Rumor has it, she was homeschooled.

Being a princess, you sort of automatically think of governesses and tutors, for what sort of princess is properly homeschooled?  But nothing says locked-away-in-a-tower quite like homeschooled, so homeschooled she was.  And seriously, how else would lines like “I don’t socialize much,” and “Can you tell I’m not used to this?” (referring to, uh, having a conversation) make any sense?

Now we homeschool.  Locked away in the west tower, looking out over the kingdom and unable to have any part in it.  I asked my children what they thought about the comment, but the negative undertone passed by them unnoticed.

Of course she was homeschooled, mom.  She doesn’t have time for school with all those mythological monsters to take care of.

So I don’t have to worry about what subliminal messages they are being fed, just yet.  It all makes sense within the context of their own experience and beliefs about what homeschooling is and is not.

But the stereotypes are heavy on my mind as I look around at nearby churches.  It is a long drive in to Lincoln for worship, long enough to negate any real participation in the church community there.  When our commitments are through, I hope to move to a local church where we can be part of an active community.

I’d never really thought about it before.  I know people who have had difficulty in their home churches due to homeschooling, but Lincoln is big enough that it just isn’t that hard to move to another church.  The pickings are slim, out here, and somehow, we’re going to just have to make things work if we want to worship in our own community.

I like the idea of that, but I guess we shall see how it plays out once we begin actually visiting churches.

homeschooling home education socialization

• One is two years younger than she. One is three years older. The other three are her age.
• All five are Christian. Only three attend our church.
• Three are homeschooled. Two attend public school.
• One lives down the street. Four live thirty minutes or more away.
• One is Hispanic. One has enough Native American in her that you can tell. The other three are white.

And this in an area that is 91.4% white.

And I wonder, for all the concern about how homeschooled children will learn to appreciate diversity when raised in the bubble we have supposedly manufactured for them, how many children truly select friends who are so diverse?

We note how many opportunities homeschooled children have to play with others. We note that children do not learn to value others by sitting quietly next to them. We note that the playground is little more than a miniature stage for all our social ills.

We don’t like to talk so much about the challenges of giving our children the opportunity to develop friendships. Real, close, lasting friendships as opposed to numerous polite interactions with other children in an ever-rotating cycle of activities. Maybe that is because it isn’t a problem for many, but a number of homeschoolers I have talked to have sympathized readily with the need to be intentional in this area.

As I passed out scones, I thought that maybe that isn’t all bad. In school, you are surrounded by children. You have the option of forming bonds with others like you and building distinct barriers to keep those who are different away. With scarcity, however, comes a willingness to set aside superficial barriers such as race, income, location, etc., in favor of fulfilling the social needs every human being has.

When your class is 90% white, you notice the one Hispanic girl. Outside of that context, however, when you just want someone to play with, you are much more likely to notice that she is nice.

homeschool homeschooling home education socialization

Hey, did you know we’re Mexican?

says the little girl at craft table at the library.  She couldn’t have been older than six.  Her little friend across from her dropped her scissors, mouth agape.

Don’t you call me that!

She was clearly insulted and the table fell silent, all eyes on the offender.  She averted her eyes, but there was no place to go.  She and her two friends had been told to stay there and color and stay she did.  Just before hurling this horrendous insult, she had been happily counting and singing . . . in Spanish.  Clearly, neither she nor anyone at the table had any particular issue with the country of their obvious heritage until it was named.

Mexican.

After a long moment of silence, the third girl leaned in and whispered, “It’s called Hispanic.  We’re Hispanic.”  With that, the tension eased and they went back to their playful chatter about school and television and friends.  They forgot about that dirty word.

Mexican.

She may as well have said, “Hey, did you know we were spics?”  Or niggers.  Or chinks.  Or any number of racial slurs.  I can’t help but wonder how a child growing up Hispanic in an Hispanic home with Hispanic friends, watching Dora the Explorer, who happily sings songs in Spanish in the library learns that Mexican is a dirty word.

