School Pot Calling Homeschool Kettle Black - Acceptance is not taught in school
I challenge the notion that public schools inherently teach kids how to deal with people who are from diverse backgrounds. In fact, I would argue that students in school who do not have an adult or groups of adults to model acceptance, are generally taught the opposite—to be wary of people who do not fall into the school-based idea of what is “right”. And the worst of it, is that these school children and products of the school system are being discriminatory and judgmental all the while arguing that their way of thinking is somehow more accepting and open.
Embarrassingly, I can say this is true, because I lived it. I read this blog post today, by a college student studying early education, and I can imagine myself saying the same things when I was that age and at that stage of my education and life experience. I was sure that my way was more accepting and more open. Oh, how naive I was! I’m still not as open and accepting as I could be. I’m still growing and learning. But I can see now just how closed minded I was when I was convinced that anyone who didn’t have the same experience as the majority of kids (i.e. me and my friends and the people in my world), were probably freaks and therefore obviously incapable of acceptance or love or any kind of real world success.
Like me when I was in school, this blogger openly admitted to not knowing any homeschoolers. It immediately makes it clear that this person is making a judgment based on nothing but conjecture. It’s kind of like trying to explain the value of living in another country without ever even visiting it. I can talk about living in Canada all I want to, I can do research, look up statistics, and even talk about the reasons why people choose to live there. But until I at least visit Canada, or at least know a large variety of people who live there and hear their experiences, there is no way I can know what it’s like to live there. To make a negative judgment about living in Canada without this kind of knowledge is totally academic. And making a negative judgment about the experiences that people have who live there, and even their worth or their ability to live full lives, based solely on numbers and research studies, is unfair and gives us a false sense of knowing what the hell I am talking about, when I really don’t. This is what most schools teach us to do. To bullshit in a very convincing way. (Believe me, I got really, really good at it. I was a great student! 
If schools truly taught acceptance by the mere fact that kids are around a lot of “different” kinds of people, there would be no wars in our country, no racial hate, no neighbor disputes, a lower number of people suing each other, and less negative judgments on pretty much everything. If schools truly taught acceptance and understanding of diversity, very few people, if ever, would have a negative view of homeschoolers or of any other life choice, such as religion, educational philosophy, or personal choices.
Life in school is limiting. It’s very limiting. We only get experiences in that school, with that school culture, with the people in that place, with the rules and policy of that milieu. Schools are not a representation of everywhere in the world, or even in our country, or even in our own state. They are experiences in that school, and that school only. Sure, there are lots of other school children who share similar experiences in general, like tests and school lunches. But this is only a very small sampling of all of the experiences we can have in a lifetime. No matter how many experiences we have in school, we will have many, many, many more different ones after school is over. And, no matter how many people we meet in school, we will meet many, many different people in our lives.
School doesn’t prepare us for that. It doesn’t prepare us for the unexpected. It is simply a collection of experiences in one place, with one set of people, with a lot of prepared process and protocol, and little room for actual learning how to deal with people outside of the that school itself. School doesn’t prepare us for a full and varietal life any more than working at Disneyland will prepare us to work at another company. Unless, unless… unless we have an infrastructure of adults in our lives that take what we learn in school an extrapolate it into real life, and can teach us, both by example and by conversation, how important it is to be open and ready for the many experiences we’ll face as adults.
Then, if kids have parents and adults like this in their lives, they don’t *need* school to teach these things, since school doesn’t teach it anyway. School simply gives experiences that can be learned from if given the right guidance. School itself is not the teacher of being accepting. It’s the parents who are the real teachers. It’s the infrastructure of a child’s life that teaches acceptance, love, and understanding. If a child doesn’t have the infrastructure, school won’t “save” them. They’re going to have to learn the realities of the world as adults, just like homeschoolers, and their infrastructure will prepare them for that, not school (or the process of homeschooling) itself.
There are problems with homeschooling. Nothing is perfect. And, there are certainly many great things about school, as well. It all balances out in the end. Either way works, one way or another, to give children experiences they will take to their adulthood, and then have to sort out in some way or another. That’s part of growing up, is to sort out all of the experiences we’ve had along the way, interpret them, then make a decision about how to live. There is no perfect set of childhood experiences. We all grow up with baggage to have to sort through.
Those that are stuck in school, and simply say that “school is better” because they knew no other way, and understand no other way, are no different than the people who they criticize for being “narrow-minded” or not understanding the real world. Listen to me carefully on this one: school is not better simply because you went to school.
