35 Reasons Pt 1

35 Reasons Pt 1

Why We’ve Chosen to Home School…
Dear family and friends, Among the most momentous decisions any family makes are those related to their children’s education. We are taking an atypical path, that of home-based learning, though it is not an uncommon, uninformed, or carelessly chosen one. Simply put, we believe that the flexibility and open structure of home-based learning provides at this time for our daughters a more promising educational opportunity than conventional public or private schooling. Through this letter we hope above all to express that we do not take lightly honest inquiries about the wisdom of our choice by caring family and friends such as you; rather, we appreciate your concerns because we share the same overall aim: the best possible education for the next generation. So below are 35 questions you may always have wanted to ask home-schoolers, with brief attempts to convey our own answers (spiced up with various quotations in boxed or shaded text). Kerry and Candace Magruder, June 1992 (revised June 1993)

Why HomeSchool? We first outline the positive appeal of home-based learning under the two headings of educational pedagogy and worldview. Contents: Pedagogy, Worldview, Socialization, Democracy
Why NOT Home School? Many objections to home-schooling fall roughly in the related areas of socialization and democracy. Pedagogy

‘The World is so full of a number of things; I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.’

Robert Louis Stevenson

1. Is home-based learning something every family should consider? No. Perhaps you aren’t very enthused about the whole idea of home-schooling. Perhaps you’ve had limited or unpleasant exposure to it in your community; if so, we empathize completely. Perhaps neither parent can afford time off from work (though home-based businesses often prove compatible in a way that dual-careerism cannot). Home-schooling is not for every family, nor for every child in a given family, nor for every year of a given child’s education. Our claim is neither universal nor dogmaticÑwe seek not to persuade others to do the same, but to explain a decision which we expect to reevaluate year-by-year and child-by-child for the next decade or so.
2. What do you mean by ‘home-schooling’? Strictly speaking, the common expression ‘home-schooling’ is a misnomer; more accurate though also more cumbersome is ‘home-based learning’. . . ¥’Home-based’ emphasizes that the home is the coordination-center for educational activities, wherever they may take place. ¥’Learning’ refers to the student activity without being limited to the formal type of teacher instruction we associate with ‘school.’ Home educated children do learn outside the home. For example, a recent survey of 300+ home educated students in Oklahoma showed 52% involved in music classes outside the home. The home is not a classroom; the entire planet is the teaching aide; the family’s imagination delineates the edge of the curriculum.
3. Why do families home-school? Pedagogical flexibility, with respect to both curriculum and instructional methods, is a major driving motivation for many home-schooling parents. Preschool children at home learn by delight as they explore their richly-filled world; many parents wonder why that has to change at age five. As a former public school teacher myselfÑand before that, a frustrated public school studentÑI cannot believe that long days at any formal school can come close to the more natural education our children can enjoy coordinated from the home. In the final analysis, this conviction is what it’s all about.

‘Children’s learning predominantly from parents is a cross-cultural phenomenon and a natural occurrence within family contexts.’ 4. What are some curricular advantages? Curricular advantages of learning at home fall into the three categories of content, approach, and aims; each one contributing to a more flexible curriculum than is usual in the traditional classroom. 5. What are some advantages in content? Home-schoolers have time to study what conventional students don’t. What do you wish you had learned when you were in school? Why is it that bookstores and school supply catalogs make your mouth water, yet there’s so much you’ve kept putting off for years? From classic literary works or great art to recognizing the constellations, studying archaeology or family history, etc.; every child and family can fill out curricular content differently, tailoring it to their special interests and opportunities, thus making best use of those precious early educational years. 6. What are some advantages in approach? Often what matters most is not a case of what but of how: Home learners have more freedom to integrate major disciplines and to proceed by discovery and direct experience. Elementary grade children, for instance, can learn about nature through actual outdoor experiences; geography through hearing interesting travel stories; history through reading stories of interesting people; beauty through daily appreciation of inexpensive art prints; etc. Much historyÑespecially AmericanÑcan be visited; and planning the trip can be a semester-long, multi-disciplinary project. Let children learn of different ideas not through committee-assembled, government-approved textbooks, but from engagingÑand coming to grips withÑthe actual works themselves (whether these works be classic books, great art or music, actual historical sites, or even innovative vehicles in a technology museum).

