Posted on 08/06/2006 3:22:26 PM PDT by RKBA Democrat
Socialization is no longer an “issue” for homeschoolers, according to some researchers on the long-running debate over public and independent schooling.
Susan McDowell, author of "But What About Socialization? Answering the Perpetual Home Schooling Question: A Review of the Literature,” has researched 24 studies on the socialization of homeschoolers, according to Bristol Herald Courier.
"It’s a non-issue today," said McDowell, who earned Ph.D. in educational leadership from Vanderbilt University. "All the research shows children are doing well."
On one occasion, she was challenged by one of her publishers to find evidence that homeschoolers were socially deficient compared to their publically educated counterparts.
However, she claims finding no one in the academic field with such view supported by research.
Other researchers, such as Larry Shyers, who holds Ph.D. in counseling, support McDowell’s findings. Shyers’ dissertation, "Comparison of Social Adjustment Between Home and Traditionally Schooled Children," won a national award in excellence in research from the Educational Research Information Clearinghouse in 1992.
His studies found that homeschooled children are not disadvantaged when it comes to socialization. He said that those taught at home were more likely to invite others to play with them, they were not as competitive but more cooperative, and they kept their noise levels lower. Homeschooled children also played with peers of both genders rather than with those of the same gender, he added.
Fourteen-year-old Kayla Freeman from Bristol, Tenn. says she knows more people than she did while in traditional school, and she has discovered better friends in the homeschool community.
“Most homeschooled kids I know are outgoing and friendly," Kayla said. "They are the truest friends I have."
Whether it is for religious, social, or educational reason, American parents are, albeit small in number, increasingly withdrawing their children out of public schools and instructing them at home, despite the criticisms laid out by homeschool critics.
The National Household Education Surveys Program (NHES) estimated that 1.1 Million students were homeschooled in the United States in 2003, an increase from 850,000 from the 1999 NHES data.
We had 2 groups enter our school last year--one was a family of hispanics, one was a family of Thai (I THINK they were Thai). All were given ESOL classes. By the end of the year can you guess which group were speaking English (not perfect by any means!) and able to converse simply. Yep, the Asian group.
Their family structure was unlike any I've seen. The parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles sat with their kids every night from 6:30 until 10:00 and everyone worked on HW or read or wrote in a diary. No exceptions--and no TV either.
"I view home schooling as an insanely risky experiment on the kids."
Apparently your history lessons were skipped in public school.
Here's a quick test: How long has the current compulsory educational system in the U.S. been around?
A) Since the dawn of man
B) Since the time when Jesus walked the earth
C) About 100 or so years (depending on which state you live in)
The current public school system is the experiment. Home school has a much longer history to it.
LOL now, that's bad! ;)
susie
Best response I heard was that to socialize their kids like the public schools they would jump their kid in the bathroom, beat him up, and take his money once a week.
I recall, back when I took child psychology a number of years ago, my prof told us that studies were suggesting that children actually learned better when in groups of other children of mixed ages, rather like in either a normal family setting or the old one room school house type setting. I can't remember any other details of the study, so take it for what it's worth.
susie
There are many ways to homeschool, not just the way you describe about your nieces and nephews. I've been homeschooling three kids (the oldest now a sophomore in college). They go to soccer, karate, 4-H club, girl scouts, etc, etc, besides hanging out with friends after school
School time, though, is for studying not socializing
Oh darn, I forgot about us fanatics! ;)
susie
That would be funny if it didnt' have the sting of truth to it. I'll remember to tell my brother and his wife as they are homeschooling their son. They'll get a kick out of that.
susie
Thank you. We appreciate the encouragement.
Asian, Indian, Eastern European (primarily Russian). NYC has a system of what is euphemistically called "Specialized High Schools." These are schools in which testing is mandatory for entrance and they only take the top 2 or 3 percent. Basically X-Treme Cherry Picking out of a study population of over a million. These kids are filling the specialized high schools.
Based on my personal experience as a 7th grade language teacher for 11 years, I can say the article is right. The social habits children learn at school are often more bad than good, largely because administrators are timid about discipline and parents know that the laws protect their kids, no matter how much they act like buttheads.
Several times, homeschooling parents have brought their kids in for standardized testing in my classroom. These are often the most polite and cooperative kids in the room. That's a big deal, considering these kids know I can't put them in detention or assign consequences otherwise.