The real world is full of lots of different people. The real world includes homeschoolers. That’s hard to grasp sometimes, and it’s hard to accept. The solution is not to turn all homeschoolers into public schoolers in order to no longer have to grapple with the complexity of the diversity of the real world. The solution is to honestly let people be different, let them live their own lives, and be accepting that maybe a life different than my own is OK, even if it’s so different we can’t understand it. That’s what needs to be taught in school. But then, if that was taught in school, it might create a lot of kids who actually think about other possibilties besides going to school, and challenge school’s effectiveness. We can’t have that, because, well, that would be different.
There are many other issues this blog post brings up, but I’ll stick to this one. Schools don’t teach acceptance, and the proof is in how many school kids and people who went to school can’t accept homeschoolers. So please, my fellow academics and school affecionados, please stop saying that homeschoolers are narrow minded or that we don’t know how to teach our kids to be accepting and understand diversity. Be the change you want to see. If school is so accepting and so diverse, and you learned from that, prove it by accepting the differences in homeschoolers. Get out of the academic mind just for a moment and take a look at the real world. We’re right here. We’re not hiding. Give it a whirl. And you might find that acceptance and understanding diversity, in its real sense, feels great.
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Reading this drivel from a person who hopes to educate children is one more reason to homeschool. My God.
Reminds me of this moron. http://teacherrevised.org/2009/05/30/the-case-against-homeschooling/
I replied to him at great length on my blog ages ago. If these people are an example of what public schools have to offer…
::shudder::
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Well, I don’t know if she’s as bad as that guy. I think Kristen’s post was simply trying to make a value judgment based on an academic approach, kind of like a case study. But, when the researcher is biased and the topic itself is not scientific, it’s going to lead to erroneous conclusions.
She is still in school. I remember how that was, being in school and that was my world. I could not really understand anything beyond it. So, her assessment makes sense, from her perspective. Not a moron, simply blind to her own biases. All of us could become victim to that
But ya, she’s going to teach little ones, and she has this point of view, perpetrating the same nonsense logic down to the next generation. I’m almost of the opinion that all teachers should have at least 10 years real world experience before teaching in public school, so they know what this “real world” is that they are trying to prepare the kids for.
I was trying to leave this comment on her blog, but it won’t let me….hmmmm…..
Disadvantages of Home Schooling
• Time Restraints
• Financial Restraints
• Being with your children “24/7”
• Limited Activities
As a homeschooler I’d like to go over these. But first, you’ve never met any homeschoolers? Really? You have led a very sheltered life. There are homeschoolers everywhere. Next time you see a mom with her kids at the library during ’school’ hours, or at the grocery store, zoo, museum; ask them if they homeschool, I bet they do.
Time restraints: believe it or not, it takes much less time for me to find out what my children need to learn and to implement it than it does for a teacher who is having to come up with work for 30 kids (and maybe even in just 1 subject area!) I have 4 children who have always been homeschooled, they are 15 (10th grade), 10 (5th), 7 (2nd) and 4 (Pre-K). I labeled them that way because if you’ve never met a homeschooler then you probably don’t know that a child can be in any grade if you homeschool. They can be at, above or below grade level in any subject and we can teach to their strengths and weaknesses instead of pushing them ahead or dragging them along. Since I have never worked (which I’ll go into next) and have always been a stay at home, home educating mom I’m not sure what you mean by ‘lives are turned upside down’. Homeschooling is life, life is school so there is no life turned upside down. We school when and where we want and though we have a structure to what we learn, it is flexible. Yeah, life happens, kids go to the ER, people get sick, people die, car wrecks happen - that’s why homeschooling is so great, it is flexible to wrap around any life event.
Financial restraints: okay I have only worked outside of the home before I had children, so about 2 years of my married life I worked. But then I had a son and yes, a baby changes everything; except, we had already determined that I would stay home and that we were going to homeschool. Whew! Two major items off the list I didn’t have to worry about. Most homeschoolers can live off one income and here’s a secret - most people can live off one income. There are things we can do without and things we don’t need to live.
Being with your children 24/7: this is always brought up in regards to homeschooling and I have to tell you, if you hate your kids then yeah, it will suck to be around them 24/7. But, most homeschoolers don’t despise their children, they don’t want a break from them, they don’t need someone else to teach them. I hear all the time about how patient I must be to homeschool my kids, that has nothing to do with it. I love them and though there are days when I pull my hair out, I don’t ever want to send them away somewhere.
