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presented Sunday, July 16, 2000 at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Brevard by Ann Fuller My initial instinct was to present statistics, sociological study results, anecdotal evidence and expert opinions supporting our family’s decision to home school our children. I dismissed that approach because I find it to be unnecessarily defensive. Although, there is one set of numbers that I’d like to share with you. In 1980, there were 12,000 homeschooled children. In 1990 there were 300,000. In 1998 there were 1,500,000. At this rate of growth, one out of four children will be home educated by the end of this decade. I don’t think anyone can argue that this is a significant trend in what has generally been considered a “fringe movement.” At any rate, our decision to home school was based as much on gut instinct as it was the number of other families involved or on any external evidence of its success. I firmly believe that there is no need for inherent conflict between home educators and parents who choose to place their children in school, whether it be public or private. One UU home schooling parent recently made an analogy along the following lines regarding her decision to educate her children at home, "I like to swim, but I don’t enjoy skiing. I don’t swim to avoid skiing. I swim because it’s what I would rather do. It’s better for me. I’d break my neck if I went skiing. Who am I to disapprove of someone who chooses to ski? If he chose to swim, maybe he’d drown. We’re both getting exercise." Unfortunately, when you announce your intention to home school, most parents assume you are critical of their decision to have their children educated in schools. There’s usually an automatic defensive reaction on both sides that is unnecessary. It’s my belief that both choices can easily co-exist with a little understanding and tolerance. I began researching the possibility of educating our children at home when I became pregnant four years ago. That research has intensified dramatically in the last two months as Liam rapidly approaches the traditional age for enrolling in kindergarten. I have scoured the internet for articles both pro and con. I have read a minimum of a dozen books about both formal education and home schooling. Probably the two most influential books I’ve read so far, are Homeschooling for Excellence and Dumbing us Down. The former is by the Colfax’s, whom some of you may remember from the news story about the "goat boy" enrolling in Harvard in the mid-80s. The latter is by John Taylor Gatto, 1991’s New York State Teacher of the Year. I cannot emphasize the impact of this book enough. If nothing else, his essay "We Need Less School," is an incredibly thought-provoking commentary on not just schools, but modern American society as a whole. I’d like to quickly read a couple of excerpts from this essay: 1) "Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual not a conformist. It should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges. It should allow you to find values which will be your road map through life. It should make you spiritually rich, a person who loves whatever you are doing, wherever you are, whomever you are with; it should teach you what is important, how to live and how to die." 2) "Yet it appears to me as a schoolteacher that schools are already a major cause of weak families and weak communities. They separate parents and children from vital interaction with each other and from true curiosity about each other’s lives. Schools stifle family originality by appropriating the critical time needed for any sound idea of family to develop -- then they blame the family for its failure to be a family. It’s like a malicious person lifting a photograph from the developing chemicals too early, then pronouncing the photographer incompetent." His essay asserts that the growth of networks and institutions, not just the institution of public school, has undermined the support and function of family and community. He presents a very interesting argument whether you agree with him or not. I have also joined mail lists and participated on on-line bulletin boards that discuss home schooling and provide support for those who have taken the plunge. And of course, I’ve picked the brains of friends, family, and acquaintances already home schooling their children. But most importantly, I’ve observed my own son. My instinct tells me that his learning style does not match the learning style supported by a formal classroom environment. Believe me, his theoretical future teachers would thank me for sparing them. The most amazing thing I have learned since beginning all of this research is that home schooling is a controversial topic. In my naivity, it never occurred to me that complete strangers would have such strong opinions about how I choose to have my children educated. Of course, I was also naïve enough to think that people didn’t care if I bottle fed my son, made him sleep in a crib rather than my bed or had him circumcised. I’m quickly learning that the hottest topics involve some of our most personal choices. Even some UU families choosing to home school are finding that their own congregations are hostile to this life style choice. Unbelievably, congregations that support a wide-variety of life style choices find it difficult to accept a family turning its back on our public school systems. The primary critique leveled at these families is that they are elitist. People assume that home schooling families are by default "anti-school." Of course this critique has some basis in fact, but I believe it carries the argument to an extreme. Home schooling families would not make the choice if they did not think their children would be better educated at home than at school. However, it is probably a rare home schooler that believes schools should be abolished altogether. I’m fully aware that the vast majority of my son’s peers will get their education courtesy of these public schools. Therefore, I have no qualms about paying taxes to support the schools and plan to exercise my political rights when presented with school issues on the ballot. UUs can also find themselves facing congregational disapproval because of the traditional association that home schooling