‘The great difference of emphasis between the two conceptions holds good: modern education concentrates on teaching subjects, leaving the method of thinking, arguing and expressing one’s conclusions to be picked up by the scholar as he goes along; medieval education concentrated on first forging and learning to handle the tools of learning…. For the sole true end of education is simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves; and whatever instruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain.’

Dorothy Sayers

7. What are some advantages in curricular aims?

Families school at home for diverse reasons, reflecting various family values and lifestyles. Our own educational aims closely resemble those of a ‘classical’ education as expressed by Dorothy Sayers in her perceptive and typically enjoyable essay, ‘The Lost Tools of Learning’ (see boxed excerpt). By ‘classical education’ we refer to philosophies of education well expressed by Sayers and Allan Bloom, the latter in his The Closing of the American Mind. Near the top on our list of ‘classical’ aims are more freedom for children to develop confidence and independence in their thinking, and more flexible use of time for them to explore worthwhile interests.

‘Questioning is the most sophisticated and civilised of arts.’ J. S. Mill 8. What instructional methods appeal to home-schoolers? Methods among home-schoolers vary to the same extent as motivations and curricular aims. Some prefer to set up a ‘classroom’ at home, relying on school textbooks and workbooksÑone home schooling curriculum has catered to this desire by producing a video series featuring master teachers instructing in all subjects KÐ12! We do not share this perspective at all, and believe that most home-schooling families are working to individualize the learning structure more than is possible in a classroom of 15+ students. One recent study reported that a child might receive on average a total of only 3 minutes of direct, personal, teacher interaction per day. In contrast, home schooling parents are better able to individualize learning for their child, to creatively accommodate a variety of learning styles, and to provide personal attention in a tutorial rather than classroom format. At the same time, the child’s developing habits of self-discipline are encouraged preparatory to a lifetime of learning. ‘Most learning is not the result of instruction. It is rather the result of unhampered participation in a meaningful setting.’ Ivan Illich, 1970. 9. How much time does it take? An article in the April/May 1992 issue of The Teaching Home put it this way: ‘Home schooling takes a time commitment, but not as much as you might expect. One-to-one tutoring is more efficient than classroom instruction and thus takes less time. The time requirement varies according to the methods used, the ages of the children, and how many children in the family are being taught…. Subjects such as Bible, science, history, and literature that are not dependent on prerequisite skills can be taught to several grade levels together.’ Many home-schooling families adopt a ‘Unit Studies’ approach that saves time by creatively integrating subjects which in a formal setting would be taught separately. Older children who need greater, individualized challenges can find satisfying opportunities for self-directed investigations. Imagine what topics might be covered in a unit on exploration of the American West, perhaps in conjunction with planning a summer vacation! 10. Are parents qualified to teach? In 1990 the National Home Education Research Institute studied over 1500 home-schooling families, chosen by a random sample from one organization’s membership, and found home learners on average scoring at or above the 80th percentile in all areas on standardized achievement tests. At yet a more fundamental level than objective learning outcome, however, is the question whether a teacher primarily teaches subjects or persons. Parents know their children well and bear the most direct, long-term responsibility for them. As a result, parents offer a degree of personal understanding, individualized attention, and dedicated motivation with respect to the learner that goes far to compensate for a lack of credentials with respect to the lessons. On the other hand, effective teachers do not act as walking encyclopedias in any case; parents as well as anyone may effectively and enthusiastically model the ‘tools of learning’ for their children, setting an example of learning as a lifelong endeavor.

Candace’s reflections, June 1993:

