tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7907752.post3522220584436170909..comments2024-03-27T07:18:39.229-05:00Comments on In Medias Res: Home Schooling, Human Capital, Equity, and ChristianityUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7907752.post-54107130120424874992007-07-04T18:01:00.000-05:002007-07-04T18:01:00.000-05:00This was an interesting post, and one that hits so...This was an interesting post, and one that hits somewhat close to home. My parents struggled with the decision of whether or not my siblings and I should be sent to private schools or public schools. My mom chose the public route because she wanted us to be "lights" to the other students, and she also knew that our faiths wouldn't truly develop without exposure to outside ideas and values. She also didn't want to rely on any school, public or private, to teach us values. That was my parents' and church's role. So if the public school teaches values they're not thrilled with, it doesn't matter because that's not the end of my values-education. But, to be fair, her decision was made much easier by the fact that our school district is one of the best in Wisconsin. We might have had to steer away from the drinkers and pot heads, but we would have had to do that in the private schools as well (whose students aren't as immune to these sorts of tempations as they'd like to think). <BR/><BR/>My cousins faced a different battle. They live in medium sized city in Alambama where the public schools aren't great, and with 7 kids private schooling wasn't an option. Being lights for other students is one thing, but recieving an adequate education is another. They aren't alone, and a whole community of home schooled students in their area combine efforts to make their education (academic and social) possible. Though, by pulling out of the public school system, they not only loose the oppurtunity to witness to other students, but the schools themselves loose the parents' involvement which is desperately needed.Lindseyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11095269766349024764noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7907752.post-63351756168055276862007-06-27T09:32:00.000-05:002007-06-27T09:32:00.000-05:00"Will we have a polity united with a common litera..."Will we have a polity united with a common literacy, enough to resolve problems with words instead of guns? Note the anecdotal failure I witnessed these last few years, and this was among young people whose families shared the same religious outlook!"<BR/><BR/>A shared outlook is a net positive, but only depending on what's shared. I want every knee to bow and every tongue to confess <I>that Jesus is the Christ,</I> for example. The content of what's shared matters as much as the sharing.<BR/><BR/>So the problem with public schools, in my view, is that their shared outlook is pretty heavily mixed with wickedness and there's not much that can be done to change it.<BR/><BR/>My wife and I aren't certain that we're going to avoid our public schools, but if we do its because we think we can keep our kids from sharing too much of the school's outlook.<BR/><BR/>-Adam GreenwoodAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7907752.post-68382804933173545812007-06-26T21:57:00.000-05:002007-06-26T21:57:00.000-05:00(sorry for the double google accounts, here, by th...(sorry for the double google accounts, here, by the way)<BR/><BR/><I>I suspect a lot of defenders of home schooling--including much of my immediate family--would jump all over your case here, suggesting that it's kids that have to negotiate the pressures and temptations of the public school environment that come out "weird," and they'd have a point.</I><BR/><BR/>It's a symptom of the kind of thing I'm talking about. Weird to me means I'm weird to them as well, which makes communication more difficult. <BR/><BR/>My comment addresses the lack of a sufficient shared context, rather than the perils of losing one's child to an undesired philosophy. <BR/><BR/><I>Popular media</I> might be one way to impress a shared context, but I'm sure your family members would argue, the prevalent message in popular media is not desirable. <BR/><BR/>I don't want to lose parochial schools either. (BYU at this point is my only hope of a Bachelor's degree, for example, without starting completely over...)<BR/><BR/>I agree that three-R's must must must must grow into something much more complex. Have you read Friedman's _The World Is Flat_, for examples of why? I'm sure there are other better peer reviewed papers on the subject, but his book was interesting nonetheless. <BR/><BR/>And I like the idea of charter schools; my sister makes fruitful use of them in Arizona, but you may know that here in WA they're not legal and they never garner more than 40% of an affirmative vote to make them legal. <BR/><BR/>Plus, I'm engaged and interested in the public schools being a place where 95% of us keep solidarity with one another! That means to me that instead of providing an "education", the school district, as a department (in the English sense) of the State government, ought to be about providing "district services". For many, that will entail enrollment in the standard public curriculum. For some families, perhaps that means nothing more than a math and PE class and the privilege to play on the school team. And still others, a bevy of Internet-based courses to supplement Running Start (courses taken at the local community college which earn simultaneous college and high school credit)<BR/><BR/>My local district does all of those things, and runs a vocational skills center in concert with five other school districts at the same time. A Junior at one of our high schools can spend her morning learning dental assisting and her afternoon earning undergrad credit.<BR/><BR/>In that way (at least) we *serve* the people for whom a standard education is not optimal, without losing their voice in our chorus. Hopefully.Rob Perkinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15618647194288598056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7907752.post-90827914083015931952007-06-26T16:52:00.000-05:002007-06-26T16:52:00.000-05:00Rob,Thanks for your many thoughts here![Home-schoo...Rob,<BR/><BR/>Thanks for your many thoughts here!<BR/><BR/><I>[Home-schooled kids]...are just a tad weird to me. I believe that that comes from failing to participate in the shared experience of common schools. Since I don’t share their context as much, there is more work both for me and for the home-schooled person to reach accord on an issue.