Homeschooling

I am so sick and tired of seeing the crass way in which the New York Times equats "homeschooling" with radical right, christian fundamentalist loonies. Huckabee Draws Support of Home-School Families is a slap on the face of the millions of parents in this country who believe that independent, child-led, out-of-school, unschooled, parent-directed education is better and far superior than the crap that passes these days as "progressive" school-confined education --regardless of religion

Yet the only people who are to blame are the leaders of the secular homeschooling movement. They have failed to raise money and to raise awareness among the progressive movement about their true politics.

First, their libertarianism has hampered the growth of the independent and even "open source" learning movement in this country because they've stuck their heads in the sand on about what they've needed to do to attack the politics and PR game of extremists like Michael Farris and his radical Home School Legal Defense Association. This guy is one of the signers of "A manifesto for a Christian America", just FYI.

Second, their natural disgust of Democrats has unfortunately marginalize them within the progressive community, even though most homeschoolers are more than liberal but progressive in their education and political thoughts and would most likely align themselves to the Democrats. But because Democrats treat them like three-eyed bible totting hill billies, they'd rather stick with the tried and true millions of the schooling industry and teacher's union than "explore" a constituency that appears anyway to be hostile to them.

Calling Rob Reich, calling Rob Reich . . .
Self-driving cars?? Right there at Stanford University, whence emanate your advanced theories of controlling kids to set them free?

Homeschooling should not be banned, but regulated much more vigilantly.

Not to mention the intellectual cradle of your Stanford-educated colleague Kimberly Yuracko, who quotes your theories so um, liberally -- or illiberally, both, neither? -- as spitshine for her own Stanford-servile theory that home education is a public function from which government is required to protect all children. (Did you two go pub-crawling while she was a student, to swap collegial notes on these elaborate fantasy worlds you both had under construction, like CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien?)

It says right there in the news, “The idea of a self-driving car is a really big idea that will have a big impact on society.”

Only if society is asleep at the switch, and that's where you come in, quick! There's still time to cook up some kind of ethical servility theory to stop it. Maybe use your homeschool regulation screed as a template, here, we'll help --

The families of homeschooled children are clearly different from those of traditional schoolchildren.Some 97 percent of homeschooled children live in married couple households; the comparable number for public school students is 72 percent. Nearly 88 percent of homeschooled parents continued their own education beyond high school; less than 50 percent of the general population has attended college. The home environment of these students is supportive, nurturing and encourages diligence. . .

Yes, good! Let's actually focus on the kids and their learning, not just exploit them in the name of helping their exploited moms or any other political agenda. Let's leave prayer and religion out of it, too, since most folks in schools and government (and politics) also self-identify as god-fearing believers; religion is a confounding variable in education analysis that may quack like a duck, but really is more of a duck-billed platypus.

In other words, religion is not education and religious freedom is not academic freedom, wherever it happens. So let's stick to the constitutionally sound raison d'être of Compulsory School -- secular academics and independence sufficient to preserve and protect our liberties and provide for the common good -- for at least this one conversation.

This is the kind of media exposure that gives homeschoolers a bad name. Check out the 450+ comment thread over at LiveJournal's Oh No They Didn't and see for yourself.

Let's just say this is one of the most painful interviews I've ever watched. Someone ought to smack the parents of this child for putting him in front of a camera without any supervision.

As some people on the thread have said, he seems to have high functioning Asperger's Syndrome but without that context he comes across as both awkward and rude as a consequence of being homeschooled, not necessarily due to possible developmental disabilities.

Sigh.

Let me just state the obvious : What you will see is the exception not the rule when it comes to homeschooled kids.

I have been meaning to write this one for a while now, but it's not just my blogADD that has kept me away from this discussion. I just so get emotionally pissed off about this subject that it becomes unbearable to try to write everything that comes shooting by my brain. Yet Nance here point to a post by Amanda Marcotte that has pissed me off so royally that I have to respond to it.

In the comments Amanda insists that she allegedly has no problems with either stay at home mothers or homeschoolers; yet in her writing she betrays herself. When she opens up her post with and I quote, "This interview in Newsweek with Laura Derrick, the president of the National Home Educator’s Network, was even fluffier than I expected it would be when I opened the link", you know that her expectation was to see a piece excoriating the "different path" of homeschooling.

It goes downhill from there because she conflates her contempt for xian fundamentalists with homeschooling:

I didn’t expect the interviewer to hammer at Derrick about the issue of whether or not it’s wise for people to homeschool their kids if they are doing so with the intention of teaching them that Noah had a pet dinosaur or that Jesus founded America (and therefore feed them into upper echelon jobs in the Justice Department), but I figured it would at least come up. No luck, though.

In the next paragraph her cluelessness about homeschooling shows with flying color when she claims to know that homeschooling is gaining steam in the left. Ahh ... hmmm ... see ... no!

Homeschooling has never been an either/or proposition for people in the left or right. It has been always a proposition for radicals; especially radicals who have a strong libertarian political background. There's conservative libertarians, Christian libertarians and then people like me, who Chris Nolan has most famously described as Social/Progressive Libertarians.

The problem is that christian fundamentalist homeschoolers in this country have had a well funded public relations machine. That's it. That's all.

The HSDLA was the pet project of Michael Farris, one of the signers of the Manifesto for a Christian Church; which really should be read as a manifesto for a extremist American theocracy.

But you already suspected as much.

