George Bush's secret army (Why Democrats Hate, and Fear, Home Schooled Kids)

Economist ^ | March 17th 2004 | Economist

[gobucks]

A revolution is happening in American education. As it grows in size, it should frighten teachers everywhere.

Just how bad are American schools? And how deeply do conservative Americans distrust their government? One answer to both these questions is provided by the growth of home-schooling. As many as 2m American students—one in 25—may now be being taught at home.

The growth of home-schooling is all the more remarkable when you consider two facts. The first is the commitment of the parents. They give up not just a free public education, but also often the chance of a second income as well, because one parent (usually the mother) has to stay at home to educate the children.

The Department of Education highlights the results of its survey: “Homeschooling in the United States: 1999”. See also the Home School Legal Defense Association.

The next is that the practice challenges most of the assumptions behind public education. For most of the past 150 years, compulsory mass education has been the hallmark of a civilised society. Sociologists such as Max Weber have hailed the state's domination of education as a natural corollary of “modernisation”. Yet in the most advanced country on the planet (on many measures), more than 2m parents insist that education ought to be the work of the family. How has this come about?

Faith's imperatives

The 2m figure comes from the Home School Legal Defence Association. The most recent (1999) survey by the Department of Education put the number at only 850,000. The chances are that the HSLDA is closer to the truth. Rod Paige, the education secretary, uses its figure in his speeches, and, although home-schoolers tend to refuse to answer government surveys, a wealth of anecdotal evidence suggests that home-schooling is on the rise.

The market for teaching materials and supplies for home-schoolers is worth at least $850m a year. More than three-quarters of universities now have policies for dealing with home-schooled children. Support networks have sprung up in hundreds of towns and cities across the country to allow parents to do everything from establishing science labs to forming sports teams and defending their rights and reputation. When J.C. Penney started selling a T-shirt in 2001 that featured “Home Skooled” with a picture of a trailer home, the store faced so many complaints that it withdrew the item from sale.

Home-schooling is a fairly recent phenomenon. When Ronald Reagan came to power, in 1981, it was illegal for parents to teach their own children in most states. Today it is a legal right in all 50 states. Twenty-eight states require home-schooled children to undergo some kind of official evaluation, either by taking standardised tests or submitting a portfolio of work. Thirteen states simply require parents to inform officials that they are going to teach their children at home. In Texas, a parent doesn't have to tell anyone anything.

The main reason why legal restrictions on home-schooling have been swept away across so much of America is the power of the Christian right. Not all home-schoolers, of course, are religious conservatives. One of the first advocates of home-schooling, John Holt, was a left-winger who regarded schools as instruments of the bureaucratic-industrial complex. A lively subdivision of the home-school movement, called “unschooling”, argues that children should more or less be left to educate themselves. And the number of black home-schoolers is growing rapidly.

Yet the Praetorian Guard of the home-schooling movement are social conservatives. They turned to home-schooling in the 1970s in response to what they saw as the school system's lurch to the secular left—and they still provide most of the movement's political muscle on Capitol Hill. Senator Rick Santorum home-schools his children—or, rather, his wife does. Another Republican home-schooler, Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave, sponsored a bill to clear up various legal confusions about grants and scholarships for home-schooled children.

George Bush has tried hard to keep home-schoolers on his side. During the 2000 campaign, he said: “In Texas we view home-schooling as something to be respected and something to be protected. Respected for the energy and commitment of loving mothers and loving fathers. Protected from the interference of government.” As president, he has held several receptions for home-schooled children in the White House.

Just as the teachers' unions provide so many of the Democrats' volunteers, home-schoolers are important Republican foot-soldiers. According to the HSLDA, 76% of home-schooled young people aged 18-24 vote in elections, compared with 29% in that age group in the general population. Home-schoolers are also significantly more likely to contribute to political campaigns and to work for candidates—normally Republican ones.

An education that works

So there is certainly an ideological edge to many home-schoolers. But do not be misled. First, this is a bottom-up movement with parents of whatever political stripe making individual decisions to withdraw their children (rather than following orders from higher up). Second, the movement has a utilitarian edge. Home-schoolers simply believe that they can offer their children better education at home.