</I><BR/><BR/>I suspect a lot of defenders of home schooling--including much of my immediate family--would jump all over your case here, suggesting that it's kids that have to negotiate the pressures and temptations of the public school environment that come out "weird," and they'd have a point. But I think your larger concern stands, and is a valid one on its own terms. Democracy--a free society--means on some level being able to work around and through our differences and being able to deal with one another and govern together. Public schools, with their common pool of experiences and expectations, play a tremendously important function in creating that kind of minimally shared "language"; there's a lot of scholarship to back that up. And so, in that sense, the fact that there are people out there missing out on a shared "context" can be a real concern. And of course, as you go on to note, that can have real negative consequences in smaller, more intimate associations as well (work, church, etc.).<BR/><BR/>I think diversity in the content and style of education is important; Melissa and I are a big fan of charter schools. And we certainly don't want to get rid of parochial schools, or church universities like BYU! But there are ways in which "weirdness" can be developed which I think ought to be discouraged, especially when such weirdness coincides with class differences (in other words, I'm talking about expensive private schools).<BR/><BR/><I>Is a fracturing of the public common schools to an extent where significant populations participate in alternatives going to shatter that?...Is it enough to specify public common education standards? Do our kids need public common society as much as they need three-R’s standards in their education?</I><BR/><BR/>As I said in my post, an article of mine is about to be published in which I defend the idea that the public school system ought to be more "populist," more locally responsive, and that means admitting even <I>more</I> "weirdness"...but doing it in such a way that it isn't mandated across the board, but can be contained within certain, specified curricula. I do think our common culture, in order to function properly, needs the next generation to be taught more than the "three Rs," but I also am dubious of the idea that that "more" will come from any standardized content. For me, the "more" that matters are the social and linguistic and procedural things which just come along with the formalities of education; in other words, that so long as there is a common civic context--the ideal of public education--the "weirdness" that some students will bring with them will be healthy, rather than antagonistic to, the common culture. That's what I hope anyway.Russell Arben Foxhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03366800726360134194noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7907752.post-31033355701681543962007-06-26T12:52:00.000-05:002007-06-26T12:52:00.000-05:00You've touched substantively on issues that I, wit...You've touched substantively on issues that I, with five children, including one entering the seventh grade, feel quite deeply.<BR/><BR/>I'll offer my impression, first, on the home-schooled kids: They are just a tad weird to me. I believe that that comes from failing to participate in the shared experience of common schools. Since I don’t share their context as much, there is more work both for me and for the home-schooled person to reach accord on an issue. <BR/><BR/>It’s come to the point from time to time around here where the teens being public-schooled would not associate with the teens being home-schooled in our church Youth group. On a couple shameful occasions that even came to blows and ostracism. <BR/><BR/>That kind of problem doesn't exclusively extent to home-schoolers, of course. Those educated in a private Christian academy, or in a Catholic school, will also come off "a little bit weird" just because their upbringing has elements that don't exist in the public school. The reverse is certainly also true. Perhaps BYU grads even share the “little bit weird” stigma, having never participated in the Greek system of fraternities and sororities that are prominent at most other U.S. universities? <BR/><BR/>So there’s the first social problem of a qualitatively palpable <I>difference</I> in the kind of person that is made by an educational experience<BR/><BR/>These days I suppose that this difference is not enough to thwart the purpose of public common schools, an idea whose original intent was certainly to provide all Americans with enough common social experience and a common intellectual foundation so that instead of blows and guns, we worked out our differences with words. <BR/><BR/>This is probably where the standards-based education movement is getting some of its fuel. If the same triple-R subject matter can be taught without exposing a child to what many parents consider corrosive elements of popular culture, then hey, mission accomplished, and the State’s interest is satisfied. <BR/><BR/>Except… I remember arguing a probable slippery slope about the legality of gay marriage during the run up to Oregon’s constitutional amendment initiative on the subject: If a state imposes something in its laws which is abhorrent to a significant part of the population, to the point where it is required to be taught in the public schools, (an outcome certainly desired by those who support the legalization of gay marriage), then those who oppose it will feel justified in not participating there, choosing instead the private academies or home schooling options which are legally available. <BR/><BR/>And those kids will be just a little bit weird to the public-schooled kids in populations much, much larger than they are today. <BR/><BR/>Fast forward for four generations of that. Will we have a polity united with a common literacy, enough to resolve problems with words instead of guns? Note the anecdotal failure I witnessed these last few years, and this was among young people whose families shared the same religious outlook!<BR/><BR/>Consider, too, that even today we can’t seem to reach accord among the adult population, on issues that have not been settled politically, such as legalized abortion or how to set the price of a BTU of energy. Mostly, we compromise on those issues with words and move the compromise back and forth depending upon which faction attains power in the Congress. <BR/><BR/>Is a fracturing of the public common schools to an extent where significant populations participate in alternatives going to shatter that? (The alternatives to two unhappy factions moving a goalpost are unpalatable to me.)<BR/><BR/>Is it enough to specify public common education standards? Do our kids need public common society as much as they need three-R’s standards in their education? <BR/><BR/>Or, do we need to take controversial subject matter out of the common schools to an extent where the population opting for alternatives never becomes large enough for the “little bit weird” to create a political problem?Rob Perkinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13115249244056328076noreply@blogger.com