The Educational is Political

I talk with so many people about education, and so often I feel like I haven't managed to communicate why I would want to homeschool. Its hard to do without a three hour conversation. But I want to improve. How about this:

I want for my family far more freedom and self-direction than the system is willing to accommodate.

The educational is so political. Study political science, and you will likely begin with Socrates, whose crime was corrupting the minds of the youth of Athens. What and how we teach our young people is a powerful force to wield.

I recently told a politician I would vote for him because I valued what he had to say about improving public education. I couldn't miss the crestfallen (and maybe confused) look on his face when I said my family would probably homeschool. I'm all contradictions. What I mean is this:  Yes, please improve the public system. Families deserve a quality public option. I want something more radical, but I know most don't.

I know teachers against this awful "ed reform" movement who must think I have drunk the Kool-Aid about how America's public schools are failing. Well, politics makes strange bedfellows. It's finally okay to criticize school. School, which is traditionally associated with apples, kids trotting off with their cute backpacks, young minds growing enlightened as autumnal sunlight beams in their classroom windows.  I had a few days like that in school. But mostly I received damaging messages like: perfection is the goal, the reason to learn is to make money, make sure not to question authority too much, girls usually struggle with math, and my "favorite:" when you are excited about learning you are a nuisance to your teacher and classmates.

For this reason I stand with those who say we don't need ed reform. We need an education revolution. No test, no curriculum adjustment, will solve the problems that are inherent in our current system.

I feel stuck. Do I fight against standardized testing while operating in a system that needs to be fundamentally restructured? Would it be immoral to want free, self-directed education for my child while fighting for something different for other children? Even if it's what they and their families want? I fear the answer is yes, which is why I care so deeply about education yet want nothing to do with a career in schooling.

Critics of some proposed reforms, like vouchers, say that these changes will gut our public schools. Silently, knowing I need a three hour conversation to explain myself, I think: good. We need something new, and there's usually a pile of ashes before a phoenix can rise.

How Much Freedom? (The roles of the parent and the school)

For most of my life, I've felt protective of the right of the parent to determine a child's education. I think this protectiveness comes from the fact that in U.S. law, the right to homeschool flows from the government's acknowledgement of that right of the parent. The state has an interest in seeing that children are educated, but that interest does not overshadow the fundamental right of the parent to educate their child as they see fit. This is why homeschooling is legal in all 50 states, though regulated to different degrees in different states.

For me, homeschooling meant freedom. I asked my parents' permission to homeschool. My parents told the state that my education was going in a different direction from the government-designed program. Then my parents let me design my own program. As an adult, I realize that many critics of homeschooling are concerned about the amount of time they imagine a homeschooled student spends with their parent. Where's the room for separation? In my case, neither parent quit their job for me to homeschool, so plenty of space remained between my parents and me. Though I definitely communicated with them about what I studied, I was truly self-directed.

So I've felt strongly about the rights of the parent, but also about the value of letting the student be as self-directed as possible. Now that I'm starting an alternative school, I'm meeting all sorts of people who feel the parent should not be responsible for the child's education, because children need a place to go without their parents. I think this idea is using a different definition of "responsible for" than the one I do. In my mind, here's the model: An individual parent has the right and the responsibility to educate their child. They execute that right in a variety of ways, perhaps by sending their child to public school, selecting a private school, or developing a homeschool. In each of these models (to greater and lesser degrees), the parent delegates some of the job to someone else. But they retain their rights, and if school is going poorly for their child, they can choose a different option (ideally, anyway). So a parent choosing a democratic free school isn't saying, "I'm not responsible for my child's education." They're saying that as the steward of their child, this is the education they have chosen for that child.

That's the model (and I suspect I subconsciously adopted it because it's the legal model in the U.S.), but what I really believe is more nuanced. I believe that the role of the parent is one of ever-decreasing responsibility. A child is born and we do everything for them. For Ladybug, I held her while she slept because she couldn't even do that without me. Before she was born, I breathed for her, for goodness sake. Little by little, over the course of a couple decades, a parent hands over the reigns. The freedoms and responsibilities are transferred to the child. I imagine a spectrum that, taken as a whole, represents full-fledged adult responsibility and freedom. The parent begins by being responsible for most of this spectrum, and the child's portion of it grows over time. But, like I concluded in this post, the process is messy and nonlinear, more nonlinear than the spectrum example really depicts.

