Tuesday, July 11, 2006
homeschooling redux
There's been an interesting thread at Spunky, begun by a question (John's) and carried forward by 54 commenters as of this writing. Some comments have been rude (how unusual for blog commenters - not), some have been informative. What I realized midway through reading them is that homeschoolers make some fundamental assumptions, some of which I share and agree with and some I'm not so sure about:
1. "Brainwashing" is a term loosely used to mean inculcating children with the viewpoints and/or ideologies of those who instruct. Private and public schools have their own sets of viewpoints and ideologies so they are also "brainwashing" children. In a sense, then, one of the decisions involved in where one educates children is which brainwashing one disagrees with least. (I pretty much agree with this. Every school and every teacher comes with a set of predispositions and values. Sometimes these are religious, sometimes political, sometimes cultural. It would be nice to think that children could be taught those things that are factual, as facts, and those that are evaluative, as opinions. But it's not gonna happen, I think. Besides, one man'sceilingfact may be another man'sflooropinion.)
2. Parents are ideal teachers of their children because they (a) know their children and (b) are knowledgeable enough to teach because they were taught, once, themselves. (I have to say "huh?" about this one. It's one thing to know someting and quite another to teach it, let alone teach it well. There's an adage that parents should never teach their own children to drive, right? Not because parents don't know how to drive but because children usually learn best from someone who has no emotional interest or investment in the outcome. Which I would think also applies to academic subjects.)More to come but must do some other things for a while. Meantime, would love to know readers' thoughts.
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