

I disagree with your assessment of the situation as I understand it [that the kid was the first to escalate the situation]. The guard’s initial response was to escalate the situation; the student responded in kind.

I think it is rarely appropriate, as the adult in an interaction, to bait, escalate, or otherwise engage in a pissing contest with an adolescent. It’s especially inappropriate for an adult who is hired to work with adolescents to do so.

A standing army will eventually be turned on the population it was originally convened to protect . . . what is the thinking that goes into setting up an adversarial relationship between students and security guards? How does a security guard coming down on a student for what the student has said make anyone safer or provide security to anyone at the school? How did the job of security morph from being one of providing a safe place to study to being one of policing the children?

I think the security guard should have diffused the situation rather than escalated it. I have had, in my years as professor, as well as my time in customer service, had a number of times where infuriated persons have screamed at me for a variety of reasons — and in each case, I diffused the situation, generally by referring the person to the dean, or my boss.

“Ah, young peacocking boy, I can see that you feel I am a mother-fucker, and I am sorry that you feel that way. If you’d like to discuss my performance with my boss, here’s h** contact information. Better yet, I shall use my trusty radio to summon my boss, and you can discuss my job performance and lodge a complaint right now.”

Such a cordial invitation, delivered with a smile, has the most sail-deflating effect. The diffusing adult in the situation has acknowledged the issue, and provided a clear path to resolution. Even the most riled up boy with a chip on his shoulder is generally going to decline the offer. Or, he might take the security guard up on the offer, and express to the (head of security/principal/superintendent) that he feels the security guard is, indeed, a mother-fucker, and the conversation can go from there.

Telling the kid to shut up and go away is just not really every going to work, you know what I mean?

I also homeschool to piss off the NEA.

This seems to have worked.

In 1988 (when they decided that, if they could not prevent homeschooling, the next best thing they might do is try to regulate it), they passed a resolution against homeschooling that they’ve trotted out and passed again every year since:

The National Education Association believes that homeschooling programs based on parental choice cannot provide the student with a comprehensive education experience. When home schooling occurs, students enrolled must meet all state curricular requirements, including the taking and passing of assessments to ensure adequate academic progress. Home schooling should be limited to the children of the immediate family, with all expenses being borne by the parents/guardians. Instruction should be by persons who are licensed by the appropriate state education licensure agency, and a curriculum approved by the state department of education should be used.

The Association also believes that home-schooled students should not participate in any extracurricular activities in the public schools. The Association further believes that local public school systems should have the authority to determine grade placement and/or credits earned toward graduation for students entering or re-entering the public school setting from a home school setting.

I love the part where, simultaneously, they believe that homeschooling  “cannot provide the student with a comprehensive education experience,” and that students should not be permitted to participate in public school programs (where, presumably, students do get this comprehensive education).

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the NEA’s resolution against homeschooling isn’t about providing the best education to students, but is about controlling the monopoly on education they’ve long enjoyed.

Let’s look at the statements individually:

The National Education Association believes that homeschooling programs based on parental choice cannot provide the student with a comprehensive education experience.

Here, the focus isn’t actually on homeschooling, but on parental choice.  If you’re a public school parent reading this, you should be shrieking.  The NEA does not believe that parental choice cannot result in a “comprehensive education experience.”

When home schooling occurs, students enrolled must meet all state curricular requirements, including the taking and passing of assessments to ensure adequate academic progress.

First, the NEA wants homeschoolers to be enrolled (not all states require this of homeschoolers; some do). Second, that they follow state curricula (no state requires this of homeschoolers). Third, that they follow the state’s testing and assessment (again, some states require this, others do not). Again, if you’re the parent of a public school student, you should be questioning the latter two premises — in every state, they impact you more than they do us.

Home schooling should be limited to the children of the immediate family, with all expenses being borne by the parents/guardians.

I find this one fascinating in light of the rise of hybrid public school/ homeschool programs, and the adoption of K-12 online programs by public schools in over half the states. Under the guidelines of most of these programs, the public school contracts with K-12 for curricula, they get a new public-school-at-home student, and the family gets a pay out (usually somewhere around $1,200 per student) to use for books, supplies, and lessons (karate, ballet, piano, Japanese, etc.). In many places, homeschoolers can access these programs part time, retaining their homeschooling status and freedoms while taking a few of the K-12 classes. It’s interesting that the NEA doesn’t have a similar resolution against these programs that bring in so much funding.

Instruction should be by persons who are licensed by the appropriate state education licensure agency, and a curriculum approved by the state department of education should be used.

This is the crux of the resolution: keeping the monopoly on education by limiting teachers to those who have gone through teacher training programs.

