I am not a fan of homeschooling; in fact, if I had my way, I'd make it illegal. Too often it's an excuse to isolate kids and hammer them full of ideological nonsense, and in a troubled public school system, it doesn't help to strip students and money from a struggling district — it should be part of the social contract that we ought to provide a good education to everyone.
Before you start protesting (aw, who am I kidding? Some will be howling in protest anyway) I know that there are good homeschool programs, and I have students who were homeschooled and were better prepared than kids coming out of the public school system. You may be one of them. But I don't think sending everyone to be taught by your mom and dad is a good solution, and I think we're better off investing in good public education.
OK, but now on to the email. Here's a sincere and worthy request from a homeschooling mom in Arizona.
Next summer, Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis is coming to Phoenix to speak at the local homeschool convention. As a secular homeschooler in Phoenix, I am appalled. I feel like I must respond in some way, stand up and say, "This guy does not represent me or others like me!"
I am interested in creating some kind of large, public response, but not sure where to begin. I thought that one of you might have some ideas.
See what I mean? This is one of the big problems of homeschooling: for every good, science-oriented parent, there are dozens or hundreds who buy into the awful, horrible, no-good nonsense peddled by Ken Ham and other creationists.
So I recuse myself as an opponent of homeschooling, but I appreciate that as long as we are going to have homeschoolers, something needs to be done about this ridiculous association between homeschooling and bad education. I turn it over to the readers here: what should be done? What can be done in the short term to protest damning choices like bringing Ham in to speak to a convention, and what can be done in the long run to get better quality science into homeschool programs? That last one will be a real challenge, given that my impression of the majority of homeschoolers is that they're doing it specifically to indoctrinate their kids in a specific conservative Christian ideology.
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Since PZ wimped out on this one, maybe the parent can find some assistance at:
http://www.secularhomeschool.com/
If homeschooling is such a bad thing, why are states and school districts sanctioning homeschooling by allowing/offering online options under the charter school concept?
http://www.mnohs.org
http://www.minnesotavirtualhighschool.com
http://www.connectionsacademy.com
http://mn.insightschools.net
I am not a fan of homeschooling; in fact, if I had my way, I'd make it illegal.
Think again! You should know there are secular homeschoolers. Atheists and agnostics also get fed up with the failings of public schools.
http://www.secularhomeschool.com/
http://www.secular-homeschooling.com/
http://www.secularhomeschoolers.net/
http://www.letshomeschool.com/articles15.html
There are even Unitarian Universalists who homeschool:
http://www.uuhomeschool.org/
The stereotype that homeschoolers are all religious fundamentalists is an urban myth. I'm amazed that a professed skeptic like you fell for it.
Dale Husband, the Honorable Skeptic
First, I have to indulge in a moment of sorrowful silence for the (hopefully temporary) passing of respect I've long had for Pharyngula -- a longtime homeschool resource, I might add, for myself and for the thousands of homeschoolers for whom I provide resources through several different support and networking groups.
Okay, now down to the business of knowledge. For one thing, an opinion titled "I am the wrong person to answer this email," followed by a series of ignorant generalizations, is definitely a good way to support your thesis. Congratulations! Point made.
I'm sure you'll be inundated with understandably outraged responses from lots of other irate godless liberal homeschoolers. Contrary to your belief, there are plenty of us, in pretty consistent proportions to the general population.
So I'll just take up this observation from your post: "...for every good, science-oriented parent, there are dozens or hundreds who buy into the awful, horrible, no-good nonsense peddled by Ken Ham and other creationists."
Um - and public school families are different? I'll venture to say that for every good, science-oriented *public-school* family, there are thousands who buy into creationist nonsense. And worse yet, many of them are on the school board! Witness Texas, for one.
For that matter, there are more private schoolers than homeschoolers, and many of them attend religiously conservative institutions.
You think making homeschooling illegal - the practice of free, unfettered access to knowledge of all kinds, at all times, for all types of children -- should be illegal? Take a look at some of the research being done on Free Choice Learning and Informal Education:
http://seagrant.oregonstate.edu/freechoice/index.html
http://www.infed.org/i-intro.htm
Just to name a couple of explorations of the type of learning that most homeschoolers employ extremely successfully.
