Robin L. West, in an essay titled, “The Harms of Homeschooling” (scroll down for the article), and published by the University of Maryland’s Philosophy & Public Policy Quarterly, argues for greater government oversight of home schooling and takes a shot at fundamentalist Christian families who are short on mammon but big on procreation.
Here’s the quote:
The husbands and wives in these families feel themselves to be under a religious compulsion to have large families, a homebound and submissive wife and mother who is responsible for the schooling of the children, and only one breadwinner. These families are not living in romantic, rural, self-sufficient farmhouses; they are in trailer parks, 1,000 square foot homes, houses owned by relatives, and some, on tarps in fields or parking lots.
Honestly, what an obnoxious, self-important, clueless, idiot. Yes, I have lived in a trailer park, a 1,000 square foot home, and I had every intention of living in a house owned by a relative, only he died and left me the house before I could get here to help take care of him. I have not actually lived on tarps in fields or parking lots, and I don't really believe she knows of any real people who have. However, I have packed up the family and taken nearly two months to drive across the western United States and then up the Al-Can highway, through parts of Canada, into Alaska, camping in a tent every night along the way and cooking dinner for our then family of five (including an 11 month old child) dinner over an outdoor campfire. We did it again, only in reverse and slightly less time, 8 months later when I was pregnant. Maybe Robin should try it some time.
What's so inherently wrong with these things that homeschooling and living in a trailer park is inherently suspicious enough that you lose your civil rights?
Who DOES she think she is? Pin It
So prejudiced. Just throwing one random counter-example out--I wonder what she'd make of Melissa's Shakespeare club. http://tinyurl.com/ybg3lao
ReplyDeleteWow. Just wow. When I first started reading that article, it really got my blood boiling, but by the end, I was cracking up laughing. I majored in English in college, and if I'd ever turned in a paper with so many blatant lies, sweeping generalizations, undocumented or poorly cited claims (a TRIAL JUDGE said that 95% of all abuse reports come from teachers???), and contradictory arguments, I'd have definitely failed. There are states that require testing, and the children do well in those states, but I guess the children who weren't going to perform well move to tarps in parking lots in the less regulated states so they don't have to take the tests.
ReplyDeleteI think my favorite part was the part about how amazing the love from a teacher is because she loves the child on the basis of him being a student. My five year old read his first words yesterday. There's not a public school teacher in the country who would have shown more admiration for my child than I did.
I think you should send your response to her.
ReplyDeleteI admit I found it mostly hilarious, too. She must be terribly, terribly young.
ReplyDeleteAn important point she hasn't thought about it is how many of those 95 percent of abuse reports (if that's even accurate, as you point out) are FALSE?
Read the whole article. I would never have dreamed that an academic journal would publish such a concatenation of empty assertions, logical missteps, and sneers and call it scholarship. Almost every paragraph contains some kind of flaw in reason.
ReplyDelete"Dating from the mid 19th century, with the
ReplyDeleteadvent of mandatory attendance laws, until three
quarters of the way through the 20th, it was a crime to
keep one’s children home from school, and it did not
matter in the slightest whether it was religion or some
other felt conviction that was at the heart of the decision
to do so. Parents who did so were criminals, and
their kids were truants."
Is this statement accurate?
It couldn't possibly be, since education laws varied by state and territory, and private tutoring was still very much a normal method of educating the upper classes, and we read all the time about children who had to drop out of school at the age of, say, 8, to help their families. Even where there were truancy laws, school was only required for 1-8th grade, or even younger.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing to note is the question of immunization that the author brings up. First of all, immunization is not as necessary in home-schooling settings, because a child's contacts, and hence his or her chance of being exposed to contagions, are somewhat more limited. Secondly, not all immunizations are equally necessary, and in some cases mandatory vaccines seem like they are just a handout to manufacturers.
ReplyDeleteShe also seems to be unaware that some states permit religious exemptions to immunizations, so there are children in schools who have enver been immunized.
ReplyDelete