Swedish Homeschoolers Walk to Freedom—July 13 to 19, 2012

If you're like me you can't fly to Sweden to join in their protests against their draconian homeschooling law, but you certainly want to support their effort. As the following short film shows, many families have chosen to leave Sweden and live where they are allowed to homeschool instead of compelling their children to attend conventional Swedish schools. It is an awful situation for learners who do not thrive in conventional schools, and for teachers who seek personalized, non-standard ways for helping children when conventional methods fails. As the organizers note in the film, Sweden is in violation of the European Commission on Human Rights by denying parents the right to educate their children according to their own religioius and philosophical beliefs.

To learn more about the protest walk watch the video below and visit one of these links for donations and more information:

http://askofamilycamp.info/
https://twitter.com/#!/WalkToFreedom
http://www.facebook.com/events/251857044905976/

Why Bullies Are Reason Enough Against Traditional Schooling

This is a guest post by Jane Smith.

School bullying has become the latest issue to challenge the traditional schooling institution. More prevalent than any other topic related to school violence or crime in recent memory, bullying has taken center stage in media outlets as the problem that threatens the very safety of many vulnerable children. Most recently, school bullying has been discussed in the context of gay students being victimized by fellow classmates that harass them for their sexuality. The bullying behavior has no basis in logic or reason; it’s a sad example of a few students being selected and ridiculed for their perceived differences.

Bullying has figured so prominently in the national dialogue of late that the topic factored into the presidential campaign. Specifically, there have been allegations that presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney himself bullied a gay teen when he was in high school, allegedly attacking a classmate with scissors simply because of his haircut. It’s a sad portrait of an institution that hasn’t much changed from the times that the candidate was enrolled in high school, and only further makes the case that high schools do little to foster real education in students.

More and more schools—not just high schools, but middle and elementary schools as well—report cases of bullying. It’s an acknowledged “part of growing up” for less sympathetic parents and administrators who have long since been written off the behavior as just enough facet of the school experience. But what these willfully ignorant individuals don’t seem to realize is that bullying takes a real and permanent toll on its victims. Just the other day a gay teen in Iowa committed suicide as a result of excessive bullying in a trend that has become far too prevalent in our society. What has to happen beyond teen suicide for the systems that govern public and private education institutions to realize that more needs to be done?

The bullying issue draws to attention the fact that schools have virtually no control over the social norms and trends that occur there. One of the most common defenses for public/private schooling is that it subjects a child to the social world, but how can a parent accept that assertion in good conscience when children across the country are choosing to end their lives rather than go to class? Is this the environment where you want your child to learn social norms?

I feel like it’s not enough to tell children, particularly bullied children, to just keep their head down and bear with the terrors and anxieties of school until they graduate. Telling kids, “It gets better” is a brave campaign that lends hope to those lacking it, but that message implicitly tells children to ignore their aggressors while they’re in school because a better time will come later. Why does traditional schooling have to be an experience synonymous with misery and a just-grin-and-bear it mentality? I don’t think it does, but administrators, teachers, and parents will have to come up with some pretty radical reforms if they want to change it.

I think the school bullying issue is one that needs to be addressed in our country, and fast. It simply isn’t acceptable to let our children go to school knowing that there are bullies out there who will mercilessly harasses them for no good reason. This is among the many reasons why homeschooling seems like such a promising prospect for more and more families.

What do you think about the bullying epidemic in American schools? Do you think it makes a stronger argument for homeschooling?

Byline:

Jane Smith is a freelance writer and blogger. She writes about criminal background check for Backgroundcheck.org. Questions and comments can be sent to: janesmth161 @ gmail.com.