The Association also believes that home-schooled students should not participate in any extracurricular activities in the public schools.

This one is fascinating, and I’ve never been quite sure what to make of it. I suspect that preventing homeschooler participation in extracurricular activities is a bid to cut down on interactions between homeschoolers and public schoolers. One of the conversations that I’ve had with public school faculty is that it’s “not fair” that homeschoolers “cherry pick” classes when they choose to take them at their local schools. I maintain that what’s “not fair” is that this educational freedom isn’t open to all students. (Of course, as we saw above, parental choice in educational matters can’t result in a “comprehensive edcuation experience”). If more public schoolers had contact with homeschoolers at extracurricular activities, the public schoolers might decide they want the same choices and freedoms homeschoolers enjoy.

The Association further believes that local public school systems should have the authority to determine grade placement and/or credits earned toward graduation for students entering or re-entering the public school setting from a home school setting.

This is pretty much universally the case. However, since most schools simply assign students to grades based on their age (regardless of test scores, previous experience, boredom, or, at the other end of the spectrum, struggling), this resolution doesn’t really seem necessary.

So there you have it.  I homeschool to piss off the NEA.

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.

This is a parody of The Case Against Homeschooling by Jesse Scaccia

The Case Against Local, Safe, Organic Food

Local, Safe, Organic Food: great for self-aggrandizing, chemical-phobic mother…… but not quite so good for the kid.

Here are my top ten reasons why whole food parents are feeding their children the wrong things:

10. “You were totally brought up by granola-crunching, Birkenstock wearing, tree-hugging hippies” is an insult college kids use when mocking the slender, healthy kid in the dorm (whether or not the offender was from a hippie family or not). And… say what you will… but it doesn’t feel nice to be considered an outsider, a natural outcropping of eating whole foods.

9. Call me old-fashioned, but a child’s diet should include such food-like substances such as Fruit Loops and canned meat loaf (not at the same time I hope).  In modern society, we call these engineered commercial products “food,” even though they’ve been stripped of all their nutrients.

8. Buying local, safe, organic food is selfish. According to this article in USA Today, children who eat whole foods are increasingly from wealthy and well-educated families. To take these (I’m assuming) healthy children out of our fast food establishments is a disservice to our less fortunate kids. Poorer children with less literate parents are more reliant on fast food chains, and they  greatly benefit from the additional sales from their richer and higher achieving neighbors.

7. God hates whole foods. This study, done by the food conglomerates, notes that the most common reason parents gave for buying local, safe, organic foods  was a desire to provide nutrient rich, healthy foods to their children. To the whole food believers out there, didn’t God say to subdue the world?  From my side, to take your children off manufactured food products is to miss an opportunity to spread power of dominion given by the Lord to the common people. (Personally I’m agnostic, but I’m just saying…)

6. Whole food eaters are arrogant to the point of lunacy. For real! What makes them think they can just “cook from scratch” with ingredients from their local farmer’s markets.  Well, maybe they can make a few dishes as well as I can, but there’s no way they can make pizza as well as Papa Johns, or chicken as well as the Colonel, or burgers as well as the King, or fries as well as Ronald, and, and, and . . . .

5. As a consumer of packaged foods, cooking whole foods kind of pisses me off. (That’s good enough for #5.)

4. Cooking whole foods could breed intolerance, and maybe even racism. Unless the children are  being fed at the MTV Real World house, there’s probably only one kind of cuisine in the room. How can a young person learn to appreciate other factory-produced food-like substances if he or she doesn’t eat them?

3. And don’t give me this “they still eat junk food occasionally” garbage. Convincing children’s palates to accept the oiliness of Sunny Delight, or the sodium of chicken nuggets is a process that takes more than an little junk food here and there. Whole foods, undoubtedly, leave the child’s digestive system unprepared.

2. Whole food parents are arrogant, Part 2. Many highly educated, high-income parents are “probably people who are a little bit more comfortable in taking risks” in choosing a recipe or a new vegetable. “The attributes that facilitate that might also facilitate them being more comfortable with trying kumquats, or Brussels sprouts.”

More comfortable taking risks with their child’s palate? Gamble on, I don’t know, the Superbowl, not your child’s future as a consumer of Hamburger Helper and Cheetos.

1.  And finally… have you met someone who eats mostly vegetables? Not to hate, but they do tend to be pretty healthy***.

*** Thoughts on the word ‘healthy.’ In general, to be healthy connotes a certain inability to integrate and digest refined carbs, sugars, and high-fat foods.  Which, I would argue, is a likely result of eating in an environment without processed foods.

