Mother arrested over school absences
By Jennifer Calhoun, Staff writer, Fayetteville Observer, NC

This story out of Raeford, NC reports that Jennifer Beckel was wrongfully arrested on truancy charges last Friday night. It turns out that her daughter did not have the 15 unexcused absences that she was charged with, but 3. The school attendance law in NC states that “the principal may notify the district attorney or the Department of Social Services after 10 unexcused absences in a school year — but only after school officials have notified the parents and worked with them on reducing the child’s absentee rate.”

However, Mr. and Mrs. Beckel never heard there was a problem from anyone. The article says:

“On Monday, Beckel requested the school’s documentation and protested when she saw that 12 of the unexcused absences should have been excused because of various illnesses and military family leave.

School officials agreed with Beckel and reduced Makenna’s unexcused absences from 15 to three.

Still, Beckel has pulled her daughter out of the school system, and has been home-schooling her since Monday.”

http://www.fayobserver.com/article?id=258439

Posted by Mary

The Friar at Reason and Revelation caught my critique of one of his blog posts and appears to object to my neglect of fully fisking his original post, my conclusion, and my anti-defamation league comment*.

I guess I can rectify all that.

*(as to my seriousness, sir, the pajamas-with-feet that I proposed should be on the league crest ought to give you insight into that)

Reason and Revelation, Homeschooling 3

My statement was qualified stating that some were dissatisfied with the lackadaisical nature of the homeschool community in a certain town. The fact that they were does not decrease the value of homeschool. It only criticizes a certain aspect of homeschooling that exists in a particular place. The blogger does not even note this fact.

So noted.

What you may not have taken into account is that participation or non-participation in communal activities is not what makes homeschooling, and isn’t even a defining feature. Some families homeschool while sailing a boat around the world. Having a little help from your friends is useful, of course, but it isn’t something that can be guaranteed to anyone. It is not the obligation of one homeschooling family to provide whatever another family lacks any more that it is incumbent upon one neighbor to finance the house, raise the children, or mow the lawn of another, although if there is a need, neighbors often help out. But one doesn’t move into a neighborhood for those reasons. If one does, it is usually a commune. Much of the point of homeschooling is independence of action.

Also, over-organization can (but doesn’t always) badly affect a family’s homeschooling. The energy given to the group, especially a high-needs group with dues, meetings, committees, and co-operative teaching is subtracted from the energy available to the family in their daily lives. The entity’s needs becomes the focus instead of the family’s individual needs.

The kind of support to supply to group members is one of the key decisions the people who want to form a support group must hammer out at the beginning of the process.

• Is the group meant to be one that is informal, or formal?
• Will the group be a playgroup?
• Is a main focus field-trips?
• Will the group be mainly a social group — for the parents or for the kids?
• Does the group have forming a co-op as a goal?

Your writing leads me to the conclusion that you presume that only groups that are formal and supply significant support are worthwhile, something that the group in the Raleigh area apparently did not do. I presume that, because of this, you use the word “lackadaisical,” which is not generally known for its positive implications.

I homeschooled my children, usually without any local support. When I first started I was the only homeschooling parent I knew, and that condition persisted for almost four years. My only supports were two magazines, and many catalogs. At this time we were also living in the infamous Germany, which had yet to fully enter the public cyber-age, but our Commodore 64 wouldn’t have been able to do anything with an Internet connection even if we’d had one. Because of this, I had no online support although I read in my magazines about these mysterious things called “bulletin boards.” I could only imagine what they were. Finally, a group came together, but after two years or so, we moved (to the also-infamous Belgium). For the final two years of my children’s homeschooling I was again a loner. I was also of the unschoolish persuasion, so I used no prepared curriculum, and rarely asked for guidance.

By what I infer from your writing, our homeschooling would have been ineffective because of the lack of ‘support.’

Further the blogger does not address the critique (or vices) I raised, which was the point of my post.

(and now we revert to the post that caught my eye)

• But homeschooling is not a panacea. Not every student out of a homeschool environment is better off it seems to me. One private school, located in Raleigh, was founded because some homeschoolers were dissatisfied with the lackadaisical nature of many homeschools.

