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Help for Home Schoolers
New Guides Make It Easier for
Parents to Take the Plunge
- The Homeschooling Revolution
By Isabel Lyman, Ph.D.
$11.95 (Canada, $13.95) which includes shipping and handling
(except for international orders).
- Make checks payable to:
Isabel Lyman
88 Harkness Road
Pelham, Massachusetts 01002
- The Complete Guide to Attending College:
How to Go to College and Still Obtain an Education
By Bruce C. Smith, Ph.D.
http://dreamscp.com/smithhand/college.html
By Paul
Moreno
April 2001
Isabel ("Izzy") Lyman home-schooled
her two sons and ran a private school in Amherst.
She has long been a home school advocate and has
written columns on home schooling in the Boston Herald, Investors
Business Daily, The Wall Street Journal and National Review.
Her new book answers many questions that parents
have asked her about home schooling, and draws on the experience
of many who have left public and private schools.
Some fled "whole language" reading
instruction. Others left because the "multiculturalist"
agenda was promoting racial and ethnic divisions. Some had their
children forced into special education classes. Others left
because the schools were anti-Christian, or just too dumbed-down
and boring for their children.
Whatever the source, all over the country tens
of thousands of parents have discovered that it is not necessary
to have a credentialed "professional" to teach a child
to read and write.
They have joined the home schooling
"revolution," which is really "a return to the way
education was before the days of common schools and compulsory
schooling laws."
These parents have often sacrificed lucrative
careers in order to give their children a better education. They
have done anything necessary to keep their children out of the
hands of "the professionals."
While the decision to home school does require a
major commitment, gone are the days when parents might be arrested
for refusing to send their children to public or private
schools-as Sam and Marquita Shippy of Idaho did in 1984.
Home schooling is now legal in every state,
although some states (like Texas) are more accommodating while
others (Massachusetts) are difficult.
Massachusetts recognized the right to home
school one's children in 1978, but Lyman notes that,
"Curriculum is subject to the approval of the local
superintendents, and submission of standardized test scores can be
required, as can periodic reports on the students' progress."
Until last year, home schooling families in Lynn
were required to have their homes evaluated by school officials.
Two Lynn families, the Brunelles and the Pustells, went to court
over the issue of home visits, and the Supreme Judicial Court of
Massachusetts ruled in their favor. For a long time Massachusetts
school authorities tried to exclude home schooled children from
participating in interscholastic athletics.
Parents who home school have the help of the
Home School Legal Defense Association in cases like these. In
December, the Association came to the defense of a Kentucky woman
who was jailed after refusing to send her daughter to public
school.
Lyman distinguishes between
"education" and "schooling." Real education,
she says, does not require a school at all. This is part of the
reason why she says that there is no real difference between
public and private schools.
"Note the similarities," she says,
"between public and private schools. One adult, typically a
woman, is expected to communicate information to a group of
unrelated, uninterested, and intellectually-varied students.
Sometimes there are more than 25 of these charges. The information
has been selected by adults other than the students' parents or
their teachers, as have the textbooks and the instructional
methods. All students in a school are subject to the same
predetermined academic standards, grading policies, and behavioral
guidelines.... Grade levels are determined primarily by age,
regardless of aptitude. Students are expected to arrive and depart
at the same time every day."
Besides the similarity of regimentation,
"The fact is that most private schools can't even exist
without conforming to an educational paradigm established and
regulated by public education bureaucrats." This should serve
as a warning to voucher advocates.
Not Just for Conservatives
Lyman attributes the hom schooling revolution to
"a pair of Paul Reveres who alerted parents to the pitfalls
of dispatching their children off to schools" in the 1960s.
One was Raymond Moore, who discovered that most
of the developmental problems of young children (hyperactivity,
nearsightedness, dyslexia) resulted from a too-early exposure to
institutionalized settings. He and his wife were also concerned
about the dangers of secular ideology in the public schools. They
wrote their best-selling books from a Christian viewpoint, Better
Late than Early and Home School Handbook.
