Notes on Schooling for Humanity, or Why Homeschool

I just returned Schooling for Humanity, by David O. Solmitz, to the library. I didn’t manage to read it all – it’s very dry and heavy reading – but there are some bits I want to note here. Solmitz taught history in central Maine public high school, about an hour or so from where I live, for 30 years. This isn’t a book about homeschooling, but it does illuminate why we homeschool: it’s not about our town’s school or teachers, but about the content & priorities of education available to public school students in our country.

One of Solmitz’s basic ideas, as I understood it, is that public education was initially conceived as a way to inform our country’s citizens, so they could participate in the democratic process. A free education, open to all, encourages a bedrock level of educational attainment, so people will be able to make good decisions when selecting their leaders.

Over time, he argues, education has been diverted from this initial purpose to one of preparing students to become good producers and consumers, allowing corporations, and this country’s elite business executives, to make more money.

“If researchers are to be believed, most educational reform initiatives of the past 20 years are geared toward ensuring that the United States will remain dominant in the emerging global economy. Even the most cursory reading of the 1983 document A Nation at Risk reveals these imperatives at the core of recent reform movements. What is lost in this rush to the top of the materialist heap is an education for the more enduring human values: for creativity, intellectual development, care, social justice, and democracy” (foreword, by Kathleen Kesson).

Is it ironic, or just scary, that the “rush to the top” alluded to here comes from a book that was published in 2001 – years before President Obama was elected, and the Race to the Top education initiative & grants were put into place? Unfortunately, I am skeptical of educational plans proposed by any party. Would that it were so easy to guarantee our nation’s children get a good education.

This inevitable warping of even the best ideas as they become institutionalized is addressed in the book as well:

“It was during these years that I began to realize when ‘good’ ideas become institutionalized they lose their admirable spirit. Since institutionalization requires standardization, bureaucratization, and regulation, the natural flow that allows all sorts of people from different economic classes to spontaneously work together for the common good is lost. As I became a teacher I carried this lesson with me. I realized that, if public schools were to work effectively, students, teachers, and administrators must work as partners for the common good” (25).

So, from what I read, Somitz advocates for true democracy within our schools. He lost me here, frankly, because I cannot picture this. Even within my home, our school (one teacher, two children) is not a democracy. I suppose this is called unschooling, or the lifestyle would be “radical unschooling”, which for me, erases the knowledge, maturity, and life experience adults use to make decisions for/with children in the name of equality. Not to say that I don’t consult my children, and respect them, and listen to them. I do! But I make decisions FOR them, because I am the adult – the parent and the teacher. I don’t have a problem with this, in my home, or in a school setting.

However, I have my children’s best interests at heart and at the forefront of my decision-making. MY children, not all children, or the town’s budget, or my company’s bottom line.

Here’s a sample of the argument:

“With the appearance in 1983 of “A Nation at Risk” school administrators and teachers were once again targeted for national economic decline and cultural deterioration. Instead of acknowledging that more students were completing high school from among the poor and disenfranchised, corporatists and politicians tried to demonstrate through statistics that students were doing academically more poorly in the 1980s and 1990s than they had in the 1960s and 1970s. Therefore, it was easy for them to demand education reform to meet the new needs of business and industry . . . government officials, politicians, and corporate leaders took advantage of the new scare. They demanded that schools be reformed and that statewide and national standards be established to bring education in line with the new basic skills demanded by corporate America. This argument scapegoats educators; and it blurs understanding of a labor market in which the largest proportion of new jobs are relatively unskilled and millions of skilled workers are jobless’ . . . Therefore, the effects of the education reform effort do nothing to reclaim the wonderment of learning that children so often lose when they enter school. The focus remains on amassing as much knowledge and developing as many skills as possible to meet the current demands of business and industry as opposed to encouraging young people to explore the purpose of life, to foster human dignity, freedom, and social responsibility (53-54).

Making money is certainly part of what we need to do in life, but it is not our purpose. This bit reminds me of the tongue-in-cheek picture that goes around Facebook of the four African boys looking out over the savannah, saying something like, “oh those poor American children stuck in school all day – maybe we should send them money!” One’s perspective certainly influences one’s priorities. Yes, I want my children to have knowledge and skills, but I also want them to ask questions, discover answers, pursue interests, and have quiet time that they cannot have if they attend public school.

Another ironic moment is that the Maine Learning Results (and probably the Common Core new mandates) SEEM to be in the best interests for children (who wants their child “left behind”??), and are dressed in the rhetoric of meaning and truth.

“As serious as the socioeconomic problems of our society are, and as beautifully as the Maine Learning Results portray goals for ‘citizenship and personal fulfillment’, they aid and abet the very problems they proclaim they are trying to alleviate. They establish what appear to be noble goals for education, e.g., as integrative and informed thinking, open-ended questioning, self-directed and lifelong learning, and responsible and involved citizenship. However, each of these ideals is not only geared to the newest paradigm of business and industry, but students are rigidly and routinely assessed to make sure they have achieved each standard’s performance indicator. As a result the creativity of teachers is stifled and their ability to meet the needs of their students is curtailed by bureaucratic technicalization” (81).

“Although the learning methods supported by the Maine Learning Results appear to use an open-ended approach, students are not encouraged to ask questions and seek knowledge beyond the parameters established within the le

arning standards. Since they are tested regularly by their teachers and by the state, teachers are obligated to teach to the test” (84).