As I continue to work through the whole god-guns-government culture being tied to home education (and vice versa) I found this cultural commentary:

Egalitarianism and Homeschooling-

One Member’s Personal Story by Karen Till

. . .The homeschool community is a culture, religion—to some a cult—in itself. I loved many aspects but certain things were hard to understand. For example, many people thought women should dress very modestly and with head coverings. Definitely the more “earthy” you were the better: grind your own grain, natural foods, bake your own bread.

Many also believed that couples should let God plan their family – and I mean no interference on your part—because it showed you had more faith. Moms should stay at home while dads provided for the family. All of these were what proved you were a godly woman. Of course, you needed to do this all with great delight and in an organized fashion.

I began to have difficulty with this culture as our children got older and their gender roles began to be more defined. . .I started to feel pressure about how my kids behaved and what they wore. We were not a family that believed that girls must wear dresses, but many of our friends did.

If they systematically hit their own small, weak children, mortify their flesh when they have an independent thought or expression on their baby faces,and call that godly and good government of the private sphere, what do you think they'll use the power of real government to do to you and YOUR kids if you don't slap on a smile and fall into line?

Yesterday was National Spank Out Day 2007, which I'll say more about in a minute and you can read about it here too. But more urgently, I just learned today is National Loyalty Day and Thursday is National Prayer Day. I learned this not in the public marketplace of ideas but in a dark corner of ritualistic beliefs and practices -- from homeschool parents who pray (and urge each other to whack their kids early and often.)

I cross-posted the following at Snook this morning and I've been getting strong reactions all day. Read on down for an update at the end of the post and please do comment here or there, or both. The time has come to at least talk openly about it:

RANT WARNING!

I grew up here in Florida and know the stories, speak the native languages.

Not Spanish. I mean idiomatic dialects like Goldwater Republican. Metaphorical Methodist. Southern Democrat. Spring Break Speak. Hiassen. Government in the Sunshine. Even PublicSchool Speak.

For a while our National Tourism slogan was "Florida-- the rules are different here!"
It encouraged folks to dream of our white-sugar beaches and sunshine as the Promised Land, to plan idyllic pilgrimages here with faith they would be welcome as if to heaven, however they got here and however long they wanted to stay and live it up.

But the rules here aren't so different anymore.

Not sure when it happened, that the Trinity of God, Government and Guns took over again. I have been slow to notice, with all this gentle, loving, respectful and mannerly pretense that religious education is a private non-governmental realm of the spirit, not the State.

National Day of Prayer State Capitol Rally Thursday, May 3, 2007 Homeschoolers are invited to take part in this important day of prayer for our state and nation and participate in the children's prayer walk. If older youth would like to help stamp prayer passports, please email -- Volunteer time is from 10:30 am - Noon, report to the tent in the courtyard

There's no category called "Best Feminist Teen" in the homeschool blog awards, but I wish there were. And I wish there were thousands upon thousands of strong contenders for it, harmonizing with Favorite Daughter's young voice in the alternative education blog-hersphere.

But I get the uncomfortable feeling she may be pretty much the sole standard bearer for that, writing on such a sharp cutting edge that few will even find her point of view to consider it, much less join her. She just doesn't fit comfortably into the curriculum-based Christian conversations and patriarchal perspectives that seem to dominate homeschooling both online and off. And doesn't want to.

Her olive oil essay about purity balls really spoke to many of you non-homeschool types ABOUT homeschool types, but you can well imagine it's the kind of thing that would hurt her more than help her in building and reaching a homeschool following! So if you find Favorite Daughter's writing worth a vote to help bring her fresh eyeballs and keep her unique view engaged in the conversation, please take a minute right now (or sometime this week before voting ends) and give her your click here.

It makes a difference who you are -- and whoever gets to create your character.

Favorite Daughter defines herself as her own reflection, says she has a "Disney Princess Complex."

But I don't think this fake news videoclip of "Frog Princess" is quite what she had in mind, guess homeschool princesses better be careful what we wish for and who gets to grant it.

(Sorry, can't get fancy video screen to appear but the link above will take you to it at Comedy Central site)
Anybody for popcorn? --

My skin is crawling because I just had a creepy epiphany about the power of religious story in politics.

I've been listening on CNN to Barack Obama preaching, I mean campaigning, in Selma, Alabama. Demagoguery is alive and well in southern churches; in the hands of a master, it does send shivers down your spine one way or another (either because you buy it utterly or conversely because it's frightening to see the congregation buy it so utterly.)

Looks like this will be an even more uneasy election cycle for me than the last two -- and this time not because of far-right Christian activists manipulating lesser-educated minds (always assumed to be headquartered in the South, sigh) with simplistic, storybook preaching to motivate and direct that base straight to the polls like lordly lemmings.

This time I may have to fight the so-called liberals too, those willing to dominate civic and global matters from the pulpit if need be, with an army of God behind their politics . . .

Obama kept evoking "Generation Joshua" this afternoon, to hallelujahs from the crowd (congregation?) If you're a secular homeschooler, that'll send shivers down your spine and if you're not, let me 'splain --

There's a well-financed, evangelical-dominated national organization of lawyers, lobbyists and speakers/advisors in the homeschool movement, known as the HomeSchool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA.) Its heft and heat tend to blot out the sun -- with the Son? -- in homeschool politics and the public mind. AS if that weren't plenty of power for me to fret over, in 2003 HSLDA leaders launched a kiddie "education" project aimed at getting conservative Christians to steer children into Republican politics and government at the highest levels.