Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker wrote an essay which presents a perspective for anyone seeking to understand the history of homeschooling. I’m not going to paraphrase the writing or pull choice quotes out of context. You just need to go read the whole thing for yourself. Then, if anyone’s so inclined, I’ll be happy to discuss what it has to do with homeschooling.
Tags: Kathleen Parker, Washington Post
Okay, I’ll bite. What does this have to do with homeschooling?
Argh. Just tried posting, got the security code wrong, and it didn’t save my text when asking me to try again. Rats.
So, what I tried to post was more or less this, following up on my brief comment above: I mean, I see the connection, generally, between the religious-right branch of the GOP on one hand, and the fundamentalist/evangelical, HSLDA-joining, school-at-home type of homeschooling on the other. I’m curious what you see specifically about homeschooling history in Parker’s column. I’m interested in both what you see historically, and what you might think would happen with homeschooling if the GOP were to follow Parker’s advice and show its religious-right branch the door.
By the way, I’m new to commenting on this forum, though I’ve read your blog for a while, and I’m a long-time unschooler (kids are teens now) and subscriber to HEM. Thanks for your HUGE contribution to the homeschooling community!
To understand what this has to do with homeschooling one first needs to understand what happened when homeschooling was just gaining in popularity, how the world got turned on its ear and peoples’ best intentions and beliefs – simple, good beliefs – got used against them and twisted into a source for the centralization of power and control. What started festering back in the late 1980’s has only relatively recently started hitting the mainstream and is erupting in this kind of visible outrage and incense.
I suggest that anyone who doesn’t understand how homeschooling was derailed and redirected 20 years ago take an hour or so and do a little reading on the subject:
http://homeedmag.com/INF/FREE/hsinfo_far1.html
And then, once we’re all on the same page, let’s keep talking.
Ah, yes. The derailment chronicled in the articles you referred to is most lamentable.
I have been very fortunate. I live in Wisconsin, where our wonderful statewide homeschooling support and advocacy group, the Wisconsin Parents Association (a director of which, Larry Kaseman, wrote some of the testimony you linked to), has been diligent and wise in promoting maximum homeschooling freedom. I am very thankful that we live in Wisconsin, and not in my home state, Minnesota, as homeschoolers. The difference between these two states regarding government intrusiveness in homeschooling is significant.
So, my oldest reached “school age” in 1997. We’ve never suffered, at least not directly, the pain that so many did in the ’90s because of right-wing religious manipulation of homeschooling leadership and laws. Inclusive support groups were always available. There are Christian support groups here, too, and pretty much there’s a place for everyone, according to what they want. Some people belong to both a religious and a secular group. As far as I know, at least in my area, no one group is making life miserable for any other.
By the way, I’m a Christian, though not the particular type, which is usually Protestant and evangelical or fundamentalist, that looks to those four supposed “pillars” of homeschooling. (For the most part, I’d never heard of those “four pillars.” Gah, that sounds so cult-ish.) And I’m theologically very traditional: arguably, I think, moreso than the “conservative Christians” that promoted the atmosphere decried in your articles (”traditional” emphatically doesn’t mean “fundamentalist.”) But I never saw the appeal in those Christian groups. They were always way too schooly for us. I was drawn to homeschooling, and unschooling, by the secular unschooling types. Imagine that.
Anyway, reading the material you provided (and I recall reading much of it before, but it’s worth revisiting) certainly reminds me of how lucky we’ve been. It also makes me consider this: what have we lost, what was unavailable to us that we didn’t even know was missing, that never had a chance to develop, because of the fragmentation and power struggles brought on by the HSLDA crowd? Makes you wonder. Certainly many who live in places where this divisiveness prevailed, places less friendly to homeschooling freedoms than Wisconsin, lost a great deal.
The readings you provided were from the ’90s. What’s going on now? You said, “What started festering back in the late 1980’s has only relatively recently started hitting the mainstream and is erupting in this kind of visible outrage and incense.” How recently are you talking here? What’s going on in the big picture? As I’ve described, we’ve been sitting where it’s pretty nice and easy and congenial for homeschoolers. I confess I haven’t been keeping up much with what’s going on nationally. Other than, I suppose, big-news cases like the California thing earlier this year, where I gather the same dynamic you’ve described emerged: national campaigns to direct outrage towards the CA court, when that’s not what CA homeschoolers necessarily wanted.
