The Idiocy that Wouldn't Die, or, Harvard's Continuing Crusade Against Homeschooling

More information has come out about how our would be Dictator of K12 Education would have us plebians submit to her pedagogical wisdom.

Bartholet's new discussion of her "preferred regime" appears here.

Below are the comments I left on that article, and on the one Harvard article that somehow failed to close, delete, or disallow comments, so as to prevent the very diversity of opinion that supposedly justifies their onslaught on educational choice.

First comment:

The opposition to homeschooling decries stereotyping and then jumps into it with both feet, utterly failing or refusing to see the amazing diversity that is homeschooling. We do not judge all of public schooling by the failing schools at the bottom, but they would have every homeschool tarred and feathered with the broad brush of insular and ideological/fundamentalist fervor that in no way typifies the entire homeschooling community.

Just as there will be tremendous variance in the educational quality and social experience of public school students hailing from diverse urban settings versus extremely rural ones, and even between students in different neighborhoods and schools within a given city ( cf. NYC specialized science high schools with some of the poorer performing neighborhood schools, for example), there is as much variability in homeschooling.

Why are Bartholet, et al, willing to sacrifice the vast number of homeschools that provide a superior individualized education that embraces diversity for the very few aberrant cases of abuse or ignorance?

Public education woefully fails a very large number of students. Look at the drop out rates and the sad statistics on proficiency in various subject areas. It is patently ridiculous to give institutional schools a free pass to fail, while turning the presumption of innocence on its head and requiring homeschoolers to prove they deserve to be limited exceptions from a presumptive ban. The educational insiders who benefit financially from forcing up attendance numbers in public education are far from the disinterested advocates they would have us all think them.

Homeschooling is about individualizing education for the particular student. Public schools give lip service to differentiation, and then bash those who actually provide it. We have a faculty to student ratio that institutional schools can only dream of.

Stop stereotyping and generalizing on the basis of outdated statistics or the rare anecdote. Religion is no longer the driving motivation of most homeschoolers. Current statistics show that academic quality and safety of the educational environment are the predominant reason people now choose to homeschool.

I am an ivy league educated retired professional who homeschools a highly gifted kid who would be completely underserved in a traditional school setting. I chose to take on the responsibility of catering to his needs. We are part of the NYC homeschool community, which is diverse in every possible meaning of the word, including viewpoints and opinions.

Choice is the key to providing every student with an appropriate academic experience. Homeschooling may not be perfect for every child, but neither is institutional school. Families are free to choose what works best for them, and it will be a sad day if authoritarian busybodies with delusions of superiority take that away.

Second comment:

The fact that Bartholet has made comments also attacking private schools is a big red flag to me that it isn't about mandatory reporters getting a look at kids to prevent hypothetical abuse. Private school teachers serve that function.

It's all about promoting group think and indoctrination. Even those who meet her ridiculous standards for exemption from her proposed presumptive ban are supposed to follow an "approved" curriculum and submit to a certain number of hours in institutional schools.

That ensures exposure to the ideology Bartholet wishes to instill.
It also completely destroys the value of homeschooling in individualizing education to the particular student's interests, achievement level, and learning style, and ignores the fact that many choose to homeschool to escape substandard curricula and implementation, which result in pathetic proficiency outcomes.

Her totalitarianism is showing despite her faux concern mask.

If you value educational liberty, please make your voice heard.  Bartholet gains far too much instant credibility from her association with Harvard.  We must show how wrongheaded her thinking is to prevent the gullible from falling for her fearmongering and false stereotypes.

In Defense of Homeschooling

Dear Harvard University and Harvard Magazine,

Contrary to your woeful stereotyping of homeschoolers in the biased, speculative and wholly unsubstantiated portrait painted in Harvard Magazine currently, here is photographic proof that my homeschooled 10th grader is not chained to the kitchen table by horrible authoritarian parents who isolate and indocrinate him. 

There he is at the *Harvard Museum of Natural History* taking in the *gasp* evolution and zoology exhibits.  He wants to be an evolutionary biologist and a paleontologist.

