Elizabeth Bartholet gained a lot of attention when she called for a presumptive ban on homeschooling. Her argument was that she was concerned with child maltreatment and educational deprivation. Look at those two phrases. Next, look at what I have said repeatedly over the years about my experiences in government-run schools.
- Schooling is the biggest obstacle to a healthy education that I have ever encountered.
- Staying in school is the most unhealthy thing that I have ever done in my life.
- I would be better educated today if I had never set foot in a school.
While I'm at it, I also have been known to use the following phrases when talking about schooling:
- Prohibition of progress
- Mental genocide
It should surprise absolutely nobody that Bartholet's words hit me in a way that she never intended. She was proposing the creation of obstacles to leaving an environment of child maltreatment and educational deprivation as a means of addressing these problems.
I wasn't the only one who was concerned about Bartholet's views. The Cato Institute held a discussion featuring Bartholet and her views. Bartholet was joined by Neal McCluskey, Kerry McDonald, and Milton Gaither. I viewed this as an important discussion, although I was not available at the time of the discussion. Cato made the video available to the public, and I felt like I had to watch. Knowing what these four individuals had to say, I wanted to provide some of my thoughts on this issue. For the sake of simplicity (for me), I will identify each person by last name.
Like most of my posts, I'm focusing primarily on poorly writing out random thoughts that enter my mind. This is already going to be longer than most of my posts, so don't expect me to change in favor of in-depth analysis.
Homeschooling’s Invisible Children
Gaither mentioned a website, Homeschooling’s Invisible Children. I have visited the site and am underwhelmed. The website shows that if homeschooled children die from abuse and neglect at the same rate as other children, we would expect 73 fatalities among homeschooled children over a 13-year period. Instead, they showed 84. That's less than one more per year. They do mention that their methods could undercount, but this does not appear to be a substantial threat for children.
There is also no data suggesting that the regulations proposed would have been successful in preventing these deaths. The primary argument has been that homeschooling can hide abuse, not that it leads to abuse. If parents bring a child to the verge of death and removes them at the last minute, this is held against homeschooling stats.
More importantly, suicide can be connected to abuse, but it doesn't appear to be reflected in this data. It's been established that suicide rates among school-aged children tend to track the school year. Considering my experiences in the system, I find it very difficult to believe that this is mere coincidence. I don't want to diminish the lives of the children lost in the report, but I don't think we can ignore the impact that abuse can have on suicide. It's hard to find an apples-to-apples comparison between suicides and the child abuse fatalities mentioned, but there is reason to believe that government-run schools lead to a higher likelihood of abuse-related deaths when suicide is taken into consideration.
Homeschool test success
I have talked about the intelligence trap before, although it shockingly appears that I never wrote about it. The intelligence trap is the tendency of people to embrace evidence that they are intelligent, even if the measure is invalid. If someone does poorly on a measure, they avoid discussions out of fear of people finding out. As a result, nobody challenges the legitimacy.
When people tout homeschoolers' success on various tests, I think of the intelligence trap. The truth is that I don't trust these measures. They generally reflect test-taking skills more than practical skills. I'm saying this as someone who used to test well.
Look at math. It's one thing to be able to complete a worksheet. It's something else to see a real-world mathematical problem and solve it. An even bigger issue with these measures is that most practical abilities (ability to think, learn, form opinions, form ideas, create, imagine, etc.) don't fit right-wrong patterns. The things that I care most about are not found on tests.
A part of me wants to point to McDonald's numbers to validate my beliefs, but I'm not going to do it. These tests don't really prove anything. Fortunately, she didn't go overboard with these results.
Bartholet's core arguments
One of the first thing Bartholet said was that McDonald misrepresented her views. She then went through a series of points that she wanted to make. These points were shockingly similar to McDonald's portrayal of those views.
I will discuss most of Bartholet's ideas separately. One thing that I noticed is that she doesn't have many facts to back her views. In fact, she openly acknowledges this. She insists that studies will not capture the full story without capturing the subset that she's concerned with. Without regulation, she doesn't think we can get data on that subset.
Instead of looking for better data, she dives right in to what she wants to do. For example, she compares the United States with other countries with stronger regulations. Even when she does, she cites no evidence that stronger regulations are beneficial. In fact, I don't think there is a single proposal of hers that was backed by any evidence. On the plus side, at least she didn't praise Germany for maintaining a Nazi law that bans homeschooling in their country.
A subset
Bartholet repeatedly insisted that she doesn't have a problem with homeschooling in general. She is specifically focused on a subset that uses homeschooling to hide abuse. Her proposals go beyond just looking for abuse, and they are applied to all parents, even those who prove that they are not a part of that subset. She wants parents who are doing a good job to jump through more hoops because of the actions of a very small segment of the population.
One-sided view
Bartholet talks about the problems that she has with some homeschooling parents as an argument to eliminate an escape route from those very same problems. The vast majority of her concerns are more typical of the government-run model than homeschooling.