This is socialization.  Learning what is “other,” labeling it and trying to make it conform.  This is the “leavening effect of democracy” which compulsory schooling offers.  It does not teach us to value difference, but to conform.  It does not teach us to handle conflict, but to submit to the capricious and cruel tendencies of small children with inadequate supervision.

Humans are fundamentally social creatures, and I would be the last to argue against teaching our children how to function within our social groups.  Socialization is a natural part of being human.  But how do we best teach this to our children?  Seated in neat rows while the teacher talks?  Or perhaps better seated in circles?  On the playground while an adult with a whistles chats with an aid and watches for any grievous rule breaks?  Or within the context of the family where true, selfless love can be experienced alongside daily modeling and guidance specific to each child’s needs?

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Uppercase Woman’s daughter, too, is learning her place in her social world (language warning) at the tender age of three.  Fortunately, she has a loving mother to help guide her through it as she wrestles with the question of how to educate her daughter.

Also, we’re still sorting out this whole moving blog thing.  Posting may be erratic and the blog may go down when we finally get that far.  Sleeping for hours in a row is doing me wonders, however, and I am brimming with things to write about once I have my blog back!

socialization homeschool home education

kicking about in a T-shirt with “I’m living proof my mum is easy” slapped on the front. Even if he does have four siblings, it does not seem to be the place for opening that kind of cultural dialogue. After all, what is a T-shirt slogan, if not a sort of pre-Twitter medium for expressing your message quickly, succinctly and to a broad audience?

Katherine Hamnett, whose T-shirts The Guardian credits with becoming the cultural signposts of our times, says of the medium:

“I wanted to put a really large message on T-shirts that could be read from 20 or 30ft away,” she says now. “Slogans work on so many different levels; they’re almost subliminal. They’re also a way of people aligning themselves to a cause. They’re tribal. Wearing one is like branding yourself.” The Guardian

Aligning yourself to a cause. Connecting yourself to other people. Branding yourself. You have five seconds and the passing eye of a distracted stranger.

From: Despair, Inc.

What do you want to tell the world about your cause and yourself?

Maybe “The Condom Broke”?  Or “I’m a t*** man.”  (Without the asterisks, of course.)  Or how about “I’m bringing sexy back”?  On an infant!

Julee Gale, director of Kids Free 2b Kids, bought some items at Cotton On Kids (I presume for education purposes) and is outraged by the messages carried by these shirts that may be conveyed to young people.

“I reckon there should be a penalty and there needs to be an awareness campaign with retailers about what’s appropriate and what’s actually harmful,” she said.

“They don’t get that it’s . . . harmful. It’s all part of a continuum of sexualisation of kids. It’s about the mental health of our children.” Herald Sun

But is it really the retailers that need education? What if, in response to this collection, Australia decides to regulate the messages that can be printed on t-shirts marketed to or for youth? Would anything really change? The items on the rack at your local department store are, after all, an effect of the culture we live in, not the cause of it. Certainly there is a bit of a circular relationship between marketers and the market, especially when the marketers are successful in attaching their products to other things already sought after (think High School Musical merchandising!).

But a T-shirt slogan? For this collection to become a colossal flop would speak loudly and clearly to Cotton On and other clothing manufacturers and retailers about the inappropriateness of both the message and the medium. Rallying family groups? Not so long as the collection is turning a profit.

The collection bothers me. That product designers, marketing directors and retailers wanted to design, advertise and sell this collection bothers me.

But really it is the fact that there are parents who are willing to buy them that bothers me most. Your child is not your vehicle for sexual-expression.

t-shirt Cotton On Cotton On Kids

But how do we explain this [the reasons we homeschool] to a five year old without a.) giving him the impression that he’s missing out on something fantastic, b.) running the risk that he looks down his nose at other kids who do go to school or c.)getting the impression that schools and everything associated with them are to be avoided?  Homeschool Diplomacy

They are good questions and the answers deserve some pondering.  After all, short of sending your children off to school for an extended period, any answer given will only be part of the story.  It’s like trying to explain a foreign culture without it coming down to food, holidays and national costumes.

I don’t have an answer.

