Yesterday evening, Pat Farenga of Holt Associates, and editor of the Growing Without Schooling newsletter, was interviewed on Geraldo Rivera’s television show. I missed seeing it (duty called), but the reports on email lists about the interview are positive. The one complaint is that the news show recommended that state boards of education be the source for homeschooling information.

Geraldo’s website doesn’t (yet?) have any links to the story, so the only discussion right now is on the email lists.

On the 23rd of September, my husband and I went to see the movie Jesus Camp (click on “Videos” at the top right of the screen). I meant to blog it immediately, but there was enough ambivalence within the movie to make me wonder if it belonged on a homeschooling blog. On the one hand, the opening context of the movie was framed within homeschooling. On the other hand, the ‘camp’ part of the movie didn’t make a single mention of homeschooling.

Jesus Camp isn’t a movie about ‘homeschooling,’ but the key children were homeschooled.

When the movie started I intended only to watch it, but I pulled out my notepad after a “fact” was written on the top of the screen: “75% of homeschooled kids are Evangelical.” There was no source given for the statistic, but it doesn’t jibe with the NCES statistics in which religion is given as the main reason for homeschooling by only 30% of parents (see “figure 2″ under Parents Most Important Reasons …).

I’ve put all those on-the-spot notes at my own blog, Happy as Kings.

That 75% ‘statistic’ combined with the small number of children on whom the movie focuses made me more and more uneasy as the movie played out. The rolling of the final credits to the beat of one of my 70s faves, Norman Greenbaum’s Spirit in the Sky, only underscored that feeling. It isn’t that X% of children who are homeschooled are Evangelical, but rather that 75% is a number that will stick in people’s minds, and it is probably not true.

• Catholic Curriculum Swap: 3916 members
• Mater Amabilis Teacher Training Forum (Catholic Charlotte Mason): 610 members
• Episcopalian Homeschool: 135 members
• Lutheran Church Missouri Synod Homeschool: 134 members
• Modest Lutherans: 62 members
• Chevra (Jewish homeschoolers): 202 members
• New England Jewish Homeschoolers: 81 members
• Jewish Waldorf: 79 members
• Ladies of Torah: 134 members
• Unitarian Universalist homeschoolers: 807 members
• Southeast Latter Day Saints homeschoolers: 134 members
• Latter Day Saints Charlotte Mason: 164 members
• Gulf Coast Buddhist homeschoolers: 18 members (small, but still ‘there’)
• Shia Homeschoolers: 31 members
• Muslim Homeschool: 95 members
• Hogwarts Summer Correspondence School (Harry Potter homeschoolers): 613 members
• Many Paths: 236 members
• Free Thinking Home Educators: 239 members
• Earth-Mamas Homeschooling: 130 members
• Florida Pagan Homeschoolers: 125 members
• Washington Pagan Homeschoolers: 118 members
• Sacred Spiral Homeschool (Snohomish, Washington): 26 members
• Connecticut Pagan Homeschoolers: 64 members
• Sacred Grove Academy (Alabama pagans): 72 members
• Raleigh Pagan Homeschoolers (North Carolina): 26 members
• ['pagan groups' was the largest grouping I found, with 55 groups, so there are many more]
• Eclectic Homeschoolers of Chattanooga: 49 members
• Atheist Homeschoolers: 130 members
• Gay Homeschoolers: 166 members

The greater homeschooling community is nothing if not varied. Evangelical Christian homeschooling families may be the most visible group, which probably has something to do with organizational preference, but they don’t have a lock on homeschooling any more than they have a lock on shopping, or Michelin tires, or Sara Lee whole wheat hot dog buns.

Homeschooling is not a group-driven activity, but rather a family-driven activity. There may be cultural surges as the homeschool concept enters into different portions of society, but because of the ‘decentralized’ nature of homeschooling, no one group can own it.

+++++++++++++

My initial feeling about the movie was uneasiness, but that was probably ‘cultural.’ My church experiences are of the more ritualistic kind (referred to as ‘dead church’ within the movie) so I was out of my element while watching this kind of service. My own Vacation Bible School classes, or my times at Girl Scout camp, were nothing like the Kids on Fire camp. Because of this, I’ve waited to blog about the movie because it’s taken some time to ‘come down’ from the intensity of the combination of the music score and what was shown.