See my original reply, and above.

By the way, I have an aversion to referring to young people and children as “students.” That seems to place their entire lives solely in the context of schooling.

• The support system among homeschools was also lacking discipline.

See above.

• 1. Expectation: Some homeschool students that I have had the pleasure of teaching believe, upon arrival to a college (secular or otherwise) they deserve high grades, and when I mean high, I mean “A.” A “B” is like an “F” to them. They have usually gotten wonderful grades in their homeschool and they expect the same results. The reason for this is my next point.

Grades? Sorry, I didn’t ‘do’ grades, or assignments, or testing. John Holt was my guru, and GWS was my magazine (along with HEM).

• 2. Achievement/Smarts: Homeschool students usually believe they deserve all “A”s because they have been told (usually by their mother) for years that they are special, bright, smart, and will be successful. While well meaning, this is probably not the wisest thing mothers do for their children. It actually hampers them when they get out into the real world and have to deal with people who are not their mother.

Hmmm, just as I didn’t take into consideration that you were writing about a local lazy league of learners, so, too, you do not take into consideration that what you’ve written is meaningless in the context of unschooling.

The closest I can get to giving you an idea of our outlook is to quote some signs that I hand-lettered (I liked calligraphy), and that were hanging around for a while.

If you can’t be a good example, you’ll just have to be a horrible warning.

If you think you can, you can. If you think you can’t, you’re probably right.

Richard Maybury‘s Two Laws as enumerated in his book Whatever Happened to Penny Candy? (and others):

Do all you have agreed to do.

Do not encroach on others or their property.

Floss [under hand-drawn picture of the Cheshire Cat's grin]

As for the ‘real world,’ what world do you think we live in? Do you think the world of school is ‘real?’

• 3. Narcissism: Homeschool students who go to college find it unnerving when their professors do not lavish attention on them the way their homeschool teacher did. In fact, some are downright offended when a prof does not lavishly praise them, spend time with them, etc., as they are accustomed. After all–and I have heard this from numerous students: “my parents told me I am special, and thus, you should pay more attention to me.” This is reflective of a bit of narcissism, and it’s unhealthy.

The kids you know say, “and thus?” My.

[calling out in a fluting voice to daughter, who commented on the last blog post] Rose, darling! What was it that Sue-J. said to you at college? (arch aside to readers: Sue-J. was the professor urging her to go to grad school) Wasn’t it something along the line of she was glad you were homeschooled because she didn’t have to coddle you? And who was the teacher you student-taught with?

[I'll have to shout louder for the other daughter, as she doesn't look around much online] Cindy, dear! What was it your chemistry grad-student-teacher said about your homework? Wasn’t it how it was so much more fun to grade because of the (copyrighted-by-my-daughter) King Monkey cartoons explaining your work? Mummy got that right, didn’t she, dear?

The boys don’t read me, so it’s no use yelling for them.

I’m assuming, sir, that we are at an impasse as I can see your experiences-with-homeschoolers-in-college, and raise you two grads-with-honors, and one doctor. Our publicly-schooled son also graduated with honors, so either I did as well as the public school teachers, or they did as well as I.

• There is one thing I have seen from homeschool students in the college setting that does not bespeak of narcissism–the penchant for some to want to show up to class in their pajamas–so careless are they with their appearance.

Guilty as charged, she sez as she sits blogging in her pajamas. (t-shirt that says “Front” and “Bach” — with appropriate image –, orange, pink and green-striped britches from WalMart, and black-patent leather Birkenstock sandals) I’m formal today.

Working in pajamas, by the way, is ecologically sound. If there is no need to dirty a second set of clothing there is a decreased need for laundering (which, to my credit, I’m doing concurrently with blogging) and that saves on the Seventh Generation laundry detergent, the wear and tear on the machines, and provides a decrease in the use of electricity and water. If the ‘good clothes’ do not wear out as fast, they don’t need to be replaced as often, and, as mentioned in … Zoolander, was it?? where the reporter is chastised for asking questions-of-little-substance and then goes for the jugular, …. the textile industry is a source of significant environmental pollution.