What does this mean for education? That in each parent-child relationship, you have an intricate and individualized division of labor. Together, depending on how much of the spectrum the child is overseeing, the parent and child select an education for that child. They may pick over and over again, rejecting what doesn't work, honing what does. I know from forums that homeschooling parents are constantly in that honing process, throwing out the curricula their child rejected and looking for something better.

How much of the spectrum a child "should be" responsible for, and at what age, could be the defining factor in different educational philosophies. A traditional public school grants almost no autonomy, such that the idea of choosing what you study, if it occurs at all, is a novelty on a special occasion day. Radical unschoolers and proponents of free schools are going to grant the child responsibility for the whole spectrum of activities surrounding their education. This method, while terrifying to those only familiar with the traditional model, has been an effective education for many students.

I am helping to establish a free school because I believe in the power of educational options, and that many students flourish within the free school model. But I am captivated by the notion of a school that manages to exist somewhere in the middle, ceding autonomy to students as they grow into it, on an individual basis and with respect for the role of the parent in that process.

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Edit: A note to the grammar nazis out there, including beloved English profs. I am a huge fan of the "improper" use of the pronoun "their" as a gender-neutral singular pronoun. So is everyone who speaks our evolving English language. Particularly since this is a blog written in an informal tone, I will continue to make liberal use of this form/device/error. Thanks ;)

Alternatives to Compulsory Education - My Radical Roots

This weekend I attended the Alternatives to Compulsory Education conference, presented by four speakers who wanted to begin a dialog about the need for alternatives and what they might look like. I am full of ideas and have decided that the best way to organize my response is to tackle each talk individually. I am hoping to be able to update this post with links to the video recordings of the talks.

The first presentation was by Cevin Soling, director of the documentary The War on Kids (available streaming on Netflix). Cevin's talk was darkly funny, deliberately provocative and radical. It really reminded me how I felt about school when I was fifteen. That's not an insult; I'm not saying his talk was like the shallow ranting of a naive teen. He validates the misery and suffering that many--most-- students feel when trapped in school. Here are some of my favorite points from the presentation, and the thoughts it prompted for me.

There is a nostalgia surrounding school, and many adults have a selective memory about their experience. There's a difference between liking school and remembering you liked it. Further, just because some people like a thing doesn't make it good. Did you like school? How did you feel about your teachers? What you were learning?

Failure is endemic to the system. Even if we created an ideal school with experienced teachers, low student:teacher ratios, and students with perfect home lives, 20-30% of students would be labeled failures. The system is set up so that there must be winners and losers, and someone has to score the worst on those standardized tests.

That point reminds me of the summer my husband taught a college physics class. This was during his grad school career. Chris is an effective teacher who worked hard to help his students understand the subject. He was given the "Distinguished Teaching Assistant" award for his dedication to his students. But because "too many of them" did so well in the class, the university re-normalized their grades to reflect an "ideal" bell curve. This curve did not reflect the rubric presented in the class syllabus. Chris and the students fought the changes, but the lowered scores remained, and Chris swore off a career as an instructor. What's the point of doing good teaching if the institution punishes your and your students' success?

Bullying is endemic to the autocratic structure of schools. We won't be rid of bullying as long as young people are legally required to attend institutions where their rights are violated and they have no power. Teachers bully students. In an environment like that, some kids will cruelly take out their aggression on other kids.

Compulsory schooling creates a monopoly on community. This is what people are really talking about when they ask homeschoolers, "What about socialization?" They don't mean that cliques and bullying are healthy ways to socialize children. They want to know how that child will experience community when all the other children are in school. The good news is that not all the children are in school, because many parents are choosing different options, then actively seeking out and creating communities.

We defang our arguments when we criticize school. Cevin criticized the TED Talk Do Schools Kill Creativity? for its polite descriptions of school's shortcomings. I know I have been guilty of this, diplomatic to a fault. Most teachers and administrators are very good, well-intentioned people. We all know what the road to Hell is paved with. But we're reluctant to offend anyone, because our relatives are teachers and all our friends send their children to school. We don't want to raise hackles lest people quit listening to us at all. I really struggle with this one.

"But Not in My School." A few teachers and administrators will admit that some schools are troubled, but assert that their school is a very nice place where students are respected. They will make these assertions even in the face of clear evidence to the contrary. The point here is that criticisms of compulsory school are not isolated examples that have been exaggerated. The problems are widespread: students are being abused, minor misbehavior is dealt with as criminal offense, rates of childhood mental illness are rising, and human beings cannot learn in these types of dysfunctional environments.

