Ken Ham is the head of Answers In Genesis, an organization that promotes and perpetuates the Creationist view that the Earth is less than ten thousand years old, that homo sapiens sapien trod the same ground at the same time as dinosaurs, the the story of Noah is literally true, and that evolution is All Wrong. He’s an Australian and a biblical literalist. He built the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, in 2007. Check the link for an overview by an (admittedly) biased source, but for simple clarity is hard to beat. It is a fraud of research, flagrantly anti-science, and laughable in its assertions (in my opinion).
Ken Ham is one of the more public figures in our current national spasm of extreme religiosity. He’s attempting to have built another show-piece in Kentucky, a theme park based on Noah and the Flood. The problem with this, however, is that tax dollars are being used in its construction and it is a blatantly religious enterprise.
In the meantime, Ken Ham and Answers In Genesis have recently been disinvited from a conference on homeschooling. There are multiple ironies in this, especially since, on the face of it, Ham and these particular homeschoolers would seem to be sympatico on the issues.
Be that as it may, it prompted me to make a couple of observations regarding this whole phenomenon. According to the Home School Legal Defense Fund, homeschooling is a growing practice.
it is estimated that the annual rate of growth of the number of children being homeschooled in the U.S. is between 7% to 15%. Reports from 1999 determined that approximately 850,000 American children were being home schooled by at least one parent. This number increased again in 2003, to over one million children, according to the National Center for Education Statistics National Household Education (NHES). NHES compiled data showing that in 2007, over 1.5 million children in the U.S. were home schooled.
There are several reasons for this, but the most stated are:
Religious or moral instruction 36%
School environment 21%
Academic instruction 17%
Other 26%
Questions of violence, socialization, academic standards, and related issues play into these decisions. Not all homeschooling is, as is popularly thought, conducted for religious reasons, but certainly religious homeschooling gets the lion’s share of the publicity.
I have the same reservations about homeschooling as I have with special private schools that seek to isolate students from the wider community. Despite the problems with “the world” to put an informational barrier between a child and that world can put that child at a disadvantage later. But I can’t argue with the sentiment that many public schools are dysfunctional and do a disservice to students. The 17% of the sample opting for homeschooling for academic reasons probably have concerns with which I’d agree.
The more people pull their children out of public education, though, the less incentive there is to fix that system.
Part of the academic experience is and must be socialization (although I firmly believe most of the problems we have with public education today stem from the fact that in America the primary purpose of school has always been socialization, often at the expense of academics, and we’re paying for this unacknowledged fact today).What profoundly disturbs me about the 36% of those who homeschool for religious reasons is precisely the problem presented by people like Ken Ham. Parents who reject science as an enemy to their religious beliefs do neither their children nor this country any good by isolating their children and inculcating the distorted views presented in the name of some sort of spiritual decontamination. What these parents wish to tell their kids at home is their business—but there is also a vast pool of legitimate knowledge about the world which needs to be taught if these kids are to have any chance at being able as adults to make reasoned and rational choices, for themselves and for their own children and for the society in which they live and work. Few parents have either the time or the training to do this, at least in my opinion, whether they are certified or not, simply because they are only one voice. Much education happens in the crossfire of ideas under examination by many. The debate that happens in a vibrant classroom setting is vital to the growth of one’s ability to think, to analyze, and to reason. The by-play that will likely happen between dissenting viewpoints, or between different apprehensions of a topic, won’t happen in isolation.
Ken Ham tends to bar outside viewpoints when he can. He has a history of banning people from the Creation Museum when he knows they are antagonistic to his viewpoint. In the face of overwhelming evidence, he tries to assert a reality that has long since been shown to be inaccurate. That he was barred from a conference of folks who will then educate their children in those same inaccuracies is an irony of epic proportions. But, as they say, what goes around, comes around.
Whoo boy, Mark! That high pitched squeal you just heard was the enamel coming off of my teeth as I grind them…
If the intent is to isolate, then I have the same reservations. If not, then I have reservations about anyone seeking to perpetuate the compulsory schooling model Horace Mann foisted on us and Cargengie and Rockefeller coopted. Nearly everything about it is wrong and despite being a product of it, or rather in spite of it, it took having my own kids to realize just how wrong.