The other was John Holt, who advocated home
schooling from a libertarian point of view, including advocating
drug use and sexual experimentation for children.
In the 1970s, most home schoolers were
counter-culture hippie types who had dropped out of mainstream
culture. But by the 1980s, Christian conservatives were the main
ones dropping out.
Parents Have Nothing to Fear
Many parents worry that home schooling will not
give their children the same academic achievement that they can
get in school. This should be the least of their worries.
"Virtually all the available data show that
the group of hom schooled children who are tested resembles that
of children in private schools.... Regardless of income, race,
gender, or parents' level of income, home schooled children
consistently score between the 82d and 92d percentile on
achievement tests."
Even if parents can afford to spend more time at
home and even if the state no longer harasses them, many parents
fear that their children will not be "socialized" if
they are home schooled.
As public schools show more and more signs of
being dysfunctional and dangerous places, socialization is
becoming the most attractive aspect for parents. In addition, as
greater numbers of parents turn to home schooling, larger
"networks" of home schoolers have arisen. Lyman's book
displays the growing number of support groups that make it easier
for families to jump on the home schooling bandwagon.
Another factor favoring home schooling is that,
at least for the time being, the media have shed a favorable light
upon it. Lyman (a freelance journalist herself) notes that
journalists like unusual, offbeat stories, and that home schooling
is still fresh enough to appeal to them.
"Conservatives often criticize the media as
being the handmaiden of school unions," she says. "But
some media outlets have not ignored their task to report that
public schools are falling short and, as a result, some families
have rearranged their lives to home school."
Off to College
The first college directed particularly to home
schooled children was opened this year, Patrick Henry College in
Virginia. Its president is Michael Farris, a leader of the home
school movement in Virginia and 1993 candidate for lieutenant
governor.
Established colleges are becoming more open to
home schooled applicants, especially because they are among the
best-prepared academically.
For parents of home schooled children who are
preparing for college, there is The Complete Guide to Attending
College: How to Go to College and Still Obtain an Education.
As most home schoolers would suspect, one need
not go to college to get an education, Smith says, and a diploma
is no guarantee that one has learned much.
Home schoolers are more likely to have the kind
of old-fashioned skills that are needed for college, and they may
be surprised to find that they are well ahead of most of their
classmates. "You must secure your own education because most
of the classes, particularly in the first two years, will be
geared toward the academically handicapped, public school
product."
Like all freshmen, home schoolers will be
unfamiliar with the peculiarities of the academic world. Smith's
book is designed to help them understand it.
The most difficult adjustment for home schooled
college students is moving into the cattle-car anonymity of the
college classroom. But most will have no trouble thriving-they
already know not to trust the authorities.
Smith has had experience teaching in both public
and private schools, and he knows the system that college students
will be entering. He has seen it from the inside and he reveals
the facts about watered-down curricula, grade-inflation, and the
many other perversions of higher education.
Most of these problems derive from the fact that
"the public K-12 schools are about money, not
education."
Students are aware of this. "Many of them
resent having to learn or actually work to get a good grade in
class. These students are now flowing into the nation's
classrooms. Because going to college is voluntary, not mandatory,
college administrators have made it clear to professors that
students are to be accommodated at all costs. In many cases, this
means almost any rule can be broken to keep a student on campus
and paying tuition. In other words, the patients run the asylum on
many campuses."
Home schooled students might also be surprised
by the financial aid system, where frugality is not rewarded.
"As a general rule, families with lots of debt and other
monetary obligations can usually obtain financial aid... much more
easily than families with paid-up mortgages and little or nothing
charged on credit cards."
Since home schooled students tend to come from
religious families and often seek religious colleges, Smith warns,
"Being affiliated with a church does not make a college a
center of spiritual values. Many church members would be shocked
by what goes on in the church's name at their denominational college."
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