Sounds like your nieces and nephews are the exception to the rule. What kinds of behaviors are you observing that concern you?
There's no wisdom on television, only slight variations on cliches wedged between the laugh track. Just enough to sell the required amount of soap and cars.
Sorry you dismiss the occasional brightness of the medium. Perhaps I crossed you on some other issue that makes you oppose me when encountered. Cool - I'm used to it...but never cowed. Later...
Misread, so sorry (certain dweebs were distracting). I stand by your efforts to insure your kids get the best education possible while instilling a sense of self-discipline.
I have nothing against you. Actually, you seem like a very nice person. However, I really do despise television.
Homeschooling has been a long journey of intellectual exploration for myself, trying to figure out what works from a bunch of competing sources. Over the last 10 years, we've accumulated several thousand books in this house (mostly on the cheap from flea markets and garage sales)
At the end of the journey, I've come to the conclusion that the classical educational model (the Trivium) works the best, and I'm trying to implement it.
The Trivium consists of three stages: Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric.
In the grammar stage, you're trying to get the kid to absorb facts and be able to correctly parse communication, so that she understands what the author is trying to say, and so she can communicate what she's really trying to say. The end-product of the grammar stage is the kid knowing things.
The second stage is Logic, where the kid learns how to evaluate data, spot fallacies and contradictions, and generally see if an argument is sound. The end-product is an ability to evaluate data and form an opinion
The final stage is Rhetoric, where the kid learns how communicate opinions in a persuasive and convincing way. The end-product is a kid who can intellectually stand her ground
"I view home schooling as an insanely risky experiment on the kids."
Apparently your history lessons were skipped in public school.
Here's a quick test: How long has the current compulsory educational system in the U.S. been around?
A) Since the dawn of man
B) Since the time when Jesus walked the earth
C) About 100 or so years (depending on which state you live in)
The current public school system is the experiment. Home school has a much longer history to it.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
For further details, see:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/historytour/history1.htm
and
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm
A review of this online book:
The Underground History of American Education: A Schoolteacher’s Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling
by John Taylor Gatto
The Oxford Village Press
Oxford, NY 2000/2001
Reviewed by David Harrison
“BIANCA, YOU ANIMAL, SHUT UP!” screamed an assistant principal at a six-year-old girl in front of a school assembly.
This quote from The Underground History of American Education is the visceral linchpin around which Mr. Gatto’s impressive narrative revolves, as he unfolds for us the complex development of what we now call “school.”
While History may appear to be the author’s focus, it is the fate of Bianca - and millions of compulsorily schooled children like her - that most concerns the author. He despises what he calls the “psychopathic” violence inflicted upon children by schools in this country. “Process kids like sardines,” he warns, “and don’t be surprised if they come out oily and dead.”
Don’t be fooled or discouraged by such bluntness. There is beauty, subtlety, complexity, and wisdom here, too. As you read through the introduction and start to absorb the gist of the author’s ideas, you quickly discover you are in the hands of a compassionate and skilled teacher. Mr. Gatto asks you to care. He warns you that it will not be easy. He freely states his biases and intentions. He asks you to trust him, to listen carefully, and then to draw your own conclusions.
I regret that this review can only briefly cover the many fascinating and important insights contained in what is one of the most frightening and revealing books I have ever read. As the title suggests, its main purpose is to reveal the little known details of the historical development of modern schooling.
Along the way, Mr. Gatto makes it increasingly clear that school’s primary goal is not the education of our children. The author builds his argument for this seemingly counter-intuitive claim with an incredible array of research that documents the interlocking development of big business and forced schooling. He painstakingly points out how the captains of industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries - when the basic structures of the education system were being set down - influenced, guided, funded, and at times forced compulsory schooling into the mainstream of American society. Perhaps you’ll recognize their names: Ford, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Morgan, to mention just a few.
Mr. Gatto argues that these emerging corporate titans knew they needed three things in order for their interests to thrive: 1) compliant employees; 2) a guaranteed and dependent population; and 3) a predictable business environment encompassed by a rigid, caste-like social hierarchy of haves and have-nots. It is toward these ends - and not education - that modern compulsory schooling was unleashed.
