Home School and Public School According to Me

I should probably say going into this blog that I already have a very strong opinion and a VERY bad opinion of the public school system. I’m not looking for a debate, just stating my opinion. A new friend of mine kindly pointed out that not all public schools are as bad as what we have here in our little corner of the world, but our local public school has become an abomination. Maybe I’m cynical, but I believe they are all on the slippery slope nationwide toward that same end. Children are being ushered through the system without learning what they need to know. What ever happened to reading, writing and arithmetic? Are academics going the way of moral absolutes?

I’ve come to view public schools in general as little, high efficiency, indoctrination camps. Some all-knowing bureaucracy decides not only what they should know, but what is socially acceptable, what is ethical, what is open or closed minded, what is politically correct, what morality is, or isn’t. Other societies have used similar methods to undermine the masses and ride into political control on the back of the resulting wave. I don’t consider myself an alarmist, just a student of history and an observer of current events. The public schools are part of the fifth column in our country, along with big media and others. I’m not saying we’re setting up for another Hitler, but I’m not ruling it out, either. The politics are definitely at play in the big picture, and the children’s moldable little minds are always most highly sought after by the-powers-that-want-to-be.

Having said that, let me state that I we are a home schooling family. It’s funny how many people feel the need to comment to me about our decision to home school. Some of the comments and questions they ask me would probably really offend them if I turned around and asked them the same questions as it relates to them and their decision not to home school, but to use the public school system. I am frequently asked things like, are you smart enough to teach them? Are you qualified? Can you give them the variety and scope they need? Can they have the same advantages as they get in the system? (Making the assumption the system actually offers any advantages!) Won’t you ruin their futures? Aren’t you over protecting them? Won’t they be socially inept? Isn’t it a lot of work?

One of the things I’m constantly having pointed out to me as a home schooler, is that there is some great, nebulous experience that’s apparently only available to children in public school, called “socialization” that I’m accused of causing my kids to miss out on by keeping them at home. People tell me I should go ahead and send them for “the socialization”, and that we can overcome the negative aspects with a good home life. Well, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the idea of socializing to learn, practice, and acquire behavioral skills, attitudes, values, customs, and social skills? That is the point, right? So, I am to send them to school for the very things that I should then correct at home? That’s not even kind of sensible.

No, I don’t think I’ll be relying on the public school system for my children’s social development, thanks. The examples of socialization being given in public school are a huge part of the reason I don’t want my kids going there.

It’s sickening. It is abhorrent. There’s no order, or respect for authority taught, and any behavior can be justified and laid off on a need to express oneself or some other such nonsense. They are taught that there are no absolutes, and that all ethics are situational. Honor is absent. Morality is judgemental, and therefore intolerant and hateful. Children are taught to question or reject parental authority, and instructed from a very early age about what to do if their parents do something they don’t like. I remember one of my boys coming home from grade school one day and telling us he was going to call the police on us for grounding him.

When I was a child in school, we had counselors who were actually trained to make determinations based on physical, or behavioral evidence as to whether or not a child needed some kind of additional attention or even some intervention. However, now it’s just become a blanket practice throughout the entire system, for every child, regardless of whether or not they show any evidence of a need, to second guess their parents, and even suspect them of the worst. The school authorities, with their superior knowledge and understanding, have decided most parents are incompetent or bad, so all children should be warned and prepared to defend themselves against them. I’m sure some kind hearted souls were originally just hoping to give children from bad homes some options, some help. Unfortunately, the way they chose to do it, the way it turned out, is a really bad way. It’s a very poor, ineffective, hit and miss program at it’s best that we have now, and a insidious and undermining plan that destabilizes families and family values at the root, whether intentional or not, at it’s worst. This is just the socialization they are gaining from the staff.

On the milder side of the social scene from their peer group we have the kids, swept up in a current to fit in and be a part of trends that are shallow and superficial, such as fashion and entertainment. I was pressured to “be cool” when I was in school, as I’m sure all generations of kids have been, but some of the “trends” are more sinister now. Sure, sure, that’s what our parents told us way back when, but, actually, they were right, and so am I now. It was bad when I was in school, and it’s only grown steadily worse over the years. Of course home schooled kids will experience this to some degree anyway, but it really doesn’t factor in as heavily in a home school setting.

