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GWS 32 continued from previous page. This is page 8 of 13.
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8) We are indeed back at the matter of definitions. You speak of "far more than 1,000 home school records on our files." Does this mean you have letters from far more than 1,000 California families saying that they are not sending their children to school but are teaching them at home? Or does it mean something else, perhaps that more than 1,000 families are using some kind of home teaching materials? California home schoolers have not until recently been very much organized, but those few communities which have active organizations have not reported any such large numbers. The Utah people are exceptionally active and well organized, with very good internal communications, yet they do not claim much more than two hundred or so home schooling families.
9) See my earlier remarks about home schoolers and meetings. Also, it is surely as true for you as for me that when the word gets out that you are going to be speaking somewhere, people come from a long distance to hear.
10) I quite agree; my information is the same. But no one I know in Louisiana has claimed much over two hundred home schooling families. If there are more, nobody knows about them, which puts us back into wild guesses. As for those 2,000, we don't know how many were actual home schoolers; there were many education bills up before the legislature, all of them bad, and many of these people may have been there to oppose some of them that had nothing to do with home schooling. Say even that they are potential home schoolers; I wouldn't disagree with you for a minute that there may well be a million or more people in the county who are seriously considering home schooling. But how many are doing it right now is another matter.
11) I entirely agree; if we have accurate figures, let us by all means use them.. But if we are guessing, as we are, then it makes more sense to guess conservatively. TR rightly said, "Speak softly, and carry a big stick." What use for us to speak loudly if in a pinch it turns out that all we are carrying is a little twig. I would rather say to a legislator that we have 100 home schoolers in a state, and have all 100 turn up at a hearing, than say we have 10,000 and have only 100 turn up. Meanwhile, I insist that it doesn't make good tactical or political sense to throw the schools into unnecessary panic.
Well, so much for all of that. My mind remains open (more or less) on this question. I would rather believe that there are many home schoolers than that there are few, and will welcome any and all hard evidence to support that idea, so any time you get some new information about all of this, I'll be grateful if you'll send it along for us to share with our readers.
Meanwhile, thanks for all your good work, enjoy your new home in the state of Washington, and keep in touch.
FREEDOM IN FLORIDA
Melanie Darst (FL) writes:
... Ann Mordes helped me when we got started. At that time there were some bad signs for homeschoolers in Florida. So she suggested that I register Russell (6) at Grassroots private school at a special rate for homeschoolers. I did and the cost was $90 for the whole year. The director is interested in and supports homeschooling. Once a month I turn in three sheets which record the amount of time we have spent in three subject areas. Grassroots does not interfere with our homeschooling in any way. [See "Helpful Schools," GWS #30.]
... When I undertook this experiment I had one main objective - to take all the pressure of learning out. I wanted Russell to relax, enjoy himself, and feel that he had some power and responsibility in his own life. Therefore I could not institute another regime with graded sheets and him reading aloud, etc. I decided to go completely to a non-structured learning situation. In fact, the only activity which I planned to do daily was read, which I was doing anyway, but read more. I have always let Russell and Lightsey (4) pick out the books.
It was difficult at first to be passive - not to ask questions, test, and worry. The hardest task to not worry about is reading. I have asked Russell several times if he wants to practice aloud or if he wants me to teach him. Each time he has said he would rather do it himself and just ask me a word when necessary. So I do not know at this moment how well he reads, but I do see him studying books and he does ask about certain words.
I am self-employed as a botanical artist and am part-owner of a native plants nursery. I am able to work almost entirely at home and this is ideal, but we could not have our home-school without the support of Paul's full-time job. However, I have very little time to "teach." I estimate that Russell and Lightsey get about one and a half hours of undivided attention and help per school day.
I love our freedom from carpooling, school hours, and organized school activities. We can do a project when we want to, for hours if necessary. Russell is more confident and is very self-motivated about what he finds interesting. He has studied history and geography mostly. We have read about topics that I never studied such as the Mongol invasions, Russian folklore, Indian folklore, the origin of Japan, Confucius, and other things. He has a portfolio of artwork about three inches thick so far.
All this is great but there is one problem. Russell says he is ready to go back to school next year. I think there are several reasons. First, he misses the children he got to know during his kindergarten year. Second, he liked the independence of being out on his own, however nervewracking. Third, I think he feels he is missing something which the other kids share. When asked about home-schooling, he says he likes it. Lightsey says she wants to go to kindergarten, too. I have already told them that if next summer they still want to go to school, they can. I have also said that if later (the following year) they wanted to go back to homeschooling, we would ...
[From a later letter:] ... The kids are currently not leaning toward going to public school. I try not to poll them about it, but I think then are hearing more negative things about it from schoolchildren they play with. We'll see ...
FROM COSTA RICA TO U.S.
From Walter Marschner (LA):
... Our letter about adopting our two boys, ages 14 and 12, from Costa Rica was published in GWS #26, and we thought readers may like to know how our boys are doing since their arrival in May '82.
We are home-schooling the boys, as well as our 17-year-old daughter. Up to this time, I have not wanted to ask the boys how they like school here as compared to schools in Costa Rica (which are Hispanic versions of schools in the US - enough said). I felt it was too manipulative a question.