has with fundamental religious beliefs. There's no denying that fundamentalist Christians are largely responsible for re-introducing home education into modern society. Their efforts over the past twenty years have placed me in a more comfortable legal position to pursue this option. As a home schooling Unitarian Universalist, I am placed in the unenviable position of having to support their efforts as home educators while disapproving of their curricula. Acquaintances who may not be familiar with our liberal religious beliefs frequently jump to the conclusion that we are fundamentalist Christians because we have expressed an interest in home education. And of course, there are always professional teachers in the congregations who react to home schooling as an indictment against their profession and individual talents as teachers. Nothing could be further from the truth. I don’t know of a single home educator who doesn’t have immense respect for the men and women attempting to educate children within a system that frequently makes that task harder rather than easier for them. Ironically, my experience as a Unitarian Universalist is probably the single greatest influence in my decision to begin researching home education. My childhood educational experience was not a positive one. Even my mother contends that my sister and I succeeded despite our schooling. You’d have to know my mom to realize what a startling admission that is. By the time I graduated from high school, I had attended six schools in as many school districts. Because of the frequent relocation, my history classes covered ancient history over and over again, yet I wasn’t introduced to American history in any real sense until I was a junior in high school. The horrific experiment with "new math" in the 70s and relocation made me miss any formal instruction in some areas creating a math phobia. One school was just about to teach fractions when I moved to a school that had just finished teaching them in my particular grade. Imagine my surprise to find out in my thirties that I’m pretty darned good at math after all and sometimes even like it. I credit my parents with saving me from becoming one of public school’s failures. They are avid readers who fostered an early love of reading. They encouraged me to explore my interests beyond the classroom and took the time to fill in educational holes when they were obvious. Of course, the problem is the holes that weren’t so obvious. The holes I discovered when I went to college and realized I wasn’t nearly as educated as I’d assumed. I learned the hard way that I was not a critical thinker. I had virtually no ability to defend a position on paper, not to mention a complete inability to verbally discuss my views. To this day I find myself struggling to form my own opinions when reading a position-piece or listening to a speech or sermon. Which brings me back to why Unitarian Universalism influenced my decision to home educate my children. It is my belief that being a fully active UU requires the ability to read on an advanced level, think rationally and critically, explore personal interests and have the confidence to present and defend your opinions and point of view. Unfortunately, less than 2% of classroom instruction time in the public schools is spent discussing anything. The nature of the system, particularly its student to teacher ratios, necessitates lectures, busywork and discipline efforts above discussion, exploration and social interaction. Social interaction is probably the single most misunderstood component to home educating or even formal schooling for that matter. Home educators are frequently accused of denying their children proper socialization. This is one area where I will come across as being “anti-school.” I personally find nothing natural in placing a group of children together for the majority of their waking hours who are all the same age. I can’t think of a single situation as an adult for which peer-grouping prepared me. I’m also not comfortable with my children experiencing the negative socialization associated with peer pressure and unnecessary competition. Without proper context, I’m sure that statement makes me sound like an over-protective mother and not unlike the fundamentalist Christians who home school as well. However, the fact is that home schooled children actually have as much if not more opportunity for social development than their formally schooled counterparts. Not only do they consistently average standardized test scores significantly higher than the public school average, but they also score higher in socialization studies. Granted, while some of these studies are as scientific as possible, the term socialization itself is highly subject to interpretation. So these studies are of course, also subject to personal interpretation. One of the women posted this comment about socialization to an on-line bulletin board created for the support of families home schooling preschoolers. I’ll share it with you since I happen to agree with her. "I want my children to experience genuine relationships. I want them to learn that relationships need to be worked at constantly and that you get back what you put in. When people question my choice to home school based on it being hard to find friends for my kids, my thought is that it should be hard to find friends since we tend not to appreciate things that come too easy to us. But the truth is that in reality it is school that is much more limiting. When you home school you get to make friends all day with people at work and adults at the park. You have more time to truly be with your family and have one on one conversations every where you go. In small groups you have the freedom to really learn about each other. You really find out what socialization is truly all about because you have to make the effort. You are responsible to make and keep those connections and most importantly you are free to be yourself as you are with confidence because you have that freedom to choose to be there or not." A public school teacher must educate and control at a minimum 20 students, and often upwards of 30 students at a time. It’s no wonder that a large percentage of the school day is spent maintaining discipline, conducting administrative duties such as taking