It seems like a large number of negative news stories attempting to link all sorts of atrocious behavior with homeschooling have popped up lately. Add to that the series of stories about public schools going all Big Brother or just plain psycho on their students and I’ve begun to cringe anytime a link to an education related story shows up through whatever avenue. It is hard enough convincing people that the wacko homeschoolers are the exception, not the rule without these guys helping out the opposition.

Religious zealots following a fundamentalist Christian child training “expert” beat their kid to death and it is, of course, because they were homeschoolers. It couldn’t possibly be because they were insane with zealotry. Never mind that this happened in a state where homeschoolers are already required to register with the government, it’s still evidence that we’re all crazy and should be stalked by local authorities at all times, don’t you know.

The number of Muslim homeschoolers is apparently on the rise according to one major national newspaper. So is the hateful rhetoric against and willful ignorance about American homeschooling apparently (not to mention Muslims, which is just tragic.) At least according to the comments section of the electronic version of this article, there are few things more despicable than a homeschooling family, much less a Muslim one. Never mind that homeschooling is increasing across all demographics in this country and that Muslim homeschoolers aren’t automatically nutty just because they happen to be Muslim.

Meanwhile, there’s an unfortunate violation of civil liberties and a huge sticky wicket in Pennsylvania involving a teacher, a child and a school issued laptop with webcam. In New York a girl is arrested and taken away in handcuffs for doodling on her desk. (I can only hope the statue of limitations has run out on that offense and that all physical evidence has long since been removed by janitorial staff at my old high school.) Apparently in New York, the gun trade has shrunk. Literally. Because a two inch toy gun now warrants consideration of suspension for nine year olds.

So after sifting through all of that garbage about how horrible homeschoolers are for society and that we should be forced to put our children into government schools, but oh-by-the-way, government schools have lost their ever loving minds and children are suffering all sorts of abuses there on a daily basis, it was an absolute salve to the eyes to stumble across this article about a normal homeschooled kid accomplishing good things. In the interview, the soon-to-be homeschool graduate and National Merit Finalist speaks of validation. Validation that he is doing as well as others his age. As well as? He’s doing wonderfully!

The validation he represents, however, reaches beyond what he could possibly fathom for me right now. How could he know what a reaffirming thing it is for me to open and read an article about a successful homeschooler who is attending a public university next year, wasn’t abused, can assemble an articulate sentence and doesn’t mention God in the whole article. I have to say I’m not surprised this has yet to go high profile. There’s no politically useful or scandalous story here. Just a normal kid studying hard with the support of his parents and achieving good things. Imagine that. They do exist.

Wonder where I’ve heard that before.

I’ve put Kelly Green and Gold on my Google Reader at this point because she’s an excellent source for staying up on the Badman Review situation playing out in the UK and an inspirational international advocate for home education freedoms worldwide. She had a very reflective post this week that has me thinking deep, like she did, about my own experiences in high school and college and my own observations of our local home educating community. I felt like it was well worth sharing.

I was reminded today of the irony involved in being a family that chooses home education because we feel there is too much religion in our state’s public school system.  A friend who is exploring the possibility of moving to homeschooling asked me for a few resources that address this issue, so I wrote her an email.  Then I commented in a public forum about having written said email and got several requests for a copy.  I figured, instead of forwarding it a dozen times, I would just tweak it a bit and make it blog ready.  I’m probably going to make some folks mad with this, but aren’t bloggers supposed to be controversial on occasion?  So what the hay, here goes.

The basic issue is the manipulation of Texas state education standards and the impact that can have nationwide, especially in the textbook market.  This is what, in my opinion, an informed citizen ought to know about.

As a beginning foundation to understanding the intricacies of this issue,  this is a good article that gets you started understanding how state governments and pressure from lobbying groups affect state standards, approved textbooks, and therefore- textbook authors and publishers.   Texas has A LOTof pull because of the sheer volume of textbooks they buy.  Textbook publishers are always more likely to focus on publishing exactly what Texas and, to a slightly lesser extent California and Florida, want.  Because of that, the preferences in Texas usually determine what is more widely available for the rest of the country to buy.  Vermont, for example, would have a really hard time getting their hands on more progressively oriented textbook resources because they just aren’t going to order that many, so it just isn’t as profitable for the textbook publishers to publish what Vermont might be looking for versus what Texas is looking for.  Anyway, the article is a bit of an oldie, but a goodie and explains this and other major issues with American textbooks well.  
 