Schools systematically abuse children. This is primarily in the form of emotional abuse, but sexual abuse and bullying are common. Apparently, government-sanctioned child abuse doesn't count in her mind. There are also concerns with exposure to differing values, something that our schools are intentionally trying to minimize. I'll have more on this later.
Although it is possible for rare homeschool families (the subset concerning Bartholet) to provide extreme isolation, schools take so much involvement from students that very few have lives outside of home and school. This might not be the same extent as isolation that very rarely occurs in homeschool environments, but it is still more isolation than children should encounter.
Mandatory reporters
I sort of get this argument, but I think we have to be careful with this. If someone knows a child is being abused, that abuse should be reported. The concern is if mandatory reporters start inhibiting the rights of children or parents. Parents should not be forced to allow a mandatory reporter into their house without probable cause. What's even worse is if you require a child to visit an unhealthy environment such as a school for the sake of being seen.
Gaither at least had an idea that he admitted wasn't his for a semi-voluntary approach to reporters. Parents would be expected to expose their children to a mandatory reporter. The parents would choose the reporter, and that reporter could then sign off that the child had been seen.
I actually have an idea of my own. I'll discuss that later (not today).
Proof of teaching ability
I am not a credentialist. I believe in ability more than a piece of paper. As such, I strictly oppose efforts to ban capable parents from homeschooling just because they learned outside of the schools. Even a high school diploma or GED should not be required for homeschooling.
I would also like to point out that education is more about learning than teaching. Too much emphasis on the teaching side of the process diminishes the role of the learner. The bulk of practical teaching comes from the learner.
On top of all of that, this suggestion is absolutely reliant on parents being the exclusive influence on a child's education. Most children will be exposed to different people with different skills to help them learn different things. This includes homeschoolers.
Testing
What else do I strictly oppose? The minimum standards approach. The minimum standards approach is the idea that all children should be pursuing the same education. We aim low to ensure that standards are obtainable by all.
We push negative consequences for falling short that are far more substantial than positive consequences of exceeding expectations. This encourages children to disproportionately invest time and effort into areas of weakness while neglecting areas of strength and pursuing minimal education. Simply put, the minimum standards approach is an attempt to standardize the individual. Children should be pursuing the education that's best for them, not minimal standards that have nothing to do with their abilities or potential.
Testing is an attempt to ensure that children meet these minimum standards. No matter what you do, these tests will not provide an accurate picture of the educations being received. A vast majority of learning is not reflected in these tests, and testing doesn’t reflect practical ability. Of course, I've already mentioned these concerns.
I want to add one more point about testing. For some kids, testing can cause some serious problems. As McDonald mentioned, getting away from these tests is one of the reasons some kids pursue homeschooling. We shouldn't defeat this reason.
I should also point out the difference between Gaither's views and Bartholet's. Gaither was open to a single test near the conclusion of the normal K-12 years. Bartholet wants yearly. Although I prefer that children are not evaluated through standardized tests, I want to make it clear that I would be more willing to go with the single test than yearly. This is because the single test would have more influence over the results while yearly tests would have more influence over the path. I'm fine with children falling a little behind on important skills if they have not yet seen the practical value and would rather focus on something else. This could allow deeper learning when the child is finally ready while allowing more immediate learning to be more meaningful. This also reduces the harm to the natural desire to learn.
Different values
Bartholet insists that she doesn't have problems with children finding alternatives to conventional schooling as long as the alternative includes conventional schooling. This is insane. If conventional schooling does not work for a child, that child should not be mandated to attend conventional schooling.
The reason argued for making children go to classes is to ensure that children are exposed to values other than their parents. McDonald did a pretty good job countering this argument. She mentioned that homeschooled children are more immersed in culture and are more politically tolerant.
Let me tap into my experiences again. I used to be a good student. I eventually realized that despite my grades, I was mentally weak. I worked on my mental skills, and my grades plummeted. The reason for this was obvious. It's much easier to get good grades when you think what your teachers want to think. If you have your own thoughts, you start to diverge from your teachers' expectations.
The simple reality is that most teachers are intolerant of views that differ from their own. They frequently try to silence alternative viewpoints while pushing their own. Schooling is not a valid tool for exposing children to different values.
Having only two potential influences is not nearly diverse enough. Even worse, what if parents end up with the same value as teachers? Because of how much control schools have over children, very few children have time for exposure to diversity. Homeschooling is more flexible, so exposure to diversity is far more likely.
More to come
I think I've said enough about this discussion. What's next? I already mentioned it. In the future, I will put together a much shorter post. This post will be a quickly brainstormed (but not thoroughly evaluated) idea that popped into my head about how to expose children to mandatory reporters that doesn't undermine the homeschooling community. Hint: This idea will deviate drastically from what was suggested by Bartholet.
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