Here he is at Columbia and Yale and MIT participating in enrichment programs for high school students, rather than languishing in a bookish prison as your article depicted. 

He has recently walked the Freedom Trail in Boston and visited Independence Hall in Philadelphia, the National Museum of Natural History, the National Museum of American History, the National Gallery of Art, the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Historical Society, the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, the Academy of Natural Sciences at Drexel University, Yale Art Gallery, and too many others to list here.

I will stack his DIY interest tailored education against any public school in the nation and feel confident it is at least equivalent, if not far superior. 

In some of the photos, he has on a ballcap that reads "Assume nothing." I would like to suggest that you adopt that as your mantra in attempting to understand the diverse and wonderful practice of homeschooling.  If Veritas is your motto, you need to seriously reexamine what you have published and your call for a presumptive ban on an educational modality that is effective, creative, and stimulates a lifelong love of learning.

Sincerely, an Ivy League educated libertarian retired lawyer who finds your latest foray into journalism laughable.

Hey, Harvard Magazine!

Here's something that I wrote a long time ago that I would like to serenade Harvard Magazine and a certain ignorant law professor with...  In case it isn't painfully obvious, it's to the tune of Battle Hymn of the Republic.

BATTLE HYMN OF THE HOMESCHOOLER

Under the Department of Education

We’ve produced some hopeless dolts

But at least they are quite passive

And the bulk of them don’t vote.

“There must be accountability!

Now teach them to the test!”

And stupidity marches on…

CHORUS: 

Glory, Glory education

Is a joke in this great  nation.

Glory, glory education

While testing marches on.

We have hamstrung all the teachers

With our great assessment tools

We have killed their creativity 

And generated fools

The kids are bored to tears

So that the brightest of them drool

Public education marches on.

CHORUS

If you live in a great district 

Then your kids have got a prayer

If you’re poor or from the city

Well, the rich folks do not share

When there’s 40 children in a room

Then chaos reigns supreme

And testing marches on.

CHORUS

The No Child Left Behind Law

Makes sure no one gets ahead.

They will drill and kill the subjects 

Till the kids wish they were dead.

We give lipservice to improving

But the game is rigged, you see,

And Bureaucracy marches on.

CHORUS

We tell kids that they must study

And that college is the goal

But when graduation comes

They’re in a financial black hole

And the jobs that they have worked for

Have been shipped out overseas

As propaganda marches on.

CHORUS

If you’d have your kids be thinkers

Then you need a better tool.

Pull them out of institutions,

Roll your sleeves up and homeschool.

Though they won’t have a diploma

Stamped and sealed by government

They will think for themselves!

Glory, glory education

Take a permanent vacation

Join the happy homeschool nation

And learning marches on.

Feel free to share with credit...

A Musical Tribute: What Did You Learn in Homeschool Today?

I wrote a piece on Pete Seeger, the Hudson and how they tie into our homeschooling journey, which is going to be in the NYCHEA newsletter's next edition. Space considerations meant that the full version of my adaptation of Pete Seeger's "What Did You Learn in School Today?" needed to be trimmed... but our wonderful editor asked me to post the full version here, so she can link to it.

Here it is:


What Did You Learn in (Home)school Today

An updated version of Pete Seeger's song, by Chele Coyne of Homeschooling on Hudson.



What did you learn in school today, dear little boy of mine?

What did you learn in school today, dear little boy of mine?

I learned to fill in bubbles on a test

And that askin’ questions makes me a pest

I learned that funding is the key

To why they keep on assessing me

That’s what I learned in school today

That’s what I learned in school



What did you learn in school today, dear little boy of mine?

What did you learn in school today, dear little boy of mine?

I learned my teacher wants me to obey

And won’t make time for me to have any say

I learned that learning is irrelevant

Memorizing answers lets ’ em pay the rent

That’s what I learned in school today

That’s what I learned in school



What did you learn in school today, dear little boy of mine?

What did you learn in school today, dear little boy of mine?

I learned that girls are preferred to boys

Cause they sit quiet they’re the teacher’s joys

I learned that bein’ lively is ADHD

I need to be drugged for them to cope with me

That’s what I learned in school today

That’s what I learned in school



What did you learn in school today, dear little boy of mine?

