"The man who does not read books has no advantage over the man that can not read them."
Ignorance takes many forms.
Some people think going to school is what makes people smart. Little do they know, school can get in the way of an education. For this reason among others, many people over the years have returned to the concept of homeschool as a means of educating their children. However homeschooling is not always approved of and for a long time, not sending your children to school, or taking them out of school was illegal. People pushed limits and laws to homeschool and pushed legislators to make home school legal and make homeschool laws. People worked hard to make it possible for parents to choose private schools as well.
Fact was, parents had a right to make decisions about education for their kids. Fact was, parents did educate their own children at home with great results. Due to public demand, and facts that proved their points, statesmen began to work voting on legislation to ensure a parents freedom to homeschool.
The idea caught on like a roaring river. Everyone was "homeschooling." It became the IN thing to do. Even public schools began marketing themselves to whose who had this ideology of homeschooling. Washington State law guaranteed homeschooling as a separate entity from both public and private school. Parents directed the learning of their own children applied their own philosophy of education too. Homeschooled students had access to military and colleges. They made use of programs allowing 16 yr olds to enter colleges and get dual diplomas and AA degrees by the age of eighteen and were able to take the GED too. (Not that it is necessary to do GED, you can award a diploma.)
Recently, I read an article which declared,"homeschooling, as an ideology, has simply run it's course." Not only that, but the author made it a point to tell school officials that parents with their desire to teach their own from home were nothing for the public schools to worry about. Did you know public school teachers and principals lay awake at night worrying about homeschool? Apparently they can sleep a little easier now because the river of homeschooling ideology that was once running free has been dammed.
Maybe what concerned them was that with the WA Home School Laws, Laws governing Home Based Education, the local public school essentially lost the right to criminalize those who didn't send their kids to them for education. The article stated that school officials needn't worry... the homeschooling movement is, he declared, done. It's finished. It is no more. The main reason for this, he said, was that there homeschooling was no longer just for those free thinking, 1960's, love-child, Jesus-freak and "hippy"-type, sometimes religious... wacko's and antidisestablishmentarianists that it started from. Homeschooling had gone, what he called "mainstream." No longer did homeschoolers flow against the current of public school, in his opinion, they were joining forces.
It's true. People "partner" with the schools and mistakenly, (usually due to the schools misinformation to students and parent,) think they are 'homeschooling" or participating in the "homeschool program" at the school. It's professionally marketed to them that way too. This too is part of the "homogenization." The purity of the concept of a home education has been clouded, even removed from their mind. They like the money offered, they feel more confident partnering with schools. Their friends are doing it. Maybe there are too many unknowns, or so it seems... when like a pioneer of yesteryear or some famous knowledge explorer you are embarking into the unfamiliar territory of home based instruction for your own child. Parent partnerships feel like home, so people join them without even thinking too hard about it.
“Far from failing in its intended task, our educational system is in fact succeeding magnificently because its aim is to keep the American people thoughtless enough to go on supporting the system.” ― Richard Mitchell
It takes a certain conviction about something for a parent to choose to homeschool. What convinced me, may not be the same thing that convinced or convinces you, but were both convinced that homeschooling is the way to do for our families, and so we file a Declaration of Intent form (DOI) This declaration form that is filed goes completely by the wayside when the student is enrolled, full time, in public school. It means no more, but in many cases it was the filing of this form that made the student eligible for the alternative learning program at the school.
This making people file DOI forms with an intent to homes for the purpose of actually putting them into the program at the local public school, asking them to wait for a period of time before actually enrolling in a PPP is a deception. It misleads the parent into thinking that the school is offering a homeschooling program. This is only covering up the parent partnership for what it really is... alternative school... and in the mind of school officiates, alternatives school is school for public school "drop outs." Additionally, high enrollment rates in these "homeschool programs" if they are called that, serves to tell the NEA that they were right... and the parents who want to homeschool...they were wrong, because, you see, all these parents in the programs agree. They need the help from experts at the school.
This is a travesty people.
Public school parent partnerships are NOT homeschooling. They tell you they are not home based education, but home based education IS HOME SCHOOL in WA. These partnerships are extensions of the public school now operating within a private home. If it's your home, then it's probably your kitchen table. You now answer to them for what your teach in your own home. The two, home school and public school are completely different beasts.
It's weird. "Homeschooling," is like some strange designer insignia on clothing, something viewed with prestige. Everybody wants to wear the ideology of teaching their own children on their sleeve. "I am a homeschooler," they all shout. Have you ever seen two parents, one who homeschooling and one in a parent partnership, debating the issue of what homeschooling is and who a homeschooler is and isn't. It can become a heated topic of discussion.
It reminds me of the two woman arguing before King Solomon who both wanted to be the mother of the living child. (1 Kings 3:16-28) Solomon knew a way to determine the true mother of the child. He knew one would desire to ensure that her beloved child would live. Solomon was right. One mother didn't really care if the child lived or if he died, the other desired nothing but for it to live. Likewise, as people argue about who is a honeschooler and who is not, or even what constitutes "home school" there is a way to tell: See who supports and cares about protecting and defending the current homeschool law. The one who does, is. The one who doesn't isn't. (Like the woman in the story, they's be happy to see it torn into two and disappear.)
Homeschooling parents do not write to legislators asking for funding for homeschool programs at the school. It is illegal for schools to fund home based school. Homeschoolers do not work side by side in some kind of partnership with the public school and they do not have their curriculum paid for by the tax payers of their state. They do not school their children in every subject under the direct supervision of teachers at the local school. They even have no requirement to meet or attend classes on any school campuses ever! Homeschoolers are learning in freedom.
Homeschoolers are exempt from the WASL and Core Curriculum testing too. Their school is done at home with their teacher, the parent, who is also director, not merely a learning mentor or educational coach. Homeschoolers can use religious materials for credits given towards a diploma, send their kids on to colleges, and their homeschooled students may join the military too. You might say homeschooling is just one little real-time exercise among many in what "freedom" looks like and truly is.
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