The battle that is playing out in Texas right now has been raging in school systems across the country for some time.  When it comes to science standards, the lynch pin issue is evolution.  The Creationists don’t want textbooks or science standards that teach evolution.  They either want them severely watered down or even better, removed completely.  Or else they want Creationism (Judeo-Christian God created the world in six days, man came from dirt, there were dinosaurs on Noah’s ark, end of discussion) taught in schools.  This is Ken Miller’s site that outlines the battle scientists are in about this all over the country.  Ken Miller is a textbook author.  He wrote a biology textbook that was highly criticized for addressing evolution.  They placed these crazy stickers on his books in some school systems in 2005.  He eventually had to go to court over this whole thing.  Anyway, his experience is a prime example of the crux of the debate ongoing, nationwide debate. 
 
Last year, Texas public school science standards came under review.  The Chair of the State Board of Education was an ardent Creationist– Don McLeroy.  This guy is seriously scary  He’s very open about his goals for Texas public education and they are not even remotely tolerable when compared to the goals we have for our children’s educations.  He’s no longer the Chair.  Now it’s his protege, Gail Lowe  who is in no way an improvement.  Anyway– he and Ms. Lowe and many other State Board of Education (SBOE) members helped to effectively weaken science standards in this state.  I’m going to link to the Texas Freedom Network for you for their synopsis of the damage done.  TFN is clearly a liberal organization, so their bias is clear and they are honest and passionate about it.  But they are a very effective watchdog organization when it comes to keeping an eye on the SBOE and their actions lately.  Here is their summary of what happened in the science standards battle.  Scroll down and you will see where it says Science Curriculum Revision Recap.  You can read through those links or take a look at the video. 
 
Now the SBOE is at it again.  This year it is the social studies standards.  Recently, they listed several notable American historical figures that they felt should be cut from Texas social studies program.  The list included Thurgood Marshall, attorney in the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court case and later the first African American Supreme Court Justice– but Texas children don’t need to know about him.  Or about Cesar Chavez, major figure of the modern labor movement.  Why?  Because these individuals are not representative of a good conservative education and the current standards contain way too many references to minorities, apparently.  However, Rush Limbaugh should be included.  It’s insanity.  Again, TFN is the easiest place to go to read up on this to start with, but keep in mind they do have a strong liberal bias.  You can just go straight to their homepage because it is one of their top lobbying issues right now.    Right at the top it says “Far Right Moves to Rewrite History in Texas.”  So take all of this insanity and then go back to the issue of textbooks.  If Texas rewrites its science and social studies standards to reflect an ultra-conservative agenda, that is what the large textbook publishers will cater to and the entire nation’s public education systems will feel the effects.
 
Combine all of this with the 2007 legislation that encouraged public schools in Texas to teach Bible classes but without an specific guidance on how to do that, plus statements by the Texas Attorney General that require high schools to teach the influence of the Bible in history and literature (again with no guidance on how to do this in an appropriately academic manner versus a religiously dogmatic manner) and we have a whole lot of political and religious propaganda being fed daily to public school students.  It has been a very effective backdoor campaign to create a politically and religiously motivated education in government funded classrooms. 

Basically, it’s enough to make my skin crawl and convince me that my kids are better off homeschooling.  Funny that, unlike the popular cultural image of home educating families,  we homeschool because we believe there is too much religion invading my state’s public education system!  At least when I’m homeschooling, I am the textbook purchaser.  I can look for what I judge to be objective, secular resources that provide us high caliber materials for science and social studies– no radical bias needed from any political or religious agenda in my classroom.

The Economist just published this obnoxious article about American homeschooling. This type of media coverage of homeschooling really irritates me and I’m going to explain a bit about why.

For one thing, it is politically divisive. Just read the comments and you’ll see what I mean. Articles like this encourage people to make certain clear cut divisions. Conservatives for homeschooling, liberals for public education. The End. It is never that simple. But this type of garbage encourages liberals to oppose supporting homeschooling as a viable educational option in an effort to garner the support of their base. It also pits home education against public education. As if one can only succeed at the expense of the other. This is equally absurd. We homeschool. But we also support public education reform. Not across the board, mind you because there are some really dumb ideas out there, but in the broad sense of the theory that improving America’s schools is good for the entire country no matter where your kids are educated. My home educated children will grow up and work with publicly educated adults and I’d really like for my children to live, work and play with intelligent, well-educated individuals across the board in their future society.