My response to Homeschool teacher, meet public school teacher. Now hug. by Alistair Bomphray

As a public school teacher who knows very little about homechooling, I would love to know what it takes to be a good homeschool teacher. I have questions like, How do you balance being both parent and teacher to your child?

I balance it in much the same way that I did when she was two and three and four — by living side-by-side with her. I don’t put on some “teacher hat” at 7am and take it off again at 4pm.  I think your question may stem from a notion that homeschool families have little classrooms in their homes, complete with a teacher’s desk, and a blackboard, and the pledge every morning. Don’t get me wrong, some families do have that.  We don’t.  The classroom set up is great for managing large groups, but it’s not particularly useful for most families, especially ones like ours, with an only child.

More fundamentally, though, we believe that learning happens everywhere, and all the time. We don’t have a set start and ending time to our day, our week, or our year. We have periods of intense study and creativity, and we have periods of rest. These happen as a natural rhythm to our lives, not imposed by a calendar. We embrace opportunities to learn new things, and engage in new activities when those opportunities present themselves. If my spouse comes home and asks if we’d like to take off to Paris or Dublin in a few weeks, we say “yes” and then focus our energies on preparing for that, by determining what things are of the most interest to us, and what we can accommodate in the visit. That might also mean that we drop a project we had going, and pick it up again when we return.

How do you incorporate technology into your lessons?
Probably similarly to the ways school teachers do . . . use of the computer for a variety of tasks, use of the internet for entertainment and research (and critical examination of source material), use of the robotics lab for programming, use of the CNC router for creating 3-D sculptures and other projects, use of the woodshop for projects, use of the tools for changing auto and generator oil, use of the sawmill to create posts and lumber, use of the excavator for earth work, use of the concrete mixer to build a foundation, use of a graphing calculator for math . . . the basic 7th grade kinds of technology.

How do you go about teaching a subject you know very little about?
I go about it the same way most people would, I think: I either research and gain an understanding of the subject, or I find someone who already has the knowledge and passion who is willing to share that.

How much homework do you give?
None.
But I don’t think you should, either.

Is it even called ‘homework’ when it’s assigned at home?
There are some families who follow a school model and who assign homework and call it that.

Do your students have to take the same standardized tests as mine?
I’m not sure. Which ones do yours take?
Each state has different requirements for homeschoolers.
In mine, Washington, we have to either test or assess our children annually. We’ve chosen to use a standardized test, and generally use the CAT. This year (7th grade), we chose the SAT instead.

If so, how much test prep do you do each week?
None.
Never have.
Standardized tests weren’t meant to be studied for, they were meant to be a comprehensive look at the student’s abilities in relation to other student’s performances. If a student can read classic works of the western canon, there isn’t any real need to study for the vocabulary or comprehension sections of a standardized test, as the words that will appear there will be ones already in the student’s working vocabulary, and the passages will be simple to read and understand. Likewise, a student who understands and has mastered math will not need separate study for the mathematics section of a standardized test.

In short, I want to know your best (and worst) practices.
The best practices of homeschooling relate to providing individualized educations for children. We’re able (because of small class size) to provide the kind of attention that only the most exclusive private schools can.

And as homeschool teachers, aren’t you just as curious about the life of a public school teacher?
Not really. Most of us were involved in the public schools during our own youth; many of us have taught in institutions. There’s so much attention on classroom management, following canned curriculum, and taking tests in school that is wholly unnecessary in the homeschool setting.

If for nothing else, to rethink and reshape your own teaching philosophies?
While I was in graduate school, I took a few courses in the education department, because I was still tinkering around with the idea of keeping my options open for secondary ed. One of the courses I took was Adolescent Literature, wherein we were to read 13 novels (The Hobbit, Where the Red Fern Grows, I Heard the Owl Call My Name, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Chocolate War, Fahrenheit 451, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, The Great Gatsby . . . you get the idea), write 2 page response papers to each, and discuss them in class. I was the only one there not pursuing an MAT (Master of Arts in Teaching), and the only one who was not planning to be in a highschool classroom the following year. I’m also the only student in that class who read each of the assigned books. My classmates were renting the movies and reading the Cliffs Notes.
This did, of course, shape my teaching philosophy. Like other negative examples from school teachers, it very much shaped my own philosophies. (Age promotion, teaching to the lowest common denominator, low expectations, outright cruelty, and the folly of grades and testing are others I would point to).

There are public school teachers who have influenced my teaching philosophy in a positive way. John Caldwell Holt, John Taylor Gatto, and Robert M. Pirsig have all had positive influences on my philosophy both in the college classroom (where I was for the decade before I began homeschooling my then second-grader), and in my homeschooling.