I have pages of notes on what will have to be a multi-part posting for DI on the subject of homeschooling…I just can't seem to focus the time to bring it together. We've been home educating since December 1993, and you can probably guess not for religious reasons. First for academic and social, later because it just seemed right, then because it is the only logical way to educate – in our, and others, opinion. The public (and private to some extent) school model is designed for failure. If I ever get my act together on that article, I'll explain why, but for now, I'll suggest two books by John Taylor Gatto: Weapons of Mass Instruction (one of the most important books I have ever read) and The Underground History of American Education. They might grate on your nerves as Taylor rants, but he speaks from experience – 26 years of experience in the NYC public school system.
I could probably deconstruct every sentence in that next to last paragraph, but I'll just submit that the socialization that compulsory school provides is grossly overrated. And not reflective of actual societal socialization. My children have always been comfortable talking to people, discussing their ideas, and fortunately have never had to experience cliques and the like. Yes, the 36% are the fringe, and that demographic is what is driving our country further and further from whatever Enlightenment we achieved in the 1700s, but people need to know that that fringe is a fringe and not the norm. That's schooling at home and every bit as wrong as the public variety.
Rant off. Take a breath, Jim.
I really need to set aside some time to write on the subject.
Jim: Based on your rec, I'm ordering a copy of "Weapons of Mass Instruction."
Jim,
I actually agree with about everything you said there (and a lot that I assume you were thinking).
I agree, socialization is not as high a priority as it is made to be, and I agree the present system is deeply flawed. I do not agree that abandoning it for "The Jesus Will Take Care of Everything College of Spiritual Cooption" is in any way a good thing. The fact is, most people will have neither the time nor resources to homeschool efectively (not to mention the inclination) so they will be left with some form of community-based system.
I said those private institutions who purpose is to isolate. I stipulate that not all (or possibly even most) have that as a purpose but such exist.
I also think that some homeschooling ought to take place anyway. My parents effectively deprogrammed me and made me look things up reflexively through sometimes heated Socratic dialogues in the evenings, but the bulk of the material came from the school.
Anyway, I would be delighted to read your articles about this and I will likely agree with much of it.
Mark: Check out this billboard in Texas. Ken Ham most definitely wants to keep his flock away from amoral atheists like you (and me):
<img src="http://dangerousintersection.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/answers-in-genesis-billboard-vs-atheists.jpg" alt="Billboard by Answers in Genesis" />
This images is by Misternaxal at Flickr. <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/misternaxal/1414548652/” target=”_blank”>http://www.flickr.com/photos/misternaxal/1414548652/
Mark, sorry how I came off. Like the political climate, a few bad or vocal (or both) eggs get the publicity and the entire concept gets pigeonholed. Watch Jesus Camp and you'll see indoctrination. Watch how my kids work, and you won't. You'll wonder how they're learning anything. Talk to them and you'll see that they are.
Charlotte Mason had some interesting methods at the turn of the last century. Narration (on the part of the student) – putting into their words what was covered – was a key element; it demonstrated that the student grasped the concept. No repetition – the expectation was that the student should get it the first time. That was an enlightenment – the repetitious system actually cripples the learning process; homework, drills, all that teaches kids that they'll have another chance or six to get it, instead of making the effort to get it the first time. Some of her stuff was a bit extreme, but we take elements from all resources and have evolved a hybrid approach that works for our younger two children.
Inspiration and a kick in the pants. Gee thanks. (Okay. Gee! Thanks!)
Jim: I carefully read what you wrote and got it the first time, and I can repeat it in my own words!
I went to a Catholic grade school and high school where I was largely warehoused. Lots and lots of repetitive math problems and taught me nothing. And years and years of diagramming sentences. The first few hundred times, it might have been useful, but thousands and thousands?
I mostly learned discipline. Stay in your seat and do the work or you'll get yelled at.
"The more people pull their children out of public education, though, the less incentive there is to fix that system."
And there is something wrong with this?
The 'system' is so badly broken that maybe scrapping it and starting over would be the wisest thing. The current system gives the appearance of an education without the reality … so, little would be lost if it took 10 years or so to launch a better system that was actually capable of committing deliberate acts of education on a daily basis.
Likewise, the reality is that the incentive to fix the system was insufficient to start with. I regard that as being self-evident. If your incentive to keep a roof over your head is strong enough, you do that. Come hell or high-water, you do it. Likewise with the incentive to provide a quality education to the general population of this country.
Ours was once the 'gold standard' emulated by other nations, but that has not held true for at least two generations.
