Home Education Magazine

May-June/97 - Columns

How Homeschoolers Can Help Prevent Education from Becoming the Next Scapegoat

Have you noticed how much attention is being paid to education these days? Federal and state governments, big business, professionals and universities, and the media are all focusing an enormous amount of energy on education.

To be sure, since the future of a society depends on the way young people are raised and educated, education is a subject that is frequently discussed. But in recent years, more attention than usual has been paid to education. Just one example is the Bush administration's education reform package, which was called America 2000, then renamed Goals 2000 by the Clinton administration, and written into law as the federal Educate America Act in 1994.

In recent months, the amount of attention has escalated. In the State of the Union address in January, 1997, President Clinton's first major point was, "My number one priority for the next four years is to ensure that all Americans have the best education in the world." He then outlined the ten principles on which his "Call to Action for American Education" is based. The first principle is "a national crusade for education standards-not federal government standards, but national standards, representing what all our students must know to succeed in the knowledge economy of the 21st century." A week later, Wisconsin's Governor Thompson spent seven pages of his State of the State address discussing education and only five and a half pages total on all other issues, including the economy, public safety, and property taxes. Thompson told his audience, "What we're talking about tonight is what will be taught to your children. What I'm proposing is not less than a blueprint for what will go into the heads of your children."

Current political moves in education have bipartisan support. (In the above example, Clinton is a Democrat and Thompson a Republican.) The moves are being accompanied by many stories in the mainstream media about education, including the need for well trained workers, problems schools are facing, the importance of standards and testing, drop-outs and truancy.

Now is a good time to ask what is going on and why, what effects the attention that is being paid to education and somewhat less directly to families will have, and how we can respond. This column begins with the premise that as our economy and major institutions fail to fulfill their promises or to provide vision and meaning, the dominant powers and players (big business, professionals and universities, our governments, and the media) are finding scapegoats and picking on the weak to explain the problems. Welfare was a first major hit, and now that the new welfare reform has been accomplished, education seems to be the next primary target.

This column will begin by discussing reasons why homeschoolers should think about the possibility that education will be the next scapegoat. It will then briefly describe the way in which misinformation about welfare has been presented as part of the focus on welfare. Next we will examine some of the misinformation currently being presented on education. Finally it will examine what we as homeschoolers can do and are doing to prevent education from being used by the government, big business, professionals and universities, and the media in a clumsy attempt to distract people from real problems.

Why These Developments Affect Homeschoolers

Why should we homeschoolers be concerned about this? After all, our decision to homeschool removes us from the institutions of conventional schools. However, there are compelling reasons why we need to be involved.

- The way our society views both education in general and the public schools definitely affects us as homeschoolers. Homeschools are expected to more or less correspond to conventional schools. Therefore, as society's perspective on what schools should be doing changes, including adopting national standards in education that all schools must meet and putting more emphasis on using schools primarily to produce workers for large corporations, these expectations will be put on homeschoolers as well.

- As homeschoolers, we have worked closely with young learners who have been given strong support and encouraged to pursue their own interests and use their strengths and talents. Therefore, we have important insights into how learning really takes place, ways young people can be helped with their learning, and ways of helping those who have difficulty learning in conventional school settings. Few other people understand learning as well as homeschoolers do, and our society desperately needs this understanding.

- Homeschooling is The few arenas in which families are clearly demonstrating that we can and should refuse to allow the big four to take over the process of raising and educating our children. Homeschooling works! That simple fact shows that there is something seriously wrong with standards in education, with having professionals and experts raise our children, and with accepting the direction and policies of big business and government.

Learning from What Happened to Welfare

Before considering what is currently being done to education, it is instructive to look at what has happened to welfare. (This column is in no way intended to be a discussion of the pros and cons or the justice or injustice of the current wave of welfare reform. Regardless of how we feel about welfare, understanding the process by which the welfare system was changed will help us understand the similarities and differences in the process that is now being used to change education.)

First consider the following facts about welfare.

"AFDC [Aid to Families with Dependent Children] costs alone have been no more than 1% of the total federal budget in each of the last ten years, and, in the ten years prior to that, they were never more than 1.7% of federal expenditures." (From Welfare Myths: Fact or Fiction? Exploring the Truth about Welfare, The Welfare Law Center of the Center on Social Welfare Policy and Law, p. 37.)

"It is widely but incorrectly believed that welfare families are larger than average, and that welfare itself encourages family growth. In 72.7 percent of AFDC families, there are two or fewer children. The average AFDC family size has decreased from 4.0 to 2.9 persons since 1969." (From Welfare Reform, The Twentieth Century Fund, p. 6.)