The homeschooling depicted in the movie was also not ‘my kind’ of homeschooling, but it wasn’t completely foreign. I’ve seen it before in support groups. What I hadn’t seen, though, was the emotional fervor that appears, to me, to be induced crowd hysteria directed at children who have no defenses against such a thing. What disturbed me even more was that the parents approved, and participated. I shall commit homeschool heresy by saying that, after watching this movie, I am inclined to be in sympathy with Rob Reich and Michael Apple who both feel that ‘society’ has as much of a claim on the forming of children’s personas as do parents.

Again, this is probably my cultural response and the children’s minister in the movie, Becky Fisher, has made the point that all parents “brainwash” their children to their points of view, and that Pentecostal families viewing the film approved of all that was shown.

As for the movie itself (and what follows is a spoiler, so be warned), the movie starts off by ‘introducing’ the three homeschooling families with vignettes of their family life. The only school context given for the featured children is homeschooling. Pentecostalism is a given for all the people, so it’s a non-factor for purposes of comparison. The boy preaches, one girl witnesses, the other girl worries that she sometimes dances ‘for the flesh.’

The three featured children are shown in their families before they leave for the camp. There are scenes of the boy and his mom discussing global warming from a skeptical viewpoint — ‘rise is just 0.6 degrees’ –, and then the boy and his brother watching a video on evolution that says something like ‘we don’t come from goo’ with a shot of some slimey stuff. Children in another family do a pledge of allegiance to the Christian flag and one child ‘breakdances’ to what I’m assuming was Christian heavy metal music in her bedroom, so that was very modern. Another scene is of a possible homeschool group bowling outing where one of the featured kids witnesses to/pesters a foxy young woman in the bowling alley (whether the child is witnessing or pestering depends on your point of view).

The rest of the children and parents at the camp are mostly ‘background,’ other than the little blond boy you see in the clips as either joyfully waving his hand to ‘die for Jesus’ or crying bitterly because he feels that he doesn’t live up to not being a good enough Christian. The little girl weeping in despair over abortion is also an unknown as to schooling preference. The camera catches them, but we don’t find out their backgrounds.

All the talking, singing, discussing, preaching, witnessing is done by the people in the movie. There is no script and no one off-camera asks/tells/says anything to the people in the movie. There are no ‘external’ voice-overs, narration, comments or opinions given. Editing is the editorializing. The film appears to be of the ‘reality’ genre. The folks at the church even have pictures online of the film makers & the camp.

It is difficult to pigeonhole just what was meant by choosing homeschooled kids to be featured, showcasing their home lives as homeschoolers, but then dropping all references to it at camp. As a homeschooler, I didn’t view the movie as being ‘about’ homeschooling, but I have a frame of reference for homeschooling. I don’t know how someone with no experience of homeschooling would see view the rest of the film after the opening framing all the kids in that context.

But there is still the ambiguity because no other ‘statistic’ was given other than ‘homeschool = 75% Evangelical.’ The content of the few captions before the statistic didn’t make me want to take notes, and I didn’t note any on-screen writing after the 75%.

Homeschooling-as-homeschooling is not discussed, but it is the backdrop to ‘who these people are.’ There is no depiction of any kind of homeschooling other than the one ‘flavor,’ and that overall impression is coupled with the 75% ‘statistic.’

For those in the general public who don’t have any homeschooling friends/colleagues/acquaintances/neighbors, this will probably be t.h.e. one ‘inside look’ they’ll have at people who are actually homeschoolers, and not just ‘playing one in the movies.’

Again, on the one hand there is no ‘homeschool connection’ at the camp, and mainstream discussion doesn’t mention it; but on the other, the only featured people were homeschoolers. The exception is the children’s minister, but she appears to be unmarried and with no children, young, grown or otherwise, in her home.

Tory (the dancer)

Rachael witnessing at group outing to bowling alley

Levi

Children’s pastor calling kids to repent

Harry Potter section of movie

Mike Papantonio interviewing Becky Fisher

ABC News Good Morning America interview w. Mike Papantonio (talk radio host from movie) & Becky Fisher (children’s minister).