• And I should add that my experience is anecdotal–that is I should state that the 3 vices above are not generalizable.

Ditto on my replies.

Now to return to the current post:

However, many parents do share resources and some in my example found that wanting. THAT was the motive for some to start a private school. Where’s the illogic in that account?

In itself, that is not illogical, but your argument drifts away from homeschooling and into alt.ed. This is the source of a lot of online discussion where ‘ideas from all over’ butt into each other: where does homeschooling stop and ‘something else’ begin?

Again, is it really that difficult to understand that some people try homeschool, and find it is not for them in one way or another? And then, resolve not to put their kids into public school, but put them into a private school. Sounds reasonable to me and other homeschool supporters who responded to the original post.

Founding a private school isn’t at all unreasonable, but it isn’t about homeschooling. It is about the personalities and needs of people who decided that homeschooling, with its inherent independence, didn’t fit them. This lack-of-fit isn’t a failing of homeschooling any more than not having a bat with which to hit the ball is a failing of football.

You are ascribing the founding of a school to a failure of homeschooling to meet the needs of these people who apparently ‘aren’t homeschoolers’ — which isn’t to blame them. I am not a rock-climber, or an airplane-flyer, or a person who enjoys buildings of over … say … 4-stories in height, so is this a failure of rock-climbing, flying, or skyscrapers? No. They haven’t failed. What’s more, I haven’t failed. I am just an ocean-swimmer, train-rider and ranch-house-liver, which leaves more room on the cliffs, in the airport waiting lines and in penthouses. Win-win, we’re all happy.

The school in Raleigh was founded because that is the framework these people needed. Founding a school is fine, maybe even wonderful. But you don’t have to blame homeschooling because independent home education didn’t meet their needs.

And that is where the illogic comes in: one thing doesn’t have anything to do with the other in the context you gave it: ie, the founding of a school by people who are ‘not homeschoolers’ (at their core — it’s just ‘not them’), because of homeschoolers whom you find to be insecure, narcissistic, and slovenly.

The blogger also does not mention the many positive statements I made about homeschooling (which I support–mine was not an attack on homeschooling).

Uh-huh.

Homeschooling is a viable and worthy alternative, but we ought to be aware of some of the natural(?) and potential pitfalls of such an endeavor. With the continued failure of many K-12 public schools, homeschooling should be considered. However, to avoid some of these pitfalls, it might be worthwhile to check out the private arena.

I think that’s called ‘damning with faint praise.’

posted by Valerie

So suggests Peter Cookson Jr., dean of the Graduate School of Education and Counseling at Lewis & Clark College. He wrote up a introspective piece that you would hope to see from an educator called: If our high schools were like Google . . . . in The Oregonian, March 5, 2007. Mr. Cookson went on to consider the 10 things that Google uses as its guide, as compared to schools; high schools, in this case.

Our home isn’t like Google in the quest to know, except for our many good books and other resources that include the great outdoors. We use Google every day, along with a lot of other potential answer givers. This article is listed under the category of Education Reform in the publication, but the learning or curiosity search has been going on for centuries (or make that thousands of years). And that was with and without Google or the internet or compulsory attendance laws.
So this philosophy can also be compared to homeschooling. As pointed out in the article with the very successful Google strategy and this educational dream venture, one should “focus on the user and all else will follow”. (But the users in our case are our children.) And all I can compare it to is our Ryan homeschooling family life, as we all do it differently. So goes the beauty of homeschooling.

The one constant that holds true that Dean Cookson, Google and we have discovered is that “There’s always more information out there (knowledge is infinite, while textbooks and worksheets are finite)“. So true and yes, our life is most definitely not boring. We’ve developed a love of learning, little acting out and plenty of joy in the richness of a boundless world of experiences.

Posted by Susan Ryan

The Herald, Glasgow, Scotland, 15 February 2007, Home education hampered by tension with councils

Children are being damaged by tensions between Scottish local authorities and parents who want to educate their children at home, according to a new report.

