Family's Religion Must Match School?

There's a story making the news about a judge who included in a divorce agreement the terms that the child is not to be taught the family's religion, specifically, "non-mainstream religious beliefs and rituals." The family is Wiccan, but this issue really isn't about the specific religion. The judge stated that because the child went to a Catholic School, he would be too confused learning one set of beliefs at home, and another at school. So school got priority.

Now, when my children were in school, they often got one set of beliefs at home, and one at school. There were times when their teachers said untrue and negative things about their religion, tried to force them to violate a religious rule, or threw out homework that mentioned their religious beliefs because they spoke of something the teacher disliked. There were times when the teacher's beliefs simply violated my own personal beliefs.

If such a ruling were upheld, every parent who did not homeschool completely and without government help would lose the right to guide their child's thinking. The thought police would come to live in our homes. Would children be trained to report to their teachers what their parents were teaching them, as Hitler required children to do? Would the government then be forced to stop blaming parents whenever a child didn't turn out right? Would every parent be mandated to teach only atheism at home? Would churches be closed to children?

Scary picture this story paints of our nation. Our constitution will certainly hang by the oft mentioned thread should this judge get away with deciding school gets to choose a child's religion.

The Gift of Time

Now that my kids are grown and graduated from homeschool, I've become aware of how precious that homeschooling time was. I had so much freedom to play with my children or to meet their needs. Now, if we want to plan a family outing, we have to consult everyone's schedules, make a dozen special arrangements, and hope no one's schedule changes before the planned outing.

In the good old days, we lived in California and had annual passes to Disneyland. About once a month, I did away with school and we headed for a visit with the Mouse. We were always weeks or months ahead in our hours and my children were very advanced in their learning, so we could afford it. They probably no longer remember the capital of Ohio or the name of the largest dinosaur, but I'll bet they remember those hours spent gabbing on the bus and the days spent playing at Disneyland. The memories we made, and the bonds we created, mattered more than anything we might have learned that day.

I miss waking up and saying, "Who needs math today? Let's go to the museum." I miss the way we all got a secret thrill out of running off to play somewhere when everyone else was in school. Knowing those days were coming made it motivating for us to stay ahead so we could do it without sacrificing anything.

Homeschooling...it's really all about family.

Why Do Homeschoolers Attack Each Other?

As homeschoolers, we all face a lot of criticism and judgment. People tell us how evil we are to keep our children out of school, assure us their lives will be ruined if they miss prom, and worry that we'll lose our minds being with our children all day. So with all this judgment from the outside, why are we fighting from within?

I constantly encounter online debates about whether people who "part-time" (send their children to school for a few classes), use government homeschool programs, or afterschool are "real homeschoolers." Why does it matter? If someone says she is a homeschooler, she homeschools. It doesn't make the person who does it all solo any more important. The point of homeschooling is a strengthened family through time and learning experiences done together.

I wouldn't have had the courage to homeschool if a school district program hadn't been available to me. Now, it only took a few months for me to figure out that I didn't need the school, but the point is that it gave me the courage to start. When I struck out on my own, I really didn't do anything differently except that I didn't report in. I was as much a homeschooler on my own as I had been as a parent participant in a district program. I was at home, with my children, overseeing the education of my child.

Unschoolers vs. Structured Schoolers
Religious vs. secular homeschoolers
Soloists vs. charter school
Full-time or Part-time

What difference does it make? We get enough persecution on the outside. On the inside, let's stick together. We need each other...badly.

Standardized Brains

I've been very concerned about the increasing emphasis on standardized testing in schools, as well as the desperate attempts by some states to force homeschoolers to take them. I've always suspected that part of the power of homeschooling is that we have the right to teach our children to think. As schools become increasingly dependent on tests to determine educational content, they become increasingly unwilling to allow students to think. Thinking teachers don't have the time or encouragement to include anything in the curriculum that isn't on the test. There is no room for creativity, for analysis beyond what the test creators think should be there, or even for reality.

I once took a practice test handed out by a state to show us what our children would be doing when they took their standardized tests. There was a poem and children were asked what they thought the author meant by a certain line. I got the answer wrong, even though I had always gotten perfect scores on my literary analysis in college, and this test was only for third graders. My first thought was, 'They asked for my opinion. Do they have a right to tell me my opinion is wrong?" I guess so. They really wanted you to guess their opinon.

Robert Louis Stevenson's poem, "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening," is often thought of as a poem of longing to commit suicide. A school girl didn't believe this and wrote a different opinion, that it was exactly what it said it was, a lament about the sadness of rushing through life without taking time to enjoy it. She failed the lesson, and wrote to the author to ask who was right. He wrote a letter to the teacher stating that she was right and the teacher was wrong. Years later, I also received an F in a class for refusing to change my stand on this poem. When I showed a copy of the letter to my instructor, he read it and said, "Well, he just didn't know he was suicidal." That moment solidified my objection to standardized tests, standardized thinking, and standardized education.