Keith Olberman’s program

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough (fyi, segues into something called “Hollyweird”)

AlterNet blog post: Bill Maher on Jesus Camp

eFilmCritic: detailed interview with film makers and children’s pastor

I was working on a September collection of international articles about homeschooling, but this article from Israel deserves a blog post of its own. 

Jerusalem Post, Jerusalem, Israel, 31 August 2006, Learning without lessons

Most homeschoolers in Israel follow the less structured “un-schooling” model which does not provide a set curriculum but rather tailors itself to children’s individual needs (see box).

…

Prof. Roni Aviram, chair of the Center for Futurism in Education at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, encourages homeschooling as an alternative to what he believes is the failure of the school system in the Western world, and especially in Israel.

…

According to Zinigrad, families from across the socioeconomic, political and religious spectrum are members of the homeschooling flock.

“Anyone who says it’s something elitist or like a cult is wrong.” While in the past, homeschoolers might have been isolated, there are now homeschooling groups all over the country, including one that meets bimonthly at the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo, and there are several Web sites and email lists.

There is no typical homeschooling family. While many families in the Jerusalem area are Anglos, in other areas of the country this is not the case.

“We are not an example of a homeschooling family. We are an example of our family that happens to homeschool,” says Dina.

…

“It takes a [certain] type of personality… [the parent] has to give up a lot if she [or he] chooses to take care of them at home… She doesn’t have a life. Others would say a mother who chooses to do that, that is her life.”

Trachtman takes the latter statement one step further.

“Have there been days when I’ve wanted to run off to Antarctica? Sure. But even on those days I have reflected on the fact that I wouldn’t have traded a single moment of my life with another person on this planet.”

I knew there had to more of us out there.

The Spectator, London, England, 23 September 2006, Rod Liddle, Who is right about home schooling? 
(unfortunately, only a Google cache of a snip of the article is available)

I think it was the bit about Cézanne which really got to me. It came early on in last week’s article. Perhaps you read it; my colleague James Bartholomew was explaining how he had intended to tutor his daughter Alex, now that he had taken the liberating decision to remove her from school because the teachers and everybody else were useless. From now on he’s going to teach her at home, or in agreeable bits of the world where there is usually a nicely crisp dry white wine available and a modified peasant cuisine.

Crisp white wines and a modified peasant cuisine … I may have to cut short my mad blog-updating spree today and haul out the cookbooks (I’m filing like a fiend to try to get all the articles in order so I can post them, whether they’re ages-old in cyber-time or not). 

I’d subscribe to read the entire article, but I’ve got quite enough online reading to do, plus, “Annual subscription to The Spectator online for only £57.50.”  (!)  I’d have to sacrifice my subscriptions to The New Yorker and New Scientist to afford that!  I wonder if The Spectator‘s cartoons are as entertaining as those in The New Yorker?

[time passes while She Who is Incurably Curious checks to see if the library has a link ....]

It does.

Despite the attractions of being able to live somewhere with good food and have it be part of the learning process, Mr. Liddle doesn’t like homeschooling.

Are they right? The obvious answer is a resounding ‘no’ – and simply because a thing is obvious does not mean that it should be treated with suspicion. It is a colossal arrogance – and a self-indulgence – on the part of those 180,000 parents that a) their knowledge of such diverse disciplines as, say, fine art and pure maths should exceed that possessed by the specialists; and b) that even were they to possess such encyclopaedic knowledge, they may not have the necessary skills to impart the ground rules of those disciplines to children.

The catalyst for Mr. Liddle’s article was one by his colleague, Mr. Bartholomew.  While not fully weeping for joy at seeing the thoughts of a kindred spirit, I am decidedly misty-eyed.  I’m not alone in the Universe.

The Spectator, London, England, 16 September 2006, James Bartholomew, My daughter is in a class of her own now.
(available only through subscription, or by an online library connection)

I have the idea, which some may think eccentric, of giving Alex a big picture of the past, starting with the creation of the universe, going through the development of the surface of the Earth and then on through the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans to the present. Perhaps that will prove over-ambitious. But having been repeatedly taught the ‘Tudors ‘n’ Stuarts’ through my childhood, I want her to get an idea of the big narrative sweep.

If your library has online access to periodicals, and if The Spectator is one of the periodicals to which it has a subscription, it is worth reading Mr. Bartholomew’s column, and Mr. Liddle’s, too.

