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Home Education Magazine
September-October 2003 - Articles and Columns
Publisher's Notes - Helen Hegener
Reconnecting Families
As I write this, in early August, summer is still in full swing, but there are already telltale signs of autumn's eventual takeover. People are beginning to talk about the State Fair at the end of the month, fall hunting tips and reports are starting, and the pinkish purple fireweed blossoms are climbing toward the tops of their stalks - a colorful harbinger of the end of summer.
Another reliable indicator is perhaps the biggest commercial event of the year, after Christmas - the great Back-to-School sale of pens, pencils, crayons, mountains of paper and books, clothing, shoes, computers and more. Education-related spending is a chart-topper in economic profiles, accounting for a large bite out of family finances this time of the year.
By the time you read this, probably in mid-September, the big yellow buses will have started to roll and the gears of the education machine will be humming smoothly along. The majority of children in this country will be attending school, part and parcel of that intricate system of rules and regulations, policies and procedures, parameters and guidelines and all the rest. The majority of children in this country will spend their days institutionalized, away from their families and loved ones, doing the bidding of strangers and being trained not to ask why.
This country has been heading down a path of ever-increasing institutionalization of our lives for over 100 years. The earliest pioneers of social reform sought ways to speed up the assimilation of immigrant families into American society, because these immigrants carried with them strong family structures. The progressive social thinkers of the day determined that their children must be weaned from family loyalties in order to successfully identify with the larger values and goals of the just-emerging American society. Complete integration of the children could only be achieved if professionals took over the role that had previously belonged to the parents.
Policies advanced the acceptance of experts and professionals in education. Behavioral psychologists conducted elaborate experiments to determine the most appropriate ways to influence the social and political dispositions of children. The concept that the developing mores of children were best cultivated by professionals gained widespread acceptance in academic circles, feeding a cycle of producing childhood experts who hailed the need for still more childhood experts.
Social dynamics worked to disconnect individuals from their families: More and more people left the family farm to work in the city factories. Newlyweds, who at one time would have simply moved in with Mom and Dad, left home to struggle with personal, financial, and social problems on their own. Hundreds of thousands of families were broken up by war-related responsibilities. Women increasingly left home for the workworld while children were shuffled off to daycare, then to kindergarten, then inevitably to school. Assurance that a college degree guaranteed a piece of 'the good life' sent teenagers fresh out of high school packing off to college as if it were the only acceptable option.
With all these driving factors leading to fewer and fewer family resources to turn to, people have had less support in their daily lives, which has helped to fuel ever-increasing social problems. More roles for professional intervention in our lives has been the inevitable result.
Scholars in the fields of sociology and psychology have counseled that children need to be educated by cool-headed, goal-conscious professionals to counter the damages brought about by the emotional hothouse of family life. Only then can they be adequately prepared for success in a fast-changing, increasingly technological society. These findings have squared conveniently with the goals of educational policy-makers, and the result has been a trend toward centralization and institutionalization, and the increasing exclusion of parents and families in these processes. The result of this exclusion is evident today: Many parents are completely convinced that only good schools, certified teachers and approved curricula can successfully prepare children for life in today's world. This attitude, fostered and developed in large part by schooling itself, supports the runaway freight train of cradle-to-grave, school-to-work control and directing of people's lives.
Over time, the decisions we've made as a society have moved us toward valuing growth and progress at the expense of families. As we've moved steadily toward ever-increasing consumerism, driven by an ever-increasing focus on productivity, we've found that we can no longer afford luxuries like time together as families. Terms like "latchkey children" have reflected the absence of parental involvement in young lives, and as a result, families have inevitably come to be viewed as the problem, not the solution.
As the majority of the population is pushed toward ever-increasing conformity and uniformity, resulting in an ever-increasing reliance on professionals and experts in our daily lives, many homeschoolers are taking a different path, sending a different message, building a different future. Will homeschooling families be able to hold the center and resist the temptingly easy path of conformity, or will they be assimilated and pushed toward compliance by an assumption that homeschooling is really only another path to the same goals?
Homeschooling families are showing the way to a different approach to living and learning with children. As the professionals and experts try to figure out how to incorporate living with your kids into their current school-centered paradigm we should remain wary, and aware that while imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, many aspects of homeschooling simply cannot be replicated institutionally.
The next time one of your kids gives you a warm hug or a loving smile you'll understand what that really means.
© 2003 Helen Hegener
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September-October 2003 - Articles and Columns
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