Homeschooling is One of the Most Progressive Parental Acts
Recently this article was shared among my homeschool groups (which include progressives, conservatives, religious families, secular ones, and everyone in between) and it took everything I had not to punch my poor laptop. Not only was there no single piece of good evidence cited to support why progressives should not homeschool; there were also wild assumptions made across the board.
As a homeschooler who makes below $20,000 working from home, for example, I can assure you that you can homeschool and be broke at the same time. There are free materials all over the web, and there are co-ops to exchange babysitting with, other homeschoolers that you swap with, etc. I have explained this time and time again and I don’t think I need to do it again.
What I do want to talk about is how homeschooling is progressive. My child, who would have otherwise attended an all-white school like I did, has friends who are black, who speak Spanish, who are Jewish, who are Indian, and who are Korean. Rather than going to a school that bans the word gay, she learns about boycotting places that fund anti-gay movements with her mom. Rather than be indoctrinated about false histories (Columbus) or simply ignoring women’s history—or be barred from ethnic studies at all, as many states are doing—she learns history from firsthand sources whenever possible, uses Howard Zinn rather than a textbook as a resource, has studied people like Dr. King and Jane Goodall in depth (rather than a cursory holiday glimpse), and is also learning Spanish from her mom, who taught in Spain. Our studies of Keller do not end when she learns to communicate; that is only where her story of socialism support and working class peoples' rights begins! I consider our homeschooling a very progressive, and yes, a very feminist act.
You’re telling me that a public school is more progressive than what we do? I take her to the polls. We sign petitions together. When she’s a bit older, she’ll also go to the March for Women’s Lives with me, as I went in 2004—as well as local events. I was in for a rude awakening when I graduated from high school and found that the real world was not at all like I had thought for seventeen years of my life; she will not have to have that same sense of betrayal and hurt. (As I tell people who claim that my child is missing out on the “real world,” my child is the one in the real world all of the time—the community, the store, the park, volunteering, being at my work with me, etc. It’s kids in school who are in a manufactured, unnatural environment.)
She also won’t have her spirit crushed by a system that was developed to create uniform, like-minded, obedient soldiers and workers. The author of the article above claims to come from a long line of educators (I have three in my family, if you count my own training, by the way); apparently none of them are familiar with the works of John Holt or John Taylor Gatto, two of my favorite teachers who do not believe that “schooling” and “education” mean the same thing. Nor do I.
Perhaps if an education, and not schooling, were implemented in the creation of the article referenced above, more than an example of a single family, and more than a statistic about integrated high schools being tolerant of diversity (which had nothing to do with homeschooling, by the way, and did not prove nor disprove whether homeschoolers are as well—which is like saying that since people with red hair are compassionate, brown-haired people should dye their hair) would have been used to support the original statement of purpose. Since they weren’t—and since regulation for regulation’s sake isn’t really an argument at all—I don’t see how a single soul could warrant the entire piece any merit.
At risk of sounding like Eilonwy from The Chronicles of Prydain, this is much like my progressive friends who tell my conservative friends that they can’t be vegans or animal rights activists because they are conservative. Since when is being a progressive about imposing limitations on people, being militaristic in our education (see Gatto link above), and generally making sweeping, wide-scoped statements without any support? If that’s what being a progressive is about, perhaps I don’t want the label.