It also paints a terribly myopic picture of home educating families as white, rich, Christian, Creationist, patriarchal, two-parent, heterosexual families whose children never leave the safety of their own roof with possibly the exception of church activities. The 3-5% of American school age children being home educated are a much more widely varied bunch than that. As are the parents choosing to homeschool them. Several demographics of home educating families seem to be on the rise these days that do not fit this narrow image of what an American homeschooler must look like. More and more, I am beginning to feel very strongly about raising the profile of this rising tide of home educators that do not fit the neoconservative Biblical literalist profile. American schools are failing our children. All of them. Not just the conservative Christian ones. Parents of all backgrounds have had enough and are taking matters into their own hands.

I also do not appreciate the way many media outlets are manipulating the 2007 NCES data either. This article is no exception. It highlights the fact that 83% of the parents responding to the NCES data collection articulated religious and/or moral instruction as their reason for homeschooling. What the article does not explain is that 83% chose it as ONE OF their reasons for homeschooling, not THE reason for homeschooling. It also neglects to clarify that the respondents to that question were not sorted by religious/moral belief systems, therefore, that 83% cannot be assumed to be solidly Christian. In fact, there’s no way to tell how many of them are Christian. They could be many other faiths as well. They could, hypothetically, also be secular humanists who feel strongly about providing moral education to their children that has nothing to do with a religious dogma of any kind. The percentage of families that chose religious/moral instruction as their PRIMARY reason for homeschooling was 36%. THIRTY-SIX PERCENT!!! Now, in case anyone needs me to do the math, this means that the other 64% of the respondents ranked a different reason higher than religious/moral instruction in their decision to homeschool. These more important reasons for almost TWO-THIRDS of the respondents included, but were not limited to, concern about the school environment, dissatisfaction with the academic instruction available, and the desire to pursue nontraditional educational methods with their children. This is the glaring evidence most media outlets have not chosen to highlight. That 64% of the families responding to NCES 2007 homeschool survey chose a reason directly related to the failure of public education as their PRIMARY reason for choosing to home educate. That is the message we need to be sending loud and clear. That we refuse to accept substandard educational options for our children and we are voting with our feet.

I will continue to work to broaden the America public’s picture of home education in my little corner of the country. I will continue to encourage both home education as a fantastic option that should be protected by law and creative public education reform for those who cannot or will not home educate. Spread the word– followers of non-Christian religions, single parents, folks who make less than $50K a year, and even liberals do it too.

Ten minutes poking around the search engine of my choice was enough to prompt this thoroughly depressing post.  I’m warning you up front. 

Today, I’ve been taking advantage of a leisurely weekend and indulging myself in some unstructured computer time.   Oddly enough, one of my previous posts happened to garner a flurry of commentary that I was available to respond to thoughtfully and unhurriedly, which was nice.  I also caught up on the latest laughable anti-homeschooling blog post (which is so ignorant, I refuse to give the poster the satisfaction of linking it) from a prime example of why we opt out of institutional schooling.  That was fun and all, but then I got to thinking (which I know I shouldn’t do, but that’s never stopped me before….)

These can’t possibly be new arguments can they?  Are folks taking positions on various sides of these disagreements that are original?  Is the discussion evolving over time on a constant search for how to create a better world?   Unfortunately, no.

Different folks.  Same arguments.  Same inability to come to some sort of agreement or at least mutual respect for differing viewpoints, intelligently and logically presented.  So how long does it take for us to spin in circles over an issue before we spiral out to a new understanding?  And, most likely, find ourselves spinning in a newer, possibly more complex, but equally divisive circle.  Is there such a thing as progress or are we just too dizzy to notice we’re actually still in the same spot we started in?

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.

~Albert Einstein~

I recently attended a discussion where the facilitator presented this particular quotation and proposed the idea that indulging our curiosity is actually a form of spiritual practice.  Learning can be a sacred act.  As someone who is constantly contemplating how I can deepen my own spiritual practice and further my personal journey, this instantly appealled to me on several levels. 