But in letters to their former houseparents in Costa Rica last week. Joseph, our 12-year-old, said, "Thank God we don't go to these schools. We go to school at home." I then felt free to ask him why he liked school at home. His response was, "Because I do so much better! I did much worse there," which is very true. ln five years of schooling, Joe could not write cursive, knew absolutely no math (could not even add 2 + 1 in his head without counting on his fingers). Also, though he had a desire to communicate with others, he had great trouble expressing this thoughts, particularly on paper. He had been labeled "perhaps learning disabled."
After several months of home schooling, Joe now knows all his tables through the 10's, can do complicated addition, subtraction, and multiplication, generally without counting on his fingers or using stick figures any more. He writes a beautiful cursive hand. Most encouraging of all, he now sits down and writes his own letters to friends without help - that is, he can now express the thoughts that are in his head in his own words on paper. Of course, he needs lots of help with spelling and punctuation, but it is almost as if a bright light has been turned on in his head ...
He is also asking many good questions and developing listening habits, which he did not have before. He has asked, just over the past several days, "Who invented airplanes"' "Who invented kites"' "Who was Hitler?" And he asked the very good question one day, "Why is the U.S. such a rich country and Costa Rica so poor?" leading us into a historical and religious analysis. We combine our answers to the boys' questions with trips to the public library for picture books which help to show what we are talking about.
As for the older boy, Saul, 14, we can't keep up with him! Neither boy had ever (or very rarely) opened a book for pleasure in their lives before. Now, Saul has devoured the several dozen books we brought back with us from Costa Rica and we are searching for other Spanish language books for him. (While the boys are learning English, we don't want them to forget Spanish.) Saul likes both fiction and biographies, and has been fascinated to learn about Benjamin Franklin, Marquis de Lafayette, and other figures in American history. One of his favorite books was a biography of Isaac Newton. The great part of this is - as you and readers of GWS know - that such omnivorous reading leads one into learning about so many things'
... Saul was always a good athlete, but Joe had never done anything physical in his life before. Now he not only rides a bike, does karate and exercises and running, but is making goals for his soccer team! He had somehow been led to think, in the past, that he could never do anything...
We read in English together every day. The boys are learning, though they don't understand everything as yet. We also read in Spanish (I read to them) at night before they go to bed. Their (and my) great favorites are the C.S. Lewis "Narnia Chronicles" in Spanish ...
MORE SUCCESS STORIES
From a Georgia mother:
...We home-schooled in Tennessee for a year, during which time we were summoned to court twice. The last court appearance resulted in all charges being dropped, but with a warning from the court that they would continue to harass us. So, we bought a farm in Georgia and moved to friendlier territory.
...The boys and I are thriving on the farm. I know when I say "The world is our classroom" that it sounds hokey, but it is so true. In the last few months the boys and I have sold our house, our car, bought a farm, learned to drive a standard shift (I couldn't have done it without the kids' support: "Hey, Mom, you're still in second!"), learned to split wood and build a fire (our farmhouse is heated by wood stove and fireplace), mended fence, learned to use power tools, etc., etc. And in spite of all this learning we've had to do, we still found time to read TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, and ANIMAL FARM, and SLAPSTICK by Kurt Vonnegut (the boys' favorite), learn long division the fun way (without pressure), visit the once a week, write to pen pals, etc, etc. Sometimes we get so busy with "etc., etc." that we don't have time to watch TV! ... _____
From Gwen Witmer (PA):
...We're two months into our second year of home-schooling: this year without any hassle, after agreeing to allow our fifth grader to be tested with the local school's CTBS achievement test. After a discussion of the abnormality of testing our son in the alien environment of their schools the superintendent marvelously agreed to allow me to test D.N. myself!
We had a wonderful workout with those tests and I hope that D.N.'s fears of achievement testing have been forever allayed. The test was sent out to be graded with local fifth grade tests and will be returned with a printout advising his strengths and weaknesses.
... We are using materials from CHRISTIAN LIGHT PUBLICATIONS, PO Box 1126, Harrisonburg VA, an individualized-study curriculum.
...Mornings at our house center around math, language arts, science, social studies, and Bible study. Any daily assignment not completed by noon is considered "homework." Afternoons are for the extra-curricular activities such as signing, German, creativity, music, workskills, "home ec." composition, memory work, and practicing parts to be given at church on Sunday mornings.
We take the children on a field trip each month and also seek out the skills of other "teachers." Right now we are learning how to make stocking caps on a homemade circular loom made of plywood and 46 golf tees ...
AT HOME UNTIL 10
From Georgeanne Poe (ME):
... We don't plan to send our 4-year-old Rosie to school for a while. I thought I'd share with you my personal experiences with my first child, Annalee, who is now 18. Because we moved to a very rural commune in northern Vermont when she was first-grade age, we had the ideal situation to keep her at home with no legal hassles. We really didn't follow any program, but, as I look at your booklist for young children, I see that we had literally every book on it, and Annie read all them until their covers wilted.