There are thousands of secular homeschoolers -- a lot in a practice that only numbers a couple of million, and above and beyond the secular homeschoolers are thousands more home educators who may hold religious views but teach at home for the sake of knowledge alone.
Check our Homeschooling Freethinkers: http://www.hsfreethinkers.com/
Secular Homeschool: http://www.secularhomeschool.com/content/
UU Homeschoolers: http://www.uuhomeschool.org
The Denim Jumper: http://www.thedenimjumper.com/
Atheist Homeschool (A Non Prophet Website): http://www.atheisthomeschool.com/
We don't need anyone to write us good biology curriculum! We have the internet! We have opensource courseware from MIT and others. In Florida, we have Florida Virtual School - the state's online public school. And most of us have access to dual enrollment, where our high school aged children can take college classes.
And many of us in fact are quite proactive citizens, voting, speaking out on issues, helping with public schools - we've been volunteer readers, tutors and brought programs to public schools -- cleaning roadsides and beaches and generally being good public citizens.
So you're right on one thing - you're the wrong person to answer the email. In fact, your response was quite creationist-like -- reactionary, incindiary and completely lacking in facts (as were several of the comments). If we were to apply Michael Shermer's Baloney Detection Kit -http://www.michaelshermer.com/2009/06/baloney-detection-kit - to evaluate value of your observations, you'd lose on all ten counts.
(I'm sure the asteroid impact continues, but this didn't seem to make it through - or perhaps it was too long? Anyway, I'm lobbing it again...)
First, I have to indulge in a moment of sorrowful silence for the (hopefully temporary) passing of respect I've long had for Pharyngula -- a longtime homeschool resource, I might add, for myself and for the thousands of homeschoolers for whom I provide resources through several different support and networking groups.
Okay, now down to the business of knowledge. For one thing, an opinion titled "I am the wrong person to answer this email," followed by a series of ignorant generalizations, is definitely a good way to support your thesis.
Congratulations! Point made.
I'm sure you'll be (have been) inundated with understandably outraged responses from lots of other irate godless liberal homeschoolers. Contrary to your belief, there are plenty of us, in pretty consistent proportions to the general population.
So I'll just take up this observation from your post: "...for every good, science-oriented parent, there are dozens or hundreds who buy into the awful, horrible, no-good nonsense peddled by Ken Ham and other creationists."
Um - and public school families are different? I'll venture to say that for every good, science-oriented *public-school* family, there are thousands who buy into creationist nonsense. And worse yet, many of them are on the school board! Witness Texas, for one.
For that matter, there are more private schoolers than homeschoolers, and many of them attend religiously conservative institutions.
You think making homeschooling illegal - the practice of free, unfettered access to knowledge of all kinds, at all times, for all types of children -- should be illegal? Take a look at some of the research being done on Free Choice Learning and Informal Education:
http://seagrant.oregonstate.edu/freechoice/index.html
http://www.infed.org/i-intro.htm
Just to name a couple of explorations of the type of learning that most homeschoolers employ extremely successfully.
There are thousands of secular homeschoolers -- a lot in a practice that only numbers a couple of million, and above and beyond the secular homeschoolers are thousands more home educators who may hold religious views but teach at home for the sake of knowledge alone.
Check our Homeschooling Freethinkers: http://www.hsfreethinkers.com/
Secular Homeschool: http://www.secularhomeschool.com/content/
UU Homeschoolers: http://www.uuhomeschool.org
The Denim Jumper: http://www.thedenimjumper.com/
Atheist Homeschool (A Non Prophet Website): http://www.atheisthomeschool.com/
We don't need anyone to write us good biology curriculum. We have the internet! We have open source courseware from MIT and others. In Florida, we have Florida Virtual School - the state's online public school. And most of us have access to dual enrollment, where our high school aged children can take college classes.
And many of us in fact are quite proactive citizens, voting, speaking out on issues, helping with public schools - we've been volunteer readers, tutors and brought programs to public schools -- cleaning roadsides and beaches and generally being good public citizens.
So you're right on one thing - you're the wrong person to answer the email. In fact, your response was quite creationist-like -- reactionary, incendiary and completely lacking in facts (as were several of the comments). If we were to apply Michael Shermer's Baloney Detection Kit -http://www.michaelshermer.com/2009/06/baloney-detection-kit - to evaluate the value of your observations, you'd lose on all ten counts.