The Value of Human Interest Stories to Public Opinion

With graduation came a plethora of stories about homeschoolers doing the same sorts of things other teenagers do. Things like putting on a musical, playing organized sports, taking field trips, and of course graduating. Some of them even earn scholarships and go off to college. Even the potentially fascinating story of living and learning at a living history museum in central Nebraska was cast aside in favor of focusing on how normal Aaron Beye, the young graduate, seemed to be.

My first reaction to the sheer number of these sorts of human interest stories cluttering my inbox was, "Stop the presses! Homeschoolers are normal!" But it was a nice mental break from the battles being fought in Tennessee, New Hampshire and California. It also provided a nice contrast to a headline that would appear on a North Carolina news site on June 16.

Death investigations prompt homeschooling recommendations

The death investigation was that of young Sean Paddock, whose mother tied him to the bed in several blankets. He suffocated to death. Because the family homeschooled, many people questioned whether or not the system could adequately protect children who were effectively "off the grid." The specific recommendations related to homeschooling made by Social Services in the report were:

• The Department of Non-Public Instruction should conduct a study regarding a Needs Assessment and pursue funding to support increased monitoring and oversight to home schools


• The State Fatality Review Team supports the continued efforts of the Division of Social Services in regard to the gathering of statistics related to specific school situations in child protective services


• The State Fatality Review Team recommends that the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner begin to track school status at the time of death and make available this information on a yearly basis to the North Carolina Child Fatality Task Force and the state-level North Carolina Child Fatality Prevention Team. State Child Fatality Review, Findings and Recommendations
  

While I was constructing my post in response to these recommendations, I focused on how Sean was not of compulsory school age, how the state was involved with monitoring Sean's well-being because he was placed in the Paddock's home by Social Services for adoption and there had been prior allegations of abuse, another story came across my computer.

Teen tied to tree overnight dies.

A homeschooled teen, tied there by his father as a disciplinary action.

Unfortunately, these kinds of stories slip easily into the common stereotype many people have that we homeschool in order to "hide" our children from the public. But they also inspire a certain level of defensiveness among homeschoolers that can come across as a little insensitive to the horrific torture these children experience. Of course it isn't a homeschooling issue. An average of four children are murdered each day in the United States, a number that has been increasing steadily. 79% are younger than four, and 39% have had previous contact with Social Services. Monitoring homeschool families would prevent very few of these cases, if any, considering that most of the children are not yet of compulsory school age, and even schools miss the warning signs in the children they see every day. A summary from ChildHelp:

But people still worry about what could happen. Homeschooling is not well understood, is often met with some level of suspicion, and seems like a "good" way to hide abuse. And people seem frighteningly willing to forsake any liberty "for the children." Even if the actual benefits to the children are immeasurably small. The arguments we construct, however, seem to fall flat on those outside of homeschooling.

Then a thought struck me. Perhaps these small human interest stories appearing in local papers across America could be potentially more beneficial to homeschooling than they might first appear. These stories present homeschooled youth a lot like "the kid next door." You can connect with their stories because they are not doing anything extraordinary, are obviously not excluded from the normal social lives of American teenagers, and they so often credit their homeschool experience for the confidence they have to pursue their dreams.

Most stereotypes are built on ignorance rather than overt hostility, and personal experience goes a long way toward shaping a person's opinions of homeschooling. While having a friend who homeschools is likely the best way for non-homeschoolers to see homeschooling in a more positive light, these sorts of human interest stories probably rank a close second to meeting a friendly homeschool family at the doctor's office. Over time, these snapshots of the lives of real homeschoolers may go a long way in building a more positive image of homeschooling with the public.

Fortunately, these types of articles are not that difficult to write, and reporters are generally pleased to have brief articles about people in the community. Although it is generally more focused on homeschool groups than individual homeschoolers, Mary Griffith's The Homeschooling Image: Public Relations Basics is an excellent starting point for anyone interested in writing an article, a feature, an editorial or who is asked for an interview for a story. Even nicer, it is available as a free download.