I wonder about the long-term effects of teaching children to parrot answers fed to them by the government. Do we risk losing our freedoms because we're allowing our children to be taught that thinking and having unapproved opinions is evil and will cause you to be held back or denied graduation? Our constitution, our democracy, our Bill of Rights, is absolutely dependent on our ability to think and to stand up for what is right. Without that, anyone can take away all our forefathers fought so hard for, and we might as well declare ourselves Communists.

To the government, it might seem like a good idea to teach everyone the government is always right. In reality, it is a sure path to the loss of what makes our country unique and special, a model for so many others.

Let's fight hard to keep standardized tests out of homeschools, so that when the day comes that a whole generation can't think for itself, our homeschoolers can step up and take the lead.

Family Learning

One of the charges commonly leveled against homeschooler parents is that they're not educated enough to teach their children. When I was a child, school was pretty much a disaster for me. I was gifted and learning disabled. I remember very little of what I learned at school, but I remember almost everything my parents taught me. They weren't paid educators and didn't have degrees, but they were amazing teachers. Today, we'd call them afterschoolers and unschoolers.

My mother taught me to read when I was four by putting me in her lap with an old copy of Dick, Jane, and Sally. We also sat on the floor together and played reading games. I grew up going to museums. One day we saw a fish hatchery and my father stopped and talked someone into giving us a tour. We watched the news together and discussed it, and as a result, were very good at holding intelligent conversations with adults (who might have been surprised to find themselves debating the Viet Nam War with ten-year-olds.) They filled our house with books and set an example of reading. When I was about ten, my father battled the library to let me have an adult library card, because the children's card didn't entitle you to check out books in the adult areas. In those days, you couldn't find classics in the children's room, or challenging biographies.

What they didn't know, they learned with us, and that, I believe is one of the "secrets" that makes homeschooling work. Whenever I've tried to teach my children something I knew really well, I was tempted to open their heads and dump in knowledge. Effective for testing, perhaps, but disasterous for learning. When we tackled subjects I knew nothing about, I learned with them. Sometimes I led the way, and sometimes they did, but the process of finding answers caused them to learn how to learn. Together, we learned how to evaluate sources, sift conflicting information, and find experts. Today, as adults, they are constantly learning because they know how.

When my children were young, they overheard a woman saying she longed to learn something or other, but couldn't because she couldn't afford to go back to college. Later, my children asked why that woman didn't know you could learn without going to school. They explained to me that she could go to the library and read books, visit museums, talk to people who knew about it, and things like that. They were truly puzzled.

How would society be different if everyone's education included self-education? How would it be different if family learning were the norm? When a family learns together, they share a common adventure of exploration and build a memory. Family memories aren't made of each person learning in their own special building--it's made when they tackle the world together.

No Recess and We're the Unsocialized Ones?

40 percent of US schools have done away with recess or are considering it. First it was about safety. Naturally, now it's about standardized testing. Soon enough, homeschoolers are the only people who are going to be socialized, when you add in assigned seating at school.
http://www.educationworld.com/a_admin/admin/admin088.shtml

Put the words "eliminating recess" into Google and see what you get. A scary future for chldren who are growing up without play, which Mr. Rogers said was a child's most important work.

There was a time when we understood that children learn best by playing. What went wrong? Oh yeah, playing isn't on the test. No Child Left Behind can be renamed No Child Allowed to Play. We warn adults of the consequences of being workaholics and admonish them to play. Children, who are the ones who are supposed to play, are taught to chain themselves to desks and to have every waking moment regimented by overly ambitious adults. Are we just a little confused here? What are the long-term consequences of refusing to let children play?

Some educators say they can play at home. Since schools are also sending home mountains of test-prep homework...when do we think they're going to get to play at home?

So, homeschool parents, when you see your child freed from schoolwork by noon, and outside playing with friends in the sunshine, celebrate. Only homeschoolers have the right to play, to socialize, and to be children in many parts of this country.

Introducing Me

I promise...this blog will get more interesting, but I do think it helps to know who's ranting to you. My name is Terrie Lynn Bittner, and I am the author of Homeschooling: Take a Deep Breath--You Can Do This, which was published by Mapletree Press this year. The book is aimed toward parents who have thought about homeschooling, but who feel they aren't somehow qualified. Whether they're just too timid, too disorganized, too impatient, too uneducated, or whatever, I think they can do it if they really want to. Do I think homeschooling is for everyone? No! But I think most parents who want to do it badly enough can succeed. If I could, anyone could, because I was all of the above.

I'm married and have three children. I retired from homeschooling when my youngest started college at 16, and am now returning to my previous career as an author. When I'm not playing author, I am a partner in TML Seminars, a training solutions service for businesses, families, and individuals, which my husband and I started and run together. For fun, when there's time for it, I love genealogy, reading mysteries and children's books and thinking up excuses to not do housework.