THE WORLD SEEMS TO HATE HOMESCHOOL (Part I)!
by Steven David Horwich
This is the last article in a series answering hard questions dealing with homeschooling.
In article one, we made a brief list of major concerns and objections one might encounter to homeschooling. This article is long enough that I’ve had to break into two parts.
Let’s take up the final point on that list now.
- No support in the community for homeschooling.
First of all, I would debate the truth of this assertion. I believe there is plenty of support for homeschooling, given the millions of homeschoolers in the United States at this time. But homeschooling is a pretty private thing. It happens in, well, homes. Homeschooling is happening right now, and in every community. It is a quiet thing. It isn’t loud, as hundreds of kids playing on a playground are loud, so you don’t always know that it’s there. Homeschooling doesn’t require huge tracts of land and big, expensive buildings, like schools do. It uses existing resources. It re-tasks bedrooms and garages. You can’t see that homeschooling is happening everywhere, yet it does.
Homeschooling is very quiet. You never hear about a homeschooler bringing a gun to school, or attacking a teacher…or being brutalized by a teacher. Homeschooling isn’t “sexy”, it doesn’t get much “press.” Its victories are personal and private. They include moments of silent triumph, as when a child suddenly understands something he struggled in school with, but was never able to receive the attention or time he needed from overburdened teachers. It includes simple discussion with one’s parents about the way the world is, in science, in religion, in ways that schools can’t and won’t work.
Homeschool is private, personal, and happens in normal houses all over the place. So homeschooling rarely receives the attention that it merits.
But its enemies, though actually few, can be very loud indeed. They are often well-funded, and they very often lie.
I will say that sometimes a few very loud individuals can make it seem like the opposition is enormous. Teachers paid by schools almost always hate homeschooling! They will kill it if they can, and will use almost any means to do so. And well they should, as homeschooling is the single largest threat to their apparent monopoly in the area of education.
Education is very big business, as you know. It eats up a remarkable amount of our national wherewithal. Educators will protect this massive boondoggle with all their might – their next rent payment depends on it. So, their paid shills…um, so sorry, the “experts” in education sometimes show up on TV and talk about how “bizarre” homeschool parents can be, the “odd violent act” or “shocking crime” committed by homeschoolers or by their parents. Of course, these supposed educators always fail to mention the overwhelming number of teacher abuses in their schools, or school dropout rates that reach to the moon as children find any way at all available to them to escape these prisons, or the common, violent acts in schools, . No, these won’t be mentioned or discussed by “experts” who try to sell the public their brand of snake oil – “Homeschool BAD, Schools GOOD”. Poison, indeed.
Any fair comparison of schools and homeschooling makes homeschool look a lot like paradise. The media loves stories of abuse. Such tales pay the bills. As they say in TV news, “if it bleeds, it leads”. (The lead story is the first story of the hour, the “headline”.)
Let’s look at some simple ideas that most sane parents, most sane people would probably agree with, and which should lead sane people everywhere to support homeschooling.
1) Children are the future.
Children will grow up as a generation, as a group. What they think and feel, what they know and what they will be able to do as a group and as individuals will decide whether or not the world becomes a better or worse place to live.
2) The skills and understandings a person can bring to his life and work are largely developed throughout his youth. The ideas and skills that a person can use to solve problems in life will largely be determined by the understandings, skills, and ideas they are exposed to and that they develop as children.
The other side of this coin is that the limits of a person’s understanding and effectiveness are largely determined in youth. The more limited the child’s experience and exposure to ideas, the more limited will be his later, adult response to the world.
3) Schools cannot cater to the individual child. Classrooms are too crowded for personalized handlings. They do not have the resources, or the methodology to individualize education. Schools are too populated for tailored programs intended to service and bring out the best in an individual child. Schools do not and cannot deal with much outside of the “average” as they have defined the average. They provide an ‘average” program, for their idea of an “average student”.
4) No child is in fact “average”, so no child comfortably or profitably fits into a school’s self-assigned limits.
This is pretty basic reasoning, and is not debatable.
Homeschool deals almost entirely with the individual child. Because of this truth, and for many other reasons, people who are truly concerned about their children’s welfare and for the future are re-discovering homeschooling. Why do I say that they are “rediscovering” it? Because the standard in education for all the centuries prior to enforced public schooling, instituted in the 1860s, was homeschooling!
More to follow.
Steven Horwich is an Emmy and Dramalogue award-winning writer/director, who has split his life between the arts and education. A teacher with over 35 years and over 20,000 hours of experience from elementary school through university-level teaching, he started homeschooling his own children in 2002. This led him to author over 300 courses since 2002, a complete curricula (excluding math) for ages 5-adult, called Connect The Thoughts. Over 20,000 people have used CTT since making it available via the Internet in 2007. His curricula is presented at www.connectthethoughts.com. There is over 5 hours of film explaining his courses and approach. He has authored a book about education today, Poor Cheated Little Johnny, and a teacher training program to go with it. He currently presents a free webinar about education and homeschooling every third Tuesday.
by Steven David Horwich
This is the last article in a series answering hard questions dealing with homeschooling.
