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Home Education Magazine
July-August 1998 Articles
Why Public Schools Want Homeschool Extracurricular Activities
Dan Johnson
I'd like to begin with a brief note on John Dewey, the key defining father of the "pragmatic school" and "progressive education" as the institutions and ideas have come to be known in America. John Dewey wrote major defining works in American Education beginning in the late 1800's, and was active regularly until his death in 1952.
It would be difficult to overestimate his impact on the theory and practice of "education" in America. Using an edited synopsis from a book I've written regarding the ideas of John Dewey, I have extracted the following key strand of thinking to help frame the extracurricular activities issue within a historical and social context:
Dewey first used schools to supplement the family, and gradually to supplant the family, in its various social roles, to include child rearing. The process would not rely on the articulated lessons at the front of the class, but on the conditioning that resulted from living the social set-up of the institutions. Put in poster language: Children Learn What They Live. In tax-funded, government defined schools they are very much living (being conditioned into) a form of centrally planned anti-private society. Dewey was relying on the notion of learning from life experience to accomplish his objectives. Given Dewey's objectives he articulated a highly effective means of achieving them.......
Dewey knew exactly what he was doing. He also knew why and how it would work. Again, this is our government school enterprise of today, defined explicitly for competing with, if not outright replacing the role of the family and home as the basis of a private society. Providing the experiences of a broad based government learning environment (pragmatic schools) was the key to raising up a centrally planned, state-based social order. Living and learning privately, family based experience is the key to growing a private people and reclaiming a privately based social order.
So, there is the key strand of thinking that would relate to public school extracurricular activities. It comes down to these few sentences: (1) "Providing the experiences of a broad based government learning environment (pragmatic schools) was the key to raising up a centrally planned, state-based social order." and then (2) "Put in poster language: Children Learn What They Live," and (3) "In tax-funded, government defined schools they are very much living (being conditioned into) a form of centrally planned anti-private society."
Dewey's idea was basically to bathe or baptize the children into central planning, by immersing the child in that set of conditioning experiences. If you were to take the old (more traditional) idea of education as the "3 R's", there was not an awful lot of "central planning" to bathe a child in.
Thomas Jefferson, no dummy in his own right, when speculating about public education (as he envisioned it), thought that it would take about three years of school to equip a person to get along in society. Note that this included teaching the person to read well enough that he could deal with the larger ideas, philosophies, and how they related to whatever might be the current issues to be voted on. This need for school has grown from Jefferson's three years to our current 13 to 20 years, with master's degrees seeming to be the "ticket of the day" so far as "education" is concerned.
Have people really gotten that much slower in their learning? Or have we vastly expanded the concept of "what is education," or "what is the stuff that the schools are to be doing, even if it's not 'education' per se?" Where do "life" and "education" part ways?
Dewey thought (correctly, in my opinion) that they didn't. He said that all life was education. Well, you might be able to see that this notion would have fairly totalitarian ends, especially when turned loose in compulsory government schools. It is this vast expansion in the ideas of "what schools are to be doing" that has provided our immersion into "total government planning" throughout our childhoods.
The government sets the rules for our sports or recreation through the (government) schools. Now, if you're a serious enough athlete, the government "sports" program is in effect your "school to work" program. It becomes far more to you than simply your recreation or P.E., but, it is at least that. The government defines all the qualifications. Government agents decide who gets on the team in the first place. They define the terms for admission to the team and decide who gets off the sidelines, how often and under what circumstances.This applies throughout extracurricular activities, whether it be "school square-dance teams", or "school band" or "school art appreciation" or "school whatever". The bottom line is, your world as a child is defined by a set of fairly elite central planners. Now, if it's not "right" that this should be done, if it should not be that way, then why would it be that way? Do you see the presumptive conditioning that is taking place here?
Taken all together, what extracurricular activities amounts to is a "Ministry of Youth Culture" funded, defined and run by the state. That's exactly what an honest, or not self-deluded society would call it. In fact, it's what they have called it in a good many nations.
Now, just in principle, if it's "right" for the government to "plan and fund the lives of the children," then where is the principle which makes it "wrong" for the government to "plan the lives of adults," and when does one cease being a child for whom the government funds and plans life? When does one become an adult for whom government does not plan life, or, for whom it is "wrong" for government to plan life? Dewey's implied answer is: gradually, over a couple of generations, there is no line. He wanted a centrally planned society of one and all alike, and the schools were what he used to get the job done.
He converted us from a private society to a centrally planned society, by conditioning us (gradually, multi-generationally) from being a private, market driven society, to being a centrally planned, government driven society. He did it by having us reared through a set of institutions that provide this central planning, on higher authority, for nearly all areas of childhood, for 13 formative years.