Actually, I have more questions.  Essentially, they are the same questions, broadened and not specific to homeschoolers.  How do we explain differences and diversity to our children?  Whether it is a woman dressed in a sari, or with a hijab covering her head, a child with obvious physical deformities or a man behaving bizarrely on a street corner, how do you address the questions your children have?

As a child stands staring, the most common reaction I see from parents is a swift diversion and a muttered “It’s impolite to stare!” as the child is whisked away.  Now, it is impolite to stare, and an important part of raising children is teaching them these finer points of social life.  But in that moment, the child has also noticed something:  people are different.  We come in different colors, shapes and sizes, we have different customs, we speak different languages and some of us suffer from diseases and disorders that make us noticeably different.  Some of us are hurting, are hungry and even smell.

But it is impolite to stare, so we whisk our children away.

I’d be the last to say that it is appropriate to turn the person into an object lesson. . .although a man with a neck injury at McDonald’s once told me he never minded the children staring.  It was the parents shuttling them out of sight that got to him.  But I can’t help but wonder how many parents pick up the conversation with their children later.

I wonder, because a lot is learned in that moment.  A lot more than perhaps we realize.  It brings us back to that socialization issue homeschoolers are so fond of:

The process whereby a child learns to get along with and to behave similarly to other people in the group, largely through imitation as well as group pressure.  Answers.com

It is also a process which occurs without critical analysis.  That quick but firm redirection (with perhaps a touch of shock) may teach our children a lot more about our culture than simply that it is impolite to stare.  After all, there seem to be certain “things not spoken of” that we aren’t even supposed to look at.

But how do we (and how should we) discuss these issues with young children?

homeschool homeschooling diversity socialization

As a mother, well, as a mother I confess to being a little concerned about my Mouse.  And more on the “socializing” front, since we homeschoolers frequently point out the difference between socializing and socialization.  “Mom, I don’t have any friends,” she complains.  “I just want a friend.”

Since she’s somewhat prone to exaggeration, I name a few friends for her.  But they are all in Lincoln and are a part of the various social activities our families are engaged in.  This left me thinking about school, socialization and the friends I had as a child.

If socialization is supposed to be about learning to work together and get along in diverse society, schools fail miserably.  Maybe I say that because I didn’t have that many friends in elementary school, but it seems to me that the other children made friends only with those who were most like them.  There was very little crossing of ethnic or economic boundaries.

It was different in the neighborhood, however.  Suddenly, other children to play with seemed a scarce resource.  Scarcity created a demand and that demand let differences fall by the wayside.  I was “friends” with every child within a reasonable distance from my house, regardless of their age or background.  Kids who wouldn’t talk to me at school knocked on the door to see if I could play after school.

We learned to get along not because the teacher told us to or by simple exposure, but because we all wanted someone to play with and our choices were limited.

But not quite so limited as my daughter’s.  There is one other girl in our town, and she is three years older.  In school, they’d likely have little to do with each other.  Out here…well…the only other girl for her to play with is my daughter.  And they get along well.

Still my daughter pines for friends.  At first, I thought it was mostly a problem unique to us.  After all, we do live in a small and aging town.  But then she and another girl really “clicked” during homeschool gym.  On the way home, I heard all about what she and G. did.  On the way there, I heard all about what she hoped she and G. would do.  She was making a new friend…in Lincoln.

Then her mother told me something her daughter had said.  Something that sounded very much like something my daughter could have said.

I hate it when I make a new friend but then I don’t get to see them again.

Transient friendships?  Ones made during various homeschool activities?  All of which have an ever-changing group of participants?  We are not currently involved in a homeschool group, just occasional homeschool activities.  But that part of my daughter that is yearning for a close friend cannot be appeased by opportunities to play and interact with a different group of children every quarter.

Suddenly my daughter has made two friends, two relationships which will be able to continue past the activities where they met.  Her entire demeanor has changed.  She no longer pines.

And it seems we have made a major accomplishment in our little homeschool, even though I never had the foresight to make it a goal.

homeschool socialization homeschool

Ki o tsuke!

