Common Misuses of Analogy in Homeschool Criticism

When reading essays and opinions criticizing homeschooling, it does not take very long to be confronted by a number of analogies. Judicious use of analogy can be an effective means of communication. It makes difficult concepts easier to understand, makes writing more interesting and tends to be more persuasive than a simple statement of facts. In the case of the myriad homeschooling analogies, however, they generally serve to better demonstrate the author's misconceptions about education than any specific ideas about the failings of homeschooling.

Jack Lessenberry of Michigan Radio, for example, appeals to a rather common analogy between doctors and teachers in his essay on homeschooling:

If I announced I was going to “home doctor” my family and take my son’s appendix out on the kitchen table, the cops would be there pretty fast. Educational malpractice should be illegal as well. Jack Lessenberry's Essays and Interviews

Other than the fact that it presumably takes place at the kitchen table, there really is no similarity between "home doctoring" and "home schooling." But since this analogy is fairly common, and the same mistakes are made in most of the analogies involving homeschooling, let's take a closer look at the problems with this analogy.

Education is to medicine as philosophy is to science.

Education involves the development of the mind and the character. It is not something which is quantifiable or measurable. Asking for a description of an educated person is, by its very nature, the beginning of a philosophical discussion. The appendix, on the other hand, can be described in specific terms along with the common diseases associated with it. Its size, shape, color and position in the body are documented and you can even take pictures of it. While there are certainly close relationships between the mind and the body, it must also be appreciated that one is a philosophical concept while the other is physical. The reach for an analogy is perhaps natural since the concrete is easier to understand than the abstract, but when the concept itself exists only in the abstract, concrete representations cannot do it justice.

The mind is to the appendix as a thought is to an organ.

If a doctor makes a mistake, it cannot be so easily undone. When my husband had his appendectomy as a child, for example, the doctor nicked his bowel. Small mistake, but it caused a great deal of scarring. Eventually, several inches of his intestine had to be removed and the pyloric valve (the passage between the large and small intestines) had to be surgically reconstructed. Compare this to the proverbial "gaps" in knowledge it is feared homeschooling creates in children. We know that colleges are having to restructure their teaching to adapt to the "gaps" in knowledge public high schools are producing, but what does this demonstrate? These gaps can be filled in at a later date as needed.

The mind is not an organ like the appendix in Jack's analogy. It needs "nourishment" but this idea of nourishment itself is an analogy. Unlike the body, it does not need specific vitamins, minerals, etc. found in a varied diet but instead needs stimulation. This stimulation can take on a variety of forms, unique to each individual. It takes more than a simple "gap" to actually damage the mind. Failing to adequately cover analytical geometry in high school does not harm a person any more than the work required to make up the knowledge in college assuming college is even the goal.

Homeschooling is to abuse as medicine is to malpractice.

"Educational malpractice", as Jack calls it, is meant to conjure up images of quack doctors performing surgeries they are unqualified to perform with potentially fatal consequences. But what is malpractice?

mal·prac·tice (ml-prkts)n.

1. Improper or negligent treatment of a patient, as by a physician, resulting in injury, damage, or loss.

Because education involves the development of the mind and the character, educational malpractice would have to result in injury to the mind or character. We are not talking about failing to read The Catcher in the Rye with the rest of the juniors in the state, nor even lacking laboratory science upon graduation. We are talking about abuse. Real abuse, not allegorical abuse conjured up by those who cannot imagine education occurring outside the confines of a brick building. It is extreme, causes lasting harm to the victims, and has nothing to do with homeschooling. Certainly there are those who abuse their children while claiming to be homeschooling. But then there are those who abuse other people's children while claiming to be babysitters. "Homeschooling" has no more to do with abuse than "babysitting."

As flawed as they typically are, these analogies can be difficult to refute because they do not rely on facts but in perceived relationships. Still, those used to present homeschooling as education at the hands of unqualified "amateurs" tend to falter on the same points. Consider Greg Laden's comparison to getting a pilot's license, or the technical expertise of home-repair considered by head custodian Dave Arnold. They seek to illustrate their objections to homeschooling, yet succeed only in illustrating their own misconceptions about the nature of education and its delicate relationship to the art of teaching. It reminds me of another analogy, adapted slightly:

An educrat's rhetoric is like a light breeze in the forest. Weak trees bow before it, yet the strong hold their position.

Dana is a fourth year homeschooling mom to three girls and a boy. In her column, "In the News," she will be taking a look at homeschoolers who have affected the news and news that affects homeschoolers. Visit her blog, Principled Discovery.