It’s nice that so many local newspapers publish articles about homeschooling.  It would be nicer if all the articles were more accurate.

The News Review, Roseburg, Oregon, 10 September 2006, Home lessons: County home-schoolers head back to their domestic classrooms  (Bug Me Not)

Oregon has fewer regulations than many states. The registration form is simple, Huckaby said. It asks for the child’s name, age, date of birth and previous school district. Home schoolers are required to take standardized tests in certain grades, and the ESD can request the scores. The state requires that students score in at least the 15th percentile on the test, which means they have scored better than 15 percent of the students who took the test.

I suppose it’s human nature to say that one’s state is the ‘best’ for whatever the category in question is.  In Jane Healy’s book, Endangered Minds: Why Children Don’t Think And What We Can Do About It, she cites a survey by Dr. John Cannell where the education offices of all fifty states reported that school children in their state scored above the national average (Lake Woebegone and Fraudulent Testing).

I’ve nothing against Oregon (it looked beautiful when we drove through), but it isn’t one of the states with ‘fewer’ regulations, which is the implication in the sentence, “Oregon has fewer regulations than many states.”  It’s no Pennsylvania or New York, but it also isn’t an Alaska, Texas or Oklahoma either, or even a North Carolina where testing is required, but results are not reported.

Home schooling is a relatively recent phenomenon, and there isn’t much research available, [Dave Conley, an education professor at University of Oregon] said. During his son’s college search, Conley found research that home school students can have problems working in study groups because they’re used to being independent.

Point 1:  Homeschooling isn’t a relatively recent phenomenon.  In the greater scheme of things, compulsory mass-schooling is the newcomer.

Point 2:  In the experience of one of my daughters, she found that her classmates in college had problems with freedom and self-discipline.  She not only escaped the “freshman 15,” but also graduated in four years, while her publicly-schooled friends often used the “five-year-plan” or even stretched their college career to six years.

What you see often depends on where you’re standing.

 

The family vignettes in the article are nice, and they provided a pleasant counterpoint to the seemingly obligatory regulatory rhetoric, and a swipe about socialization.

Amy Coughlin wanted her 11-year-old son, Drew, to get a tailored education. Drew is accelerated in most subjects. This year he’s taking high school geometry. Amy doesn’t think her son is smarter than other kids, but he has had the benefit of education designed for him.

 

[Gabrielle Randall’s] son was reading so well at 4 years old that it seemed silly to send him to kindergarten, so she stuck with it, and taught her younger son, as well. They’re 12 and 14 now.

 

[Julieanne] Miller incorporates music and movement, and she teaches history chronologically using copies of original historical documents. She uses video for math lessons, and her husband, Elmer, helps the girls with building models.

 

Caleb also directs his own education. He produces a magazine, The Adventurer, every two months. He researches topics that interest him and writes stories about them, and he hires other kids as reporters. He has about 30 subscribers, and he’s starting to make subscriptions available online at www.adventureronline.com. He’s interested in journalism, as well as layout, Web design, and computer programming.

If you’ve never seen it, it’s still new. Hat tip to Chris.

Jon Stewart interview with The New Yorker article’s author, Hanna Rosin:

Comedy Central, 2005, The Daily Show

Original article:

The New Yorker, New York, New York, 27 June 2005, God and Country

The article seems to make the requirements seem more stringent than they sound (from safely in the ‘homeschooler emerita’ chair).

And, as for “the big commitment,” I would say that bringing your child into the world in the first place is t.h.e. big commitment.

Atlanta Journal Constitution, Atlanta, Georgia, 6 September 2006, Home school Q&A: The big commitment

Parents “need to realize they are going to have to make an investment in time and focus on their children,” said Randi St. Denis, director of the Roswell-based Home Educators Encouragement Alliance. But, she added, “the relationship with your children in the end is like no other. You end up raising children who love to learn; they don’t tend to compartmentalize it [or] think learning is so dreary. You can’t beat that.”

But before parents call it quits with their local public school, state law requires that they have a plan.

By all means, be aware of the laws of the state in which you live, in fact, find out as much as possible about the laws.  The more you know, the better prepared you’ll be, and the better prepared you are, the more at ease you’ll be.

