1."Liberals, Dont Homeschool Your Kids...
Why teaching children at home violates progressive values.
2.... the filmmaker Astra Taylor was unschooled by her lefty, countercultural parents. My siblings and I slept late and never knew what day of the week it was, Taylor writes in a new essay in the literary journal N+1.
a. We were never tested, graded, or told to memorize dates, facts, or figures. Some days we read books, made music, painted, or drew. Other days we argued and fought over the computer. Endless hours were spent watching reruns of The Simpsons on videotape, though we had every episode memorized. When we werent inspiredwhich was oftenwe simply did nothing at all.
3. Over the past year, there has been a resurgence of interest in homeschoolingnot just the religious fundamentalist variety practiced by Michele Bachman and Rick Santorum, but also in secular, liberal homeschooling like Taylors.
4. Think no textbooks, history lessons about progressive social movements, and college-level math for precocious 13-year-olds. Some families implement this vision on their own, while others join cooperatives of like-minded, super-involved parents.
5. Yet whether liberal or conservative, [o]ne article of faith unites all homeschoolers: that homeschooling should be unregulated, Reich writes. Homeschoolers of all stripes believe that they alone should decide how their children are educated.
6. Could such a go-it-alone ideology ever be truly progressiveby which I mean, does homeschooling serve the interests not just of those who are doing it, but of society as a whole?
7. ...overheated hostility toward public schools runs throughout the new literature on liberal homeschooling, and reveals what is so fundamentally illiberal about the trend: It is rooted in distrust of the public sphere, in class privilege, and in the dated presumption that children hail from two-parent families, in which at least one parent can afford (and wants) to take significant time away from paid work in order to manage a processeducationthat most parents entrust to the community at-large.
8. In a country increasingly separated by cultural chasmsChristian conservatives vs. secular humanists; Tea Partiers vs. Occupiersshould we really encourage children to trust only their parents or those hand-selected by them, and to mistrust civic life and public institutions?
9. Nor can we allow homeschoolers to believe their choice impacts only their own offspring.....Low-income kids earn higher test scores when they attend school alongside middle-class kids, while the test scores of privileged children are impervious to the influence of less-privileged peers. So when college-educated parents pull their kids out of public schools, whether for private school or homeschooling, they make it harder for less-advantaged children to thrive.
10. But government is the only institution with the power and scale to intervene in the massive undertaking of better educating American children, 90 percent of whom currently attend public schools.... Lefty homeschoolers might be preaching sound social values to their children, but they arent practicing them. If progressives want to improve schools, we shouldnt empty them out. We ought to flood them with our kids,..."
Homeschooling and unschooling among liberals and progressives. - Slate Magazine
No...this is not from The Onion...every word between the quotation marks is from the Slate article.
Really.
I am a homeschool mom, not an "unschooler," and I found that the opinion of this cartoon of a Left-winger was the best reason to homeschool!
So...and, especially if you have young children...did you agree with Ms. Goldstein?
Why teaching children at home violates progressive values.
2.... the filmmaker Astra Taylor was unschooled by her lefty, countercultural parents. My siblings and I slept late and never knew what day of the week it was, Taylor writes in a new essay in the literary journal N+1.
a. We were never tested, graded, or told to memorize dates, facts, or figures. Some days we read books, made music, painted, or drew. Other days we argued and fought over the computer. Endless hours were spent watching reruns of The Simpsons on videotape, though we had every episode memorized. When we werent inspiredwhich was oftenwe simply did nothing at all.
3. Over the past year, there has been a resurgence of interest in homeschoolingnot just the religious fundamentalist variety practiced by Michele Bachman and Rick Santorum, but also in secular, liberal homeschooling like Taylors.
4. Think no textbooks, history lessons about progressive social movements, and college-level math for precocious 13-year-olds. Some families implement this vision on their own, while others join cooperatives of like-minded, super-involved parents.
5. Yet whether liberal or conservative, [o]ne article of faith unites all homeschoolers: that homeschooling should be unregulated, Reich writes. Homeschoolers of all stripes believe that they alone should decide how their children are educated.
6. Could such a go-it-alone ideology ever be truly progressiveby which I mean, does homeschooling serve the interests not just of those who are doing it, but of society as a whole?
7. ...overheated hostility toward public schools runs throughout the new literature on liberal homeschooling, and reveals what is so fundamentally illiberal about the trend: It is rooted in distrust of the public sphere, in class privilege, and in the dated presumption that children hail from two-parent families, in which at least one parent can afford (and wants) to take significant time away from paid work in order to manage a processeducationthat most parents entrust to the community at-large.
8. In a country increasingly separated by cultural chasmsChristian conservatives vs. secular humanists; Tea Partiers vs. Occupiersshould we really encourage children to trust only their parents or those hand-selected by them, and to mistrust civic life and public institutions?
9. Nor can we allow homeschoolers to believe their choice impacts only their own offspring.....Low-income kids earn higher test scores when they attend school alongside middle-class kids, while the test scores of privileged children are impervious to the influence of less-privileged peers. So when college-educated parents pull their kids out of public schools, whether for private school or homeschooling, they make it harder for less-advantaged children to thrive.
10. But government is the only institution with the power and scale to intervene in the massive undertaking of better educating American children, 90 percent of whom currently attend public schools.... Lefty homeschoolers might be preaching sound social values to their children, but they arent practicing them. If progressives want to improve schools, we shouldnt empty them out. We ought to flood them with our kids,..."
Homeschooling and unschooling among liberals and progressives. - Slate Magazine
No...this is not from The Onion...every word between the quotation marks is from the Slate article.
Really.
I am a homeschool mom, not an "unschooler," and I found that the opinion of this cartoon of a Left-winger was the best reason to homeschool!
So...and, especially if you have young children...did you agree with Ms. Goldstein?