Since homeschooling our children is my primary daily focus these days, I first went there.  It is interesting that recent data shows a shift in the primary motivation to homeschool in this country.  After a decided peak in the number of families choosing to home educate in order to ensure a Biblically-based education,  other more varied reasons are starting to catch up.  However, families who are not Christian are also choosing to homeschool in order to ensure a values-based education.  The public system has been forced to secularize and sanitize its curriculum to an extreme and that is affecting the decision making process of Christian and non-Christian families alike when it comes to the educational path their children will travel.  All homeschoolers may no longer be using the Bible to do it, but a majority of them still want to ensure their children do receive some sort of positive character building experience that they feel the mainstream system no longer provides.  But Einstein’s words suggest we might be going about this a bit cockeyed.  Perhaps the learning process itself is just the values-based, character building path we were seeking.  Perhaps we should see the two goals of spiritual and secular education as a single shining path of lifelong learning, winding through one holy curiosity after another and leading us into wholeness.

Revisiting how I view pursuing random bits of knowledge for myself has also been invigorating.  Seeing as we end up at the library a minimum of once a week, I often spot an armload of books that interest me personally, in addition to whatever the kids are into at the time.  They usually consist of a random hodgepodge of topics that have currently peaked my interest.  The same can be said of my assorted podcast subscriptions and current playlist.  Sometimes in the evenings, when I have finally managed to render the Triad unconscious, I struggle with what to do with the few hours I have to myself.  Do dishes?  Do yoga? Chat with Patris Maximus?  Watch that DVR’d episode of something-or-other?  Meditate?  Journal?  Blog?  Read a novel?  Read non-fiction?  Plan out a Girl Scout meeting?  Or a tea party?  The internal deliberation can get out of control and Patris Maximus may point out that I’m beginning to turn an alarming shade of purple and should stop thinking about whatever it is that I’m thinking about because I’m getting nowhere good with it.  I am also a habitual multi-tasker.  I have my ear buds in as I’m typing this.  So I often try to do more than one thing at a time to maximize my efforts.  But after thinking about what ole’ Albert had to say, I got a bit of a handle on a tiny chunk of my evening hours of peace and quiet.  I made a list of my own personal Holy Curiosities.  They are things I am in awe of.  Things I am just bursting to know more about.  Things that, as I learn more about them, fill me with wonder at and gratitude for the world around me.  Now my reading material and my evenings are becoming a tad more organized.  And I’ve put my meditation practice (which was mostly frustrating me lately anyway) on hold for a different sort of spiritual practice; a two-for-one sort of practice which the multitasker in me is thrilled with.  

When I sit down to revel in a Holy Curiosity, I take deep breaths and I get really comfortable.  I may even have something indulgent in hand to sip or nibble.  But before I crack the book or load the podcast or click on the search engine, I take a moment to be open.  I open to the wonder of what I am about to take time to take in.  It is a deeply satisfying experience.  Turning to a book is nothing new in the human spiritual experience.  There are holy books for every dogmatic path.  But what if every book had the potential to be holy?  For me, the line between secular and spiritual is blurring and I’m much more comfortable with that than I would have been previously.  This is where the questioning has led me.  And for now, I really like it here.  Let Holy Curiosity abound!  I’ll be grateful for every relative moment of it.        

No, not those headlines. These headlines. I seriously just almost peed my pants laughing. At the second link, of course. I don’t even want to talk about the first link. Stephanie at Throwing Marshmallows has done a fabulous job addressing the first link. All I have to say about that is “Here, here!”

I am exhausted.

Seriously exhausted.

But in a very positive way.   It is actually somewhat amusing to me that, as a year round homeschooler, I am being struck by the physical, mental and emotional adjustment period that is Back-To-School time.  Athena had no desire to take a break over the summer for more than a few days at a time, so we’ve been clipping right along through the heat and humidity of Southeast Texas, but in the last two or three weeks something has shifted and the pace has suddenly quickened.  It is as if she is tapped into some sort of energetic flow that causes the nation’s children to suddenly crave knowledge and new shoes again with a voracious appetite now that late August approaches.   Whatever it is, the girl is on an educational rampage.  Last Saturday became “The Day of Mesopotamian Madness.”  And she was not kidding when she made that proclamation over breakfast.  I asked her where that idea had come from and she showed me the source of her inspiration– blueberries and scrambled eggs.  Athena had used her breakfast to craft a map for the Fertile Crescent, complete with a blueberry Persian Gulf and two blueberry rivers.  You guessed it, the Tigress and the Euphrates.  She also decided to spend the rest of the day calling me “Mother of the Euphrates River“ whenever she wanted anything.  She used an old crib sheet to fashion herself a robe appropriate to wear to the ziggurat and presented Patris Maximus with a bedsheet, instructing him to do the same so he could assume his responsibilities as temple guard.  Amazingly enough, I was able to scrounge together a dinner that met her strict standards of authenticity- lamb chops, dates, kumquats, apple slices and sebetu rolls (which she helped to bake.)  The next day she wore her Mesopotamian robe to church and to a friend’s birthday party, came home, built yet another building block model of a ziggurat and opened a Mesopotamian jewlery shop in the playroom, magnanamously accepting Artemis as her apprentice and convincing Apollo to trade her animal skins (READ: beenie babies) for a hand crafted lapis lazuli necklace (READ: blue plastic luau party favor.)  It is on weekends like this, witnessing this all-consuming passion for learning shining out from her very spirit, that I wonder how anyone could ever mistake her own unique internal drive for hothousing on my part.  But it has happened.  It shouldn’t matter.  And really it doesn’t matter.  We are doing what works for us and Athena is thriving.  That is what matters.  All the same, it does sting a little to be accused of pushing your child in an unhealthy way when it is all you can do most days to keep up with her need for knowledge and keep meals on the table and just enough clean underware available for everyone to get through the rest of the week. 