As things turned out, by age 10, Annie thought she'd like to go to school. The school tested her and placed her - along with all the other 9- and 10-year-olds - in the 4th grade. She was slightly deficient in math, but off the charts in reading. School gave her a band and flute lessons, and a championship basketball team, two things I could never have provided. We had given her a very strong sense of family and support and a good idea of personal worth. By her junior year in high school, she was attending Northfield Mt. Hermon School and was, last autumn, accepted at Bowdoin with a very generous scholarship. She chose to wait a year to enter, and is presently crewing and cooking on charter boats in the Caribbean.
... I think that having home education, as well as public and private school, has been a plus for Annie and I hope we can be as successful with Rosie ...
LAW REVIEW ARTICLES
Two of our "Friendly Lawyers" (see list in GWS #31) have sent us law review articles they've written about home education. The first is by James W. Tobak and Ferry A. Zirkel, "Home Instruction: An Analysis of the Statutes and Case Law," appearing in the Fall 1982 University of Dayton Law Review (300 College Park, Dayton OH 45469-0001). The other is "The Constitutionality of Home Education: The Role of the Parent, the State and the Child," by Brendan Stocklin-Enright. It was published in the Fall '82 Willamette Law Review (Willamette university, Salem 1). This article looks especially useful for home-schoolers, as it is written from the point of view of arguing a case before the US Supreme Court, and has useful comparisons among the requirements of the different states. - DR
At present, home schoolers stand on a piece of legal and constitutional ground which, though narrow, is firm enough to support our weight and almost always does so; for all our talk of court cases, and our natural worry over them, the fact is that for every family now threatened with court there are hundreds teaching their children at home without legal problems or worry. My own fairly conservative estimate of the number of families who have chosen to teach their children at home is somewhere in the range of ten to fifteen thousand, perhaps even twenty thousand (see article elsewhere in this issue on "How Many Are We?"), and of these far less than a hundred are now facing court action.
In the draft of model home schooling legislation we printed in GWS #30, I outlined, in effect, the legal and constitutional basis for home schooling. Let me sum it up again here. The Constitution itself is silent on the matter of education. Whether the framers of the Constitution said nothing about education because they meant to leave it up to the states or because they wanted to leave it up to individual parents, we have no way of knowing. When, a century or so later, the states began to enact compulsory school attendance laws, a number of people went into the courts claiming that these laws were unconstitutional. In every case the U.S. Supreme Court turned them down, saying over and over again that under the police powers reserved to the states by the Constitution, they had the right, by enacting compulsory schooling laws, to protect themselves against the possibility that without such schooling children might grow up so ignorant as to be a burden on and danger to the state. Many honest and sincere home schoolers devoutly wish that this were not so and have taken their wish for a fact. But it is not a fact. Compulsory school attendance laws are not on the face of them unconstitutional; quite the reverse.
What the U.S. Supreme Court did say, first in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, was that the states could not establish what we might call an educational monopoly, more specifically, that they could not deny to private schools the right to exist, or require through laws that they be in effect identical to the public schools, since this would deny parents their constitutional right, expressed here explicitly for the first time, to get for their children an education generally in harmony with their own principles and beliefs. The court said, in effect, that parents should have a right of choice among schools; it did not specifically include among their choices that of teaching their children at home. Since then a growing number of state courts have later extended the meaning of Pierce to include this additional possibility, locating this right of parents in the First, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments, though, as I said before, it is not specifically written in any of these.
A few years later, in Farrington v. Tokushige, the court established further that the states could not impose by regulations "unreasonable restrictions" on private schools.
This, then, is our Constitutional ground. Yes, say the courts, the states may regulate the education of children, including the right of parents to teach their own. But, the courts then say, if the states or their schools say No to these parents, they must have strong reasons for saying so, they must say what those reasons are, and they must give the parents the right to challenge, examine, and answer these reasons in formal hearings, according them full rights of due process. I think it very likely that, through the kind of legislation we have talked about, through the home education plans that we persuade school districts to accept, and now and then, if pushed that far, through court cases at the local and state level, we can gradually reduce the requirements that school authorities can impose on home schooling parents. Thus in a number of cases we have already overcome and removed the requirement that parents must have teacher's certificates, and I think in time we will be able to do away with other requirements concerning curriculum, standardized tests, etc.
But this is a slow process, and one that requires us to keep talking to school authorities about the education of our children. Many people are for one reason or another impatient with this process and unwilling to talk to school authorities at all. They feel sorely cramped by the smallness of the constitutional turf on which we stand, and want to push its boundaries out past the horizon. They want the courts to hand home schoolers what is in effect a blank check, that is, to say that if people want to teach their own children, above all if their reasons for wanting to do so are primarily religious, then it is none of the state's business and it must leave them alone. To these impatient home schoolers I have said many times why I don't think there is a chance in a billion that the present U.S. Supreme Court will say any such thing. On the contrary, if we take such a brief that far, the court will almost certainly cut out from under our feet most of the constitutional ground on which we are now standing. Specifically, I fear that they will say that Pierce was only about private schools, not about home schooling; that whether or not people can teach their own children is not a constitutional question but something for the state legislatures to decide as they wish; and finally, that the states do not have to show any compelling need for whatever laws and regulations they may want to establish.
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