What did you learn in school today, dear little boy of mine?

I learned that bullies are a fact of life

And I musta done somethin’ to cause this strife

I learned to go along to get along

And quietly endure when someone does me wrong

That’s what I learned in school today

That’s what I learned in school



What did you learn in homeschool today, dear little boy of mine?

What did you learn in homeschool today, dear little boy of mine?

I learned to question authority

And not to let anybody think for me

I learned to stand up for what is right

They won’t take away my freedom without a fight

That’s what I learned in homeschool today

That’s what I learned in homeschool



What did you learn in homeschool today, dear little boy of mine?

What did you learn in homeschool today, dear little boy of mine?

I learned to value diversity

There isn’t one right answer or way to be

I learned to be friends with folks of all ages

And not just the ones at identical stages

That’s what I learned in homeschool today

That’s what I learned in homeschool



What did you learn in homeschool today, dear little boy of mine?

What did you learn in homeschool today, dear little boy of mine?

I learned there’s no honor in bein’ passive

In the face of problems that can seem massive

I learned that when I see something wrong

I can help make a change if I write a song

That’s what I learned in homeschool today

That’s what I learned in homeschool



What did you learn in homeschool today, dear little boy of mine?

What did you learn in homeschool today, dear little boy of mine?

I learned that I can help stop pollution

Lotsa little changes add to a big solution

I learned to think of my grandsons and daughters

And keep the planet clean, protect our air and waters

That’s what I learned in homeschool today

That’s what I learned in homeschool



What did you learn in homeschool today, dear little boy of mine?

What did you learn in homeschool today, dear little boy of mine?

I learned that corporations aren’t my friend

Their bottom line’s all they care ‘bout in the end

I learned that government ain’t my friend

In the name of reelection our rights they’ll rend

That’s what I learned in homeschool today

That’s what I learned in homeschool



What did you learn in homeschool today, dear little boy of mine?

What did you learn in homeschool today, dear little boy of mine?

I learned that money poisons politics

By, of, and for the people means it needs to be fixed

I learned that war means we all lose

And to hope in the future it’s peace we’ll choose

That’s what I learned in homeschool today

That’s what I learned in homeschool



What did you learn in homeschool today, dear little boy of mine?

What did you learn in homeschool today, dear little boy of mine?

I learned from Pete, Gandhi and Dr. King

That if people stand together we can change anything

I learned that music is a powerful thing

They can’t stop the people when the people sing

That’s what I learned in homeschool today

That’s what I learned in homeschool!



Thank you, Pete and Toshi Seeger. You proved that a song and a dream can change the world, and I intend to go on singing.

Public Education Is the Borg (Yet Again!)

The education industrial complex has jumped the shark. Take, for example, this horrifying article from Smithsonian.

What is with the drive to commodify children and learning? Kids are not produce to be manipulated, weighed, examined and found acceptable or not according to some arbitrary standard.

Cameras trained on little faces to detect comprehension or confusion is not something my teachers needed 40 years ago in New York City public schools. But then, they were not constrained by ludicrous teach to the test requirements that hamstrung any effort to develop interesting lesson plans, get to really know the kids in their class, and appeal to their interests and individuality so as to promote real learning.

Now, the broken system wants to cram every kid in a narrow little box and force conformity. You vill get it zis vay or you vill fail. We will drill and kill until it penetrates your skull (or not.) You will memorize uselessness, regurgitate it and promptly forget it once the stakes are lower and the dreaded test is done. And we will pretend that this means you are learning. And should you fail, we will promote you anyway, because holding anyone responsible for the consequences of their actions is no longer politically correct or socially acceptable. Unless that someone is a teacher, and then it is fair game to scapegoat them for the system’s inadequacies, apparently. So a kid has a bad day on test day, and that makes the teacher a bad teacher? Maybe all the stress is just too much for kids to handle. What happened to the entire rest of the year's performance in class participation, projects, tests, and homeworks as metrics for determining that there was learning happening? (Oh wait, is there time for that stuff or does it all go by the wayside to make room for test prep?) What happened to letting teachers actually teach?