Ocassionally though, I do catch a little break.  Apollo and Artemis are teaching themselves American Sign Language these days and will watch these videos, quite literally, for hours. Then, of course, Artemis wakes me up at 4am, vigorously signing something at me in the dark from the foot of my bed, so I pay for letting the video do the work later, I guess. That is the way of things though, isn’t it? Eventually the lesson comes back around to you. Funny episodes of karmic retribution have been taking place in recent days all over the place. The most amusing of which is probably the re-enactment of the Eighth Plague of Exodus everytime we return from a grocery run. I was mid-sentence, explaining for what felt like at least the twenty-first time, that we did not have to immediately devour every last scrap of food we had just purchased before I could even get it shelved, when I began to giggle hysterically. The Triad of Chaos just looked at me and then each other with this “Has she finally snapped for good?” sort of look passing between them. But I couldn’t help it. I sounded EXACTLY like my own mother when her four children, who also moonlighted as locusts, descended on her after her return from the military commissary. Here it was. The karmic boot to the behind for every time my younger sisters and brother and I managed to snarf an entire 2lb. bag of grapes or box of granola bars straight out of the grocery bags plopped hodgepodge across our kitchen floor while my frantic mother raced to store everything before it dissapeared for good. When I finally got my giggles under control, I tossed the Triad a bone and let them inhale a pint of blueberries while I finished putting everything else away.

It has been raining a great deal here the past week or so. This morning the Triad and I sat in the window seat of our kitchen and watched a small creek appear on our property line. We also got to watch the construction trucks attempting slow motion u-turns in our cul-de-sac through a little over a foot of water. But once the torrential downpour subsided, we discovered that the neighborhood actually has pretty descent drainage. The kids had a lovely time puddle hopping and delightedly drawing with chalk on the still-wet pavement after dinner tonight. They ended up drawing out most of the rest of the kids and parents on our block to join the fun actually. More storms are headed our way tomorrow. This sort of weather also contributes to my general sense of exhaustion. Rain just plain makes me sleepy. I better set the coffee pot on a timer for tomorrow morning so at least two mugfuls of steaming inspration and motivation will be ready and waiting for me. Athena warned me over dinner that tomorrow would be “Crazy, Fun Learning Day.” I asked her what such a day would entail and she looked at me with a mouth full of sweet potato and grinned. “I don’t know yet Mommy. That’s your job.”

Take the time to view this TED Talk video by Sir Ken Robinson.  He takes a humorous, yet pointed, look at what he believes to be the crux of the problem with the world’s public education systems.  Founded less than 2oo years ago as a response to the Industrial Revolution, public school systems were a crisis managment method for educating the children of workers to grow up, replace their parents and become workers themselves.  He points out that as the system has progressed and developed, it has become about fostering less and less creativity and limiting the parts of the child where growth is fostered.  This cannot continue.  I’ll let him tell you why.

Sir Ken Robinson on “Do Schools Kill Creativity?”

Creativity is just as important to education as literacy and we should treat it as such.
~Sir Ken Robinson~

Two fellow homeschooling and blogging mothers suggest we rethink how we approach answering the most commonly and (as one of them points out) most carelessly asked question in opposition of the home education path.  Check out their responses to the “socialization question” at Survive the Experience and The Happy Homeschooler. These posts are elloquent food for thought that my mind is munching on this rainy afternoon in Southeast Texas and who doesn’t like to share a tasty bite now and then?