Now think about the impression the mainstream media has presented. It seems that presentation of a lot of misinformation was a key element in convincing the American public to go along with welfare reform. This was accomplished partly by focusing on dramatic, often tragic, episodes which are reduced to visual pictures and a few seconds of narrative. The media is financed by corporations and reflects their agendas, values, and attitudes toward the family.

It is also very important for us to realize that the welfare reform says in essence that it is more important for a person to be a worker than to be a parent. Parents of very young children are required to be in the work force and are not allowed to receive welfare so they can stay home with their children. This policy is very short sighted when one considers the strong need that young children have to be home with a parent and the benefits that come from having a parent at home even as the children get older, as homeschoolers are well aware. But perhaps even more serious, this policy says, in effect, people can only be fulltime parents if they have the independent resources to manage without assistance in the form of welfare. If education is in fact to be the next scapegoat, we should ask how this will affect parenting as well.

Misinformation That Is Now Being Presented About Education

Let's now look at the misinformation being presented through the media about education and the realities that should be understood. Of course, information is not usually presented in the direct and stark language used here to make the points clearly. But careful examination of the messages being presented in the mainstream media reveals the following major points and underlying assumptions.

The misinformation we are receiving claims that The most important ways to solve economic problems is by using schools to produce and train workers who will meet the needs of big business.

In reality, the challenges and problems facing our economy are very complex and cannot be solved by producing either more well-trained workers or better trained workers. In fact, many well-trained workers currently are either not using their training or are finding that their wages are declining despite their training.

Consider the following:

- Many white-collar workers and other well-trained people are losing their jobs through downsizing. IBM alone has cut its work force from 406,000 in 1986 to 219,000 in 1995. Most who lost their jobs had met very high standards in a high tech field that requires skills in math and science.

- Since the 1970s, more people have attended college or junior college or participated in job training programs after high school. But families have less financial resources now, as evidenced by the decreasing number of families who can live on the income from one job, the increasing difficulty families are having in buying houses, etc.

- "The overwhelming evidence is that declining wages are not limited to a small group of workers at 'the bottom' no matter how defined," say Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein, and John Schmitt in The State of Working America 1996-97, page 31. They point out that since the mid-1980s, wages have been in decline for all but the top 10% of men, and since 1989, for all but the top 30% of women, wages have been stagnant or falling.

- "Nearly 1 in 5 voters live in households where someone is working at a job that pays less than an immediate previous job." (John J. Zogby, "President's Perfect Position," Christian Science Monitor, March 10, 1997, p. 19.)

- The U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that from 1992-2005, 25% of new college graduates will not be able to find jobs that require college education. (The actual figure is undoubtedly much higher than 25%, because the Bureau includes in its list of jobs that require a college education many managerial jobs that are not currently held by people with college degrees, such as managing a fast food restaurant.

If education and job training has not solved economic problems for people now in the work force, why is so much emphasis being put on job training? Obviously, job training sounds so logical that people are reluctant to let go of it. Sometimes it does work; some people are relatively satisfied working at jobs for which they were trained, although most people seem to feel that most of the training that helps them with their jobs they received on the job, not in school or in a job training program.

But perhaps even more important, emphasizing job training takes the responsibility away from big business and government and puts it on individuals. The implication clearly is that if you don't have a job or aren't earning enough money, it's your fault because you didn't get enough training or the right kind of training or didn't learn enough during the training. Emphasizing education and job training distracts people from wondering to what extent economic problems are caused by corporate greed; unwise government policies; focusing on profits rather than the needs of people, families, and the environment; etc.

Instead of focusing on job training, we could be asking more helpful questions. We could ask what it would take to create more jobs that would be satisfying and would allow families to live reasonable, meaningful lives. We could also ask what it really takes to prepare people to work well.

Homeschooling provides enlightening responses to questions such as these. Homeschool graduates are showing over and over again how able they are to make good decisions and do meaningful work. What are some of the reasons? Homeschoolers have a lot of experience in the real world and have a clearer understanding than their conventionally schooled age-mates of how the world works. Many homeschoolers have either had experience with their own businesses or their families' home businesses. Homeschoolers have often had a wider range of interesting volunteer and paid work experiences. They have had the opportunity, the freedom, and the support they needed to follow their special interests, talents, and abilities. And they have not had to waste time or money or energy in attending job training programs or vocational courses unless they chose to do so!