That's why the schools are in the shape they are in and that's why people pull their kids out of public schools. So, knock together all except the religious reason and you come up with 64% strictly secular and performance / safety related reasons. This growing trend of homeschooling is less a matter of religious zealotry than of parental determination that their children receive a quality education even if it comes at great personal cost.
Which leaves kids whose parents both must work at the same disadvantageous point as always: wealthy parents received a better education and can afford a better education (home schooling, [good] private schooling, tutoring, horizon-broadening vacations and so on) for their children, which translates into wealthier children and better educated grandchildren … and on down the line. This, in turn, leads to ever greater accumulations of wealth.
Wealth = social position + education = power. Existing wealth + social position + education + power + political influence = greater wealth and son on … the thing feeds on itself and leaves 400 people wealthier than the lower 50% in this country (and perhaps the same thing happens in other countries).
Meanwhile, less favored households cannot devote either the time to homeschooling or the funds to private schooling that would help their children escape underdog status. And, even if the time was available, the parents' social strata likely argues against having the skills to home school.
Public schools, in the past century at least, are, generally speaking, dismal failures. They consume enormous amounts of money without producing well-educated citizens who are prepared to continue their education at a higher level. Instead, their output is largely equipped for menial service or mass manufacturing jobs or for use as cannon fodder in this country's ceaseless wars.
Let's face it, the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya, possibly also Iran and Latin America are not winnable nor is there any desire to win them. General Dynamics and Boeing and the petroleum companies and (what's the name of that construction company Cheney used to head?) will see to it that they continue. Moreover, they fit right within the aims of those who seek to reduce global population by whatever means possible.
Perhaps the schooling answer is to de-certify private schools so that money cannot (directly) buy a premium education. Then enter all students who score above a certain level in standardized testing designed by the colleges (as a whole) into a lottery for 90% of the available freshman seats. We could call it the 90/90 Plan. These would be full-ride (tuition, books, room & board if the student is (again, randomly) enrolled more than 30 miles from home or where public transportation is unavailable) enrollments. Continued attendance would require 3 or 3.5 average in all classes.
The remaining freshman seats would be available cash & carry but only at full price. No student loans for anyone before age 25 (on the assumption that those age 25 or older are re-entering the educational system and are self-supporting).
Just as it is a bad idea to 'graduate' ill-prepared high school students, it is also a bad idea to burden college students with burdensome amounts of debt such that the collection rate is crappy and the monthly debt service is oppressive.
This planet is not "at its carrying capacity": it's at its greed capacity.
My apologies if my reasoning seems somewhat disjointed or my writing lacks polish, I am trying to reply while an unrelated deadline has just gone swooshing past.
(Gatto has a web site worth investigating, too.)
I never understood sentence diagramming. Never. And now they don't even teach it.
All of this talk about John Gatto convinced me to read some of his writings. It's hard to stop reading once you start. Here's an excerpt from an essay called "Against School," that appeared in Harpers Magazine in 2003: http://www.spinninglobe.net/againstschool.htm :
Erich,
If you really want your eyes opened, read "The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher." (I found it here: http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt) It is the first essay in "Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling". I spent 20 minutes talking to Gatto back in 1996 on the subject and some of this other points. Took an insider to turn the outside perspective on its ear for me. After reading that, you'll slap yourself in the forehead and ask how you didn't put it all together yourself.
That's how my children learn. (Well, we guide and facilitate – "we" being mostly my wife – but they self-teach.)
Mark,
I never learned diagramming. Later, never saw the point. Absurd methods. The absolute best way to learn grammar is to read good writing.
And now I've let a little more of our secrets out.
Jim: Thanks for being so loose with your secrets. I just finished reading Gatto's 7-lesson essay.
I've known some very good teachers, some of them being public school teachers, but they eccentric and quite often on the shit-list of their principles because they are natural innovators, and they don't get along well with most rules. I look forward to reading more of Gatto. I agree that there are big problems in schools (his 7 lessons identify many of those), but regarding the solutions, the devil is in the details, I suspect.
I always liked green eggs and ham. Sorry I'm different.
The home schooling environment/business/conference/ climate has been changing much in recent years as more and more varied groups present the challenge of how to not offend others while still expressing that differences of opinion/interpretation exist.
The groups that take the most offense about the intolerance of others are the groups that push their agenda the strongest and this of course means going after the monetary supporters to get their desires known and enforced.
This is the same way American History was rewritten so that nearly only the economics perspectives are taught because of the inability to present a textbook that won't be offensive to someone or another.
