Letter from a liberal homeschooler.

Last week, the left half of the homeschooling-o-sphere exploded with discussion of this piece by Dana Goldstein entitled, "Liberals, Don't Homeschool Your Kids:  Why Teaching Children At Home Violates Progressive Values."  

I know, my conservative homeschooling readers might be going "W00t! Bring it on!" but as you can imagine, it contains a lot of stupid.  Homeschooling is a symptom of being rich and white and privileged, we have a duty to keep our children in public schools because we believe in public education, lefty homeschoolers preach sound social values but... you can imagine how well this was received ... don't practice them.

There is an absolutely fantastic piece in response to this today, called "An Open Letter to Dana Goldstein," by Stephanie Baselice.

What is a Liberal Homeschooler? Am I, for you, merely the assumed opposite of a Fundamentalist Christian Libertarian Dominionist Homeschooler? Do you imagine we are a group essentially just like the women at your office, or the last cocktail party you attended, except we are nursing toddlers in the park with our older children readingMark Twain and Philip Pullman nearby? What exactly leads you to presume that your idea of “liberal values” is one that the entirety of non fundamentalist attachment parenting unschoolers would share? Just because we are not raising revolutionaries for God’s Christian Army does not mean we agree with you about the meaning, let alone the value, of public education.

In my personal experience, you are right about some things. Home school families are indeed diversifying as a group. I live in an area where the home school community spans the spectrum from those who want to ensure that their God-fearing children are not sullied by exposure to science to those Dragon Mamas who want to make certain their offspring get into Stanford. Yet there are a wide range of perspectives somewhere between those poles, or somewhere else altogether. Many are families whose children for one reason or another did not thrive in the school system. Many have children with mild to moderate ADD, ADHD, Aspergers or OCD.

There are indeed those parents who prefer to spend family time together, perhaps running a family farm or traveling instead of attending school. There are Homeschoolers of Color who feel their children will be ill served in a public school system which tracks them towards low achievement (many of the Moms I know who meet that criteria are former public school teachers). Plenty of homeschool families I know personally live at or near the poverty line, making lifestyle choices from the bedrock of their values. Choices which involve significant financial sacrifice. 

This is my favorite line:

...You do not own the cause of progress. And the liberal tradition of fighting for public schools is a particular expression of values, not a value in itself.

... because failure to distinguish between values, and a particular expression of values, is a really common error.  For people both on the right and the left.

Another great insight:

When I worked in finance, pre-child days, I had been a registered assistant for an investment adviser. I was seriously underpaid. The number one question we got from couples under 50 was “Our family is so stressed and exhausted…is there some possible way one of us can stay home? ”. My job was to take in all their financial data, and put it together so we could analyze their situation and present financial options. Unless Mrs. Client was an attorney or a physician, or had a job she deeply loved and did not want to leave, I saw the math prove over and over again that these families would be better off financially if Mom stayed home.

Mothers, even highly educated ones, seemed often to bring in just enough money to put these families in a higher tax bracket. Usually two income households lock themselves structurally into this problem by buying more house than they really need—an expense that has recently become all to clear to families struggling with layoffs in the economic crisis. Granted, the families I was working with were usually well to do. But the same problems apply broadly to our whole society. Our lifestyle choices and our incomes are interdependent, not unidirectional. The values perpetuated by consumer culture lead us to view accomplishment in terms of income. It has long been possible to purchase status. If one lets go of that wheel, and is willing to live with less, according to different values, other economic possibilities can and do open up....

This is not to say that fathers cannot do the job of care giving, or that Mothers cannot provide adequately for families. There are all sorts of  ways to structure families. I know many families where the parents both work part time to support homeschooling, or where Dads stay home with kids while Mom works. Some of the non traditional families are gay. Yes, extended breastfeeding does indeed create a prevalence of very traditional looking stay-at-home Moms in the AP and homeschool communities. But this is more a response to the way the consumer society and nuclear family is structured than anything else. Most Moms I know would ideally work part time and spend lots of time at home with their little ones. In a tribal situation, there is extended family and lots of help with the work of raising a family. My homeschooling group has come to be almost a tribe to me. We help each other. All the time. Because that is how we wish to live. Relationships have replaced the need for revenue in many areas of my life.

Read the whole thing.  As I've said time and time again, one of the greatest things about homeschooling is the way it brings into agreement people from across the political spectrum.  Liberal and conservative homeschoolers often have more in common than they have separating them.

Comments

[Christy P.]

In case anyone was wondering -- mom working outside the home does not preclude extended breastfeeding, or as I like to say, normal breastfeeding.

[Barbara C.]

I really, really liked this response. Dana Goldstein's original article was so full of ignorance that I couldn't believe that people were taking it so seriously.

[Mark]

There is a stark contrast between Goldstein's "progressivism" and the values of every parent I know. In Goldstein's world, parents sacrifice the good of their children to achieve some "good" defined by the government. Parents I know make choices for the good of their children, and have the greater societal benefits as a secondary goal. Even the most liberal parent I know selected the "best" Minneapolis public school for his kids, not the neighborhood school.

[Dorian Speed]

Very glad to read this. I'd seen the original piece but not the response.