A study by Scotland’s consumer watchdog found some councils intruded into families’ lives, once they had removed children from school, with unannounced visits.

…

Current estimates suggest that just in excess of 700 children in Scotland are educated at home with rural areas like Argyll and Bute, Highland and Perth and Kinross having the highest numbers. Bullying remains the most common reason for parents removing children from school.

posted by Valerie

Lake Oswego Review, Lake Oswego, Oregon, 18 January 2007, There are reasons for home-schooling

I understand the district’s plight. Enrollment in the district is declining, and the home-schooling movement is gaining momentum. But there is not a carrot that you could dangle in front of me that would entice me to enroll my child in Lake Oswego schools, as long as I believe she is best educated at home. This is not because I think negatively of the institutions, but because I have carefully considered the particular needs of my child as an individual, and find home-schooling to be the most effective way to meet her unique needs.

Coshocton Tribune, Coshocton, Ohio, 21 January 2007, From public school to homeschool, some students prefer homeschooling

Mildred Mozena sits in the rocking chair in the living room watching her daughter-in-law go over spelling lessons with her two young children.

She watches admiringly, and as a retired elementary school teacher, steps in when Valerie needs guidance while homeschooling Samantha, 6, and Tommy, 5.

“I admire her for doing it. It would be easier to just send them off all day and say it’s somebody else’s responsibility to teach them, but she doesn’t,” Mildred said.

Coshocton Tribune, Coshocton, Ohio, 24 January 2007, Families homeschool for a variety of reasons

(different article about same family as above)

Liberty Papers (blog), Elk Grove, California, 24 January 2007, Another Reason to Homeschool

Why? Because if you miss a parent-teacher conference, you’re guilty of a misdemeanor:

Texas Legislature

H.B. No. 557

SECTION 1. Chapter 26, Education Code, is amended by adding Section 26.014 to read as follows: Sec. 26.014.

FAILURE TO ATTEND PARENT-TEACHER CONFERENCE.
(a) A parent of a student commits an offense if:
(2) the parent:
(A) fails to respond to the notice; or
(B) schedules a parent-teacher conference on one of the dates proposed in the notice or on an alternative date agreed to by the parent and teacher and fails to:
(i) attend the scheduled conference; or
(ii) before the scheduled conference, notify the teacher or an administrator of the campus to which the teacher is assigned that the parent will be unable to attend the conference; …

At the moment, the only information on the above bill is:

Version: Introduced, House Committee Report, Engrossed, Senate Committee Report, Enrolled Document: Bill, Fiscal Note, Bill Analysis, Amendment

posted by Valerie

I caught Tim’s HE&OS link to an H.E. site in the U.K., What Took Labour So Long?, and saw Mary’s post, News from Scottlands Schoolhouse Home Education Association. Then, while scrolling through my backlog of emails from the Google alert service, I spied a report from the U.K.

Looks like home ed is popping up all over.

Somerset Mercury, Weston-super-Mare, U.K., 2 February 2007, Dispute over county’s home taught figures

THERE could be up to 3,000 children in Somerset being taught at home as a result of bullying or unsatisfactory schools, it has been claimed.

…

Additional resources for home schooling are expected to be made available in April. This should allow parents to improve the education they provide and the council hopes it will address the equality of educational opportunities.

The powers-that-be across the Pond seem to be emulating some of their provincial cousins and worrying about what everyone else is doing, but neglecting some of their own responsibilities.

Wasn’t that one of those things that teachers used to discourage? Minding other people’s business? Guess that’s another lesson that didn’t take.

posted by Valerie

This article is from an unusual source, EnergyBulletin.net. The site’s focus is the peak (and the downhill slide afterwards) of the global oil supply. The article’s author Richard Embleton has written other articles about education, and those articles are at his blog, Oil, Be Seeing You.