Anyone who insists on silencing and ostracizing the opposition does not understand how America is suppose to work. This is why the public schools are failing.
The issue is not how to protect one's children from the evils of unattended peer socialization; it is how to not participate in the moral or physical assai nation of people with as much worth as you.
Enjoying and subjecting others to ad hominem attacks is how the educational leaders of America have failed themselves and their society.
There is no law against the fruit of the Spirit, but there sure are an innumerable number of laws aimed at keeping you from doing harm to those you disagree with.
Now I'll get back to my green eggs and ham, unless someone finds a way to get the idea out of my head.
The security word for this was WOW.
I think, Karl…I think I largely agree with everything you just said.
Your Irish must be showing. 🙂
It takes a village to raise a child.
Our society trains us to compartmentalize, to divide and subdivide into smaller and smaller categories we reach the indivisible individual.
In a society where the main function of the schools is seen by many as a day-care system for the children to go while the parents work, it is easy to blame the educational system for children who don't learn.
It isn't that simple.
The teachers need the freedom to find methods that stimulate the curiosity of the students and guide them in seeking good and accurate sources of knowledge. The children need the support of parents that nurture a thirst for knowledge.
Instead, what we have is an institution that trains us to be a well managed herd of gullible sheep-like consumers and a resources to be exploited by the corporate beasts.
Teachers today are burdened bu volumes of paperwork that documents compliance with NCLB and severely cuts into the time the teacher needs to actually tune their lessons to the needs of the students. Many are forced into teaching to the test, preparing the students for the standardized tests through rote memorization, not teaching them to think, but to simply regurgitate trivia.
At home, find themselves parked in front of the TV watching infotainment cartoons sprinkled with commercial ads targeted at their age group while one parent fixes the even meal. If they are fortunate enough to live in a two parent household, the other parent working at a second job.
Older kids come from school and head straight to the computer and the internet, of if they don't have internet at home, they head to a friends house with internet. On the web sites for teens and tweens, they are inundated with tightly targeted advertising schooling them on the need to own popularized products.
An alternative to public schools is offered by charter schools, where a public school facility is taken over by a private contractor. Charter school contractor can appear to be a better alternative to public schools, but often the better results come either from being able to select better performing students while relegating lower achieving students to the public systems. This results in a statistical skewing that subsequently lowers the scores for public schools by removing the best students from the public system. The skewed statistics are then used to support system wide privatization, and in the districts that were chartered, the results have shown the charter schools to under-perform the public schools.
Home schooling can be an option for some, and requires considerable effort on the part of the parents in low and middle income brackets. It depends largely on the QC standards of the local education district.
Niklaus,
Couple of counterpoints:
To use your phrase, it isn't that simple. Nor is it new. For any state that has standardized testing (New York regents, Texas Assessment of Knoweldge and Skills, California STAR, and more) the teachers are stuck teaching to the test. Your first paragraph that I quoted is I feel unfortunately idealistic…and rather rare. Your second paragraph is spot on with what John Taylor Gatto says happened in the early part of the 20th centruy to create this system of sheep (see The Underground History of American Education).
But your last sentence
is fingernails on chalkboards to me. There are states in which homeschooling cannot occur without local district intervention, or worse, without one of the parents having a college degree. Like that means something. I challenge any school district or superintendent or state board of education that thinks it 1) knows what my child needs to know to succeed in the world, and 2) thinks it can stamp its one size fits all and our size fits all (think Texas Board of Ed rewriting history) on my kids.
I've got to stop reading these threads and get to writing my own pieces on home education. But I need to make the time!
And Karl, I agree with Mark on agreeing with you. (My anti-spam word this time was also "wow".)
Jim,
One point I think you need to address—you sound like someone fully capable of stepping up to plate and delivering an education that will benefit your kids.
Many, many, many people can't do that. Or won't. They wouldn't have clue one where to begin or even understand why they should.
Hence, some kind of community-based, public access educational system seems to me necessary.
Mark, way ahead of you. Not only in my notes, but pretty much what we start out with any time someone asks us about it. Much like when someone says, "Hey, talk to my kid about the military", I first tell that someone that I won't sugarcoat it. And that if they want me to recruit, that's not what I'll do – the military…and homeschooling…is not for everyone. But it is for some.
