In a familiar spirit, an urban provincial writes to the Dallas Morning News to object to my column last Sunday about education, in which I had a sentence or two in praise of homeschooling, and praised a Christian school that's working to resist the popular culture of success, materialism and Eros unbound:
First off, homeschooling is for rural families who live a great distance from an educational facility and for people who are afraid of their own shadows. To consider home schooling as an option in a metropolitan city like Dallas is like being Chicken Little.[snip]
I am also amazed at how afraid of secular culture Bible-belters are.
Don't fear secular culture, because that is where all the best ideas come from. Instead, learn to embrace the good of secular culture because it far outweighs the bad.
For example, take your kids on trips to California and send them to public schools. It will be a wonderfully horizon-broadening experience for everyone in the family.
Jo McMinn, Dallas
Hmm. Well. It takes a particular kind of hick to think that an ideal way to broaden a child's horizons is to take him on trips to California. (Which we've done more than once, and which is a wonderful place in most respects, but still.)
Meanwhile, we move on to a letter from Mr. John Shuey, the Voltaire of Carrollton, TX, who cautions that religious instruction for children "doesn't just destroy their cuiriosity and desire for learning, but turns them into unthinking robots who end up believing not merely in things for which there is no evidence, but that they actually know the mind and wishes of their own particular flavor of god. This leads rather casually to being able to justify depriving fellow citizens of basic rights...[and] to a willingness to sacrifice themselves in order to kill non-believers, thus assuring themselves a place in heaven." Along those same lines, a Mr. Daniel Stanley of Midlothian, who divines that my praise for communal educational enterprise based on a shared commitment to particular virtues is the "same type of village [that] has created young people who believe murdering non-believers leads to salvation."
Because, you know, there is no difference whatsoever between a Catholic or Protestant school in Dallas and a Taliban feeder madrassah in Peshawar. Where would we be without the courageous and cosmopolitan insights of Ms. Jo McMinn, Mr. John Shuey and Mr. Daniel Stanley?
Dallas readers will wonder why the paper only published negative responses to my column, and will perhaps see media bias in the letters selection. Not true. I work in this same department, and let me tell you, all the people who liked the column and took the trouble to write wrote me personally. The ones who hated it wrote letters to the editor -- which is why they got printed.
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Subscribe
I'm going to add that I had a particularly miserable public school experience myself. I was unmercifully bullied all through elementary school and junior high. In many ways, I would have liked to be home-schooled myself if that had been an option at the time. On the other hand, I would have absolutely despised the type of education I suspect some of those children are receiving out of ancient reprints and poorly written Biblical tracts. I'm incredibly grateful that I had parents who let me read pretty much anything and everything I wanted from their bookshelves. When I was 10 or so, I was reading college English texts, the college-level mythology text with the picture of the nude Venus on the cover (which my fifth grade teacher took away because he deemed it "inappropriate." My mother made him give it back) along with the more age-appropriate Madeleine L'Engle. Mom made me go to catechism and took me to Mass every week, but she also let me read books on any subject and develop my own opinions, political and religious, and decide for myself why Catholic teachings made sense or why my conscience told me that Father might just be wrong on a particular point. I'm still a Catholic, albeit of the somewhat liberal variety. Mom also told me about the priest who told her about the doctrine of "primacy of conscience." If homeschooling allows for more of that sort of education, I'm all for it.
Can we have a show of hands from all those who sincerely wish their father had picked a wife or husband for them? I'm afraid mine will not be among them. Earnest graduate students whose idea of a date is taking me to the Republican Ox Roast have never been my cup of tea. Somehow I seem to have maximized my genetic potential rather effectively with my own un-pre-approved choice.
T'was I who wrote the letter to the editor about homeschooling being for people who are fearful. IMAO the only reason most people home school their children is because they want to control their children's thoughts. And it usually involves a religious right or left leaning hippy "theocracy". It has nothing to do with the quality of their education. Also, I gave as an example of traveling with the family to California as a good way to expand their horizons because one can't get farther from the bible-belt culturally than California. For example, I was recently on the beach in San Diego (with my family). My wife and I ( I am a man) saw two late term pregnant women on the beach wearing bikinis! They looked so funny with their stomachs sticking so bulbously out and all and the rest of their bodies looking normal. I thought it was just amazing that they could feel comfortable enough in their environment to expose their oddly beautiful bodies that way. I also thought that it could never happen on a beach in the South because it is just too pious. And what a waste! What could be closer to god than two beautifully pregnant women in bikini's playing with their children on the beach?
Well, Mr. McMinn, I respectfully suggest you prepare yourself to be wrong. Your opinion is based on either faulty information, or a very narrow horizon, or both.
To be fair, and to offer you an alternative perspective, none of us should stop at just one or two motivations for those parents. Except for the (I hope you realize) rare example of an extreme isolationist attitude, most home schooling parents that I've spoken to and read about have a list of reason. Some put quality at the top. Others put social environment (as in, physical danger) at the top. And in keeping with my previous statements that there is never only one way to approach education for all children, the feedback that some parents get -- about how well adjusted and socialized their children are in general -- I would personally support the option of home schooling just for that possibility for some children.
I am committed to public schools for a variety of reasons. None of those reasons means that I turn a blind eye to the problems that provide those motivations I list above. There was a period of several years where I was in daily fear for the safety of my wife, a special ed teacher in an inner city middle school during those years. No one, including my wife, breathed a longer or louder sigh of relief when she transferred to an elementary school, then later to a high school with a good discipline record.
I have a full store of arrogance, myself. I also pride myself on facing reality. I get the feeling, sir, that you possess a similar pride. Don't let your arrogance get in the way on this issue, because as a taxpayer you have a stake in the quality and effectiveness of public education even if you don't have children, because the children who go through it will be your doctor, nurses, store clerks, delivery persons, taxi drivers and police officers. If home schooling results in improvements in public ed (an effect I am open to seeing, thought I don't see it yet), then you and your tax dollars benefit directly from it.
Oh, and I have never seen a more beautiful woman than one who is pregnant and happy with her condition... except perhaps a nursing mother.
Opinionated Homeschooler: I'd love to talk about some of the issues I've seen among homeschooling families: "unschooling" that amounts to educational malpractice; terribly lonely children; bullying; and parents with clear psychological disorders whose children are stuck with them 24/7. And homeschooling parents do talk about these things, privately. But homeschooling is too recently legal to be handing ammo to its enemies, so nobody talks about these things.
I'd like to talk about some of the issues too - Andrea pointed out a few of them in her comments on the ND homeschoolers' convention. However, it's a real tradeoff - on one hand, I know a bit of the "underside" (having homeschooled myself for many years), and OTOH I don't want to give out any "ammo" to those who would restrict homeschooling freedoms.
However, I have seen personally *everything* Andrea mentioned. No, as one person put it, it's not representative of DC, or NY, or probably any other big East Coast city, nor probably a lot of CA or WA, OR, etc. But the Midwest, South, Great Plains? Yes.
Does this mean I don't support h.s.ing? I definitely want my state to remain a "free state" rather than a "slave state" (i.e. one where h.s.ers do not have to ask for gov't permission or approval to do so; where they are subjected to minimal gov't restrictions.) However, there really is no uniform h.s. "culture;" it varies widely from "hippie" unschoolers to the most regimented and isolated dominionists. In fact, it varies just as widely as public schools do...
Post a Comment
Are you aware of our Rules of Conduct?