attendance and doling out busywork. I remember as a child always having to have a pleasure book handy to keep boredom at bay while these other activities were going on. Waiting for other kids to catch up after finishing a workbook exercise or a test was excruciating if I finished a book early. I wish I had a dime for every time I was told not to read ahead in my textbook. Home schooled children are often done with the formal portion of their schooling, if the parents decide to pursue a formal curriculum, well before lunch. Definitely an advantage gained by having such a low teacher to student ratio in the home. That leaves a good portion of the day left for fun projects, volunteer activities, social gatherings with other home educated children, field trips, visits with neighbors, music lessons and the list goes on. That list makes it obvious that home-educated children have plenty of opportunity to expand their social skills with people of all ages and backgrounds. I want my children to inherit values from their family and learn from their community. Why just read about World War II when you can also talk to the retired sergeant across the street who hit the beach at Normandy? Why just hear a teacher explain how flowers grow when you now have the time to sow your own seeds? Think back to when you were in school. What do you remember? Do you remember the contents of your fourth grade textbooks? Do you remember any lecture that your teacher gave during the spring of seventh grade? What do you remember about school? The first memories that pop into my mind are either really interesting field trips (a piano factory and a dairy spring to mind), projects in particularly interesting subjects, and of course extra-curricular activities. It’s obviously not the individual facts we learn that are important. The importance lies with the accumulated meaning. The inter-connectedness of what we learn and how it impacts our behavior as human beings is what makes us truly educated people. I’d like to share some examples of some pre-home schooling going on in our house. We do a lot of reading. I think all of the librarians at our local library branch know me by sight now. They certainly know my three year old son. I try to choose a wide variety of books, but I also let him pick a couple in his particular areas of interest at each visit. I can say without reservation that I have read every juvenile book on the solar system available in our county. I’m almost there with the dinosaurs. One book about dinosaurs mentioned that the stegosaurus had a brain the size of a walnut. My son said, “Mommy, what’s a walnut?” This was an educational opportunity I was not about to pass up. We put down the book and looked up walnuts in his children’s nature encyclopedia. We looked at the pictures and discussed nuts. Later that day we went to the grocery store. I showed him a bag of walnuts, then decided on the spur of the moment to pick some up. Later we baked oatmeal cookies with walnuts. So he was able to see, smell, feel and taste a walnut. Altogether, it was a very rewarding experience… for me. My son on the other hand, calmly held up a walnut a few weeks later and announced he had a brain in his hand. Never fear, that led to a discussion about relative size and one about brains. Did he internalize the lessons? Maybe, maybe not. But we’re on our way. He’s obviously making some connections though. He has a globe that we’ve used to discuss the earth’s rotation and it’s orbit around the sun on several occasions. I hadn’t realized how much of this was sinking in until two things happened. One day while driving home I commented that the sun was setting. He respectfully corrected me. “No mommy, we’re turning away from the sun.” As a completely biased mother, I was totally impressed with my son’s genius. It didn’t prepare me for the leap that he made several weeks later though. My in-laws are travelling through Great Britain right now. I pulled out the globe to show him where his grandparents were. He looked at the globe for a minute, started to spin it, and said, “They have light first.” I wasn’t sure what he was talking about, so I asked him to explain. He slowly spun the globe, put his finger on Great Britain and then moved it to Florida. He said, “Look! The sun shines there first.” It may be a very selfish reaction on my part, but I just don’t want to miss these moments of comprehension. I’d much rather face the challenge of trying to find ways to spend less time with my children than trying to fit in more. Unfortunately, the topic of home schooling and even my reasons for choosing this educational life style are far more complex and involved than I could present in just a few minutes one Sunday morning or a few paragraphs in a newsletter article. I wish I could share all I’ve learned about this amazing opportunity and why I’ve chosen to accept this responsibility as a parent, but there just isn’t time or space. Please understand that home educating parents are a very diverse group of people. Not only do they differ in their religious beliefs and their reasons for choosing home schooling, but also in their teaching methods and learning theories. It’s not rocket science. Studies have proven that the educational level of the parent does not impact the academic advantages of home education. Home education simply requires a strong commitment as a family, a willingness to get by with less materially and financially and an acceptance of the hard work that home educating can demand. I hope I’ve shown that choosing home education instead of public schooling is not contrary to UU ideals or practice. If I can teach my son nothing else, I want to teach him the inherent worth and dignity of every person. I want to demonstrate and encourage justice, equity and compassion in human relations. I want to promote his acceptance of others and encouragement to spiritual growth. I want to provide him the means to a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. I want to show him the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large. I want to instill in him the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all. I want to teach him to respect the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. And right now, I think I can best do that at home and in the community. |
