Diversity and homeschoolers
Jul 27th, 2008 by learningumbrella
Through Doc, I saw this Homeschool Debate.
From my perspective, I want to address a few thoughts that came up from that post.
They would not have seen these things, if I home schooled them, because they would only be seeing people just like them. They would only be exposed to people with the same family life, the same values, the same religious beliefs. And where is the opportunity for outreach? Where is the opportunity to share their faith?
First, I wish this was the way all religious families saw their children’s interactions with others. When I was a child, I knew families, of all types of schooling, who told me they weren’t allowed to play with me. I have freckles and moles on my face, and I remember another little girl telling me that her mother had told her that if she talked to “the Godless ones” she would “get ugly marks like that on her face”. So, the use of religion to divide children seems incredibly hurtful to me.
Additionally, I have to say that this mischaracterizes my experience of being homeschooled. It’s such a common misperception, that homeschooled kids are “only around those like themselves”. This may be true for a slice of the homeschooled population - those that are making an effort to have it be this way. Honestly, you’d have to be covering your children’s eyes to keep them from experiencing differences in life. Even if you live in an area with no racial diversity, or no class differences, and no openly gay or lesbian people, there must be someone with health or other personal differences. As a child, I encountered and interacted with folks of different races, abilities, sexual orientations, lifestyles (memorably, there was the woman I did a community theater show with who lived in a van with 15 cats!), classes, religions, and ages. I was friends with older folks who liked to have me visit during the day, and I was friends with kids of all ages. I know that part of this was that I grew up in a large city, and that my parents had the whole family involved in community theater. But this is what homeschooling lets you do, because you can take on a time-consuming family activity with all the time freed up from school.
I know a few homeschooling families and I think it is a wonderful option. I respect the reasons for which they’ve made that decision. What I don’t respect is the judgmental attitude they have toward those of us who do not home school.
This is a hard one. It’s all well and good to say “whatever works for you”, but really, if I choose to bike for the environment, I have made a judgment about driving an SUV. I try to not judge the people who drive SUV’s as being bad people - but I disagree with their choice. For me, homeschooling isn’t this kind of choice - it really is less of a philosophical choice for me and more of a “this is what works for me”. But for many people who homeschool, it’s a choice they’ve come to after struggling and researching, and they feel passionate about why they are doing it. It’s the same with attachment parenting, vaccinating or not, breastfeeding, using cloth diapers, and a plethora of other lifestyle/values choices that we make as parents. Can I talk about childbirth with my friends who chose the epidural when I chose total natural childbirth? Yes, we can talk about it. Does it sometimes feel like we are close to being judgmental of each other? Yes - it’s dangerous ground.
No one is perfect, and there are no perfect choices. Try not to judge, because you haven’t walked a mile in that person’s shoes. Homeschooling is hard work, it requires sacrifice in time and income that some people can’t make, and some people just don’t want to do it because they don’t like it/feel called to do it. And the ideal of public school, that it extends education to everyone, regardless of what family they were born into and how much privilege they inherit, is a worthy ideal. I don’t think the practice has ever lived up to that ideal, and I strongly disagree with the fundamental assumptions and structures of institutional schooling, but we need something to give “education to all”.
So, how can we interact with each other in respectful, non-judgmental ways, while at the same time holding actual ideals? I struggle with this, and I’m still not sure if total acceptance is what is called for. Like I already said, I don’t agree with driving and SUV, with corporal punishment, and with many other choices people make. I think good people make those choices, but I still think they are bad choices. How can we talk about this without feeling defensive and “judged”?
I have trouble with this as well. It seems that some folks are already so on the defensive, both PS and HS parents, that if anyone says anything about either choice, the other is ready to accept that as a condemnation of them personally. Argh!
I’ve been running into all kinds of things that touch on this topic lately. Maybe I’m just mellowing with age, but I’m getting close to saying flat out, “There’s no huge statement here, we’re just doing what’s working for us.” I’ve seen happy families living all kinds of lives. As long as it’s working, just be happy!
I think it comes down to valuing the individual, but communication can be hard.
Are judgements really bad? Maybe it’s just the way I define it, but making choices is all about judging. We just need to communicate respectfully. I do not like some of the animosity I’ve seen from homeschoolers towards anyone who would chose something different for their children. That will not help to inform anyone.
And I appreciate your comments about who homeschoolers interact with. My kids play more with the children in the neighborhood than their friends at church.
Great post and great points! It is tricky not to be judgmental on some issues where we feel passionately, especially concerning children.
Also, the whole stance about HS kids not being exposed to folks who are different is so incorrect in our case. My kids would be going to a little, rural school with far less diversity than HSing has afforded them. We join so many different types of groups and activities, travel, network and take part in so much precisely in order to expose them to lots more people, ideas, experiences and cultures.
Stereotyping homeschoolers today is a bit like stereotyping people with brown hair! There are just so many types of HSers and so many ways we do it.
My tentative decision to homeschool (tentative because I don’t know how we’ll make it income-wise in the long run, and Sylv strikes me as the kind who’s going to be really seduced by the idea of going to school) feels a little like one more implicit judgment people will assume I’m making.
I’m already a vegetarian raising a vegetarian kid, which is inherently a statement against meat eating. The problem is, my stance on meat eating is actually not hard line. That doesn’t come up with omnivores very much; many people assume a level of moral judgment that simply isn’t there.
Like vegetarianism, some HS families may come from a very anti-school place, others from a more “this is something we really like and works well for us” kind of place. I personally had a horrible, horrible public school experience. I was a *very* fast learner and spent a lot of time twiddling my thumbs, and also had a few teachers who treated me like shit (even when I was quite young). I’ve spent a lot of time in public school classrooms as an adult, and some of the classrooms out there are just unsupportive, dreary places to be.
My wanting to homeschool is both a negative reaction to my own experience and a genuine excitement about the kinds of experiences I can share with my kids during the day, and many of the other benefits of teaching children at home. So, like my vegetarianism, my reasons are nuanced, and probably totally different from someone two blocks over who’s homeschooling because they teach evolution in schools.