NHEG-Magazine-September-October

www.NewHeightsEducation.org
Choosing to Homeschool Isn't "Running from Reality"
Instead of overreacting, parents who decide to remove their children from school to homeschool them may be acknowledging
the disconnect between the inherent coercion of compulsory mass schooling and the freedom to live in the
genuine world around us. Rather than sheltering their children, parents who select the homeschooling option may be
endeavoring to widen their child’s community, broaden their experiences, and restore their emotional well-being.
Former New York State Teacher of the Year, John Taylor Gatto, writes in his book Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum
of Compulsory Schooling about his growing disillusionment with mass schooling:
I began to realize that the bells and the confinement, the crazy sequences, the age-segregation, the lack of privacy, the
constant surveillance, and all the rest of the national curriculum of schooling were designed exactly as if someone had
set out to prevent children from learning how to think and act, to coax them into addiction and dependent behavior.”
Parents who remove their children from the confines of the conventional classroom are not running away from reality.
They are running towards it.
Source: The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)
U.S. Schools Don't
Measure Up, and
Polling Shows
Both Republicans
and Democrats
Know It
By Annie Holmquist
Thursday, May 24, 2018
There’s often a perception that Americans are so proud of their country and its “exceptionalism”
that they are blind to any of its flaws.
That may be true in some cases, but a recent Pew Research Report calls that into question in
one area especially: Public schools.
As the chart below demonstrates, Pew asked respondents to compare various institutions
with those in other nations. The American military got the biggest raves, followed by standard
of living and scientific achievements. Public schools, however, were at the bottom. In
fact, a whopping 41 percent of respondents rated America’s public
schools below average when compared to those in other countries.
88 NHEG Magazine | September - October 2018
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What’s perhaps more surprising about this is that large numbers of
Democrats and Republicans agree that the nation’s public schools
are below average. This is likely the case for several reasons, including
strained funding, failed standards such as Common Core, and abysmal scores on national
assessments.
Rather than be discouraged, however, Americans should recognize this dissatisfaction not as a
bad thing, but as something good. Author and educational theorist Albert Jay Nock explains this
in his work The Theory of Education in the United States. He first notes, “The lively and peremptory
exercise of dissatisfaction is the first condition of progress.” In other words, recognizing a
problem is the first step toward solving it.
But the second step toward solving the problem lies in diagnosing the type:
But dissatisfaction with something which may and should be made to work better, differs in quality from dissatisfaction
with something which gives no hope of ever being made to work at all.”
Nock suspects the problem with public schools is the latter:
Any machine has some kind of theory behind it; and when you have a machine that has had every possible resource of
mechanical ingenuity and care expended on it, and yet will not work satisfactorily, the situation at once suggests that
something may be amiss with its theory.”
The question we must then ask is, “What is wrong with our theory of public education?”
Various experts have suggested different possibilities. C.S. Lewis thought the encouragement of self-esteem—spurred
on, of course, by the democratic quest for equality—was at the root of the problem. Author Dorothy Sayers suggested
it was the failure to teach students how to learn for themselves. And teacher John Taylor Gatto suggested that the true
culprit of the problem was the system of conformity enforced by schools.
We’ve worked for years to invent new ways of instruction, atmosphere, and more, yet we continue to stay stuck in a rut
of dissatisfaction over America’s public schools. If we want to break free from that dissatisfaction and turn out well-educated
children, do we need to think outside of the box and consider what types of preconceived notions and theories are
enslaving teachers, parents, and students to a system of failure?
Source: The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)
Freedom Plus
Responsibility:
Why Unschooling
Is Nothing Like
‘Lord of the Flies’
www.NewHeightsEducation.org
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By Kerry McDonald
Monday, June 04, 2018
I recently read William Golding’s classic 1954 book, Lord of the Flies, to my nine-year-old son, Jack. Unschooling is often
cartoonishly characterized by critics as a "Lord of the Flies" environment, where kids run around wildly and chaos ensues.
In the story, young boys stranded on a deserted island devolve into tribalism and savagery.
There is an important difference between freedom and chaos. With freedom comes responsibility; without that responsibility,
and the fetters it naturally creates, chaos could reign.
Freedom in the Abcense of Responsibility Is Chaos
In the book, the absence of adults to model and nurture responsibility is palpably felt. Adults matter to children. They
guide, protect, tend, reassure, and mediate. The lack of calm, care, and stability that adults offer children is what ultimately
triggers the boys’ downfall. Of course, the great lesson from this great book is that it isn’t just children who would
descend into brutality when calm, care, and stability are missing; it’s all of us.
In a happy coincidence, at the same time I was reading to Jack I was also reading Amy Chua’s new book, Political Tribes.
This line from Chua’s book could have easily been from Golding’s: “When groups feel threatened, they retreat into tribalism.
They close ranks and become more insular, more defensive, more punitive, more us-versus-them.”
Unschooled children are granted great freedom, tempered by great responsibility, and adults play a constant and critical
role in providing calm and care, facilitating freedom and responsibility, and connecting interests with available learning
resources.
September - October 2018 | NHEG Magazine 89