My response to The case against homeschooling by Jesse Scaccia

Here are my top ten reasons why public schooling parents are doing the wrong thing (actually, they’re not my top ten, they’re just a response to Scaccia’s top ten):

10. “You were totally public schooled” is an insult college kids use when mocking the poor-performing kid in the dorm (whether or not the offender was public schooled or not). And… say what you will… but it doesn’t feel nice to be considered dumb, and an academically low achiever — a natural outcropping of being public schooled.

9. Call me old-fashioned, but a students’ classroom shouldn’t also be where they are stuck between four walls with one adult and 30 other same-aged children. Students–from little ones to teens–deserve a learning-focused place to study and real-world experiences. In modern society, we imprison them in places called schools, that most closely resemble factories or prisons. The best and brightest of all generations throughout history were free to pursue their interests in real-world contexts. Prisons have, historically, and until the advent of compulsory schooling, always been reserved for criminals.

8. Public schooling is selfish. Students who get public schooled are increasingly from dual income families with well-educated, wealthy parents. To put these students in our schools is a disservice to our less fortunate public school kids. Poorer students with less literate parents are stuck with higher class sizes and less individualized attention.

7. God hates public schooling.
Deuteronomy 6: 4-9

4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. [a] 5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

You can’t really fulfill this set of commandments by sending your kid off to public school. (Personally I don’t think God really cares what method of education you use . . . but the parody back is kind of fun).

6. Public schooling parent/teachers are arrogant to the point of lunacy.
My qualifications to teach English include a graduate degree in English literature, a year’s worth of post-grad studies in fiction with a Pulitzer Prize winning author, and ten years as a college professor. So, first of all, public school teacher, you think you can teach English as well as I can? Your degrees are more likely in education, and not in a subject area. But let’s assume that you can teach as well as I can.

There’s no way that you can accommodate my student’s needs and interests in the confines of your scripted curriculum, NCLB testing practice, and the needs and interests of your other 30 charges. You simply don’t have the time, talent, or resources to do it. Even the most gifted teachers (a rarity) are spread too thin to truly invest the time my student deserves.

5. As a parent, public schooling kind of pisses me off. (That should be more than good enough for #5, but let’s explore it.) Not only do you want my child during h** choicest hours of the day, you want to send home makework, busywork, and homework to intrude further on our family’s time together. Additionally, you can’t seem to make the 10-15K per student in funding you receive cover any of your classroom supplies, reasonable upkeep of the building, textbooks, or, in many places, transportation. Do you know what I could do with that same 10-15K? Actually, you can see exactly what I’d do with it — because I choose to use my own funds to provide that education to my children, and still pay for your school. I do this without draining the resources or adding to the crowded classrooms.

4. Public schooling breeds intolerance, and racism. Unless the student is being public schooled in a large city, how can a young person learn to appreciate other cultures if he or she doesn’t live among them? Public schools draw their student bodies from the same neighborhoods, ensuring that children are divided by race and class, just as their neighborhoods are. If my child were to attend her local school, she’d be trapped, every day, with thirty other white kids of her same age, and would never have the chance to experience the diversity of our community. Public schools engage in “school rivalries” further deepening divides between neighborhoods, races, and classes.

3. And don’t give me this “they still participate in activities” garbage. Socialization in our grand multi-cultural experiment we call America is a process that takes more than an hour a day, a few times a week outside of the prison walls we continue to call “schools.” Public schooling, undoubtedly, leaves the child unprepared socially.

2. Public schooling parents are arrogant, part 2. According to the Why Public School blog, many poorly educated, low-income parents are “probably people who are a not comfortable in taking risks” in choosing a college or line of work. “The attributes that facilitate that might also facilitate them being more comfortable with public-schooling and be satisfied with the poor performance of their assigned school.”

Not comfortable taking risks with their child’s education? Gamble on, I don’t know, the Superbowl, not your child’s future, but don’t send them to public school. After all, their poor educations and low-incomes are almost always directly attributable to the public schools the parents attended.

1. And finally… have you met someone who was public schooled? Not to hate, but they do tend to be lemmings.

*** On the word ‘lemming.’ In general, to be a lemming connotes a certain inability to think for oneself and take risks. Which, I would argue, is a likely result of being educated in an environment with one set of same-aged peers between four walls, for 12 of your most creative, energetic, and productive years. It’s hard to get by in such a diverse world as ours! And the more people you can hang out with, the more real experiences you have, the more freedom you enjoy, the more likely you are to succeed, both in work life and real life.