One-to-one tuition, goes the argument, enables children to go at their own pace, rather than at a pace set for the convenience of teaching unions. And children can be taught “proper” subjects based on the Judeo-Christian tradition of learning, rather than politically correct flimflam. Some home-schoolers favour the classical notion of the trivium, with its three stages of grammar, dialectic and rhetoric (which requires children to learn Greek and Latin).

This sounds backward-looking, but home-schoolers claim that technology is on their side. The internet is making it ever easier to teach people at home, ever more teaching materials are available, and virtual communities now exist that allow home-schoolers to swap information.

The other factor working in home-schooling's favour is its own success. Many parents have been nervous about home-schooled children being isolated. With almost every town in America now boasting its own home-schooling network, that worry declines. Home-schooled children can play baseball with other home-schooled children; they can go on school trips; and so on.

What about academic standards? The home-schooling network buzzes with good news: a family with three home-schooled children at Harvard; a home-schooler with a bestselling novel; first, second and third place in the 2000 National Spelling Bee; a first university for home-schooled children (see article). Systematic evidence is more difficult to find.

There are certainly signs that home-schoolers are thriving. One recent survey by the HSLDA showed that three-quarters of home-educated adults aged 18-24 have taken college-level courses compared with 46% of the general population. But this is hardly conclusive. Home-schoolers do not have to report bad results. Moreover, home-schoolers may simply come from the more educated part of the population.

Yet these arguments point to change in the way the debate is unfolding. It is no longer about whether home-schooled children are losing out, but whether they are doing unfairly well. “Maybe we should subcontract all of public education to home-schoolers,” Bill Bennett, Mr Reagan's education secretary, once wondered mischievously. That looks unlikely. But America's home-schoolers represent an assault on public education that teachers everywhere should pay attention to.

[kittymyrib]

Cut up your credit cards, cook meals at home, entertain yourself and your children with family activities that require time instead of money and you will find you really don't have to have two incomes, one of which usually goes to the government in taxes anyway.

[blackdog]

Homeschooled kids have won the national spelling bee each time in the past six or so years. The defense talking points issued by the NEA include that it's unbalanced children winning it. They study six hours a day on spelling and vocabulary in preparation for it. Thus an unfair standard is presented to the public school kids, since they are so "balanced".

[Stew Padasso]

You'll find homeschool critics right here on FR.

[petitfour]

We took one of our children out of public schools last year when he was hitting a brick wall in his classroom. He was so frustrated. His teacher was so frustrated with him. She knew he was capable of doing the work because "his sisters are both gifted." (aint that some logic?) When my husband heard her say that in front of our son, he was so angry. We are homeschooling now. It has been a roller-coaster ride because he is so easily distracted. I could imagine what he was like in a room full of other easily distracted children. What a nightmare! Anywho, recently a FReeper recommended a book for those of us who have ADD children. It's called Right-brained Children in a Left-brained World. It is amazing how a different approach can change a child's entire attitude about learning. Homeschooling is ideal for children such as our son.

[gobucks]

My favorite winner, I'll never forget this, was a home schooled girl from NY:

1997 Rebecca Sealfon, Daily News, New York, New York euonym - a name well-suited to the person, place or thing named

The girl you refer to , i think, is:
1991 Joanne Lagatta, The Wisconsin State Journal, Madison, Wisconsin antipyretic - an agent that reduces fever


Ha!! Home Schoolers, an euonymic phrase if there ever was one, are antipyretically fighting the fire storm of public re-edukation kamps that the USA has suffered for the last almost 100 years!

[Tax-chick]

I'm surprised nobody else caught this:

And the number of black home-schoolers is growing rapidly. Yet the Praetorian Guard of the home-schooling movement are social conservatives.

Interesting how he contrasts blacks with "social conservatives," even though most polls of blacks show them to be just as conservative on social issues as those scary white Christians.

