Compulsory schooling hasn’t been around all that long; only 150 years or so. Before this time, children were educated in many ways, including tutors, private schools, and learning through living. Sending children to K-12 (pre-k through 12?) public school was not the default choice like it is today. In fact, the first compulsory laws only required children going to school through six grade.
It took less than five generations for public school to become the “norm,” after thousands of generations of human evolution when this institution did not exist.
Knowing this gives us reason to pause and ask, “Why is school considered “normal? Is school simply a fad that never let go? Why has school not changed much since its inception?”
But does it give us a reason to seriously question its choke-hold on western civilization? Simply because the institution of free and compulsory government education has only been around a short while, does that mean that other forms of education are better or even equal?
From a homeschooler’s perspective, my natural reaction to this question is to say that just because school is the “norm”, doesn’t mean it’s better. Looking at it from a more objective position, I have to say, that it doesn’t mean that it’s worse, either.
The world changes constantly. Each generation brings with it a new set of demands and challenges. Is change necessarily bad? Does change mean that the old ways are the better ways?
I think we, as homeschoolers, need to be careful when we use the “homeschooling is what the norm used to be” argument. When we list famous people who were homeschooled, we are indirectly invoking this argument, because most of the people on that list were educated before compulsory schooling was implemented.
We have to look at today’s world, today’s demands, and ask honestly – is homeschooling appropriate and effective in today’s world? Is it a viable way of educating in a world of iPhones, Internet, TV, global economics, huge population growth, and exponential growth in technology?
The world we live in today is not the same as it was before compulsory school. Arguments aside of whether the world was better back then, how does homeschooling work into today’s world? That’s the question that critics want answered. Talking about how homeschooling is the way it used to be before school doesn’t answer the question of, “But what about now? How can it be good for our kids today?”
I believe in homeschooling. I think it’s the best choice that any life-learning, life-enthusiastic parent can choose for their children in today’s world. But my belief has nothing to do with how things use to be. I don’t have any desire to bring things back to how they used to be. Homeschooling today, in a modern and technologically aware environment is the doorway to the future, not to the past.
So, homeschooling advocates, drop the “school is a new thing” rhetoric. It’s about today and tomorrow. If we can prove that homeschooling is a better choice today, then there is no reason to bring back the past, and we can instead appreciate our educational history, as the path of existence that let us be where we are today, and walk through the door to the future.
Stumble this post!
October 6, 2008 at 9:10 pm
Tammy,
It is so interesting to see you discuss the fact that public school is relatively new on the scene. I have actually used this as a defense against those who assume my kids are missing something just because they aren’t going to school. I still can’t understand the hold that school has on people. I sometimes think that any chance to get the kids out of the house is considered good and normal. I guess I have never been “normal”!!!
October 6, 2008 at 9:26 pm
School has a hold on us because it’s all we’ve ever known as a culture. Everyone alive today was born into a world of school.
Being one of the “not normal” people means you are moving forward; up and out. Every generation needs “not normal” people to create change.
October 7, 2008 at 4:28 am
I agree- the ‘public school is a new thing’ argument is only useful to bring some perspective to those who can’t imagine any other way than public school, as if no other way ever existed.
Public education, while ‘new’ in the grand scheme of American history, is itself sadly behind the times. Most schools still use methods conceived decades ago, ignoring all the advancements of technology and information about child development. I’ve walked into a local elementary school classroom, and it looks just like the classrooms I was in when I was a kid- complete with lime green hiphuggers and paisley prints! AAAHHHH!
It is important to consider the past, but by no means do I want to live there.
October 7, 2008 at 5:23 am
Yes, historically speaking, compulsory schooling is new and yet is already mightily flawed. But sometimes homeschoolers forget that it has had societal benefits, too. Overall, the United States has an educated populace. We homeschoolers have the luxury of opting out of public schooling because we live in a society where most people are functionally literate (and beyond), where we ourselves are capable and adequately literate (and beyond), and where public schooling has helped create a vast middle class (now shrinking oh so quickly!).
For the disenfranchised, education is the key to getting a piece of the pie and moving into the middle class. And for better or worse, public school provides the fundamental education that opens some necessary doors.
That said, I think it would be great if the firmly entrenched (and possibly too comfortable) middle class was willing to move out of their comfort zone and demand major changes to public education (like, revolutionary changes, not tweaks) or opt out of it en masse.
Ain’t gonna happen, though.
October 7, 2008 at 8:03 am
Very good points. It is amazing how quickly we can slip toward logical fallacies (”appeal to authority,” anyone?) rather than solid discussion of what is going on.
