Home Schooling – Positive? Negative?

August 29, 2001

A long article in the August 27 issue of TIME discusses the current trend to home schooling. According to the article, “there were at least 850,000 students learning at home in 1999.... Some experts believe the figure is actually twice that.” The basic cause seems to be that many parents are concerned about the quality of education in the public schools. About 25% of parents who adopt home schooling do so for religious reasons. Other reasons are given for home schooling, but the aforesaid seem to be the main ones.

Is this trend good or bad? Some statistics seem positive: “The average SAT score for home schoolers in 2000 was 1100 compared to 1019 for the general population.” Home schoolers also did much better on the Iowa Test for Basic Skills.

However, what cannot be known is if these high achievers would have done just as well in the public schools. The parents’ attention to their children’s educational needs was the strong factor. As the article points out, e.g., that only 3% of home-schooled fourth graders watched more than three hours of TV a day, vs. 38% of all fourth graders.

The public schools have no control over how many hours school children watch TV.

The public schools face many problems, most of them attributable to under-funding – crowded classrooms, teachers’ salaries, need to improve physical facilities. Under present laws, the fewer students in public schools, the less per-pupil funding. For example, “the state of Florida has 41,128 (1.7%) learning at home this year, up from 10,039 in the school year 1991-92; those kids represent a loss of nearly $130 million from school budgets in the state.” Furthermore with a large measure of school support coming from property taxes, the more parents doing home schooling, the more difficult it is to pass property taxes for school budgets.

However, the article also poses this question about home schooling: “Better at teaching them what? Home schooling may turn out better students, but does it create better citizens?”

I am still an advocate of public schools for public education. To lift a line I picked up reading a “Who dun it”, two questions need full, reasoned answers: “How To? What for?” Maybe home schooling can answer “How To” better for some pupils if the parents are skilled, thorough, and committed. But, “What For” is the parallel educational necessity. Not being a professional educator, my view of “What For” is best asserted by what the public schools meant for me.

The boys and girls, young men and young women I knew only because of the public schools represent warm, good memories which I never would have if I had been home-schooled.

In the elementary grades there was Woofie Simpson about whom I wrote in a prior Musing. I recall such a schoolroom event as exchanging valentines, leading to a childish “crush” on two girls, Hazel Parmenter and Lillian Snoen. Irma Tallmadge lived three houses down on Oliver Street, but her parents never permitted her to play with the other children on the street. So I would never have known her except for the public schools. Recess times in the schoolyard were good fun and healthy play unknown to home schoolers.

In the junior high and senior high school years, more friends and events: Bud Manion, who walked frequently with me the mile or so to high school, sometimes his sister, Virginia, with us. Myer Myerson, who with his parents, escaped Lenin’s Soviet Union crossing an ice-bound river to get away. “Swede” Larson, six foot four inches tall, strong and athletic, but didn’t like to participate in team sports. He was a skilled diver and swimmer. We went together to Fenway Park a couple of times. There were nice girls in high school with whom it was fun to talk and joke: Margaret Breaux, Ethel Diaz, Sadie Tomsky, Agnes Daly, Regina Kukowsky. Margaret Amot. (Protestant, Catholic, Jewish) Everett was a working class city, so we had names from every European country. We learned through personal experience, tolerance, acceptance, friendship. For this the public schools may be credited. Home schooling would never have provided me with these values and memories.

In Shakespeare’s RICHARD II (Act II, Sc. iii), Bolingbroke, later Henry IV, says after Harry Percy offers his services:

“I count myself in nothing else so happy
as in a soul remembering my good friends.”

The teachers were important in my growing years. In second grade, I remember Mrs. Sparrell (we called her Mrs. “Sparrow”), with tears streaming down her face, telling us on November 11, 1918, that the World War was over. This was one of my first impressions of what war really is and does. Then there was Miss Peabody in 6th grade, a martinet in some ways, telling us that if we had trouble understanding a paragraph, read it aloud paying particular attention to punctuation. In junior high, Mrs. Leach caught on that I was very near-sighted and had been hiding it for years because I didn’t want to be called “four eyes”, which was a common epithet for kids who wore glasses. As a matter of fact, I was not called “four eyes” when I then started wearing glasses, maybe because I was a husky fellow.

In high school, I have two particular memories. Miss Matilda Clement in sophomore English introduced me to Shakespeare, for which I am ever grateful. She also took the class to the first Shakespeare play I experienced – THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, staged by the Boston University players. When it seemed that I might not be allowed to graduate from high school because I did not have a required music credit, the Assistant Principal, Mike O’Neill, after hearing my story, waived the requirement. In the interview, I could sense that he became angry at the music teacher who was the cause.

How could I have had such experiences if I had been home-schooled? Once again, [I turn to] Shakespeare, who has Prospero say in THE TEMPEST (Act I, Sc. ii):

“thy schoolmaster, made thee more profit
Than other princesses can that have more time
For vainer hours and tutors not so careful.”

Then there is the documented matter of “Americanization.” In the large immigrant tide (1880-1920), the public schools made a tremendous successful effort to train the children of immigrants about our nation’s origin, its heritage, and the civics of government.

Thus, from my perspective, if you think the public schools fall short, correct the deficiencies. Make teachers’ salaries comparable. Women now have opportunities in science, business, industry, medicine which they never had when I was in school. Compete with that reality. I believe a large increase in public funding would provide the personnel and settings where more and more parents would choose the public schools. To my mind a much better use for large appropriations than a “missile defense system,” which probably wouldn’t work, but a gravy train for big dollar supporters of the Bush League.