I would say that a general rule of thumb is that if you’ve parented your children well up until now, homeschooling will only be a different investment of your energy.  Having the kids do well at home takes energy; having the kids do well at school takes energy.

This young man’s account of his homeschool day doesn’t fit what the kids and I used to do … but that’s the Big Benefit.

Fauquier Times-Democrat, Fauquier, Virginia, 5 September 2006, The first day of (home) school

Ahh, the first day of school, the buses roll by and the smell of pancakes fills the air. “Wait a minute! The buses are rolling by? Oh no!”

I understand the concept of ‘balanced’ reporting because there are (a minimum of) two sides to every story.  But reporters often approach writing about homeschooling from both the human interest angle and the objective reporting angle.  This combination makes reading many of the articles a mildly unsettling experience — you don’t know which way to cant your head while reading. 

In many articles from newspapers and magazines from around the country, we’ve got the Happy Families angle mixed in with Scary Experiment That Needs Close Watching angle.  The writer of the following article from North Carolina definitely seems to favor the Scary Experiment view of homeschooling, with a half-hearted attempt to portray a Happy Family.

Up and Coming Magazine, Fayetteville, North Carolina, 16 August 2006, Home Sweet School:  Teaching is often looked at as a thankless and difficult job, yet many Fayetteville families are beginning home schooling programs.

Many parents can be intimidated by the idea of being put solely responsible for their child’s education. How can anything be learned without a trained teacher standing feet away? Are there desks? Do the kids even bother getting out of their pajamas?

…

“I enjoy spending so much time with my children,” said Wiggs, who has three children who’ve been home schooled. “One thing I’d discovered is that I didn’t know my children the way I thought I did. When they came home we really got to know each other and became much closer.”

 

Later come three paragraphs from the “Advocates” viewpoint, ‘balanced’ by eight paragraphs from the ”Critics” viewpoint.

On the (questionably) plus side:

“Some people home school their kids because there are things they want them to learn which schools aren’t teaching them, and some do it because there are things in school that they don’t want them to learn,” said Hill. “It is generally a mix of those two elements.”

And then from the unimpressed side:

Home schooling is not without its critics. Some believe it is irresponsible to teach a child in an unstructured environment; that without structure, parents can teach their children anything. For example, some religiously-motivated parents may choose to ignore Darwin’s Theory of Evolution all together.

… 

Home schooling can also be used as a tool of abuse, as without a child being regularly introduced to adults outside of their family, their ability to report what is happening to them in their home life becomes limited.

…

“We, as a public school, have to meet the same criteria as other schools, we are accountable for what we do,” said Slocum. “We can’t just hide test results, we have standards to meet in order to help kids learn.”

 

So, if, in the interest of balanced reporting, we’re going to include public school viewpoints in an article about homeschooling, it should only be fair, and balanced, to include homeschooling viewpoints in articles about the public schools.

Up and Coming Magazine, Fayetteville, North Carolina, 6 September 2006, Going Back To School

School is back in session and Spring Lake is celebrating the beginning of the semester with a few events. The Greater Spring Lake Optimist Club “Bringing Out the Best in Kids” Golf Tournament, the new Community and Family Fun Day, the Opening Day of Fall Sports, the Fall Clean-up Campaign, and the opening of the Spring Lake Multi-purpose Community Center are just a couple of the happenings this fall.

Nope, no homeschool opinion there.

Up and Coming Magazine, Fayetteville, North Carolina, 28 August 2006, Back To School

Every year there are basically two console football games that the sports video game crowd look forward to: Madden and NCAA. While Madden has been the hotter product of the two, NCAA has slowly but surely made a name for itself. This year the franchise takes a nice leap forward into the end zone for a huge score, and the guys over at Madden may want to pay attention.

These two ‘back to school’ articles at the same site that skewered homeschooling don’t even mention the schools that the local kids are going back to, much less the education the kids will be getting, so it isn’t a surprise that homeschooling opinions about ‘back to school’ weren’t included.  The tenor of Up and Coming Magazine is more from the ‘county life’ viewpoint, so why the ’investigative reporter’ posture about homeschooling?

Homeschoolers are not foreigners invading communities.  They’re the same people who’ve been there all along, and paying taxes to support those local schools, too. 