Neurodiversity, Not Learning Disabilities

The current governor of Connecticut, Dannel Malloy, caught my attention last year when the Associated Press ran a story about his dyslexia: “I’m embarrassed all the time about that,” Malloy is quoted, referring to his writing disability, and I was puzzled: Why would a successful politician feel embarrassed because of a lack of writing skills? After all, most politicians usually hire writers. Upon reading the story, one sees the school wounds that are still with Governor Malloy: his memories of the teachers and students who thought or said he was mentally retarded and his public embarrassment about his struggles as a late bloomer. It is clear these wounds still hurt, and it is inspiring that Governor Malloy is willing to speak freely about them, not only to the press, but to students labeled with learning disorders, too. Unfortunately, the governor is reported to commiserate about how, like him, the students are likely to be embarrassed throughout their lives by their inability to write well, rather than provide them with examples of his innovativeness for creating a niche where his strengths could take root and overcome his weaknesses.

This is what Dr Thomas Armstrong calls positive niche construction, and it is one of the many successful strategies that he describes in his groundbreaking book, Neurodiversity: Discovering the Extraordinary Gifts of Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia, and Other Brain Differences . Governor Malloy, and others like him, might not feel their dyslexia is a gift, and Dr. Armstrong isn’t trying to put lipstick on a pig. He writes:

By focusing on the “hidden strengths” of mental disorders, I am not attempting to sidestep the damage that these conditions do. I am not saying that these really aren’t disorders or that somehow calling them “differences” will make all the pain go away. It won’t. But there is merit in focusing on the positives. The term “neurodiversity” is not a sentimental ploy to help people with mental illness and their caregivers “feel good” about their disorders. Rather, it is a powerful concept, backed by substantial research from brain science, evolutionary psychology, anthropology, and other fields, that can help revolutionize the way we look at mental illness.

By mounting a huge campaign on the strengths of people with mental disorders, some of the prejudice that exists against mental illness might be diffused. It also seems to me therapeutically useful for people with mental disorders (and their caregivers) to focus on the positives as much as, or more than, the negative. Seeing our own inner strengths builds our self-confidence, provides us with courage to pursue our dreams, and promotes the development of specific skills that can provide deep satisfaction in life. This creates a positive feedback loop that helps counteract the vicious circle that many people with mental disorders find themselves in as a result of their disabilities.

I wrote this book because I wanted to start a serious campaign to begin researching the positives among people who are defined in terms of their negatives.

I’ve had the honor of hearing Dr. Armstrong speak on several occasions, and in one keynote speech Armstrong noted that while modern science views the brain as a computer, he and others view it more as an ecosystem—a brain forest—a metaphor I immediately liked. Thomas expands this idea further with Neurodiversity:  “ . . . we need to admit that there is no standard brain, just as there is no standard flower, or standard cultural or racial group, and that, in fact, diversity among brains is just as wonderfully enriching as biodiversity and the diversity among cultures and races.”

Governor Malloy deserves lots of credit for speaking out about his learning issues, though it is clear he feels his brain is less than standard. However, as with the many examples Dr. Armstrong provides in his book, I think you will be impressed by how Governor Malloy used his auditory skills and “passions for public speaking and government, and refused to . . . be defined by his learning disability.” In doing so he provides us all with a real example of personal achievement, often despite of his schooling, and one he should not be embarrassed about.

NOTE: When Neurodiversity came out in paperback its title was changed to:

The Power of Neurodiversity: Unleashing the Advantages of Your Differently Wired Brain (published in hardcover as Neurodiversity)

Knowing What Can and Can’t be Taught

“It is good books, not good reading methods, that make good readers,” John Holt told me, and I have certainly seen the wisdom of this comment with our three girls. They all learned to read using different methods and at different ages, but they all wanted to read because books are viewed by them as pleasure and information tools, not school assessment tools. The wisdom of this approach is bolstered by research, such as that done by Dr. Alan Thomas, the success of many children who learn to read later than is preferred in school and often with little, or no, adult help (there are many homeschooling and unschooling stories about this), and educational concepts such as delayed academics (Ray and Dorothy Moore’s work; Waldorf schools) and Jim Trelease’s Read-Aloud initiative.