Per the above article, Bill and Melinda Gates want to issue wristbands that emit electrical pulses and measure reactivity and thereby “engagement” with the lesson? Forgive me, but what is next? Canine shock collars to wake up that kid dozing in the back row?

Keep your monitoring devices and surveillance equipment off my child’s body!

Keep your indoctrination and drive to make everyone into a standard widget far away from his precious mind.

Reason 10,899 to homeschool!

Woz on Homeschooling (and Comment Soup)

I'm reading an article about remarks on education made by Steve Wozniak, one of the founders of Apple Computers. Woz decries the standardized testing craze and the discouragement of creative thinking in public education. He also mentions homeschooling as "very, very good as an alternative."

Then, I read the comments. For the most part, they agree that public education is broken, but can't muster the creativity to consider homeschooling a true alternative. It gets characterized as "a luxury", while in the same comment, those who are unhappy with their local public school are urged to consider private school. Huh? Homeschooling can be done *exceptionally well* for a fraction of the cost. A friend of a friend paid over $30,000 for private Kindergarten! Families can homeschool for orders of magnitude less. Money for private school necessitates a second income, and need for a second income makes homeschooling a luxury? Um, circular thinking much?

And of course there is the chestnut that "Home Schooling is the ultimate in segregated schools." I can't tell you how sick I am of being tacitly accused of racism because I made a different educational choice for my kid. My local school district is 99.9999 percent caucasian and affluent. My homeschool community is wonderfully diverse. Way to generalize!

Public schools are acknowledged to be bad at outside the box thinking, but anyone who thinks outside the box is apparently suspect, even among purported educational reformers. Well, suspect away, but like Captain Kirk, I don't believe in the no win scenario. Sometimes you have to creatively engineer your own solution, and I have a feeling that, eventually, those still too busy applying outmoded stereotypes to the homeschooling movement will one day have no choice but to sit back and take notice that, yes, there is a better way, if you are willing to prioritize your child's education, make some sacrifices and do the work.

Junior Philosophers?

This is an interesting article, which appeared in the NY Times several months ago, about introducing young children to philosophical concepts: The Examined Life, Age 8, by ABBY GOODNOUGH. There's a discussion of children's literature and philosophical issues implicated therein. Looks like it might be fun to try looking at these questions with Mikro... I particularly liked this part of the article: One afternoon this winter, the students in Christina Runquist’s classroom read Shel Silverstein’s “Giving Tree,” about a tree that surrenders its shade, fruit, branches and finally its trunk to a boy it has befriended. The college students led the discussion that followed — on environmental ethics, or “how we should treat natural objects,” as Professor Wartenberg puts it — with a series of questions, starting with whether the boy was wrong to take so much from the tree. “We don’t actually try to convince them that trees deserve respect,” he says, “but ask them, ‘What do you think?’ We’re trying to get them engaged in the practice of doing philosophy, versus trying to teach them, say, what Descartes thought about something.” He is not the first philosopher to work with children. In the 1970s, Matthew Lipman, then a professor at Columbia University, argued that children could think abstractly at an early age and that philosophical questioning could help them develop reasoning skills. It was the Vietnam era, and Professor Lipman believed that many Americans were too accepting of authoritative answers and slow to reason for themselves — by college, he feared, it would be too late. I'm all for anything that helps kids learn to question pat and formulaic answers and think for themselves. It would be great if this program spread to more schools. However, given the whole teach to the test focus of public education, I'm not holding my breath...

Prepare to be Appalled

From today's New York Times:
When 81% Passing Suddenly Becomes 18%

Here's a snippet from the article:

There were large drops in passing rates across New York, reflecting new requirements intended to correct for years of inflated results. The exams, state education officials said, had become too easy to pass, their definition of proficiency no longer meaningful. Citywide, the proficiency rate in English fell to 42 percent, from 69 percent last year; 54 percent reached grade level in math, down from 82 percent.

This is the brain trust that thinks it ought to be able to control homeschooling?!? Yipes!

They are failing the kids they already have in their clutches!