Limited activities: this one makes me crack up. If you don’t know any homeschoolers then you don’t know that we have this thing called ’socialization’ licked. “Your child will not be able to join a school sports team or club. Also school related activities such as dances and events will not be in the cards for them. This can cause friendship restraints.” Sorry to disappoint, we have a HS sports team (not to mention the rec center teams and church teams) for sports. Club? We have a drama club, speaking club, game night club…..Dances, events? Do you mean like Christmas parties, skate parties, Valentines parties, etc? We have that too. Personally in my family of 6 we: have worship dance every Monday, have Civil Air patrol every Monday, have park day every Wednesday, have girl scout meetings the 1st and 3rd Fridays, have presentation club once a month, volunteer at the library every Friday, volunteer at the airplane museum a few times a month or more on special occasions, have an exceptional kids meeting once a month, we also do co-ops with our homeschool group (I just had one Tuesday about US government), field trips with our homeschool group and family field trips (many times a month), plus Teacher’s night out twice a month (that’s for mom’s only), Bible study twice a month (for mom), church on Sundays and I think that’s it. It’s not just me (although I admit I do a lot) homeschoolers are in book clubs, soccer teams, they take trips to the museum, do service projects (our group just sent 144 butterflies to the Houston holocaust museum), have park days, and on and on. There are some homeschoolers who are more homebodies than others, just like there are some public schoolers who don’t want to be involved in sports or team activities (no one calls them un-socialized!)
So that’s just my one homeschooling opinion and you can add it in to your pro’s list if you want. Find some homeschoolers to interview, you’ll find they range from shy to outgoing, active to passive, political to religious, busy to quiet and everything in-between - just like ‘real’ people!
Liese, do you have a blog? This would make an excellent blog post. If you don’t have a blog, high time you get one. Need you out there with us
Love it Tammy, you honed in on the essential point (highlighted with the perfect photo):
“Schools don’t teach acceptance, and the proof is in how many school kids and people who went to school can’t accept homeschoolers.”
I know that many young people go into teaching because they have exactly what it takes. They’re brimming with enthusiasm, curiosity and the ability to see a child’s unique gifts. But these exact qualities are nearly impossible to sustain in a school system based on judgment.
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Hi Tammy,
It’s been awhile since I’ve been here. It seems I have a lot of catching up to do.
Great article.
Looks like things are going really well for you, congrats.
Sheri H.
Ottawa, Canada
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Tammy, I just want to take the time to say that as always, this is a well written, well thought out piece, and I truly appreciate what you have to say (I realize that probably has a LOT to do with the fact that I usually agree with everything you have to say).
Liese4-
I LOVE your response, and it did post over on the other blog. I agree with Tammy, you should also have your own blog. I’d certainly read it.
-M Green
I had to post twice, seems I’m too verbose. I have a blog here: http://highlandshomeschool.homeschooljournal.net/
She’s just a naive girl, she says in another post that she agrees that learning needs to happen by activity, not by rote. Not sure how she’s going to do that with a gaggle of 4th/5th graders.
I told my HS group to go leave a comment about the ‘disadvantages’ part, but to be gentle since it’s her first encounter to the dark side…I mean homeschooling.
This is a very interesting post that is spot on right. I am a teacher who spent an entire career in schools. I started back when schools were still largely about supporting the family values of the community as well as upholding traditional values. I started homeschooling about 10 years ago because of the problems that now exist in education. Racially, schools are about the most divided insitutions you can find. They wind up wth a diverse roll of names but the fact is the kids still segregate themselves. Further the values they kids get from other kids can be horrendous. I would not have my own childen now in public school. The language children hear is horrible. Teachers are stressed to the max in dealing with kids who have huge problems themselves. childen see fights between kids but also adults. Now when I hear the word socialization I just laugh. Socialization to what the current sex oriented, gang oriented culture that most public school kids have adopted. I am in complete agreement with you… great post. http://dailygraces.wordpress.com
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As a fairly new homeschooling mom of 3 (we only pulled our eldest 2 out of public school last spring), I still feel we are deschooling not only our own family but also everyone else around us. The main thing that astounds me though, is how quickly everyone else assumes that if I have a problem with my kids because of homeschooling, that I must need to “send them back” to public school. As if the reasons we pulled them out have disappeared?
Over the past few weeks, as I worked as a judge for high school speech meets, I got the experience to speak candidly with many high school teachers. They, of course, all had strong opinions on homeschooling, some favorable; others, not so much. But the main feeling I got from every one of them was that they are not ALLOWED to teach anymore. They are not allowed to fail students that don’t apply themselves. They are not allowed to think outside of the box or to help students who are academically faster/slower than the system perceives “normal.” And most of them? Most of them are so jaded and disgusted with the system that they ADMITTED to passing kids that didn’t really apply themselves.
It only makes me all the more determined to make homeschooling work for my family.
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Really enjoyed your article
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I agree with this blog post 100 %. One more way in which it’s obvious that the public schools don’t teach acceptance is the pressure that’s put on kids to all be identical. Everybody has to look the same, dress the same, think the same, and woe betide any student who differs in any respect.
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