Is there more you want to say about specifics in Parker’s column, or did you just want to point to it as a jumping-off place for recognizing some of the damage the religious right has done to homeschooling? I think that a lot more has gone wrong with the GOP than its coziness with the religious right, and, in fact, in very significant ways, the GOP has used its religious-right base unconscionably, talking the talk that gets those voters on board during campaigns, but then disregarding and even (privately) scorning them after elections. This of course is about many big issues other than homeschooling. But I do think Parker may be giving the religious right more credit for wrecking the GOP than is due them. The neocons that have brought about so much disaster in the GOP have done a lot of it without reference to their religious base. But, again, that’s going outside of homeschooling issues.
Do you see any big changes on the horizon regarding the religious right’s power with respect to homeschooling law?
I don’t know how to properly format comments with WordPress, so this will be a little clumsy, but hopefully it will make sense. Lacking a better way, I’ll set your comments ***into asterisks.***
Good comment/letter, and you raise some interesting questions. But first, you noted:
***As far as I know, at least in my area, no one group is making life miserable for any other.***
Larry and Susan Kaseman have worked hard over the years to build and to help ensure a good climate for homeschooling in Wisconsin, and they’ve done an admirable job of protecting homeschool freedoms, not only in your state, but nationwide. They not only contributed to that 1991 “Homeschooling Freedoms at Risk” effort, they’ve been columnists for our magazine ever since, and most of those columns are available at this website, including their current very timely one on the importance of keeping homeschooling non-partisan.
Unfortunately, there are, in too many places, many groups “making life miserable” for other groups and individuals, and more than a few are determinedly compromising everyone’s homeschooling freedoms by tying the only locally available homeschooling to a very narrow ideology. That was the underlying premise of that 1991 “Freedoms” piece, and it is what has, indeed, come to pass in many places. Homeschooling networks have been effectively driven underground when they didn’t align themselves with certain perceptions of leadership.
You wrote:
***But I never saw the appeal in those Christian groups. They were always way too schooly for us. I was drawn to homeschooling, and unschooling, by the secular unschooling types. Imagine that.***
I can easily imagine that, because I think you’re in the majority of homeschooling families. The brilliance behind what happened with the 1991 hostile takeover of the homeschooling community was that it destroyed the networks of communication which had flourished up to that time. The early networks and support groups had built the fledgling homeschool community into a fairly cohesive whole, under the good and gentle guidance of inspiring spokespersons such as John Holt and Dr. Raymond and Dorothy Moore. There was no line of demarcation between religious homeschooling families and those homeschooling for other reasons – we were all “just homeschoolers.” Then, through the despicable tactics outlined in the “Freedoms” piece, the networks were either summarily demolished and replaced or, if they survived, were made wary and suspicious of each other. Misinformation, accusations, and effective but totally unfounded finger-pointing became the order of the day. HSLDA’s Michael Farris famously declared that his organization should speak for all homeschooling families. Families like yours were left to find their own way through the maze, and sadly, too many simply quit homeschooling.
I think this is a good place to highlight this paragraph from your comment, because it is absolutely right and a very well-written reminder of an important point:
***(I want to add the caveat that it’s difficult to use these terms without stereotyping and calling up false generalizations. Words like fundamentalist, evangelical, conservative, etc. have very specific meanings that are not always recognized when talking about religious-right activities, and certainly not all such Christian homeschoolers are exclusive and HSLDA-tied. At least I hope not. I want to be clear that I agree with you about where they’ve gone wrong, and also try to resist the temptation to paint too many with one brush when using any of those terms.)***
As I said in beginning this comment, you ask good and interesting questions, like this one:
***…what have we lost, what was unavailable to us that we didn’t even know was missing, that never had a chance to develop, because of the fragmentation and power struggles brought on by the HSLDA crowd?***
The networking and communication between broadly defined homeschooling families and advocates was lost, and I don’t think the importance of that loss, what might have happened if homeschooling hadn’t been deliberately fragmented into warring camps and factions, can be overstated.
You also asked:
***The readings you provided were from the ’90s. What’s going on now? You said, “What started festering back in the late 1980’s has only relatively recently started hitting the mainstream and is erupting in this kind of visible outrage and incense.” How recently are you talking here? What’s going on in the big picture?***
I’m talking about right now, today, and what’s going on is multi-fold, and I’d like to make it a separate post, also taking into consideration the rest of your very astute comments and observations. I’ve been working on a post for a couple of days now, and while it’s taking longer than I first thought, I should have it posted by Monday.
In the meantime, thank you for your good and very thoughtful posts here.