I have been Rachel and Hannah’s “teacher” since their births. I’ve been there at those ‘teachable moments,’ and I feel I know themÑtheir strengths and needsÑbetter than anyone. So it’s natural for there to be a continuity between what they learn at home before Kindergarten and what comes later in their “formal” education. I’ve had the joyful experience this past year of watching Rachel blossom into a creative songwriter/composer in a Kindermusik class I teach at a local church, while over the same time at home she has learned to read, write, and illustrate her own books. 11. What materials are available? Regional conventions and book fairs sponsor workshops that provide practical training for parents as teachers, while introducing parents to a rich diversity of curricular materials. Private schools and local home-schooling organizations also offer teaching and curricular assistance programs, often with available grading, testing, and accreditation options. Families who sense inadequacies in their own educational preparation may choose to adopt one of the many packaged curricula developed for home-schoolers by private schools (such as Calvert, Seton Hall, Alpha Omega, University of Nebraska, etc.). Most home-schooling families in our experience prefer a more flexible approach, however, and pick and choose among the many curricular resources available from schools, publishers, mail-order companies, and teaching-supplies businesses. Providing materials for home-schooling families has become a major business, and the wealth of materials displayed at state-level bookfairs is breathtaking. Any parent who can thumb through Mary Pride’s four volumes without watering at the mouth possesses stoic resources far beyond my own. 12. Are home-schooling families publicly accountable for their children’s learning? Legislation in the state of Missouri requires home-schooling families to complete a specific number of instructional hours every year, including a certain proportion in core areas; and to maintain records of these instructional hours for each child. Periodic evaluation, with or without standardized testing, is also expected. Parents are not required to hold teaching certificates. These are reasonable measures to ensure public accountability (so long as their enforcement does not fall to local public school officials who would have a vested monetary interest in hampering home education). Local and regional home-schooling associations support such state legislation, and provide services that facilitate parental training, record-keeping, student testing, etc. These organizational networks also disseminate information about curricular materials and coordinate group activities. Worldview 13. Does worldview matter in education? Of course! A worldview, or philosophy of life, takes what would otherwise be merely acquired skills or disconnected encyclopedic knowledge and makes learning cohere. It is the difference between beholding chaos and comprehending a universe. Any meaningful education engages ultimacies; these ultimacies raise public questions presumed but not properly resolved per se in government forums. Even to deny the relevance of a worldview in education begs the question, for meta-questions such as whether a given issue is ultimately political, religious, or a matter for pragmatic decision-making cannot be evaluated apart from worldview considerations. ‘To learn a culture is natural to human beings. Children can express individuality only in relation to the traditions of their society, which they have to learn. The greatest human individuality is developed in response to a tradition, not in response to a disorderly, uncertain, and fragmented education.’ E. D. Hirsch 14. Have worldview differences posed a historical problem for public schools? In a comprehensive work that articulates our own views of the relations between religion and democracy, Lutheran (now Catholic) social critic Richard John Neuhaus explores the worldview differences that led to the establishment of parochial schools systems in the last century. Historical divergences from the ‘public school ethic’ have only increased, if we add to Lutherans and Catholics other religious, political or ideological groups. In consequence, public education becomes a political battleground where various activist groups engage in power politics. Interest groups face an almost irresistible temptation to try to consolidate a monopoly of influence over such a large captive audience; to impose their vision of the future upon all Americans through the government-sponsored channel of education. Legislation and bureaucracy thus tend to displace public discourse as a means of persuasion. This unfortunate state of affairs is well-demonstrated, for example, in the New York City public school system’s 1992-3 controversy over classroom materials such as the pro-Lesbian children’s book, Heather Has Two Mommies. Or programs for teaching values (such as ‘values clarification’) cannot but step on somebody’s toes, while pedagogical perspectives such as ‘Outcome Based Education’ often go across the grain of many parents’ philosophies and desires (as in Oklahoma in 1993).

‘The instructor has to teach history, cosmogony, psychology, ethics, the laws of nations. How can he do it without saying anything favorable or unfavorable about the beliefs of evangelical Christians, Catholics, Socinians, Deists, pantheists, materialists, or fetish worshippers, who all claim equal rights under American institutions? His teaching will indeed be ‘the play of Hamlet, with the part of Hamlet omitted.’ R. L. Dabney 15. Are there uniform grounds for a public ethic? In public discourse all participants in society must forge a public philosophy, or a vision of the common good, that does not eradicate the diversity of the traditions underlying such consensus. Consensus at an ultimate level is not achievable short of tyranny and coercion; the American experiment requires an ongoing search for a public ethic that can be held on a variety of grounds. Richard John Neuhaus comments that the approach to public ethics ‘that assumed a religious common denominator, although at times painfully contrived, worked passably well for a long time. It worked as long as it could be safely assumed by the country’s several establishments that America is essentially white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. This was the regularly declared assumption in the great common school movement of the nineteenth century. Today’s debates about how or whether values are to be taught in public schools would have been inconceivable a hundred years ago. Then it was a matter of course that the public school was to inculcate a Christian and Protestant ethic. That taken-for-granted assumption was early contested by Roman Catholics, Lutherans, and others who had a different understanding of the relationship between belief and ethics. Instead of working through the problematic of a public ethic, the American polity at that time allowed these dissidents to spin off their deviant view into separately supported parochial school systems.’

‘To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.’

Thomas Jefferson