Calls sensei, and twenty children snap to attention, facing the front and awaiting instruction.  All but one young man:  my son.  He is standing at the end, facing the wrong direction, his gi practically falling off and swinging his belt as if it were a lasso.  There is a long pause as it becomes obvious that he neither recognizes the verbal command nor the social cues that his behavior is inappropriate.

It is difficult for me to watch.  Part of me wants to jump in and direct him, give him the extra attention he needs to be successful, or maybe just protect him from the impatient stares of the entire room.  Strange thing to protect him from, since I am clearly the only one of the two of us who has noticed.  But that is part of why we signed him up.  This class has the physical activity and physical games he loves with a little of the sitting still, standing at attention, and listening to verbal and social cues he struggles with.

Over the years my daughter has been involved, I have seen other children like him who just don’t seem to get it, and perhaps more aggravatingly don’t seem to even notice they don’t get it.  I’ve seen their enthusiasm despite regular corrections, seen their excitement as they slowly gain rank and seen their more eccentric behaviors gradually decrease as they grow and mature.

More remarkably, however, I have seen a room full of children from the age of four to sixteen who simply accept these quirky children for who they are.  The brown belts spend a little extra time helping them with their gi, tying their belt and redirecting their attention, but no one seems to actually mind the ones who don’t fit in, who make the class stand at attention while they spin in circles or who ultimately are responsible for the entire room doing push ups.

These are your dojo brothers.

Sensei emphasizes, and he doesn’t allow anything but respect.

It is an environment I felt was safe to put my son into, although I knew it would be challenging for him and those responsible for teaching him.  It is somewhat sad to say, but I have not always felt the same about our church, or his involvement with the programs he so much wants to be a part of.

Still, he is my son.  I don’t really want to sit back and watch him “grow out of it.”  I want to “fix” him, make him “normal,” help him not to experience the social stigmas he doesn’t seem to be aware of anyway.  Sometimes I even try, and we spend hours battling each other as I try to take this little square peg and force it into a little round hole and get frustrated with the little peg who somehow should respond to the hammering some other way.

I am getting better at letting him be himself.  At not being repulsed by his saliva covered hands.  At taking comments like “For him, he was good…” as a compliment worthy of praise for my young man.  At setting my expectations somewhere he can reach rather than where I think he should be.

But as I sat and watched him in karate last night, an odd thought popped into my mind…a new label for my son.

Weird, unsocialized homeschooler.

It doesn’t matter that he is only two months into kindergarten.  I see him someday as the subject of other people’s conversations and I hear all the comments I’ve read in the numerous “Yeah, but…” concerns regarding homeschooling.

I knew a homeschooled kid once.  Sure he was smart, but he just didn’t fit in.  He was weird.  He just didn’t get the social cues.

Coming from a quirky family, having not fit in especially well in school and being married to a man who most assuredly did not fit into the school enviornment, I have always wondered whether such comments say more about homeschoolers or the public/private school graduates passing judgment.

The fact is, since he is homeschooled, that will likely always be blamed for any social deficiencies which persist in him until adolescence and beyond.  It doesn’t matter that while he doesn’t seem to “get” sitting still, his sister is leading class.  It doesn’t matter that while I’m brainstorming ways to make it possible for him to participate in game time in AWANAs, my three year old is getting praise for her vocabulary, listening skills and maturity heaped upon her.  It also doesn’t matter how far he has come over the years and the fact that he has come from unmanageable to merely weird in just five years.

Society has a single standard, and since he doesn’t have any obvious and visible disabilities, I fear his “otherness” will always be blamed on his parents’ educational choices.  And that leaves us with a dilemma.  Mostly I fret alternately about how to force my little square peg into his little round hole or at what kind of damage I’m doing when I try too hard.  But I can no more make that hole square than I can the peg round.

So where does that leave us?