However, since this is a low-cost, learner-centered approach to reading it requires patience, hope, and trust—three key elements for learning that are severely lacking in education—and so it is ignored in favor of structured reading programs aimed at decoding essays on standardized tests. Educationists reduce the world to a classroom and take the motto of the alchemist and father of education, John Amos Comenius, as their reason to be: To teach everybody, everything, perfectly. From this medieval perspective, modern education feels it has the right and the mission to teach children everything—to turn the lead minds of children into the gold minds of graduates—so they will become well-rounded individuals, good citizens, and assets to the national economy. Though this process is expensive, doesn't work universally, is often counter-productive, and flies in the face of what we know about how people learn best, we have embedded it in our lives so much that most people refuse to consider other ways of learning. However, it is just as important to know what can’t be taught as well as what can be, and this is something that educationists refuse to accept. For instance, a love of reading cannot be taught to a class, it must be caught individually.

Not Teaching

Though Holt had this insight in the early sixties and wrote about it often (for instance, in The Underachieving School, the chapter titled “How Teachers Make Children Hate Reading”), and other teachers have noted similar findings before and since Holt, these indirect, inexpensive, social capital approaches to improving education are totally ignored by policy-makers as a serious tool. Nonetheless, teachers who are serious about their work and explore every way they can help their students, including NOT teaching them but rather giving the student things, time, and space to explore and think on their own, continue to discover how they can facilitate learning without having to script and instruct every step of it.

Further, I hope this article gives support and options to homeschoolers who find their children aren’t enjoying their reading program and to unschoolers who are criticized for letting their children read (or not read) at their own pace. One good argument homeschoolers can use to justify not forcing their children to read just because they are a certain age, is that if schools can use intrinsic motivation and access to books at home to improve reading, so can homeschoolers.

Here is a story from Education Week—The Home Library Effect: Transforming At-Risk Readers—about a classroom teacher who now supports this important, but underappreciated and underused, aspect of helping children learn. Also, I can’t help but note how this teacher used his own funds to get this project going, another element homeschoolers share with teachers who want to break the mold of conventional schooling.

We called our classroom adventure "The 1,000 Books Project." Each of the 25 children in my class received 40 books over the course of 2nd and 3rd grade, for a total of 1,000 new books in their homes.

The project was simple to launch. Scholastic donated 20 books per child, and I purchased the other 20 through a combination of my own funds, support from individuals and local organizations, and bonus points. The kids received three types of books each month: copies of class read-alouds, guided reading books, and individual choices selected from Scholastic’s website.

. . . The total cost for each student's home library was less than $50 each year, a small investment to move a struggling reader from frustration to confidence.

Growing Readers

These 25 students made more progress in their reading than I have experienced with any other class. By the end of the project's second year, they had exceeded the district expectation for growth by an average of nine levels on the DRA and five points on the computerized Measures of Academic Progress reading test. And they made this growth despite formidable obstacles to academic success—20 of the 25 are English language learners, and all but one live in poverty. . .

. . . While the numerical data on my students' achievement is encouraging, it is their stories that will stick with me . . . I watched child after child become a different kind of writer, thinker, and human being because of his or her growth as a reader . . .

. . . .A 2001 study by Susan Neuman and Donna Celano found that the ratio of books to children in middle-income neighborhoods is 13 books to one child, while in low-income neighborhoods the ratio is one book to 300 children.

This "book gap" is easier to erase than the more complex barriers involved in poverty. Richard Allington found that giving children 12 books to take home over the summer resulted in gains equal to summer school for lower-income children, and had twice the impact of summer school for the poorest of those children.

All this without worksheets, extrinsic rewards, or sitting in a stifling classroom in the middle of July.

Home reading surveys showed that at the beginning of 2nd grade, my students had access to an average of three books at home. Increasing this number to 40 or more books had far-reaching effects. Students' fluency improved because the children could engage in repeated readings of favorite "just right" books, and parents reported increased time spent reading at home during weekends, holidays, and summer break.