Now, what I hope to do is shed light on the alternatives and dispel some myths. Not bash public school – I do have opinions, but as we are outside the grip, if the opinions are not productive then I'd do no good by airing them. I'd like people who say they can't to realize that they actually can. And the people who won't? Well, I'm not trying to convert.
I agree; a properly designed and executed public access education system is necessary. There are lots of others who think they know how to fix what we've got. I'll try to stick with one far-reaching subject at a time. (Yeah, right.)
Jim,
I'm reading Gatto's Underground History…
My teeth are grinding at some of his historical assumptions. He's not wrong, but his take on some things is at severe angles to mine, but I'm going along with him. Frankly, at the outset, I think he places far too much faith in the "common man." But that doesn't make his main thesis wrong.
Just lettin' ya know.
Somewhere in one of these threads, I think I did say he had an axe to grind. But he comes from experience. I agree, I think his main thesis is right. Did Rockefeller (through his foundation) really conspire to keep critical thinking out of the schools? I don't know, but when framed the way Gatto puts it, for me there was at least a "so that's what I couldn't put my finger on!" factor. Still, I haven't put in time following up on his sources. I'm only recommending a read for a different perspective.
Of course, my military life taught me "don't just come to me with problems; if you don't have a solution, I'll give you one." If an entire system is broken, and happens to be one that cannot be instantly replaced, then the solutions must be achievable and largely incremental to overcome the social inertia and institutional momentum.
Jim: I'm glad you mentioned the potential axe to grind. I laugh at many conspiracy theories because I assume that that "they" are usually not competent to pull off much of the overarching social engineering that "they" are accused of. Therefore, when I hear that "they" want to keep the population intellectually mediocre so as to keep them working as drones in factories, I'm suspicious. I see many other explanations for mediocre education, mainly that it takes numerous energized, motivated and smart people to keep the system function well. In other words, mediocre education (OK, crap education too, the kind we see in many, but not all, public and private schools) could be a sign of neglect as well as a carefully planned conspiracy.
I just received Gatto's book (the one you recommended), I haven't yet read any of it, and I'm looking forward to seeing what he has to say.
I only look at the conspiracy theory as an interesting "hmmm". It would take a lot of time to see how much merit there is in his assessments. I see a lot more truth to his themes when you strip that away.
But a seed is planted that makes you go "hmmm, could it really be? Sort of makes sense now." A lot like Boyer, Dennett, Paul Johnson, James Loewen, and more that I can't think of right now.
Most "conspiracies" seem to follow the law of unintended consequences, what Manbible Maring calls the "conspiracy of effect." If you want to train factory workers, what you do is institute a regimen that excludes anything that is a distraction to that goal. You get your workers because, in my opinion, most people could care less about those other options to begin with. But when described after the fact, it looks terribly sinister.
Unfamiliar with Maring; google didn't help, but I was impressed that this exact post came up in google – pretty quick indexing.
Huh. He is—or was—a history professor at the University of Colorado with a specialty in civil rights. I'll have to check again, make sure I didn't misidentify.
*head desk*
Manning Marable. Doh!
Very recently deceased.
Short recap on Marable on NPR today.
And Mike M., I thought I recognized Wilson's name…I have his Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy.
Ooof…'Schrodinger's Cat' – the most difficult of all Wilson's work. It's an extremely challenging book, and the roughest possible starting point for exploring R.A.W.. Although one book reviewer said it was 'the most scientific science fiction book of all time' (or something to that effect), the subject of overlapping quantum parallel universes obviously presents some significant difficulties in re. plot, structure, character development, etc. Wilson's 'Quantum Psychology' would be my prerequisite recommendation to 'Schrodinger's Cat'.
So, can a cat be both alive and dead at the same time?? Hmmm…
I didn't read much of it before setting it down for other things. I was turned off by his writing style – for me, it reminded me of Kurt Vonnegut or Lewis Carroll, and I never liked either much. I am annoyed that he published a book called "Quantum Psychology" – even if it has nothing to do with my interpretation of psychology – to my knowledge, I came up with that conjunction on my own! Anyway, I think my description differs widely from the excerpts I read of Wilson's book.
I'll give Schrodinger's Cat another go…it's not that big of a book, even in the three volume rollup I have. Besides, anybody who held the W administration in such high regard can't be completely nuts.
Jim,
I'm reading Gatto's book. Clenching teeth. I have some serious problems with his sociology and some of his history and he's obviously a Libertarian, but the main line of his argument about the purpose of schools is actually consistent with my general impressions. Definitely worth the read.