Yes, it can be argued that we have a "mixed" socioeconomic structure, but make no mistake. If we have a "mixed" structure, it must stand at least partly on collectivist rather than individualist principles. We're standing at least partly on the wrong principles. In my opinion, it's those "wrong principles" that have allowed this paradigm to become possible. Add to these the fact that society doesn't stand still in the stream of ideas. It's moving one way or another. Now, which way are we moving? You can guess my answer by now, I'm sure.
So, does only softball matter? Not much. Just band? Nope. Just the 3 R's? Perhaps not. Swim team? Nope. Ski team? Nope. Music? No. What about vo-tech like auto-shop, or metalworking or woodworking or home-ec. Alone and to themselves, maybe not. No, no single These things, planned centrally by itself, would bring down a private society, not unless it were given a great deal of time in which to get the job done. This would require a great deal more "redefining" if it were restricted to "just one thing".
This then brings us back around to the "one thing" of "what is education" or "what the schools are to be doing." All these things taken together amount to a "total" experiential continuum, exactly why the education theorists have so badly needed to have "all these things" at their disposal through the schools; a centrally planned continuum of experience. Exactly what Dewey and other utopian collectivists wanted, for exactly the reasons they wanted them.
Note, nobody (nearly) participates in all these things. Except the government. It is the central fabric. Each and every These activities carried out on government money, under government planning and authority, is but a socialist brick in a wall. You can have private bricks in the same wall (Little League, Pop Warner, AYSO, etc.). However, eventually, you get enough socialist bricks in your wall, and you have a socialist wall. It doesn't matter what kind or how many self-delusional hoops you jump through to define it as something else. You build a wall of society on socialist bricks, you end up with a socialist wall, at best. You may eventually net something worse than a socialist wall (the directional movement thing), but you're not going to end up with anything better (with "better" in this case being defined "private").
Each of these activities, which are little unto themselves, are the strands that will be woven into what becomes the social fabric of society. Or, more to my thinking, they are the strands in a rope. You might not be successfully hanged from the end of a kite string, but you get enough strands together and make a big enough rope, and it'll hang you just fine.
And on the "philosophical" end of it: Dependency.
The government loves to preach "No to Drugs", yet it loves preaching "yes to government" or "central planning," or "dependency" on the elite central planners. This creeping "dependency" works wonders in what they are allowed to get away with. An independent people don't have to put up with much abuse. A dependent people will tend to put up with whatever they're handed. I'm not sure that dependency on government is alot less damaging than dependency on drugs. In fact, the individual, (at this point) still can "Just Say No to Drugs" as an individual, and probably not lose anything from doing so.
But in the case of many extracurricular activities, how are you going to "Just say No" to government softball and not lose anything? In many areas, they've got the only game in town, and if you want to advance in that paradigm, you will do it on government's terms. Not terms of your own defining, or any other private group of participants, cooperating voluntarily and peaceably to achieve an end. You will do it the government's way, or you won't do it.
Now, suppose you're a good enough athlete to eventually go professional. Well then, extracurricular sports are, for you, School to Work USA. Now it's not your recreation and physical fitness for which you will jump through government hoops, but it's your career. Less directly, perhaps it's the "scholarship" issue. Well then, central government planners will have alot to say about what college you get into, won't they? Should they? I think not.
If your homeschooler shows up for extracurricular activities, and the coach's spouse is the local NEA representative, do you think the homeschooler will ever be allowed off the bench (unless the NEA rep is also your sister-in-law)? So, you fight it. You become even more dependent on the government to give you the answers you want. Why do you fight it? Because they may have the only game in town. There may not be another existing game to put your son or daughter into.
This all amounts to dependency on the government, or central authoritarian planning, for far more than I'd care to see anyone be dependent on the government. If you are presently involved in government sports or cultural programs, please bear in mind that these examples are used to illustrate the principles involved. I am not trying to attack you or someone you may know personally.
I think we all need to "Just Say No to Government." One brick, one strand at a time. Just like we got into the mess, we can back out of it. And as people back out of it, they will develop alternatives, unless we have learned so much helplessness that we are no longer able to develop privately initiated alternatives. And that's a possibility. This could be a one way street we're on here. Dewey and his colleagues may have been that good at what they defined.
Homeschools in many parts of the country, particularly the private school states like Texas, have been a happy exception from this national norm of dependency. I think we will be wise to maintain that exception. I hope we will be wise enough to maintain that exception.
©1998, Dan Johnson
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