These guys give the rest of us a bad name
Over the course of my political activism, I have had many a get-to-know-you conversation with fellow progressives. Not invariably, but also not seldom, the conversation will meander through various points of ideological agreement about the outrage
du jour and end up at some point on the topic of education: how good or bad my interlocutor's experience for them was with either their public or private schooling. The response I so often give is usually met with surprise: It's an experience I can't relate to. Outside of standardized tests, the first time I set foot in a classroom was my first day of college at UCLA. Up until that point, my childhood educational experience was entirely the product of homeschooling or self-direction.
Given the stereotypes typically associated with those educated at home, that surprise is not surprising: A staunch progressive with no overt religious affiliation who campaigns fiercely against the privatizing of education does not fit the traditional mold of a homeschooler. Not coincidentally, though, my education was anything but representative of what one typically associates with the current movement, which tends to be dominated by religious interests. As it has been told to me, the story goes that when it would have been time to enroll me in kindergarten, I was already reading at a third-grade level, and the local school system told my parents that I would have to spend the first few years of my schooling helping other kids learn what I already knew. This did not sit well, so my parents chose to educate my brother and me at home.
The story continues below the fold.
In the late 1980s, of course, academic homeschooling?or any homeschooling, for that matter?was not as widely accepted a choice as it is now. My father, who bore chief responsibility for this process, intended to make certain that no government official could ever claim that the education we were getting at home was inferior to what we could receive in public school. We had a very well-rounded curriculum; we even converted what passed for the bar in our house into a makeshift chemistry lab (after all, what is inebriation but chemistry by another name?). The only thing we really lacked for was materials for biology: Perhaps this would not be such an inconvenience in the digital age, but back then, frogs and fetal pigs for dissecting were not the easiest things to come by.
I would never want to give the impression that the overall experience was pure sweetness and light; it certainly wasn't, and anything less than excellence did not usually receive a warm reception; but that's a subject for a different time and place. Speaking purely in terms of educational quality and achievement, it was first-rate. I was able to pursue the subjects I was most interested in while still achieving a very well-rounded knowledge of other disciplines (with the standardized test scores to prove it), and I didn't lack for opportunities to play sports, learn a musical instrument and travel abroad. I was able to secure a full academic scholarship to one of the best public universities in the nation and graduated with a bevy of honors that don't need mention. By any reasonable standard, advocate of homeschooling could point to my story as a prime example of why homeschooling should be legal, accepted and promoted.
The problem, of course, that using my example would completely ignore my privilege. My mother is a high-school valedictorian; my father, who bore by far the lion's share of educational responsibility, has a genius IQ and an insatiable academic appetite. Moreover, my family had an economic situation growing up that allowed one parent to actually stay home and do the educating, which is an increasing luxury in the modern economy. Yes, I did well; but I had every single natural advantage that would allow a homeschooler to do well, including parents with the knowledge, capability and desire required to actually be teachers. When these circumstances are not met, the result can be horrific:
Josh Powell wanted to go to school so badly that he pleaded with local officials to let him enroll. He didn?t know exactly what students were learning at Buckingham County High School, in rural central Virginia, but he had the sense that he was missing something fundamental. By the time he was 16, he had never written an essay. He didn?t know South Africa was a country. He couldn?t solve basic algebra problems.
?There were all these things that are part of this common collective of knowledge that 99?percent of people have that I didn?t have,? Powell said.
Powell was taught at home, his parents using a religious exemption that allows families to entirely opt out of public education, a Virginia law that is unlike any other in the country.
Given my example, it would be hypocritical of me not to advocate for the rights of parents to educate their children at home and instill their values, should they so choose. But the role of government, and the reason for the very existence of public education, is to ensure that all children have an opportunity to succeed. The only way to do that is to ensure that children who are educated at home are at least meeting basic standards of literacy, even if a respect for religious freedom prevents the state from requiring that children be taught that the earth really does revolve around the sun.
Source: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/04/1227605/-Confessions-of-a-homeschooled-nbsp-progressive
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