In article one, we made a brief list of major concerns and objections one might encounter to homeschooling. This article is long enough that I’ve had to break into two parts.
Let’s take up the final point on that list now.
- No support in the community for homeschooling.
First of all, I would debate the truth of this assertion. I believe there is plenty of support for homeschooling, given the millions of homeschoolers in the United States at this time. But homeschooling is a pretty private thing. It happens in, well, homes. Homeschooling is happening right now, and in every community. It is a quiet thing. It isn’t loud, as hundreds of kids playing on a playground are loud, so you don’t always know that it’s there. Homeschooling doesn’t require huge tracts of land and big, expensive buildings, like schools do. It uses existing resources. It re-tasks bedrooms and garages. You can’t see that homeschooling is happening everywhere, yet it does.
Homeschooling is very quiet. You never hear about a homeschooler bringing a gun to school, or attacking a teacher…or being brutalized by a teacher. Homeschooling isn’t “sexy”, it doesn’t get much “press.” Its victories are personal and private. They include moments of silent triumph, as when a child suddenly understands something he struggled in school with, but was never able to receive the attention or time he needed from overburdened teachers. It includes simple discussion with one’s parents about the way the world is, in science, in religion, in ways that schools can’t and won’t work.
Homeschool is private, personal, and happens in normal houses all over the place. So homeschooling rarely receives the attention that it merits.
But its enemies, though actually few, can be very loud indeed. They are often well-funded, and they very often lie.
I will say that sometimes a few very loud individuals can make it seem like the opposition is enormous. Teachers paid by schools almost always hate homeschooling! They will kill it if they can, and will use almost any means to do so. And well they should, as homeschooling is the single largest threat to their apparent monopoly in the area of education.
Education is very big business, as you know. It eats up a remarkable amount of our national wherewithal. Educators will protect this massive boondoggle with all their might – their next rent payment depends on it. So, their paid shills…um, so sorry, the “experts” in education sometimes show up on TV and talk about how “bizarre” homeschool parents can be, the “odd violent act” or “shocking crime” committed by homeschoolers or by their parents. Of course, these supposed educators always fail to mention the overwhelming number of teacher abuses in their schools, or school dropout rates that reach to the moon as children find any way at all available to them to escape these prisons, or the common, violent acts in schools, . No, these won’t be mentioned or discussed by “experts” who try to sell the public their brand of snake oil – “Homeschool BAD, Schools GOOD”. Poison, indeed.
Any fair comparison of schools and homeschooling makes homeschool look a lot like paradise. The media loves stories of abuse. Such tales pay the bills. As they say in TV news, “if it bleeds, it leads”. (The lead story is the first story of the hour, the “headline”.)
Let’s look at some simple ideas that most sane parents, most sane people would probably agree with, and which should lead sane people everywhere to support homeschooling.
1) Children are the future.
Children will grow up as a generation, as a group. What they think and feel, what they know and what they will be able to do as a group and as individuals will decide whether or not the world becomes a better or worse place to live.
2) The skills and understandings a person can bring to his life and work are largely developed throughout his youth. The ideas and skills that a person can use to solve problems in life will largely be determined by the understandings, skills, and ideas they are exposed to and that they develop as children.
The other side of this coin is that the limits of a person’s understanding and effectiveness are largely determined in youth. The more limited the child’s experience and exposure to ideas, the more limited will be his later, adult response to the world.
3) Schools cannot cater to the individual child. Classrooms are too crowded for personalized handlings. They do not have the resources, or the methodology to individualize education. Schools are too populated for tailored programs intended to service and bring out the best in an individual child. Schools do not and cannot deal with much outside of the “average” as they have defined the average. They provide an ‘average” program, for their idea of an “average student”.
4) No child is in fact “average”, so no child comfortably or profitably fits into a school’s self-assigned limits.
This is pretty basic reasoning, and is not debatable.
Homeschool deals almost entirely with the individual child. Because of this truth, and for many other reasons, people who are truly concerned about their children’s welfare and for the future are re-discovering homeschooling. Why do I say that they are “rediscovering” it? Because the standard in education for all the centuries prior to enforced public schooling, instituted in the 1860s, was homeschooling!
More to follow.
Steven Horwich is an Emmy and Dramalogue award-winning writer/director, who has split his life between the arts and education. A teacher with over 35 years and over 20,000 hours of experience from elementary school through university-level teaching, he started homeschooling his own children in 2002. This led him to author over 300 courses since 2002, a complete curricula (excluding math) for ages 5-adult, called Connect The Thoughts. Over 20,000 people have used CTT since making it available via the Internet in 2007. His curricula is presented at www.connectthethoughts.com. There is over 5 hours of film explaining his courses and approach. He has authored a book about education today, Poor Cheated Little Johnny, and a teacher training program to go with it. He currently presents a free webinar about education and homeschooling every third Tuesday.