Energy Bulletin, 29 January 2007, Give me a child until… (italics in original)

Richard Embleton’s essay below makes the strong case for viewing the school system as a form of forced indoctrination. I’ve made a few notes following it about existing alternative models. -AF

…

If we are ever to gain serious momentum toward ending our suicidal destruction of this planet – our home planet, the only one in the universe we know to support life – we must start with our children. We must stop allowing them to be essentially brainwashed into supporting the societal norms that are responsible for our race to self-destruction. We must also reach our leaders and do what we can to get them to look ahead and realize that the bridge is out and get them to start leading in a different direction. Is either likely to happen? Not likely, but we must keep trying. I think the long-term of our species is worth the effort. For a more detailed review of the debate over the government and corporate indoctrination taking place in our public schools follow the links below.
————————————————————
1) Science a la Joe Camel – By Laurie David
2) Software business profits from influence, good timing
3) influencing future decision makers by Dr Sharon Beder
4) Echoes of corporate influence
5) How Business Gained Influence over Chicago Public Schools
6) The Religious Policeman
7) PUBLIC SCHOOLS: ENFORCED SOCIAL CONVERSION & PARENTAL DENIAL 8) Fifth Annual Report on Commercialism in Schools / The Corporate Branding of Our Schools
9) New Education Initiative: Public Education as Transnational Corporate Welfare
10) United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (January 2005 December 2014)
11) Education for Sustainable Tyranny: The United Nations Plan for Our Children
12) Smaller Learning Communities: Preparing Workers for a State Planned Economy
13) Government Can’t Run Schools Like Businesses
14) American Indoctrination — The harsh reality of public school
15) Are Lady Liberty’s Books for Education or Indoctrination?
16) The Central Fallacy of Public Schooling By Daniel Hager
17) Nightmare Awaits Under Globalization – effects on public school system in Canada
18) High School Indoctrination
19) Indoctrination and filtering
20) Political indoctrination seeping into private schools
21) Political indoctrination in the curriculum during four periods of elementary school education in Taiwan.
22) FIRE Has Never Been ‘Sheepish’ on the Danger of Confusing Free Speech with Indoctrination
23) The Road to Democracy Starts at the Schoolhouse Door; Teaching our Children Beyond the “Three Rs”
24) Brainwashing and Thought Control in Scientology — The Road to Rondroid
25) Throw Out Your TV- Mass Mind Control
26) Public Schools Warned: Requiring Ritalin Is Unlawful
27) How Public Schools Coerce Parents Into Giving Mind-Altering Drugs To Their Children
28) 18 Ways Public Schools Can Hurt Children and Parents
29) Just Say Yes to Ritalin!
30) Nature vs. Nurture: Are We Really Born That Way?
31) Freedom: Transcending Enculturation and Choosing for Ourselves
32) Avatar and the Restoration of Free will
33) IS MANIPULATION REAL?
34) Propaganda
35) Pulling kids out of government schools
36) Central High School
37) Education or Indoctrination?
38) Bill Gates and the Corporatization of American”Public” Schools
39) Schools With a Slant
40) A Citizens Guide to Adopting Commercial-Free School Board Policies In Your Community
41) Curbing the Commercialization of Public Space
42) Naming Rights Sold — This Time, at High School Field

…

Alternatives

One of the positive things to come from this is the realisation that learning isn’t a chore in the way many of us have come to think of it, nor are the we and the people around us so inherently stupid as we might think! While changes, as Richard point out, would be effective at the national levels, it’s at the local level where the problem doesn’t seem so overwhelming. Homeschooling, Montessori, or Waldorf methods offer alternatives.

posted by Valerie

The Tennesseean, Nashville, Tennessee, 31 January 2007, Unworking dreamy but unworkable

Unschooling, in case you haven’t heard of it, is a trendy education technique used by a handful of home school parents. They let their kids decide what they want to learn and when they want to learn it. If the kid shows no interest in reading until they’re 9 or 10, fine, say the unschool advocates. If today the kid wants to make Valentines instead of memorizing the solution to three times seven, well that’s perfectly acceptable.

In other words, they’re training children to believe they can do anything they want, whenever they want. … And when they grow up (will they ever grow up?), would you want an unschooler assigned to your project team? I think not. Thus, for the sake of equality and fairness, I give you unworking.

