| | |
| ||
I needn't have. She pointed out that the
schools have already corrected one of the problems
to which I'd alluded. Children no longer need permission to go to
the bathroom. She assures me that they can stand
up and stretch when they need to and get a drink of water, as well.
In fact, she said if I wrote that homeschools
are different from public schools because at home children
do not have to seek anyone's permission to meet bodily needs,
I would be leaving myself open to needless criticism as an ignoramus. Maybe.
On a computer bulletin board I got into a argument with a teacher
who was proud of having punished her high school class by depriving it of a field trip. She said teachers must
know where the students are at every moment. So, when some of her students had "taken advantage" of a substitute teacher
by going out in the hall for a couple of moments without permission, they all lost privileges. At best, this doesn't sound
to me like they're allowed to fulfill bodily needs at will. At worst, as I told her, it suggests a prison.
I hope my friend is right, though. The argument with the school teacher
was a couple of years ago. Public schools copy other lessons we've taught. But it doesn't mean the public schools
are the best place for children to enjoy these newly regained liberties. It just means that they are trying a piecemeal approach
to improving themselves.
As far as I can tell, most homeschoolers also try one thing and then another,
ever in search of the elusive, perfect system to help their children learn what they need. Definitions of what
they need constantly change, as parents debate the validity of such credentials as college degrees and think about
apprenticeships for their children. The big difference between families changing all the time and schools
doing the same is that schools do it after years of studies and research, whereas families institute instantaneous
change. By the time a school can implement a change, it may be time the change was changed. Not so, the
homeschool.
Not every parent can make the best decision each time about what will work. That's part of the reason
for constant re-evaluation, but there are other reasons as well. For instance, the child learns bits of different things
at different rates. A hands-on method may work best when he doesn't know how to read very well, but once he does, theoretical
study may be better.
Some people think the state has the best interests of the children at
heart. If they do, it is only children as a collective unit. If you think otherwise, read Mary Pride's Child Abuse
Industry.
One woman at my church fears that homeschoolers commit incest. She said
she doesn't know what she would have done if it hadn't been for her school. However, she did go to school
and still the incest continued. Going to school is no guarantee against it. And, fortunately, most parents who homeschool do
so because they are concerned for their children's welfare.
Since our country is an offshoot of England, it is fitting that much of
our culture has been borrowed from the British. In England, where public schools are what we would call private schools,
homeschooling and tutoring have long been common.
When our founding fathers established the Constitution, they couldn't
agree on education. Some thought an educated electorate would prevent tyranny. Others, like Benjamin Rush,
weren't concerned about tyranny. They wanted children to become docile instruments of the state so they would compliantly
work to provide tax money and become obedient soldiers. The model of education Rush lusted after was the Prussian
which was based on the idea that children are the property of the state and
must be completely loyal to the government. Their schools worked very well. So efficiently, that
by the twentieth century we witnessed the takeover of the Germans by the Nazis.
Thomas Jefferson, diametrically opposed Benjamin Rush. He believed it
was more important for parents to guide their children than that the children receive an education. He trusted
parents to love their children enough to provide an education for them, if they could. However, he recognized that since
some parents might be too poor to provide an education, the states should offer three free years of instruction in
reading, writing, arithmetic and the history of Greece, Rome, England and America.
Although we did eventually adopt the Prussian compulsory model of education,
our notions of independence and individual liberty are more in line with English and Jeffersonian tradition.
Thus, when people say we might as well use the public schools because they've done some things to make it better,
they've got it backwards. Unless the public schools could provide what our children need, without any of the negatives, it
wouldn't make sense for homeschoolers to send their children there. The children are better off at home with loving
parents who, having sorted out their years of education, can now pass on whatever is valuable of our cultural tradition,
within a safer and more nurturing environment.Even if we make some errors in logic or in our teaching methods, we
homeschooling parents should not be the ones on the defensive--although we will be for a long time.
Compulsory government education (the stuff based on the Prussian model) only began in 1852, in Massachusetts, where it took thirty years
before the resisting 80% of the population could be coerced--yes, sometimes at gunpoint--to comply. Homeschooling, tutoring,
and private schooling went on successfully before that. As Senator Ted Kennedy's office reported, since the advent
of compulsory education, literacy rates in his home state have never reached the 98% level they had attained prior to
compulsory instruction.
Maybe they'll reach the
98% level again--when more people revert to traditional teaching methods.
Copyright © 1996 &
1997 N. S. Gill.