Three Ways I Think About Education

 When I encounter an idea in education, it seems that I will eventually approach it from each of three angles below. Here's a sample idea that weighs on my thoughts:

"Teaching kids to ask questions and think about problems before receiving the solution encourages more non-linear, divergent and creative thinking, to produce better innovators, problem-solvers, and problem-finders."
The educational value of creative disobedience 

1. They are failing to do this in schools, and I find this lack so offensive that I would be unhappy sending my child to school.

2. How will I succeed on this point when arranging for my daughter's education?

3. How could we change our institutions so that this great idea is implemented for more children?

TED Talk - Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

I wanted to post this video that a friend shared with me. It is laugh out loud funny, poignant and well-stated. My favorite quotes from this talk:

"[Education is] one of those things that goes deep with people...like religion and money..."

"We have a huge vested interest in education. Partly because it's education that's meant to take us into this future that we can't grasp."

"Creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status."

"If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original."

"The whole [public education] system was invented...to meet the needs of industrialism."

Sir Ken Robinson makes an extremely compelling case for educating the whole child and nurturing the needs of all different learning styles. I am saving this to watch again and again when I think my children aren't learning in the ways they "should." I hope it will remind me to look for who they are instead of who I want them to be.

How to Talk about What I Don't Like

I've been thinking to myself that I want to start blogging about all the ideas I have to educate my family differently from a standard public school. If I'm going to take on the task, I should at least write out my ideas so I can better reflect on them. I want to be clear with myself (and anyone interested in reading along) what my goals are, and why I would make such an unorthodox choice as to homeschool my kids.

My hesitation here is that this involves some criticism of school. Not everyone homeschools because of a dissatisfaction with public or private schools. For many families it's simply a way of life that works well, without reference to a school. I do believe our family will grow into that way of life, but I also have some negative things to say about what goes on in many schools. This is a very political topic and always has been. Socrates was found guilty of corrupting the minds of the youth of Athens. We get testy when it comes to teaching our children.

I cannot speak about every school in the country, first because I don't have the experience, but second because they are so varied that it's useless to try to talk about them as if they were one institution. Additionally, the last time I attended a public school was in 1998. A few things have changed. The changes I know about, such as increased standardized testing, do not impress me. My point is that there are many things I just don't know. But I still need a way to talk about my philosophy and my concerns.

I have friends and relatives who work hard in public schools. I know so many good teachers, and I respect their experience and the work that they do. I had good teachers in school, people who left such a strong impression on me that I think back to them decades later. But I also know teachers who I privately think aren't that bright and I wouldn't want teaching my kids. I sat in a restaurant next to two student teachers whining about how much math they had to learn (10th grade level) to teach elementary kids. It was all I could do to restrain myself. What kind of model of learning are those people providing? What kid deserves the sentence of learning math from a teacher who sees little value in the subject? 

If my only concern were the occasional lame teacher, I would probably send my children to school. I think most teachers are probably great; I certainly learned from many great people. But I firmly believe that they are good people working in a bad system. My biggest concern for my kids' education is the preservation of a love of learning for its own sake. Grades, busywork, teaching to the middle, teaching to the test, cutting P.E. then punishing kids for wiggling...what else can we come up with to make learning a more godawful experience?

Then there's "good schools." These are the ones in the nice neighborhoods with the good funding from hefty real estate taxes. People buy homes in these neighborhoods so their kids can attend the "good schools." This must be a happy experience for enough families because the schools gain that "good" reputation. However, I still object to the emphasis placed on letter grades, overscheduling of extracurriculars, standardized testing, and general sense that you must get into Harvard to have a meaningful life.

There probably are schools that would not offend my idea of an education that is exciting and respectful to the student. However, I believe they cost a lot of money that, at this point, I would rather save for my daughter's college tuition.

We may all find that she does well in a school setting when she is a little older. Some very religious homeschoolers are comfortable sending their children to high school, because by then the students' value systems are in place. My thoughts are very similar, but the values I want to protect are a joy in learning and inquiry. I want to promote doing your best work regardless of a letter assigned to it. I believe young children shouldn't have to swim upstream for a healthy education. So I'm starting at home.