And I wonder why the media always mention Texas as the paragon of homeschooling freedom, when it's OKLAHOMA that has parental control over education written into the State constitution, for the express purpose of protecting the right to home school.

[netmilsmom]

>>Tonto's update: Jr. just got his Brown Belt, we're almost done with the multiplication tables, and he's fallen in love with the Boxcar Children series that I loved to read as a boy. Piano is going well, although he grumbles about practicing (I don't care if he practices, so long as he's paying for the lesson that week out of his birthday money... if I'm paying, then he practices). We're going as a family to our first homeschool conference later in the spring.<<

Wow!!!!!!

We are doing the "Comprenhensive Curriculm" and "Work at Home" workbooks this year, but next year we are going to "Switched On Schoolroom" from Alpha Omega. It's 300.00 but it's not consumable so we will be spending that for both girls per year. It starts in 3rd grade so we have to get the little one there before it becomes cost efficient.
I was told by one of the Homeschool groups to slow down because my older one will be ready for college at 10. LOL!

Dad gets Saturdays for fun or library time. I think he likes it, but he goes back and forth between pushing them or pushing them too hard! Mostly, I just do what I need to do and show him the results. It works out better that way.
Thank you for the help you gave. I just love this!

[twigs]

This was a number of years ago (over 10) and they did not have the support of their friends and families. I have lost touch with them, but I hope that things got better.

[blanknoone]

The thing that strikes me about this was the headline. This army isn't loyal to George Bush, it is dedicated to properly limited government. It will remain a force long after G.W.B. leaves the political stage.

[WorkingClassFilth]

Bump!

[netmilsmom]

I was told the same thing in MI. The homeschool groups corrected me.
I still keep all my daughter's work in a box. If there are any problems, I would be surprised.

[blackdog]

That's precisely what happenned to my daughter too. As part of her application process to test into private school after homeschooling, we met with the admissions person who instead asked my daughter alone out to have lunch.

They came back from lunch gabbing away about geometry, balancing equasions, chatting in spanish, seventeenth and eighteenth century artists, classical music, and so on.....

She has complete cirriculum access to every grade level class.

Public schools cannot bend and flex for anyone. Too busy being "fair" I guess?

[gobucks]

"Maybe it should frighten teachers' unions more interested in turf than in teaching."

I agree it was a relatively weak statment in an otherwise bold article. Your suggestion is better. Were you home schooled?

[gobucks]

I've already met some.

[netmilsmom]

Good to see you here!!

I wish the GS could be as good as the Boy Scouts. 4H is working out fine but I may have my hubby lead a girls "Boy Scout" troop for my own kiddies!

[netmilsmom]

My pleasure!

We are blessed with children, why not live it up??

[gobucks]

Hey. I, a Texas lover, native by choice, wished it were so by birth have one thing to say: I love OKLAHOMA! Wasn't Texas a big county in the south of Oklahoma before it broke away??

[netmilsmom]

Yesterday I read the transcripts of the Air Traffic Control tower in Cleveland as Flight 93 went by. I was in tears.

The transcripts from the Port Authority phones, when one of the wives calls in to say that she had gotten a call from her hubby in the stairwell of one of the towers, was horrible. She called a few times and the officer kept trying to assure her. It was heartwrenching.

[Old Sarge]

Once a week I take Johnny to the bathroom and shred his homework and steal his lunch money after beating him up. He's not missing a thing!

I LOVE IT!! Nothing like realistic training!

How can we improve on the experience, lessee... you could pass out condoms, give the kids laptops that are homepaged to "whitehouse.com", and in the Teacher's Lounge (your den), you could hang a portrait of William the Impeached, adorned with votive candles and fresh flowers every morning.

[mlmr]

You are right, homeschool children do not vote. But politicians everywhere should be respectful of a group of people who can turn a political campaign into a homeschool project. Local politicians in Maine found that out a few years ago. Nationally homeschoolers took down some difficult legislation that was going to cripple homeschooling by federal law. And they did it in a few days. Never underestimate the power of the family.