Posted on 03/30/2020 7:59:31 AM PDT by Kaslin
Kevin Huffman, a former education commissioner of Tennessee and partner at a nonprofit which promotes public schools, has written an op-ed in The Washington Post bashing homeschooling. In “Homeschooling During the Coronavirus Will Set Back a Generation of Children,” he claims that the children sent home due to the coronavirus causing school closures are going to suffer academically.
But he isn’t even talking about real homeschooling. He is referring to distance learning, where the kids are taught online by their teachers. He cites a report which found that “Full-time virtual schools are not a good fit for many children.” Unlike homeschooling, in distance learning parents don’t get to pick the curriculum for their children. So their kids may get stuck with teaching that’s not conducive to learning at home with parental assistance. That study may be accurate for distance learning, and even then it’s questionable since thousands of people successfully get online degrees every year.
Then Huffman launches into a tirade about how summer break hurts learning, since students fall backward from where they were at the end of the school year. But again, this has nothing to do with homeschooling. He’s trying to make the outrageous claim that the two are equivalents, saying homeschooling puts children behind academically just like summer breaks.
If this was true, why do homeschoolers perform better academically than their peers in public schools? It’s true that some parents don’t do a good job of homeschooling their kids. But since homeschooled kids on average do better than public school kids, it’s unfair to lump all homeschooled kids in with the ones whose parents aren’t doing a very good job. We don’t lump all public school educated kids in with the worst performing ones.
Huffman points out that some families don’t have computers or internet access, so their children will have a hard time learning from home. Again, this is not representative of homeschooling. Parents lacking in the resources to homeschool aren’t likely to homeschool. Forcing parents to accommodate their children learning virtually from their teachers is not homeschooling.
Similarly, Huffman says the lowest income children are less likely to have a parent at home to help with the virtual learning because the parents are less likely to work from home — so those kids are going to do the worst. Another strawman argument. Parents aren’t going to homeschool if they are unable to stay at home to homeschool!
Huffman goes on and on about all the remedial action that will be necessary in order to make up for the poor learning experience children will have at home during the pandemic. He makes it sound like a terrible disaster, one that is unfairly discriminating against minority children. So now homeschooling is racist too.
The truth is that if certain students were performing poorly in the public schools, they’re probably going to perform poorly at home with distance learning too. Fortunately, the kids are probably only going to be at home for two months. The article went into hysterics over what will amount to a hiccup.
This could end up being a positive experience, despite Huffman’s bias toward public schools. Some parents may discover that they want to look into real homeschooling. Both parents and children may find they enjoy spending extra time with each other.
This could present a great opportunity to educate people about homeschooling and refute the stereotypes. For example, there is a stigma that homeschoolers are socially awkward since they aren’t around their peers all day. It’s not true. Homeschoolers do better than public school kids when it comes to social, emotional, and psychological development. They participate in a lot of group activities with other homeschoolers. They get interaction with others participating on field trips, scouting, 4-H, political drives, church ministry, sports teams, and community volunteer work.
Huffman’s article is nothing more than taking the most distorted, untrue view of homeschooling and saying since there are flaws, homeschooling is bad. Yeah, trying to force distance learning on students whose parents are unable to accommodate it doesn’t work perfectly.
Since the article doesn’t even address real homeschooling, one has to wonder if Huffman’s editors at WaPo changed his title to attract attention through outrage.
Indoctrination on hold?
Gots ta keep dem keeds in fron of a union RAT teacher to prevent dee exposure of the miserable public skool seesdems!
As if education professionals know what the hell works or not.
We know for a FACT that what they have been doing for the last 40 years has destroyed education in America.
Bureaucratic-Left states like NY, IL, NJ are absolutely screwed. Revenue is going to crash, but education, welfare and medical bureaucracy expenses and pensions keep rising.
Now during this shut-down, teachers and schools are “non-essential” and many people are finding that sending kids to the local public school for 7-8 hours a day isn’t absolutely necessary.
They will fight very hard to keep their gravy-train going.
I’ve been playing teacher for 2 kids for the first time in my life. I’m absolutely floored at how little work they are actually doing in class during the day.
I’m talking 3 dittos and read this pamphlet for a young one. 1 hour of actual work across 5 subjects for a 1st grader. This is private school as well.
I’ve decided it’s not enough and put our iPads to good use with Khan Academy for a kindergarten and the 1st grader has taken to finding out about all 45 Presidents and why China and communists are evil. I did nothing to encourage either interest. She’s just in disbelief that a government would let their people get sick and make schools close around the world by not making people stay home.
It’s funny how kids connect things like that; we’re all home, they can’t play with their friends and they think communism is now evil because they lied and made everyone sick.
Chris Plante got a caller last week who was spending time with his sixth grade daughter because of the lockdown. The caller discovered that she didn’t know the multiplication tables, but they had gotten up to 7s and 8s that week.
Imagine getting into junior high without knowing that.
An increase in home schooling would be a real crises to these bastards.
One of the good things that can come out of this pandemic is the realization by many that they CAN educate their children at home...no, it doesn’t work for everyone, but the freedom to do so should be cherished and embraced by as many that have the patience and wherewithal to do so...full disclosure we home schooled our six children from K-12 and all are college graduates, in college, and successfully/gainfully employed or stay at home parents beginning to home school their children.
It simply is not possible for any pile of rocks, any doorknob, any brick, or piece of driftwood, to be any more dumb, than the mainstream press or media.
I don’t know. Have you seen some of the Dems in the house? They are pretty dumb. I know it is hard to beat the press but I think they pull it off just barely.
I have to wonder what the WaPo staff attributes their own academically challenged minds to then?
It’s looking like a more and more positive thing than the crap public schools. When my sons were in school, the elementary & high school they went to was a 5 star school system in Indiana. NOW, the last graduated in 2008 it has SUNK to a C rated school system. Between a totally new inept Superintendent and Common Core- they both have about destroyed it. Several excellent teachers retired due to the Super and they were fed up with the system.
I think that’s one of things about homeschooling that doesn’t get talked about enough. In the government schools, a lot of time is wasted — attendance, changing classrooms, getting settled multiple times, announcements, recess, gym, lots of other stuff, including behavior problems.
If you homeschool, and focus on the actual schoolwork, it can be done in much less time. Then the family can do “non-school” activates — like gardening, cooking, museums, nature hikes, etc. More education but disguised as fun.
Government schools are just a bad idea.
My son and I are working on vocabulary drills and decling/conjugating to keep him from failing 4th form Latin. They are very strict on their Latin requirement. He is improving greatly.
He doesn’t want the children to miss out on the Leftist indoctrination of public schools.
Funny they sent my daughter home from college and now her GPA is going up. She was home schooled and is ending her 4th year now. She should have her two degrees in the fall at age 21. One in microbiology and the other in Biochemistry.
Sounds like you taught them well. When I was in 1st grade the Iron Curtain was starting to fall.
The Wapo author makes an unintended point about “summer vacation” setting kids back. Unlike union layabouts, actual homeschoolers don’t necessarily take a summer break from educating their kids. Why would they?
No doubt many “parents” of public schoolchildren no consigned to “virtual teaching” (or less in some areas), lack the ability to do right by their offspring. What else is new?
The idea that two months off of school will ruin a generation is incredibly short sighted and brimming with kool-aid.
We homeschooled year round. Children graduated high school at 14 and started college at 16. I am convinced children love to learn but something in the public school design shuts down that desire in most.
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