Recent Graduates: College Degree Isn't Worth It.

Most parents—homeschoolers or not—worry about their children being able to pass tests and have proper credentials to gain college entrance. However, as an increasing number of critics of higher education are noting, college is an overpriced and overestimated institution for most people.  This article from CNN Money puts the matter in contemporary terms as the Fall semester approaches.

The graduates portrayed have debts ranging from $185K for a bachelors degree in Industrial Engineering to $74K for a masters degree in public health;  none have found work that pays anywhere near what they need to repay their loans without great sacrifice. Part of it is the bad economy, of course, but that's also the point: the old "when the economy is bad go back to school" strategy requires a whole rethinking in our society. As recently as a decade ago a college degree was considered to be very important to gain middle to upper-middle class white collar employment. Now those white collar jobs are being outsourced to countries whose English-speaking, highly educated, and highly unemployed college graduates are willing to do college-level work for high-school student wages.

Homeschoolers have long-criticized the need for increasing the time children spend in elementary and high school, but since so many people rely on those institutions for childcare, I think it is hard to get popular traction for reform efforts that alter that model. But I think now we can find common ground with all citizens by openly challenging the perceived need for everyone to go to four years of college and, in doing so, begin to discover and document the different ways we express, develop, and use our knowledge for personal and work purposes throughout our lives.

Degree Not Worth The Debt

Free resources and events for homeschoolers and unschoolers

Here are several resources, events, and videos I learned about over the past few weeks that I hope will be of interest to you too.

I’ll be featured in these two free webinars:

Wednesday, January 26, 2011, 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM EST. Dr. Carlo Ricci of The Schulich School of Education, Graduate Studies at Nipissing University has asked me to speak about John Holt’s work. My topic will be how can teachers negotiate the tension between using John Holt’s ideas about individualized teaching and learning while at the same time working in the field of standardized education? Can unschooling be reconciled with working in school? If grades and tests must be used in your classes, is it still possible to reduce fear and cheating, encourage Socratic dialog, and form meaningful mentoring relationships with your students? What did Holt do himself in this situation? What did he recommend others to do in that situation? Reserve your Webinar seat now.

Thursday, Jan 27, 7 – 8 PM EST. “Understanding Unschooling.” This will be an interview I do with Diane Flynn Keith, follwed by questions and answers with the audience. To register: http://www.homefires.com/

Learning Resources:

If you’re interested in scholarly writing about unschooling, you can read all the issues of the Journal of Unschooling and Alternative Learning (JUAL) for free.

I’ve been a fan of the TED videos for some time, enjoying them as a smorgasbord. However, a non-profit site “designed to promote the study of the sciences among students considering obtaining a bachelor degree” has compiled an interesting list of TED talks that are focused on topics of interest for homeschoolers and other independent learners:

50 Awesome & Inspiring TED Talks for Homeschoolers

One of my favorite TED speakers, Sir Ken Robinson, receives an animated commentary in this neat video, Changing Education Paradigms.

I’m intrigued by this website and concept, the Slow Thought Movement. “Slow Thought embodies a conscious renunciation of borrowed ideas” which, among other concepts presented on the site, meshes well with homeschooling and unschooling practices.

Homeschooling is Officially Illegal in Spain

Homeschooling was declared illegal in Spain in December 2010, mainly because there is no language in the Spanish constitution that permits it. Madalen Goiria, a Spanish citizen and a law professor, notified me that this case “comes after an appeal to the Constitutional Court numbered 7509/2005 against a previous decision by the Audiencia de Malaga, put forward by two families: Antonio Gómez, Maria Socorro Sanchez, Florian Macarró and Anabelle Gosselint. The Constitutional Court decision has come five years later and it is dated 2nd December 2010.” The essence of the constitutional court decision is that homeschooling is not a right under Spanish law and therefore all children must attend formal school. The court notes that laws can be made that allow for more flexibility and choices for families, but until then homeschooling is illegal in Spain.

Spanish homeschoolers will likely appreciate any sign of solidarity they can get as they are now an oppressed minority in their own country. Creating new laws and amending a constitution are tall tasks for any group to take on, but that seems to be the order of business for Spanish homeschoolers. Homeschoolers in Spain will probably need to create alliances with politicians, family rights groups, and educators who will support new homeschooling legislation, as well as create public support for alternatives to school for children. This is no small task, as we know from our own efforts in the United States, but it is possible.