A story about your homeschool group's field trip to the apiary may not seem like "news," but imagine it as an invitation to the public to take a peek into your life. Such glimpses could prove more important to public opinion in the long run than well-crafted arguments in response to calls for greater monitoring of homeschools.



Dana Hanley is a fourth year homeschooling mom to three girls and a boy. In her column, she will be taking a look at homeschoolers who have affected the news and news that affects homeschoolers. Dana is the host of Home School Talk, a weekly one hour broadcast focused on homeschool news and opinion. Visit her blog, Principled Discovery.

How Does Homeschooling Benefit Society? GIVEAWAY INCLUDED!

On April 24, Ellison Research released the results of a study revealing America's opinions regarding different educational options. At the bottom of the list, public schools did not fare well. Homeschooling, it seems, has begun to take its place among recognized and viable educational options.

Americans see home schooling in a slightly more positive light than they do public schools. The average rating for home schooling quality of education is 3.14, with 11% calling it excellent, 37% overall having a positive impression of it, and 25% having a negative impression of it. Ellison Research

This is much better than the national opinions reflected in a Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll released in 2001 in which 54% of respondents indicated that they believed homeschooling was "a bad thing for the nation." National opinion, it seems, is moving in the right direction.

With more attention, however, may come more scrutiny. While the public may be more favorably disposed to homeschooling, they are also more aware of its existence. The old question "Is it legal?" is giving way to a general surprise at how few regulations there are in some states. As “SAD” responded in the comment section of the Lincoln Journal Star blog:

You must be kidding! There isn’t a program in placr [sic] for the Dept of Education to assure; measure; and monitor performance of children home schooled? That is neglecting the value of education and children. Maybe Dr. Christensen has been delinquent in due diligence. What have Raikes and the Education Committee been doing? Who is looking out for the children? Thank you DiAnna! Lincoln Journal Star blog

While we have had occasional, ongoing battles in our state legislatures which have largely been successful at preventing increased regulation, we have also benefited from the public's general ignorance and assumption that the state was overseeing the process, that homeschools were being held to the same accountability measures as public schools, and that we did have regular meetings with someone with a certificate.

How do we best deal with this? In the Homeschoolers United forum,* the moderator asked an interesting question:

How does homeschooling benefit society?

Other than the occasional list of historic figures who were homeschooled, most of the defenses I have read focus on how homeschooling benefits us and our children. But is there an actual benefit to society, one which even those who would never choose to homeschool themselves might recognize as valuable? The moderator shared an interesting story of another homeschooler who had attended a presentation by Sally Reed, national President of Friends of the Library.

She said something interesting that I think applies to homeschooling as well as libraries. Her comment was that when we advocate we don't necessarily want people to become library users but library supporters. She said she had her own epiphany in a Rotary Club meeting where the speaker was presenting info about the city's bus system. She was expecting him to get up and tell about how many bus routes they had and how many people rode the bus and how efficient it was and that sort of thing. Instead he got up and spoke about how much the bus system was saving the city in terms of reduced traffic; how many more parking lots and street lanes they would have to add if all the people riding the buses started driving, environmental impact, etc.

I believe homeschooling has benefited society by the mere existence of a successful alternative to public education. Not only do involved parents have an alternative, but the presence of homeschooling in the national education debate forces people to consider what education really is and who should be in control of it, as well as some pretty fundamental questions about the role the government should play in the private sphere.

But I doubt the average citizen will jump aboard for those kinds of reasons. In what other ways has homeschooling benefited society?

*Note: The Homeschoolers United forum maintains a "repost freely" policy in order to promote discussion on topics relevant to homeschool advocacy.



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.

Would you like to win a copy of Home School Heroes by HSLDA Senior Counsel Christopher Klicka (Forward by Josh Harris)? Simply enter a comment on any TWO articles in the June Edition of Heart of the Matter.

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.