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And don’t forget this week’s Carnival of Homeschooling!

homeschool homeschooling homeschooler socialization

So last year Wright decided to outsource recess. He hired Sports4Kids, an Oakland, Calif.-based nonprofit organization that introduces students to a regimen of traditional playground games, along with a more closely supervised version of such team sports as basketball. The program also stresses conflict resolution, with disagreements mediated by, of all things, rock-paper-scissors.  Washington Post

Don’t get me wrong.  I think I like the idea.  It sounds like a much needed program to deal both with the children’s need for physical exertion and the fighting these schools are experiencing on the playground.  Here is a bit of insight not often applied to homeschools when socialization comes up:

Traditionally the one period of the school day when children are free of adult-imposed structure, recess is increasingly regarded by educators as a trouble spot. They say that in the Xbox- and Internet-dominated world of many students, the culture of healthy group play has eroded, turning recess into a chaotic and sometimes violent period where strife from the schoolyard can spill over into afternoon classes. Ibid.

So free play is important.  That is the one draw-back of this program, but if the children cannot handle free play, it must be taught to them.  Not by their peers, but by trusted adults who can intervene and help them to make wise decisions and resolve conflict.  Something homeschooling parents have been saying for a long time.  You learn to get along from people who know how to get along.  And even for those in the public school, it begins in the home, not on the bus on the way to your first day of kindergarten.

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The Carnival of Homeschooling is up at Melissa’s Idea Garden.

homeschool socialization Sports4Kids

The formality and structure created by going to school everyday is lost in homeschool. Monday through Friday there is a routine, a sense of purpose. No confusion or ciaos. A learned respect of the adults that are teaching them. A respect for all people is gained by following the rules in school, as do in, the rules is society. Created to maintain order. When is this learned in homeschooling? Grove Street’s Weblog

And that sort of united some of my seemingly disparate thoughts on the subject as I wrestled with a response.

In 1989, a rather humorous collection of essays hit the best seller list and refused to budge: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum. Obviously it resonated with Americans as it became the second longest running #1 bestseller in 23 years. But I maintained then and I maintain now that if you wait until kindergarten to learn the basic life principles he outlines in his book, you have gotten a rather late start.

It is in the family that we first learn our own worth. To share. To not hit. To clean up our messes. To say sorry. To hold hands. To respect others. To wonder.

Like Dennis in Martian Child, it is where we learn what it means to be human. And if that process is botched early in childhood, the best teachers in the best schools will find it difficult to overcome. The family is the foundation of society. If we have healthy families, we will have a healthy society. If our families are characterized by chaos, our society will be as well. All because it is the family which primarily prepares the child for and introduces the child to living in concert with other human beings…for living in society.

But what of structure and routine? The nice rows of desks, or the groupings at tables? The principal’s office? The lockers? The recess monitor with her shrill whistle calling you back in after recess. Is there not value in this? Doesn’t this prepare us for “the real world?” I’ve read multiple responses to this basic question, but I think the real issue lies a little deeper and necessitates what may seem to be an odd question.

What is structure?

1. Something made up of a number of parts that are held or put together in a particular way: hierarchical social structure.

2. The way in which parts are arranged or put together to form a whole; makeup: triangular in structure.

3. The interrelation or arrangement of parts in a complex entity: political structure; plot structure.

4. Something constructed, such as a building.

A school provides a structure and places that on children. It controls the environment around the child in order to encourage conformity. It is what most of us grew up with and thus it is easy to perceive it to be the only way, the right way or the best way to introduce children to adulthood and to society. But that isn’t necessarily the case.

Home education, in its ideal, also provides a structure for children although it is different in form and function. The point is more about inspiring the child and teaching the child to take responsibility for his or her own learning. It is about seeking real-world connections and developing a habit of scholarship, wonder and, most of all, ownership.

Many of us do finish the school day in less time than the public school because we have the advantage of more individualized instruction and fewer interruptions. I can see where this question comes from:

What job can you work for an hour and then go out and hug trees? Ibid.

But it really does not follow. I can as easily ask what business expects you to sit quietly and wait until everyone else in the room finishes their work before you can move on. What happens after that two to three hours it takes to finish what is in the book does not mean that education has ended. It is in this extra time that home education has the opportunity to assist a child in discovering unique talents and real world experiences.

And these unique experiences seem to be sought after by colleges these days. Private universities have been seeking out homeschooled students for some time. But now public universities are as well. The University of California at Riverside has an interesting article posted on their website with an illustrative quote.