This reminds me of the Labor & Delivery rooms that are beautifully decorated, and attended by doctors who say things like, “Oh, I only do this/that procedure when absolutely necessary” and “of course you can do whatever you want during the birth” but who have 45% Cesarean rates and insist on mothers having IVs and be hooked up to the fetal monitor at all times. It’s a trick, people – the insides do not always match the outsides!!

Back to education – these mandates tend to go unfunded, or at least leave teachers (and administrators) working even more hours without pay to meet them. What message does this send to the teachers… and further, to our children:

“When the SAD #59 school board tried to appease angry taxpayers, like so many others throughout the state, by increasing class size and laying off teachers, it sent an ugly, subliminal message to the students: ‘we don’t care about you’” (81).

Finally, this bit sums it up for me – the bind for teachers, and for parents/children:

“A colleague of mine in the Augusta, Maine school system was struck by an analogy expressed in the Maine Learning Results, ‘education is a train and students must be able to get on and off as their needs change’. My friend asked whether we really, according to this analogy, want to place our students on a predetermined track? After all, railroad tracks are placed on a particular bed, laid in a specific direction, leading to a fixed destination. The destiny of the train is placed in the hands of a single individual, the engineer. Similarly the paths of preparation and their destinations have already been decided by the performance standards of the Maine Learning Results. Is that what we really want?

Having someone else do the navigation for our students is appealing to many parents and students. It is easier to have others make decisions for us than to have to make them ourselves. However, doesn’t the purpose of education include preparing students to become self-reliant individuals who are able to lead responsible and fulfilling lives? Doesn’t this imply independent, critical thinkers, self-disciplined individuals, reliable people who are in charge of their own lives? Are not these reflective people, appreciative and caring individuals who are socially responsible and active citizens?

. . . If neither parents nor their children are encouraged to take charge of their education while many teachers passively adhere to established curriculum in which they have only had an imaginary voice, some irreplaceable values are being lost. Therefore, this model of education is very dangerous as it creates the atmosphere of being manipulated, governed and it fosters irresponsibility . . . Today the educated power elite sometimes openly and probably more often subconsciously manipulate people worldwide to believe that corporations are democratic. In fact, multinational corporations resist those national dictators, like Saddam Hussein who nationalized the oil industry in Iraq, because they interfere with the corporate ability to make money” (86-87).

I have NO IDEA what the answers are. I have a Masters Degree in Education; I taught high school for two years; I’ve taught part-time in an Adult Ed program for three. I’ve been homeschooling for five years, and a part of our town’s educational “scene” (from volunteering at the school to school board meetings) off and on for six years. I don’t think there are any easy answers, though I do find the “roam schooling” proposed in another book I read and wrote about a few entries back, Notes on The Year of Learning Dangerously, very, very appealing.

Finally, I can tell you from a professional standpoint, that the college/career-ready hype gets on my nerves. My former boss hefted a three-inch binder onto the table, basically telling me to revamp my curriculum based on the lessons contained within, as specified by the grant she just won. My ENGLISH class was being usurped by lessons like “How People Get Jobs” and pages and pages of job inventories and skill lists, how to apply for financial aid college/career awareness assessments. There IS a place for this kind of learning and information – but ENGLISH class? I was infuriated, and disgusted. Here’s a bit of my response to my boss:

“I understand the need to make work in my classes relevant to my students’ lives. That is one of the major drivers of my choices in instruction – activities, assessment, and curriculum. Yes, work/career/college-readiness and technology certainly have their place in any good English curriculum. I want to make sure, though, that other things don’t get set aside:

Specifically to students preparing for the GED, there is a significant amount of “non-relevant” material that they need instruction around: short story and poetry analysis, for example, or how to punctuate fussy complicated sentences that they will not usually need to write.

Further, and even more important, my class may be the last place students encounter certain ideas: that language can be beautiful; that writing can move them; that as writers they can produce writing that is beautiful and/or moving; that their experiences as readers as important – they create the text they’re reading *with* the author; etc & etc.

It’s true that reading certain short stories or poems or speeches may “seem irrelevant” – but the IDEAS behind them, and/or language’s power/beauty, THAT is what engages people (and THAT is how I get them to do “boring” stuff like grammar and resume writing – because they buy into what we’re doing as important and “BIG”). Phil – and Sarah too – with MLK’s “I Have a Dream Speech”; Chris C. with House on Mango Street; a lot of the students’ responses to the persuasive essays we read, or “The Lottery”. Helping students experience the value in reading and writing is THE MOST important – and potentially relevant – take-away from this class. Last year, so many came in saying they hate reading, they hate writing, etc & etc. and yet they experienced really enjoying or being moved by language. THAT, in my opinion, is what can make a life-long difference.

Why do I mention all this? Because there’s only so much time. I only have these students for so many hours. We must balance: career-readiness; technology; reading; writing; getting ready for the GED. I wanted to take this opportunity share my priorities with you: I can definitely add in more career-readiness and technology instruction in my class, but I would prefer to also keep my basic priorities intact.”

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Also, this is just my response to the situation we find ourselves in educating our children – certainly there are many children who do well in school, and many parents who find their public (or private) schools to be the best place for their children to get an education. All of these are valid choices, and all have their challenges and benefits and anxieties.

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