Mr. Gatto states that America at the time of the birth of modern schooling, however, was a place antithetical to the stated goals of big business. Business was largely conducted by individuals, on a small-scale, within the context of thriving villages or neighborhoods. Proprietors, employees, and customers shared their lives and fates, at least to some extent, with one another. There was no room for (nor inclination towards) the kind of manipulation and control imbedded in the intentions of big business outlined above.
The author places a strong emphasis in this equation on the individual, on the entrepreneur in control of himself and his livelihood. This is an important part of Mr. Gatto’s argument for why and how compulsory schooling was inflicted upon our society. By way of example, Mr. Gatto details the lives of archetypal Americans like Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Thomas Edison, who were independent, free-thinking leaders, none of whom spent more than two years in any kind of school, and yet all were leading productive, fulfilled lives by the time they were in their teens. Mr. Gatto argues that big business knew that the development of these kinds of individuals needed to be hindered. They were too unpredictable and insufficiently pliable.
What better way to accomplish this shadowy goal than by removing children from the steadying influences of their families, and placing them instead in the hands of schools, where they could be easily molded into the kinds of people upon whom big business depended. Just in case parents were unwilling to comply, the powers that be committed school attendance into law.
The phenomenon we now call school did not unfold in a vacuum, however, or as neatly as described above. There were many other social and ideological influences that fed and accelerated the process of mandatory state schooling. For example, enforced government schooling represented the solution to another emerging impediment to the formation of a corporate consumer economy - the arrival of waves of immigrants who likewise needed to be cured of their unpredictable natures and homogenized into American life.
In addition, popular ideologies of the time such as Social Darwinism and the race-based science of eugenics were busy claiming that certain people were inherently better than others, thus providing an intellectual underpinning for the intervention into the lives of everyone. Such an intrusion like forced schooling could be justified because it was believed that the best should wield power over the rest, and lead the the caste-bound masses to happiness under the enlightened and benevolent guidance of the elite.
In unwinding the complex intricacies of issues such as these, Mr. Gatto shows us the gift of his unique intellect. He is adept throughout at making complex, well-argued connections, all the while warning against indulging in conspiracy thinking. Instead he shows us with a forceful diplomacy and unbending fairness that the founders of forced schooling were operating on false assumptions and incorrect theories of humanity and society. These social falsehoods by which we still live, knowingly or not, need to be exposed rationally and attacked head-on, tactics that would only be undermined by the resignation-tinged claims of conspiracy.
No review of this book would be complete without paying tribute to the ways in which we get to know Mr. Gatto through our reading. He tells us the wonderful success stories of some of his students, revealing how easily, with a little help and compassion, young people can overcome the worst circumstances. He also details the horrible ways he was persecuted for his creativity and ingenuity by the schools in which he taught. Finally, in one of the most touching sections, called “A Personal Interlude,” Mr. Gatto relives his childhood with us. Here the author’s storyline and characters are worthy of a first-rate novel, the writing at times bordering on poetry.
All of this reinforces the authenticity and integrity of Mr. Gatto. He is a living example of what he desires for all of our children. He asks only that they be given the opportunity to live and think freely, to grow organically and unhindered, and to thrive as powerful and eclectic examples of insight, knowledge, creativity, and fulfillment - goals that our modern government schools are actively working against and making increasingly less attainable.
In closing, Mr. Gatto leaves us with simple and practical options for weakening the hold schools have on our lives. First, he insists that we refuse to accept the idea of school reform - no amount of tinkering will get us out of this mess. Charter schools, higher standards, rigorous demands on teachers, and smaller class size are all diversions aimed at keeping us from striking at the real heart of the problem. In the end, he argues, the notion of school itself must be challenged.
Second, he urges us to “break the hold of fear” and resist the assumption that school is a necessary component in our lives. It isn’t. You can simply elect not to send your kids to school and join million of other American families that are practicing education at home. Or you can seek out one of the many truly alternative schools that are now in existence.
Thus Mr. Gatto arms us with the knowledge and the confidence to fight back. He shows us how, by staying close to their families, by having the freedom to find their own proficiency and purpose through meaningful play, honest interactions, and self-chosen activities, our children can develop the power to discover for themselves all that they could ever possibly need in order to lead happy, successful lives.
JFL
Published in the November 23, 2001 issue of Journal for Living
Copyright © 2001 Journal for Living.
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