“The new homeschool admissions program seems to have attracted outstanding students, as we’d hoped,” said Frank Vahid, a professor in the Department of Computer Science who helped establish the program. “Some applicants showed exceptional accomplishment in certain areas of study or very novel life experiences, while many also had high grades in community college courses and strong SAT scores. It looks like we’ve tapped into a pipeline of great students.” UCRiverside

We are providing universities with a “pipeline of great students.” And not just for academic reasons, but for “novel life experiences.” It is precisely this freedom from the structure of the public school system which has presented some students with the opportunity to be highly sought after.

Hat Tip: Eternallearning Academy

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Why Homeschool points to an interesting article about how technology may destroy public education which provides an interesting extension to this discussion:

He makes the point that one of the things that keeps public schools going is reputation. When people work out ways to certify that a person has the equivalent of a high school education, public schools will be in real trouble.

Valerie of Home Education Magazine did a nice job with her summary of the conversation, if you prefer reading to listening, and made an observation which strikes at the heart of what we are really discussing in this ongoing debate over homeschool regulations:

…it seems as if some of the controversy about homeschooling (if not all of it) comes down to the ancient commotion over what people think, and who gets to tell the kiddies about ‘it’ so that the kiddies will grow up to be ‘right-thinking’ adults.  HEM

Mr. Reich made three general points, however, with which I completely agree.

• Anecdotes should not set policy.
• Homeschoolers should not be required to become certified.
• Current trends of deregulation are about to shift.

Mr. Reich, of course, is working hard to do what he can to herald this trend away from deregulation, but I do not think he is off base in his prediction.

We have two competing trends in American education.  On the one hand, we see a general diversification of our educational system as charter schools and virtual academies increasingly take their places alongside traditional public schools.  The private sector completes the picture, with an array of options including accredited and unaccredited schools (both religious and secular), cottage schools and homeschools.  To top it off, there is a rather large contingent advocating vouchers so that public monies can follow students to private schools.

All of this speaks to more true choices available to families.

On the other hand, we have a nationwide trend toward federalization of our education system which, as best as I can see, really came into full swing under George Bush, Sr., the “education president.”  Since then, the progress has been halting, but steady toward a national curriculum, a national test, national certification of teachers.  In other words, toward national oversight of every aspect of education.  Education is now considered a “public good.”  Something so important that each of us has an interest in how our neighbors’ children are educated.  And people are beginning to ask, “What about homeschoolers?”

The American Educational Research Association placed this apparent conflict at the heart of its 2004 Symposium:  Educational Choice versus Civic Responsibility:  Are Home Schoolers Embracing Their Responsibilities or Fleeing from Them?  At which Rob Reich also presented.  In this title, they have set up a false dichotomy, presuming there is something about exercising educational choice which necessarily hinders civic responsibility.  Unfortunately, it is a false dichotomy repeated throughout the discussion on home education.

Reworded, it is the debate between the academic success of homeschooling and the perceived drawback of socialization.  But it is also the debate between parental rights and the interests of the state.  As a 2003 policy paper from Michigan State University puts it,

Each state must decide how to balance the rights of parents, the rights of children, and the interests of the state.

Of course, to strike a proper balance means that homeschoolers must report to the state.  Because it is our civic responsibility to monitor their educational choices.  (Incidentally, it looks as if a few lawmakers in Michigan have taken the university’s advice.)

These are the issues which I believe lie at the heart of the current debate.  It isn’t about liberty to Americans who look with suspicion on homeschoolers who desire to maintain independence from governmental regulation.  It is about those changing attitudes regarding what constitutes abuse and how willing we are as a society to disrupt the parent-child relationship to ensure that our goals are being met in other people’s families.  It is about a sense of responsibility toward children to ensure they “grow up to be ‘right-thinking’ adults.”

What can we do about it?  I’m not entirely sure, but I think to begin with we should be willing to take the opportunities to engage in the public discussion as they are presented to us.  (Shameless plug for my April article for Heart of the Matter.)

[tags]homeschool, homeschooling, home school, Rob Reich, socialization[/tags]