Even more on homeschooling

On his radio show last Friday, Homeschooling Goes Mainstream, Dr. Mohler reviewed the new data coming out that the number of home-schooling families in America continues to rise with no sign of that trend abating. (I posted an initial entry about this report here). The spark that is causing this conversation is a December 2008 report that came out of the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (You can read the report here). The numbers it shows quantify what many homeschooling parents have known for some time: homeschooling is on the rise in America and it is not happening for only the stereotypical reasons. Many parents cite school safety, the school environment and dissatisfaction with the academic quality of public schools. Parents could choose more than one reason for homeschooling, and for parents like us more than one does apply. Our main motivation is religious, which is true for a huge percentage of parents who homeschool. But we also have concerns about the social environment at school, safety issues for our kids (reflective of bullying behavior our kids received in public school for raising their hand and answering questions). We have one child who has some developmental issues that simply is not cut out for the world of the public school. Many, many parents are recognizing that the quality of education that kids receive in public schools is subpar at best.

What I found interesting was the spike in one reason that parents listed for homeschooling, religious instruction:

From 2003 to 2007, the percentage of students whose parents reported homeschooling to provide religious or moral instruction increased from 72 percent to 83 percent.

In the 2007 NHES, parents also were asked which one of their selected reasons for homeschooling was the most important.5 The reason reported by the highest percentage of homeschoolers’ parents as being most important was to provide religious or moral instruction (36 percent).

That is an encouraging sign. With only limited data to examine, I would say speculatively that this shows a shift in attitude among Christian parents who are no longer able with a clear conscience to send their kids off to a secular school for much of their week, but they also cannot afford the often very pricey private Christian schools. All of the reasons listed are valid components of the rationale for homeschooling, but for the Christian the number one prevailing impetus for educating our children at home is one of submission to the Word of God. Children are a great blessing from God but they are also an enormous responsibility entrusted to us by God. The prevailing culture in America says to parents: send your kids to the public school and entrust their education to the professionals. The Bible tells us that raising our children in the fear and admonition of the Lord is our responsibility. More and more Christian parents are realizing that the trust we have placed in the secular government school system has been misplaced.

Back to the Albert Mohler program on homeschooling. The first question he fielded out of the gate, and perhaps the number one scare tactic of those who oppose homeschooling had to do with “socialization”. How can homeschooled kids get proper “socialization”? That on the surface may seem a compelling question. At least until you ask the follow-up question, which most people don’t ask…

What does socialization mean, what is its goal and where does it occur?

I would ask this question: is a child who is raised and educated in their home, by their parents, with their siblings, who is active in activities like library groups, 4-H, homeschool groups, church, athletics, etc. less “socialized” than their peers in public school? Who dictates how and with whom each group is socialized? In the homeschool model, I determine who my kids spend time with and what they are doing. In the public school, they decide who they hang out with. You may be able to control who their friends are outside of school hours, but you can’t do much to control who their friends and acquaintances are during school hours. The schedule your child follows, the activities they do, the teachers they sit under, all are mostly out of your control. You pop your kids on the bus right out of the gate in the morning, and hope for the best. Sure you can contact the teacher if there is a problem, review their take-home folder, help with their hours of homework (If you are spending as much time as we and other parents did on homework anyway, why not save the trip to school and teach them yourself?), go to one or two parent-teacher conferences during the year. But what do you really know about what happens with your child from 8:00 to 3:00? What are they being told, what kind of conversations are they hearing, who is molding their worldview, how are the things you are trying to instill in your child being undermined?

Many people have noted, and I have as well, that homeschooled children often are more at ease speaking with adults than they are their peer group. Since we spend about 13 years as a school aged child and perhaps 60 years as an adult among other adults, which is more important? I have met far too many adults who still act like they are in high school.

Public schools tend to exacerbate the human tendency toward social chameleonism. In school you gravitate to a group where you can “fit in” out of self-preservation. Even the outcast groups (in my days back in the late 80’s they were the geeks and the burn-outs) had a sense of identity because of their group. People who crossed over groups were pretty rare. The band kids hung out with band kids. The athletes hung out with athletes. The other guys I played sports with were a cohesive unit. We ate lunch at the same table. We went to the same parties. We dated in the same circles for the most part. But woe to the kid who was outside of any groups!

The problem with the socialization argument is that it assumes that all socialization is inherently a positive, i.e. socialization for socializations sake. But simply that isn’t the case because children can be socialized in positive and in negative ways. Socialization is important for any child, but just throwing kids in with other kids and hoping for the best doesn’t seem like the right way to do it. Far better for parents to encourage their children to socialize in ways that will be enriching instead of having to undo the impact of negative socialization. Learning to deal with others, cooperation with others and, as Dr. Mohler pointed out, most importantly relating to unbelieving children with the Gospel are all important and positive aspects of socialization. Swimming with the sharks, adapting to get along and survival in a Lord of the Flies environment? Not so much.