Why do I homeschool? A myriad of reasons, actually, but the utterly appalling things I read about the state of education in the New York Times would be enough...

I do not fault the teachers, who have their hands tied behind their backs by a broken system that demands accountability in the form of test results, prevents teachers from devoting themselves to meaningful curricula at the expense of test prep, and then jiggers the test results anyway, because, not surprisingly, test prep mania does not result in real learning.

I love educating my son. But I could never, ever, teach. As in, in a school environment...

Because my head would explode when the powers that be stopped me from actually teaching.

This is a disgrace. Our national education policy is a joke. Sleight of hand is not going to give us an educated citizenry. There needs to be a complete rethink. Stop blaming teachers, the kids, the parents, and look at what the educational bureaucracy has accomplished for all its self congratulatory scheming and demands for accountability via a measure that even they acknowledge is meaningless. The NEA says standardized tests are not an accurate measure of a student's knowledge or a teacher's performance. Why have the powers that be made them into the gold standard at the expense of all else? The educrats have broken things to the point that a simple bandaid and some bluster can no longer hide the gaping holes in their precious system.

This is the educational equivalent of The Emperor's New Clothes!

Clean Your Own (School) House First...

The New York Times reports that New York is in a quandary about what to do about tougher Regents Exam requirements for obtaining a high school diploma, which are soon to take effect. You can read the full article here.

Here's a quote:

If the new standards had been in place for the class of 2009, the city’s graduation rate would have been roughly 45 percent, instead of the nearly 60 percent that city officials boasted of, according to city statistics. Among black and Latino students, barely more than one-third would have qualified for diplomas.

A Regents diploma is supposed to signify that a student is prepared for college. Today, most New York City graduates who enroll in an associate degree program at a City University of New York college need to take remedial courses there.

“This is the question that everyone is asking everywhere, not just in New York but nationally: Should high school graduation mean that a student is successful in first-year college courses?” John B. King Jr., senior deputy state education commissioner, said. “There isn’t a state answer at the moment, and that’s what we have to grapple with.”

There isn't an answer?!? Since when has there been *doubt*? When did high school graduation cease to mean prepared to take on adult responsibility, whether that is entering the working world or being college ready?

That the educrats seemingly accept this state of affairs is appalling! And these are the people who presume to regulate Homeschooling??? They are only graduating 60 percent of kids who attend, and "most" of them need remedial help to be able to hack a 2 year college program at a city college? The system is a failure. It is nothing short of hypocrisy for it to presume to tell homeschoolers how to educate!

But Aren't You Worried About Socialization?

Um, no, not when the schools have lost their minds:

"Most children naturally seek close friends. In a survey of nearly 3,000 Americans ages 8 to 24 conducted last year by Harris Interactive, 94 percent said they had at least one close friend. But the classic best-friend bond — the two special pals who share secrets and exploits, who gravitate to each other on the playground and who head out the door together every day after school — signals potential trouble for school officials intent on discouraging anything that hints of exclusivity, in part because of concerns about cliques and bullying. ... That attitude is a blunt manifestation of a mind-set that has led adults to become ever more involved in children’s social lives in recent years. The days when children roamed the neighborhood and played with whomever they wanted to until the streetlights came on disappeared long ago, replaced by the scheduled play date. While in the past a social slight in backyard games rarely came to teachers’ attention the next day, today an upsetting text message from one middle school student to another is often forwarded to school administrators, who frequently feel compelled to intervene in the relationship."

From this article in the NY Times. Please read the whole thing.

Structured recess, stupid zero tolerance policies than involve zero common sense, and now control over kids' friendships! Am I worried about my homeschooled child's socialization? That would be a huge NO!

I cannot fathom how schools can ignore actual bullying (to the extent that some targeted kids are driven to commit suicide), but get all "proactive" about intervening in purely hypothetical cases because two kids may be too close for some administrator's taste and maybe, just maybe, someone might possibly feel left out at some time in the future.

This is the oft-praised socialization that only school can teach? We'll pass.

