Homeschool day 61 of 180
Government school day 50 of 170
We homeschool because we love to see our children learn those things we value. We pulled them out of government school because they were taught values we did not hold. Among those values we abhor is the idea that a child should have high self esteem regardless of whether he possesses qualities that warrant such esteem. That concept was promoted with religious fervor at the school our children attended. Pride in wrong things is an insidious evil. There is a problem amongst many of us in the homeschool community that is similar in nature to the self esteem problem endemic in the American government school systems.
This is our fourth year of homeschool, our third in a row. When we pulled our children out of the local government school, we felt like we had just quit hammering ourselves on the foot. The pain of government school soon started to ebb. Our children started learning to be nice again. They were learning their academic material with joy and at a fast pace. Of course, we worried about that old canard that homeschool students are not as well “socialized” as their government school counterparts, so we got involved with a local homeschool group. There were some very nice people in the group.
It was a fairly typical homeschool group. The parents were well educated and fairly religious. They wanted the best for their children, so they decided to homeschool them. They met up with other families of like mind to start play groups, drama clubs, sports teams, choirs, shared classes, and those sorts of things. These are not bad things, but we saw a dynamic we did not understand very well at first. I suppose this dynamic is similar in nature to that of other early adopters of new (or newly reacquired) social constructs. Dramatic improvements are realized in the lives of the people who embrace the new idea. The new social construct takes on a life of its own and becomes an end onto itself. Homeschool becomes the greater good, replacing improved education, values, and socialization for the children. The homeschool parents take great pride in their own works. The accomplishments of the children are the manifestation of the great good being wrought on them by the way the parents implement their homeschool.
Now, when the children fail to perform at the desired level, the parent’s pride takes a personal hit. The performance of the children is a direct reflection on the accomplishment of the parent in their implementation of the new idea. The children learn that performance is everything. If the children do not perform, the pride of the parent takes a hit. It reminds me of stories about getting toddlers into the right preschool so they can get into the right kindergarten so they can get into the right elementary school, all the way up to the right MBA program all for the pride of the parent. If the children do not get into the right school, the parent has failed. There is an equivalent to phenomenon in the homeschool community. The pride of the parent becomes more important than the well-being of the child.
This becomes particularly sad when the parents become so involved with the homeschool community that the children’s sense of security begins to suffer. Cliques form. The parent must stay very involved in the homeschool community so their child will have the lead role in the play, the right solo in the choir, the right position on the basketball team. In some senses, it can be even worse than in the government school system. At least in the government school system, someone else can be blamed if a child does not get the right role in the play. For those homeschool parents who have bought into the idea that homeschool is an end onto itself, there is nowhere else to place the blame other than on themselves. The situation can get quite desperate.
This pride can feed on itself in these groups. There is a dynamic that manifests itself in discussions within the groups that feature the thought that “God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are…” The homeschool groups can become an intemperate revelry of self-congratulations. Great pride is taken in the effort of the homeschool parent to give something better to their children than they are getting in other academic environments. Joy in the children decreases as pride in the effort of the parent increases.
The answer, of course, is the realization that homeschool is no more the answer to the well-being of the child than government or private school. Investment in the process can easily get in the way of the well-being of the child in either environment. There is not a whole lot of difference between the homeroom parent at a public school who is so involved in helping the school that they ignore their children and the homeschool parent so involved in the process and implementation of their system that they too ignore their children. They take so much pride in their own efforts that the needs of the children become secondary.
Humility and unselfish love are the only antidotes. I know my hands are not clean in this either; note the first two lines in italics at the top of this post.
