WriteWingNut vents about the negative portrayals of homeschooler, especially with regards to the aspects of domestic violence and socialization:
One of my biggest pet peeves as a homeschooling mother is the "socialization" myth. Anti-homeschoolers would have everyone believe that our kids are locked in a cramped house all day, forbidden to speak to outsiders. The truth is, the lack of school restraints gives us more opportunity for genuine socialization. Our kids aren't grouped with only those the same age as them, at a desk in a classroom, being told by a teacher, "You're not here to socialize!"...
I can't tell you how many stories I've seen done by the media where they bring some "homeschooler" out of the woodwork who's being charged with child neglect and abuse. Only to find out that they were never really true "homeschoolers" in the first place. Their kids were just truant. There was no homeschooling going on, but they want to throw that label on them to hurt our movement.
I remember sitting around with a group of fellow soccer moms in a middle school for a photo session. One of the moms asked me, "Why doesn't Amanda go here?" Then she said, "Oh...that's right..you homeschool."
Then she went on about how she could never do that, and I told her it wasn't as hard as it seems. She then said in a very disparaging voice, "Well, I send my kid to school for the other kids." And all the moms around her nodded their heads vigorously. My blood was boiling and I calmly waited for a chance to defend myself, but they were talking so much about how important socialization at school was that I could never get a word in edgewise.
I later found out that the mother who instigated the attack on me is married to the county Superintendant of Public Schools here. Figures.
The research is already beginning to appear suggesting that homeschooled parents do just fine in socializing their kids:
Despite a 1999 statement from the National Education Association that, "home schooling cannot provide the student with a comprehensive education experience," a study released earlier this month shows home-schooled students are actually more socially and academically advanced than their peers.
Patrick Basham, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and author of the study, said the findings "aren't surprising in intellectual terms, but it does turn the major anecdotal opposition to home schooling - that it produces social retards - on its head."
The study by the Fraser Institute, an independent public policy organization based in Vancouver, Canada, focused on home-schooled students in North America. According to the study's findings, the typical home-schooled child is more mature, friendly, happy, thoughtful, competent, and better socialized than students in public or private schools. They are also less peer dependent and exhibit "significantly higher" self-esteem, according to the study.
But Janet Bass, a representative of The American Federation of Teachers, said it's impossible to compare home schooling with institutional schools.
"They're two totally different environments," she said, adding that there's no comparison to children in school to children "at home with mommy." As long as the right programs are in place, "you'll get good results" no matter what the environment, Bass said.
But wait, I thought the NEA said that homeschooling couldn't possibly cut the mustard. And now the AFT is claiming that we can't compare the two? Really? Why not? The outcome measures are there - test scores, college admissions, even the vaunted "self-esteem" indices - for the assessment. But now, for some reason, we're supposed to believe that we can't possibly draw any conclusions by comparing the two methods. Certainly, the homeschooling group is special, and self-selected - but it's silly to say that no conclusions can be reached.
What's more, the NEA goes on and on about how important parental involvement is in education. Doesn't it make sense, then, to wonder if the ultimate in parental involvement - homeschooling - might have the potential to be the ultimate in educational environments?
And that line about "at home with mommy" is just insulting, if you ask me.
Here's the report, by the way. Choice quote:
There is one overriding lesson for policymakers to learn from this survey of home schooling. As home schooling researcher Isabel Lyman pithily described the American experience: “Home schooling has produced literate students with minimal government interference at a fraction of the cost of any government program” (Lyman, 1998).
I'd say they're learning that lesson, and they're none too happy about it.
Posted by kswygert at February 22, 2005 02:36 PM