…

Steve Jones is chief operating officer of the X-Treme Sports Group in Nashville, … Teamwork, he said, is “everything.” And there’s no room for former unschoolers who want to unwork on a given day.

“If we get a weak link, we have a problem,” Jones said. “My gut reaction would be to say, ‘Does that mean you want to unemploy?’ “

I’ve heard comments like this before, but in connection with the freedom associated with homeschooling: “My kids have to [insert disliked activity at school], so I don’t see why your kids don’t have to do it, too.” Those who want everyone to follow the same path they do, or did, don’t get it.

Unschooling (to me) is not about being lazy, it’s about following your passion. When we’re working at what we want to work at, we often work at it longer and harder than we would do about something we didn’t care as much about. I’m reminded of an excerpt from Free At Last, a book about the Sudbury Valley School that was first published in 1987.

In this part of the book, a group of children want to learn arithmetic, and the adult tries to talk them out of it by saying that they aren’t the ones who want them to learn the arithmetic; the various ‘pressure groups’ around them want them to. The children disagree, and they and the teacher strike a bargain (as was usual at Sudbury).

And ‘Rithmetic

They were high, all of them. Sailing along, mastering all the techniques and algorithms, they could feel the material entering their bones. Hundreds and hundreds of exercises, class quizzes, oral tests, pounded the material into their heads.

Still they continued to come, all of them. They helped each other when they had to, to keep the class moving. The twelve year olds and the nine year olds, the lions and the lambs, sat peacefully together in harmonious cooperation — no teasing, no shame.

Division — long division. Fractions. Decimals. Percentages. Square roots.

They came at 11:00 sharp, stayed half an hour, and left with homework. They came back next time with all the homework done. All of them.

In twenty weeks, after twenty contact hours, they had covered it all. Six years’ worth. Every one of them knew the material cold.

Unschooling’s not about doping off, it’s about finding where you want to go, and going there.

posted by Valerie — who has been unworking all morning

It would seem that the Camden, New Jersey school system has a lot of problems, and that enough parents are withdrawing their children from school to attract attention, an action the headline seems to support. An organization mentioned in the news article, E3, meaning “Excellent Education for Everyone,” has a blog with a running roster of other news articles concerning the the school systems in New Jersey.

Cherry Hill Courier Post, Cherry Hill, New Jersey, 25 January 2007, Home-school program can aid Camden pupils

Camden parents concerned the quality of education offered in the public schools certainly have a right to home school their children.

The balance of the article, though, consists mainly of one but after another all but warning against homeschooling. In fact, the article begins with just that …

But parents must legally withdraw their children

… and continues on …

Bart Leff, spokesman for the Camden public schools, said many parents failed to follow legal procedures for withdrawing their children.

…

But home schooling is only as good as the curriculum offered. Its success will depend on whether the home-schooling program, launched with the support of the school voucher advocacy group Excellent Education for Everyone, can do a better job of educating the students.

If Alvarado wants her daughter to attend college, it would be easier if the child is prepared to pass the state’s high school proficiency test.

…

Home schooling shouldn’t be just a protest about the quality of public education in Camden. It must ensure that students receive a good education.

An school system is a dangerous place for students to be, but it’s the parents’ decision to homeschool that’s going to keep the kids from getting into college, plus some parents are being prosecuted by these same schools for not withdrawing the children correctly?

After glancing at the articles at the E3 blog, and assuming the truth of incidents such as those mentioned in The Camden Public Schools: A Failure of Management (names from the report that were searched for produced relevant results), it’s curious why the newspaper is so backhanded about the parents’ decisions to homeschool.

In contrast to “Fisk, Fisk, Fisk” below, this article (hat tip to Daryl) is written with an eye toward a positive — and from a homeschooling perspective, more accurate — view of homeschooling.

The Pilot, Vass, North Carolina, 13 January 2006, Home-Schooling On Rise in County

“I tell new home-schooling parents, if you can potty train a child, I’m convinced you can home-school into high school,” says Shelly Johnson, a home-schooling mom. “It’s an extension of what you’ve already been doing. You’ve already been educating them since birth.”

posted by Valerie