On the darker side of things, public school kids are regularly exposed, first hand, to drugs, alcohol, sex, violence, and crime. “Partying” is normal and acceptable, maybe even preferable, as is bad language, and casual sex, sexual experementation and alternate lifestyles, and a whole host of other vices. I could, and have been know to, go on and on about this, but I’ll spare the reader. To keep from getting even further into something so controversial, let me just say that we, for these and many other reasons, decided to home school.

Here’s another question I get asked a lot. “What about the home schooled kids who aren’t actually being taught?” First I’d like to ask them why is it up to each independent home schooling family to answer all of your niggling questions about the relatively few failures in the home schooling community. I don’t ask an accounting from each and every family with children in the public school system that I encounter why their schools are failing and their children are being hung out to dry by the bus load. The number of home schoolers who are in it for the wrong reasons, or who are doing a poor job, is so very much lower percentage wise than the number of public school children that are failing and falling through the cracks that it cannot compare. The public school systems are miserably failing the families in their districts. I think maybe the attention is deliberately being focused on home schoolers to sort of diffuse the spotlight that’s glaring in the face of the system, or else to relieve some sense of guilt that people feel for allowing their kids to go to the public school.

Having said that, I’ll go ahead and answer that question anyway. I think home schooling networks and support groups could help in this area as long as the almighty government doesn’t come along and start dictating a bunch of rules to them as well. These kind of groups are very interactive, and I find that the parents do tend to follow up with each other and hold each other accountable to some degree. People, communities, fellowships, “neighbors” can still be counted upon, believe it or not, to look after and check up on one another in most parts of our country. That’s all the more true when we break up into smaller groups of people with like interests. I realize the government agencies would be out of business if they acknowledged that we really are intelligent and capable enough to be trusted with these basic things, but I’d be willing to absorb the taxes that go toward their unemployment benefits. It would probably be less costly that the taxes that go towards their salaries, and it would be a more honest living, in my estimation.

The large majority of parents who home school are sincerely trying to do what’s best for their children. Maybe it sounds heartless, but there are many more kids falling through the cracks in the public system and being knowingly sent along on their merry way, than there are home school families that are slacking, so why is everyone spending so much energy looking into this problem? I’m sure there are some bad families who are failing their children in a so called home school, but it is certainly the exception. I don’t want even one child to be left out, but with a public school system in the miserable shape ours is in, I’d think the country would be thrilled at such a viable and successful, not to mention inexpensive, alternative. For sure, two wrongs don’t make it right, but neither does throwing the baby out with the bath water. I have said for years, and believe with my heart, that although my children are being very well educated at home, I’d rather they be poorly educated than wrongly educated. One can be much more easily remedied than the other.

I think that first and foremost, besides the fact that the system is failing, the main reason we pulled out of the public school system is because public school standards are not our own. I do not teach revisionist history or evolution as a science, and they do not teach Bible or absolutes as pertains to morality. The list goes on. The standardized tests are a problem only because the standard is being determined by people who do not share my family’s standards. I’m sure my kids would pass their little tests, but if they test on sex ed, or inclusion of alternate lifestyles, evolution as anything but shaky theory, then the test results might not be reflective of the truth. I’ve come to understand recently that most of the standardized tests actually don’t test on some of the more controversial things, so it probably would not be a problem for us, but they do teach it, and therefore they could at any time test on it. If they did, the test results would not be an accurate accounting my children’s proficiency in their studies. What’s the point in the test if it isn’t accurate?

I find it very distasteful that my family and I should have to have to check in with, and gain some kind of approval from a bunch of people that we so strongly disagree with in so many ways. The very people that sort of forced us to seek out alternatives, would now have us to come back to them for some kind of an inspection. I don’t feel it necessary to use any of their facilities, their curriculum, their tests, their equipment, or their standards, so why should I be answering up to them. They are still taking my tax dollars. Isn’t that quite enough?

Our home school teaches actual academics, the “three ‘R’s’”, but honor, standards, character, ethics, and God are our primary focus; we are raising up decent human beings. I can agree that their could possibly be a need for a test of some kind just because of the (very, very, few) home schooling families who really aren’t educating their kids, for whatever reason, but at this point I’d rather continue on without that test than to have my feet, and those of so many other wonderful families, held to the fire by a bunch of people who are part of the reason I chose to home school in the first place. Government has to stop thinking they are the only ones who know what’s right and best. I’d venture to say they are not even very near the top of any list that would name qualified judges. Also, I don’t think it’s right to penalize good parents and law abiding citizens in order to compensate for the tiny few, those who are not doing what they should. But that’s a whole ‘nuther blog.

~ by representative on July 25, 2008.