If any opinions about the other guy’s way of schooling should be sought out for ‘fair balance,’ they should be the opinions of taxpayers about public facilities, and not bureaucrat’s opinions about the people funding them.

… made the column deadline, now back to treading water in the rising tide of Google alerts.

The following articles “about” homeschooling were published in August.

State Journal, Charleston, West Virginia, 3 August 2006, Schooled at Home: More families holding classes in kitchens

During the 2004-05 academic year, more than 5,500 children in West Virginia were educated at home. And if past trends are any indication, even more students will be home-schooled in years to come.

Topics that followed:
A Decision That Made Sense
A System of Support
Regulations For Home Educations

State Journal, Charleston, West Virginia, 3 August 2006, Decision to Home-School Kids Just Comes Naturally: Spending more time with your own children is an enriching experience

Tony, just 3, didn’t see learning as something only for his older siblings, or something that happened only from 9 in the morning until 3 in the afternoon, or only from September to May. From that minute on, I wanted any children I was lucky enough to have someday to embrace a similar eagerness for learning.

That reminds me of a line my friend Patty uses. When people ask how long she’s been home-schooling her three children, she answers: “Since they were born.” She’s right — all parents are teachers; it really is the most natural thing in the world.

State Journal, Charleston, West Virginia, 3 August 2006, Teaching at Home Serves Some Well: Does home-schooling work? It certainly does for some families

America provides its citizens with many freedoms as long they exercise them responsibly. Home-schooling is one of those freedoms. It is a legitimate solution for many West Virginia families.

WALB-TV, Albany, Georgia, 10 August 2006, South Georgia students study from home

Adrianne says home schooling hasn’t affected her socially. If anything, she’s become more social from it. And she already has colleges knocking at her door. “Being home schooled doesn’t kick you out of going to colleges, colleges look for you because you are home schooled. I’ve had colleges trying to get me to go visit since 7th or 8th grade because they found out I was home schooled,” Adrianne says.

Huddersfield Daily Examiner, Huddersfield, England, 10 August 2006, The alternative to sending your kids to school

Schools do, of course, organise trips to museums and have special learning and themed days. But none can boast week-long pretend night-time air raids with gas masks, candles, blankets and ration books.

This experience was organised by members of the Huddersfield Home Educators Group during learning on the Second World War.

Lions and tigers and bears! Oh, my!

Kiplingers.com, Washington, D.C., 14 August 2006, Fun and Learning: Choosy parents often find that the best classroom is none at all.

The biggest cost of home schooling is often the forgone income of a parent who gives up employment. But few kids spend their whole childhood studying at home. The average is two years.

That statistic comes from Patricia Lines who wrote the the ERIC Clearinghouse book, Support for Home-based Education: Pioneering Partnerships Between Public Schools and Families Who Instruct Their Children at Home

Larry and Susan Kaseman critiqued the study, and the statistic, in their article, “Who Is Pat Lines and Why Is She Writing About Homeschooling?”

Athens Banner-Herald, Athens, Georgia, 15 August 2006, Parents tout benefits of teaching at home: Returning to school a whole different game for many students (use BugMeNot)

The money Courson spends on textbooks and computer tutoring programs still is cheaper than tuition at a private school, and it’s about the same as she spent when the children attended public school and she paid for gas to get them to school, lunches, school supplies and hip clothes, she said.

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Alberta, Canada, 16 August 2006, Who home-educates?

Compulsory schooling, on the other hand, is not much older than 150 years old in North America. In Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador, a child’s education was the responsibility of the family, not the state, until 1943. Seen in this perspective, mass institutionalized education — not home-education — might look more like the experiment.

[From one of the comments at the site]
The questions that we need to ask and answer are these: What do we mean by education? And if state education is the experiment, why did we change from centuries of home schooling to state run education systems?

Societies grow and change. Expectations change. Many parents demand that the state provide subsidized daycare for their children. Daycare is another form of state institutionalization.

The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tennessee, 22 August 2006, Best schools at home for some

Watching a homeschooling family in California got Susan Quiroz of Collierville interested in it eight years ago.

“At first I thought it was a weird concept,” she admits, “but then I got to know their kids and really liked what I saw … . They gave their kids such a great all-around education that I decided it would be a great way to educate my own children one day.”