Utterly Meaningless

Wow, Apple’s paper is certainly thought-provoking.

Daryl, you should appreciate the fact that he says “these data”. : )

I think it’s interesting that Apple discusses how public schools were generally well thought of at one time, and he correlates the turning of public opinion against the schools with the rise of the welfare state: people don’t like their tax dollars going to take care of other people who they think don’t want to work, and they view public schools as their tax dollars going to educate those folks’ children. I don’t think that’s it. I think the tide began to turn during the era of court-ordered bussing, which I guess happened about the same time. Not only did kids’ educations get disrupted and their schools destabilized, but parents began to realize that public education meant the State (in this case, the federal gov’t) took for itself the right to make basic decisions for children. And in many cases the parents could see that those decisions were not in the kids’ best interest. I think court-ordered bussing for desegregation has had many, many ill effects on society that go way beyond the state the schools are in, but the decline of public schools has to stem largely from it. It’s a shame, because the intentions were good, but we know what the road to Hell is paved with.

But I also found interesting what he said about cocooning: that people who homeschool, or who send their kids to private schools that are homogeneous (the parochial school my daughter attended K-6 was not, but I’ll take his word for it that some are) want to shield their kids from interaction with people who are Not Like Us. The reason I think that’s interesting is that my daughter attends a public high school with a very large and diverse population, but she’s in the optional program within that school, so she’s not in class with the general population. To stay in the program, she has to take the honors version of certain classes; but she takes the honors version of every class she can, which is almost all of them, because the students are different in the honors class. They behave well in class, they’re nice to the teachers and each other (mostly) and they do their projects and homework. There is a significant percentage of black kids in this program, but it’s very heavily weighted toward white and Asian. And this is the only public high school in the city that we would consider allowing her to attend. So she’s cocooning, too.

I really was unimpressed. His main example is particularly flawed. He claims that California charters are buying (or enabling parents to buy) religious curricula from BJU Press. I find that hard to believe. If any state in the union would be opposed to this, it would be CA.

Secondly, he spends a large part of his paper writing about cyber charters. Guess what? They ain’t homeschools. Not even in CA (which has some very confusing regs).

Finally, with regards to being labelled “selfish,” I’ll proudly wear that label if it means that I place my kids’ welfare first. I care about other families. That’s why I strongly support vouchers that my kids will never use. I just don’t CARE about them as much as I do my own. It’s like the old saw about the difference between being interested and being committed: In a bacon and egg breakfast, the hen is interested; the pig, committed.

I’m committed to my kids’ education.

California charters don’t buy religious-based materials for the families. If a family wants to use one, they have to purchase it with their own money, not with any funds received from the charter. Charters will buy secular programs that the parents want to use, but they remain the property of the charter when the year’s over.

I also think his basic premise that religous homeschoolers are the most “anti-public school” is flawed. I think the most “anti-public school” folks are the libertarians (such as myself) that fundamentally reject the idea of government run schools. I’m probably going to get whacked for saying this, but I think the majority of christian homeschoolers just have an issue with the way public schools are currently run, and not any fundamental problem with public schools. If Micheal Farris controlled the curriculum of the public schools I think many christian homeschoolers would happily return to the public school system.

Here’s a literature review on homeschoolers and citizenship from 1999, which comes down on our side for the most part:

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Also, I hope Scott and Brian are familiar with Gatto’s “Underground History,” which posits that discouraging citizenship has always been a primary goal of compulsory schooling.

Another point against Apple’s whole premise is that in the latest available NHES survery (1999), only 38.4 percent of respondents cited religious reasons for homeschooling — does this qualify as a “large proportion”? Wouldn’t the 61 percent who didn’t cite religion be a larger proportion, and perhaps a more interesting focus for inquiry? (nces.e...ns.asp; Figure 2)

A new NHES was scheduled for 2003. It will be interesting to see whether the religious percentage has fallen further.

P.S. Apple implies it’s OK for oppressed people to “cocoon”; I guess oppression by government schooling doesn’t count.

“P.S. Apple implies it’s OK for oppressed people to ‘cocoon’….”

I noticed that. So for kids who are white, who just want to go to class and do their thing and not be subject to violence and so forth, to want to cocoon, is not acceptable. If they were minorities it would be OK.

But I think 38.4 is a large proportion. He’s not saying a majority, only a significant fraction.

Oh, and this is just wacky:

“Money is being drained from already hard-pressed school districts to support home schooling. Just as importantly, curricular materials that support the identities of religiously motivated groups are being paid for by the public without any accountability, even though these materials may act in such a way as to deny the claims for recognition of one of the fastest growing religions in the nation, Islam.”

Laura, if you hear the phrase “large proportion”, do you think higher or lower than 50 percent? Wouldn’t a more accurate characterization be a “large” or “significant” minority?

And, of course, the paper does nothing to disabuse the reader of the common but incorrect assumption that a majority homeschool for religious reasons. Purposefully loaded language, IMO.

I personally think of a “large proportion” as being over about 15%. But I’m an analytical chemists, and have dealt with everything from parts-per-trillion residue work to assays of close to 100% pure product, so probably I think of those words differently than some.

Laura: Fair enough. I wonder what a “large proportion” means to social scientists. Perhaps “enough to imply a majority for the sake of my thesis”!

This report is the absolute worst example of cherry-picking that I’ve ever seen. He takes as his primary (anecdotal) evidence a small group of religious cyber charter parents (who refer to themselves as homeschoolers) in California and extrapolates that to homeschooling everywhere endangers the republic. And, as Davida pointed out, he gets even that wrong.

I think I’m going to write a scientific treatise that purports to prove that all education theorists are idiots. I think I already have my prime example picked out.

“I’m an analytical chemists” and it was way past my bedtime.

Nah, it’s fine — you clearly do the work of two!

I find this paper to be full of sociology babble and mis-drawn conclusions

Imagine… homeschooling is the equivalent of gated communitites and privatization of neighborhoods?? shhesh whooda thunk..

You know a while back, there was an article in the Hartford Courant claiming that Homeschoolers were socially irresponsible.. a claim I viciously denied .. we pay taxes and don’t use services, we volunteer in the community and we support the betterment of education among other things, and we are very civic minded people (we vote and get involved)among many other things.. Just because we know mud exists doesn’t mean we have to sit in it!

This guy should do a lot more homework.. people aren’t just turning to homeschool because of religious fervor or even because the government schools are so deplorable..or because we wish to “cocoon” and escape the madness… there are a host of practical reasons why people do this.. maybe he should look to the fact that we are a more mobile society – people move around alot as their work requires – or that parents may have bigger goals for their kids (like training for the olympics) than sitting in a brick building all day long memorizing drivel – or that people want to be with their children (because it has taken them forever to get pregnant in the first place) – as opposed to sending them off at 3 and 5 years old.

The assumptions this guy makes are really unfounded and represents to me another case of junk science.