Tools critical for the success of homeschooling
Recently my family and I heard a talk to parents at the first annual Northern
California Homeschooling Association meeting. The speaker had been asked to
discuss the “socialization” of children and adolescents. For the
ten minutes that he talked, he spoke about the topic by mainly criticizing current
public education. The socialization of the young is as complex as it is important,
but the speaker never helped his audience thoughtfully engage and/or analyze
any of the issues involved. Important questions are at the heart of any discussion
about socialization: How are we to educate our children/adolescents so that
they may live happy, useful and productive lives individually and collectively?
How are we to educate our children so that they can fit into and/or modify the
society they will inherit? These questions were never addressed.
The speaker not only failed to address the topic of socialization competently,
he also misrepresented truth. He said that John Dewey’s philosophy of
education is the basis of current educational practice in most schools in the
United States. This is false. He wrongly spoke out against Dewey’s ideas
and their influence on contemporary schools.
Anyone who reads John Dewey’s Democracy and Education (1916), Essays
in Experimental Logic (1916), Human Nature and Conduct (1922), Experience and
Nature (1925), or any other of his many publications on philosophy and education
will quickly realize that John Dewey not only was the father of progressive
educational ideas but is the man from whom John Holt, A. S. Neill, and many
other more contemporary progressive educational philosophers got their inspiration
and many of their ideas. It is indeed a sad irony that the speaker at the meeting
blamed the current state of most of the nation’s public and private school
education on Dewey. In this writer’s opinion, the last two generations
of children, and our country as a whole, would have been fortunate if schools
throughout the land had put Dewey’s ideas into educational practice.
For parents to implement sound educational practices with their children,
they must first develop their own philosophy of education. To do this they need
and should demand the best tools to help them think about educational issues
that are important for their children and themselves. They need to engage in
a dialogue both with the best thinkers available and with other homeschooling
parents.
Important questions need to be raised and answered. Homeschooling parents
need intelligently to decide how and what their children should learn; how much
and what kinds of freedom and discipline are appropriate; how their homeschooling
should relate to the outside community; and many other important questions.
Theodore Brameld’s book Philosophies of Education in Cultural Perspective
(1955) is the best summary presentation and analysis of mankind’s thoughts
about to what ends and by what means children should be educated. This book
has long been recognized as a classic in the field. In the preface to his book,
which is a letter addressed to prospective teachers, Brameld writes challenging
paragraphs of great importance to homeschooling parents. “When philosophy
does its job, it disturbs anyone it touches. I hope that you will be disturbed
by this book. If you are not, then the book has not succeeded in compelling
you to subject your beliefs to reexamination, perhaps to modification, possibly
even to rejection or drastic reconstruction. Unless you are willing to take
the risk that this will happen, you can scarcely expect to qualify as a thoroughly
trained teacher - as one whose beliefs about education and about the culture
it serves have been weighed and tested.” (Brameld, 1955, p.vi) “I
readily admit that the task is arduous. Issues as basic as those education now
confronts can never be resolved hastily or superficially. If you are willing
to go forward with me, you will find that we shall need assistance from the
most profound minds of history: Plato, Locke, Hegel, James, Freud and a great
many others. We shall need, further, to consider questions and situations that
often create bitterness, even violence. Nothing less than a willingness to study
and act upon them as honestly and forthrightly as possible will suffice.”
(Brameld, 1955, p. vii)
It is the responsibility of homeschooling boards and the individual members
of homeschooling groups throughout the country to see that the important questions
posed and the differences reflected in the philosophies of education presented
in Brameld’s book are thoughtfully discussed. Homeschooling parents can
subscribe to and implement with their own children philosophies of education
that are different from the philosophies of other homeschooling parents. But
whatever philosophy they adopt, it should represent the culmination of a process
of analyzing, comparing, contrasting, and thinking about alternative educational
philosophies and practices. People need not agree on their educational philosophy
but they should agree that, for their children’s sake, a thoughtful process
is required to arrive at their own educational philosophy.
It is not enough to be against something like the current quality of most
public and private education. Oh yes, it feels good to criticize those who you
oppose. But criticism is only the first, small step. By itself, it will not
help homeschooling survive as a movement. Criticism of current public and/or
private school education, by itself, will not help homeschooling parents thoughtfully
and deliberately engage the ideas they must consider if they are to be of benefit
to their children.
Homeschooling, like any movement that wants to be useful and survive, must
first and foremost, become an accurately informed movement. Knowledge is and
forever will be power. It is up to homeschoolers to make sure that they obtain
only qualified people to talk to them in homeschooling meetings. The people
who talk to homeschooling families must have accurate knowledge and make thorough
presentations to parents about the important issues and questions that pertain
to the education of their children and adolescents. Good feelings and wishes
about homeschooling will not build its success. An accurately informed homeschooling
community can.
Peter Haiman, Ph.D., was graduated from the School of Education at Case Western
Reserve University in 1970 and had two areas of graduate specialization: the
historical, social, and philosophical foundations of education and educational
psychology. He has taught these courses in universities and colleges in Ohio,
South Carolina, and California.
This article originally appeared in Skole, The Journal of Alternative of Education.
Summer 1988, Vol. IV, No. 1. pp. 38-40.