~Luke
October 7, 2008 at 10:10 am
sunniemon – I agree. School got “stuck” the way it is. Change happens because of large amounts of social pressure or demand. Hopefully, homeschooling and private schools (and perhaps charter schools) will be what finally puts the pressure on schools to change. It takes some kind of stimulus for it to reach the tipping point.
lori – Absolutely. I would even go as far as to argue that compulsory school has important social benefits today. We need school until our society adopts a high value to education and literacy, to the point where people are naturally pushed to educate themselves because it’s has high social benefits. Among the homeschooling community, and private schools, this social change has already happened. But not yet in the general population. Will it ever happen? Hard to say. But the modern homeschooling movement is definitely a part of that equation.
Luke – Good point. It’s so easy to rely on faulty logic when we are supporting our own arguments, although we don’t so easily admit that we do. And it’s easy to identify when others, especially those who hold contrary opinions, use faulty logic.
October 8, 2008 at 5:24 am
I read this to my children and we all enjoyed it. I had to explaine that you live in Ca. to them. But it, I hope, will help them the next time we see family! You know the ones, you walk through the door and they are doing pop math test…. Got to love it when they blow the pants off them and answer question that the children older than them don’t know.
Thanks for the history of the pubic schools.
Blessings
BK
October 8, 2008 at 10:52 am
Tammy,
Excellent advice. Looking back in this situation does not win the case it just creates a circle. Using today’s information and looking forward is the way to effect change.
October 21, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Absolutely true. Homeschoolers cannot rely merely on what used to be.
But thinking deeper, why is it that compulsory schooling is new? Isn’t it because powerful men seeking a more efficient way of generating wealth came up with it only (relatively) recently? Isn’t it because learning is originally natural, and people used to not have a problem not being taught how to think until those men did come up with the idea of compulsory schooling, that it is new?
We can’t argue that compulsory schooling is bad because that’s not how it used to be. But can we address how it came to be the norm today and why that’s problematic?
By the way, I’m Jill from Hoover High if you remember me… I ran into this blog a couple of months ago and now I finally decided to say something. Thank you for the wonderful blog, it’s really fun and also thought-provoking to read.
October 21, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Jill – I don’t know if I agree with you on what learning used to be like before school. But I think your pointing out the difference between the arguments of why school was created in the first place and how it’s a new thing is astute. That’s a much more important argument. But we have to make sure we have our facts straight and not pick and choose which truths to talk about, because there are many ways to see the truth.
Welcome back. Glad that you like the blog and that you are enjoying the material. Have you had a chance to read the Teenage Liberation Handbook? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on it.
October 24, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Yes (of course) I still have a lot of to learn on the facts. I didn’t think what I was saying was very accurate but thought I’d just get the point across this time.
I did have a chance to read TLH, but never finished the whole book. I checked it out from the library and read around the first half and the last parts with the letters and so forth. By then the book was already a couple of weeks late and I didn’t even know it, so I just had to drop it off the first time I got the chance. The significant thing for me was when I went to the info night and found out that indeed, I wasn’t alone in thinking the way I think about school. After that, TLH was kind of like a repetition for me, but not one I mind. And of course Grace knew more things than I did. One thing I’m particularly thankful for is that the book mentions CHSPE, which I would’ve never known about if it wasn’t for TLH. I took the exam last Saturday. I have to get a hold of it again soon.
I try to let my friends know about it, but they’re too busy with school stuff, and when they’re not, they’re too lazy to read anything they’re not made to read.
And I think TLH helped me become so certain about my opinion that when I hear other people say things like “School exists so we don’t have stupid people,” it feels very foreign even though it’s something perfectly ordinary to say today. Not that anything foreign is bad.
October 27, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Are more people literate in today’s society than they were prior to compulsory schools? John Adams wrote in 1765 that “a native of America, especially of New England, who cannot read and write is as rare a Phenomenon as a Comet.”
Educational historian Lawrence A. Cremin in his book American Education: The Colonial Experience estimates that the literacy rate of white males in the Colonial era was close to 100%.
It is true that women and non-whites at the time did not share this near-universal literacy. We do a much better job today; however, on the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy 33% of white Americans were functionally illiterate. Women are now slightly LESS likely than men to be illiterate so it stands to reason that more than half of those white illiterates are white males.
October 29, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Yes, I also remember reading in some unschooling-related book that a lot fewer people were illiterate in those pre-compulsory-school days than most people assume. We have to be careful not to assume that compulsory schooling saved the country from mass illiteracy unless it is, in fact, true.
If people were literate before compulsory schooling, than the argument about school being a “new thing” might be helpful to people. When I discuss homeschooling with most schooling folks, it is the *basics* that most are concerned about. Most people are concerned that a child won’t learn to read, write, and do math without school. They aren’t concerned a whole lot with whether their children will be able to learn new technology, computers, or global economics. So if people knew those basics before compulsory school took over, maybe the argument is still relevant to most people’s concerns?