What might the experience and success of homeschoolers tell us about education and job training?

We are being mislead by claims that adopting and enforcing standards in education will improve our educational system.

In reality, having national standards in education is so ridiculous and so wrong that it is hard to believe that anyone is taking them seriously. But people in positions of power are; recall Clinton's statement quoted above. Among the problems with national standards are the following:

- Standards do not work because children do best when they can develop according to own timetables, using their unique strengths and talents, learning in their own ways. If standards are so low that essentially everyone can meet them, they will be essentially meaningless. If they are more challenging, it is likely that even more children will be labeled "learning disabled" which often leads to a tragic cycle of loss of confidence, decreased interest in learning or work, and difficulty in finding satisfactory employment, a tragedy that can often be avoided (as many homeschoolers know) simply by giving children more time to mature and more opportunities to learn in different ways and by removing them from the pressures of conventional school settings. Having more children in the "learning disability" cycle will hardly boost our economy!

- How would it make any sense for a country as large and as diverse as ours to even try to adopt one set of standards? Why do we want to deny the richness and strength that comes from diversity? Why don't proponents of standards realize that we our communities and our nation would be much weaker, not stronger, if everyone knew the same things, because we would be limited to the strengths of one person instead of the strengths of a diverse multitude?

- Standards would lead to compulsory education and would seriously decrease our educational freedoms, which are essential to maintaining a free society. These would be the state's standards and would determine the curriculum, values, and attitudes of people.

- Adopting standards would necessitate having a way to determine whether students are meeting the standards. Standardized tests and performance-based assessments are often suggested. However, these instruments do not work. At best they show only how well a particular student performed on a particular test on a given day. They by no means show what a student knows. In addition, tests and assessments discriminate against minorities, creative thinkers and problem solvers, and anyone who does not have the same values and orientation as the test makers. Tests also interfere with learning and usually decrease children's confidence. Many homeschooling families work hard to ensure that their children are not tested or take only carefully selected tests, and our experiences show that children learn better with few or no tests.

The misinformation we are receiving claims that our society and our economy will become stronger if the government and big business increase their control over schools. In recent years, big business has become increasingly involved in educational policy making. The most recent and blatant step has been the creation of school-to-work programs and the passage of the federal School-to-Work Opportunities Act of 1994.

In reality, School-to-Work programs cause many problems. They turn schools into job training programs, require students to earn skills certificates to qualify for many jobs, do not prepare young people well for the future, limit rather than expand people's access to employment, do not work well, increase standardization and uniformity in schools, blame individuals and families, and decrease our basic freedoms. (For more information on School-to-Work programs, see our column in the January-February, 1997 issue of Home Education Magazine, pp. 16-20.)

On a more fundamental level, we should ask whether it makes sense, morally as well as logically, for big business to have a strong influence on schools. In other words, what are schools for? Are they primarily to serve the needs and desires of big business, or should they serve children, families, and communities? We could also ask even more basic questions such as: What would it take to create an economic system that would be consistent with our social, moral, spiritual, and educational needs?

Large corporations govern our governments but are driven by profit motives and efficiency to serve Wall Street, not people. Moreover, they shift the blame from themselves to the weak and powerless, including families.

We are being mislead by claims that harsh and punitive measures are needed to prevent and handle the serious problems of truancy and drop-outs. As just one example of this mentality, Clinton said in his recent State of the Union address, "Character education must be taught in our schools. We must teach our children to be good citizens. And we must continue to promote order and discipline, supporting communities that introduce school uniforms, impose curfews, enforce truancy laws, remove disruptive students from the classroom, and have zero tolerance for guns and drugs in school."

Of course, any violence is a serious problem, and truancy is an indication that schools are not working as they should. But complex problems such as these cannot be solved by simplistic responses that are patently at odds with people's experiences and with the reality of work and income in this country. Instead we need responses such as finding ways to meet young people's real needs and developing attitudes that support and encourage young people rather than blaming them. Expecting teens to cause serious problems can be a self-fulfilling prophecy, and a society at war with the young is in serious trouble indeed.

The misinformation says that institutions and professionals do a better job than parents in raising children. This is why parents are strongly encouraged to take their children to preschool screenings and to send them to preschool rather than allowing them to stay within the warmth and security of their own homes. This is why the media promotes so-called experts rather than sharing the insights of experienced parents who have learned how to really love and nurture their children. This is why schools blame families when children have difficulty learning in conventional school settings. These are only three examples.