The only incentive for this increase in reading time was intrinsic: the pleasure each child felt in reading his or her own book, beloved as a favorite stuffed animal.

. . . The home libraries have also had a tremendous impact on each child's love of reading, which has ignited that same love of books in their parents, siblings, cousins, and friends . . .

Studies show that most homeschooling families use libraries a lot and typically have lots of books in their homes, but the benefits of family literacy are leveraged by homeschoolers in many other ways, not just as a love of books. Conversations, inventions, plays, movies, games and all sorts of adventures often evolve from children reading books they enjoy. It is the unexpected turns and surprises of learning that flow from what one reads that makes reading so much more than a lesson to move through. It is a shame that so many well-meaning parents and teachers turn reading into a chore to be done with as quickly as possible for many children, especially since, as Justin Minkel and other teachers have written, the answer is so much easier than education theory makes it out to be.

International Homeschooling News

These stories illustrate some interesting ways that homeschooling is working in other countries.

First, in heavily industrialized societies like the United States, school is incredibly difficult to change from within. Any survey of efforts to make schooling more personalized, local-community-based, and convivial over the past century will show that these efforts get subsumed or ignored by the push to make schooling more standardized, national, and competitive by educators and politicians. However, in countries that do not yet have such an inflexible, industrialized schooling infrastructure in place there are opportunities for remaking schooling into something different for families. Here is one such story, from the Philippines, where homeschooling is promoted by the Department of Education as a means to reduce overcrowding in its schools. Of note here is that this program is focused on high school students and the number of students being asked to home school: 10,000! You can read the full article here: Philippine DOE supports homeschooling to ease overcrowding. Read the comments of school officials regarding how well the homeschooled students have done in this program since 2002:

Quezon City is the only school division implementing the program so far, according to Education Assistant Secretary Jesus Mateo. DepEd started the program in 2002 but there were years when it was not implemented on such a large scale.

“We’ve explained it to the parents and they understand the system. We’ve been doing it for three years (in Quezon City) and our students do well. They graduate, go to college and even go abroad,” Cacanindin said on the sidelines of a school inspection in Cubao, Quezon City, on Thursday.

Betty Cavo, also an assistant schools superintendent in Quezon City, said home-schooled students had fared well in the National Achievement Test over the past years.

Home study is one of the alternatives recommended by DepEd for schools whose enrollments far exceed their classroom space and resources, particularly those in urban centers.

Under the program, students can take their lessons at home following modules patterned after the regular curriculum and meet with their teachers only on Saturdays. They graduate with a high school diploma just like any regular student.

I am interested in hearing from anyone with experience in the Philippine homeschooling program; I’d like to know if it is just a school-at-home program, where the parents just do what the schools tell them to do, or if there is input from the families regarding how their children learn at home (the article is very unclear on details). In any case, this is another piece of evidence that being taught by professionals in school all day is not the only way that children can learn and become contributors to society.

The second story comes from India:

Satyam Kumar, all of 12 and with little formal schooling, has cracked the tough Indian Institute of Technology-Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE). He is the youngest to do so . . . Kumar never saw the inside of a classroom in his childhood but always showed exceptional intelligence. “He used to impress everyone. But in the absence of a proper school in our village, he mostly studied at home,” his father Sidhnath Singh said.

There are many such stories in the literature of homeschooling and school reform: a poor young person, whose parents or others recognize talents to which the school is indifferent (or, as in this case, not even present), is nonetheless able to succeed in life, including getting into higher education. How many talented children are we neglecting by focusing only on learners who attend school from kindergarten to college? Sugata Mitra’s work (see Competent Children) suggests there are a great many children, in India alone, who are capable of learning many difficult things on their own (Mitra’s research shows how these children teach themselves and one another to use a computer, for instance, with no adult help).