Further, civil disobedience, such as refusing to send one’s children to school, can be a spark that can bring support from non-homeschooling parties who support educational freedom, but I don’t think it is called for at this time. Videos and photos of children being forcibly separated from their parents to attend compulsory schooling can stir powerful emotions in the public, but it is not clear to me at all that there are enough homeschoolers in Spain, nor enough support for homeschooling there, to suggest that parents risk losing custody of their children over homeschooling. After all, in Sweden and Germany public opinion appeared to be against homeschoolers and media appeals in those countries didn’t do much to move public opinion in favor of homeschooling. For now, I think Spanish homeschoolers should build a larger base of support and advocacy, then, if necessary, move towards more dramatic measures. For instance, I read how “the regional government of Catalonia announced in 2009 that parents would be allowed to homeschool their children up to 16 years.” So there might be some legal precedents and lawmakers for Spanish homeschoolers to work with in this regard. Also, the creation of alternative schools that enlist parents as teachers in their program (“umbrella schools” is the phrase used here in the U.S.), enrolling their children in distance learning programs that are recognized by the government, and just plain old “underground homeschooling,” as some did, and still do, in the U.S., could be options Spanish families can use. I’m not sure if any of these ideas can work given the legal framework of Spain, but I want to mention them for those who seek to continue helping their children learn in Spain without sending them to school.

We should not dismiss this development as “Well, that’s too bad for the Spanish. They’re not lucky enough to live in a country like the U.S. that has constitutional protections for families to raise and educate their children without undue government regulation.” There is truth to that statement, but there is also myopia.

Though this situation does not directly affect our ability to homeschool in the United States, it is important for us to realize that the underlying issues that cause governments to force children by law to receive professional formal education and make alternative forms of learning illegal are universal. Universal compulsory education is a commodity that is useful for all sorts of political purposes. Compulsory schooling occurs in democracies and in dictatorships; the school bell rings and we must attend to it regardless of our country’s political structures. We need to be alert to what’s happening to homeschooling in other countries; laws and public attitudes towards people who do things differently than the majority can often change suddenly.

NOTE: If you can read Spanish, here are two resources for you. You can download this transcription of the Spanish Court’s decision here.

You can also read about the development of a new group that wants to make homeschooling legal in Spain: Educacion libre.

 



A Current Famous Unschooler

As another school year starts so do all the stories about how much children forgot during summer recess, how we need to expand the school year to include more teaching and testing, and how we must identify, at ever younger ages, who is smart enough to be groomed for positions in the fields economists and politicians demand that we focus our children's abilities on: science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. In this hot-house climate of education it is hard to see that "learning is natural; schooling is optional" (to quote from North Star's tee shirts). However, great scientists and, I might add, great citizens, are not necessarily created by excelling at rigorous, early schooling, as this example shows.

I've heard for several years that Francis Collins, a manager of The Human Genome Research Institute and current director of the National Institutes of Health, was homeschooled. In the current issue of The New Yorker, Sept. 6, we are provided with some interesting details about how this important scientist was raised and unschooled.

For Francis, it was an enchanting, if arduous, childhood, part Boy's Life and part Woodstock. he could set a bar door and knew how to predict weather by reading the sky over the distant Alleghennies. he did not see the inside of a schoolroom until sixth grade, because Margaret taught her boys at home. "There was no schedule," Francis recalls. "The idea of Mother having a lesson plan would be just completely laughable. But she would get us excited about trying to learn about a topic that we didn't know much about. And she would pose a question and basically charge you with it, using whatever you had—your mind, exploring nature, reading books—to try to figure out, well, what could you learn about that? And you'd keep at it until it just got tiresome. And then she'd always be ready for the next thing."

Valedictorian Video

I learned that Erica Goldson's speech for the Coxsackie-Athens High School (NY) graduation ceremony was filmed and posted online. I wrote about her speech on July 21, but for those who prefer to see and hear her deliver her indictment of factory schooling I have posted it below.