In reality, relying on professionals and allowing children to be raised in institutions does not work. The failure of institutions has been seen in orphanages and foundling homes and in programs in countries such as Israel and Russia. Professionals may occasionally have a good insights, and certainly some are better than others, but it is not difficult to find many examples of misinformation and harm stemming from the advice of professionals. And again, something more fundamental is at issue. Compare the warmth, support, encouragement, and compassion we can get from an organization of experienced parents such as La Leche League with the almost technical advise that comes from professionals who generally view and treat children and families as clients. They do not lobby for laws that empower families. Rather they work with corporations, the government, and the media to displace the role and authority of the family.

It is time for us to seriously consider these and other examples of misinformation that are being strongly presented in the media and promoted by the government, big business, and professionals. If they are allowed to stand, unquestioned and unanswered, they will do much more serious damage than they have already done. The challenge to this misinformation needs to come from parents, from us. As parents, we need to look especially at the ways in which misinformation in education will diminish, contract, and restrict our role as parents, our very ability to parent our own children. The welfare reform claims that working is more important than parenting; the misinformation on education further challenges parents' roles directly in the emphasis that is put on professionals and institutions and indirectly in more subtle ways. For example, Jack Westman, a retired psychiatrist at the University of Wisconsin, has proposed that people be required to become licensed to be parents.

What We Can Do

To be sure, this and other misinformation is being presented by powerful players in our society, including our federal, state, and local governments, professionals and universities, big business, and the media. However, families still have considerable power because they represent so many more people than do corporations, professionals, government, and the media. We are part of public opinion and we have some influence over it. Moreover, it does not take a large number of committed people to change the course or outcome of specific legislative or policy initiatives. An example that shows the possibilities of challenging government proposals is the fact that in 1995-96 the U.S. Congress cut back both the funding and the authority for Goals 2000.

Here are some specific suggestions for what we can do to help prevent education from becoming the next scapegoat.

Continue to homeschool. Parents choose to homeschool because it is the way they want to educate and raise their children, because they see it as the best available option for their own families. But the more education is under siege, the more deciding to homeschool will become a political act, a way of making a strong statement against the misuse of education as a way of distracting people from the real problems.

- Work to maintain our homeschooling rights and freedoms and resist increased state regulation. This work is important for us personally as we homeschool, so we can maintain the flexibility we need to homeschool effectively. But it is increasingly important as one important example of why educational freedom is critical.

Share our information and perspectives with other parents. Although the powerful players may seem strong, they will only be able to use education as a scapegoat if we agree to accept and go along with what they are proposing. To be sure, one individual deciding to resist does not seem like much against such powerful forces, but it's the only way we can work. After all, our society is simply made up of millions of such individuals. We have little choice but to consider what would happen if everyone acted as we do, and then act in a way that would lead to the outcome we desire.

- Share with others our vision of what education and family life can be. Many of us have discovered through homeschooling that we can reclaim our learning and our time and space, that we can become empowered and gain much more control over our lives than we thought possible. When we share our experiences and encourage other families to choose approaches that will work well for them, we strengthen our families and our communities.

- Make sure that our children know how strongly we disagree with the image of teens that is presented in the popular press. People tend to do what is expected of them, and teens who realize that our society is expecting them to be rebellious and destructive may be tempted to act that way.

- Share with others your ideas about what teens need and how mature and responsible and mature they can be if given a chance. If your children are teens or older, you can mention what you found positive about the teen years and what you enjoyed. If your children are not yet teens, you can talk about responsible teens you know, including homeschooling teens.

- Work to develop community whenever possible. Being part of a community of homeschoolers and others gives us encouragement, support, and assistance when we need it ourselves. Reaching out to new homeschoolers and others prevents and solves many problems. The more families support each other, the less need there will be for social services, state intervention in family life, etc.

Support reliable sources of information and pay as little attention to mainstream media as possible. We can subscribe to and contribute to small publications such as this one. When we read, hear, or see sensational or dramatic news stories, we can ask ourselves who is promoting such stories and why and what effect such stories have on us and on others.

Conclusion

As homeschoolers, we are in a unique position to make an important contribution to the decisions that are being made concerning education in our society. Our experience as homeschoolers and our insights into education and how people learn give us perspectives and information few people have. In a sense, we have a moral responsibility to become involved in the debate and contribute as much as we can, for the sake of the children and our whole society. Fortunately, our involvement will also increase our consciousness and self-confidence as homeschoolers, will strengthen the homeschooling movement, and will help safeguard our homeschooling rights and freedoms.
© 1997 Larry and Susan Kaseman

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