It's quite ironic that one of the most frequent digs directed against homeschoolers is that we are trying to protect our kids from negative social interactions that some people feel are necessary to positive character development and being able to get along in "the real world" later in life. In "the real world", has anyone ever told you you are not allowed to have a best friend? This latest trend just highlights the fact that "school culture" is a manufactured and artificial microcosm that bears little resemblance to reality.

Now the Nanny State is sheltering kids from the "hard knocks" we homeschoolers are so often told we are wrong-headedly depriving them of, in the absence of any actual harm. Why do people think government regulation of every aspect of our lives is preferable to individual responsibility? What are schools really teaching kids? That they are incompetent to make even the most basic decisions, about who to spend their time with? That they cannot possibly be trusted to think for themselves even to this extent? Talk about dumbing down! Now it isn't just academics that have to be dragged down to the least common denominator level? We need to do it to social skills too?

People are inordinately concerned over the "socialization" of a tiny percentage of school aged children who are homeschooled, yet turn a blind eye to how the fantastical machinations of government schooling affect the development of the vast majority of children. It is completely illogical to think that, in the absence of probable cause for a finding of illegal activity, they are entitled to know or control what happens in private homes, and yet, to simultaneously accept the statistically far more significant potential harm to multitudes of children under the rubric of "school as norm", rather than critically examining state action (in which, unlike my living room, they are actual stake holders since it is bought and paid for with all of our taxes, and government, at least in the USA, is supposed to be answerable to the people, not vice versa.)

Am I worried about socialization? Well, now that you mention it, yes, I am. I'm worried about what passes for socialization these days in the schools!

The Gift of Edu-Speak

There's an article in the NY Times about new standards for math and English developed by the nation's governors and school honchos, which links to a couple of pdfs with the new proposed standards. I've glanced at them and realized they are kind of useful for coming up with edu-speak for drafting my IHIP next year, and thought I would pass them along, for what they're worth. They haven't been adopted yet, as I understand it, but I think they're an interesting look at what the government thinks is appropriate grade level material... not that I particularly care what they think (and frankly, I'm not at all happy with the concept of a nationalized curriculum), but like the World Book lists, it's interesting, and may be some guidance...

Anyway, links here:

NY Times Article

Math

English/Language Arts

No Child Gets Ahead, rev.2.0

Have you seen A Blueprint for Reform
The Reauthorization of the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act?

The next rev of No Child Left Behind calls itself a blueprint. That's like saying, "we're gonna build a house, we'll make some plans and throw some money at it" constitutes a blueprint. Um, no. A mission statement maybe, but a blueprint? No. Developing the new buzz words "world class education" and "college- and career-ready" doesn't make them a reality, or shed any light whatsoever on how you get from here to there.

At least it acknowledges how badly broken the current system is:

At page 7:

"Four of every 10 new college students, including half of those at 2-year institutions, take remedial courses, and many employers comment on the inadequate preparation of high school graduates."

That's simply shameful. How dare the pointy headed bureaucrats who administer this woeful failure of a system presume to regulate homeschooling?!? Clean your own house first, before you try to dictate what goes on in mine!

Of course, this new policy completely fails to address gifted education. And while closing achievement gaps is certainly a worthy goal, if the stated aim of this scheme is to allow America to compete on the world stage, why are we not supporting the best and brightest, the geeks and prodigies, the kids most likely to innovate and discover? For too long, the focus has been on the center of the bell curve, and tough luck to the outliers at either end. Now we're told that focus will broaden to encompass those struggling at the bottom, but as usual, no provision is made for the gifted and talented kids being held back by the system's failure to adequately challenge them. And no, making them tutor the struggling kids is not advancing their educations. It's making indentured servants of them. We are a culture of mediocrity. We want everyone lumped together and made average. We claim to value diversity, but our system breeds conformity and lowest common denominator thinking.

Instead of supporting new and improved tests and throwing more money at a problem that decades of throwing money at has not fixed, how about government getting out of the way of the actual educators and letting teachers use their creativity and talent to actually teach meaningful curricula instead of spending oh, 70 percent of the school year forced to focus on test prep to secure the precious federal funding that has come to mean far more than graduating kids with actual high school level skills?