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Learning at home |
Opting out of public education
Folio Staff
Maureen Crawford with daughter Laura Oudshoom |
Home schooling was not an easy decision for Dr. David Hammond, a sessional instructor in the education faculty, and his wife Rosalyn Forest. They’d always believed in public education, and after a considerable amount of research, had enrolled their daughter Elyse in some of the most progressive programs Vancouver and Edmonton had to offer. Yet even at their best, says Forest, something vital was missing in the public schools.
"The things that disturbed us and saddened us in the culture at large were things that couldn’t help but be reproduced in the school community," says Forest. What bothered her most, she says, was that young children in school were rarely encouraged to think critically, or reflect on the relevance of what they were learning. "Kids were developing a very strong sense of the meaninglessness of their own experience, and that was really heartbreaking to us."
So two years ago, when Elyse was nine, Forest and Hammond brought her home to "challenge ourselves to be more thoughtful about the way we’re living our lives." Forest says she and her husband are both passionate about social critique and want their daughter to raise difficult questions without the pervasive, unrelenting pressure to conform.
Forest says she continues to feel ambivalent about the notion of retreat from community life, however, especially when she believes so strongly in democratic participation and social change. It was Forest’s own mother who put the question to her most bluntly one day: "Why would you who care so passionately about the public world, and about the state our society is in, why would you withdraw in that way?"
It’s a question other home-schooling parents may share.
There are just over 8,000 home-educated students in Alberta, out of 500,000 students in total, and those numbers have remained fairly consistent over the past few years. According to Alberta Education regulations (now under review), parents of home-schooled children must register with an accredited private school and agree to regular monitoring and testing.
Parents must also submit a program of study to the school for approval, but it doesn’t have to be based on the Alberta school curriculum, and this can lead to problems, says Alberta Teachers’ Association spokesperson Denele Somshor-Walsh.
"We have some people home schooling who are using programs from the United States... some Christian fundamentalist programs coming out of Texas," she says. "It’s not a problem if [parents] follow the Alberta program of studies, but we have some who are not."
Most worrisome, says ATA News editor David Flower, are radical groups such as the Home Education Corporation of Alberta (HECA), an organization claiming to represent 6,000 unregistered, home-educated children across the province. At a presentation to the Standing Policy Committee on Education and training last month, HECA president Dick Barendregt argued that "the Lord has appointed to parents the responsibility and final authority to secure, guide, and control the education of their children" and that "Christians, those who hold to the inerrant word of God, have not and will not enter into partnership with the government in the rearing of their children."
"In all fairness this has to lead one to question... what kind of education the students are being given," says Flower. "I guess it bothers me because I’m not sure that’s what a democracy is all about. I do accept that everybody has a right to make certain decisions. Likewise if you want to be members of a society you have some obligations to that society and the way it operates. It bothers me when you have to take children away and isolate them for the sake of religion, because what are you afraid of?"
However Dr. Frank Peters, a professor of educational policy studies, says the dangers of home education are frequently exaggerated. The vast majority of home-educated students, he says, are not choosing to stay home for strictly religious reasons: "This is not a rise of a neo-fundamentalist movement here."
One common argument in favour of public education is that it "socializes" children, helping them to function effectively in a community of peers. But Peters says too much is made of that argument, because the best environment for socialization really depends on the child.
For some, he says the public system may indeed do more harm than good. As any junior high student will tell you, it’s certainly possible to feel alone and rejected in a crowd—hardly the best way to develop a strong public persona.
"Sometimes the experience of home-educated kids can be less than we want—heck, that’s the way it is in our schools too," says Peters. "Don’t get me wrong—I don’t want to be in any way critical of our public or private schools. I think they’re doing a fantastic job. But 8,000 out of 500,000 students isn’t exactly time to man the lifeboats."
Peters adds that today’s public is more educated than perhaps at any other time in our history, and many parents are so disenchanted with the recent downsizing of the educational system they want to have more control in their children’s lives. In the end, however, it comes down to a matter of free choice and tolerance. We may not all approve of how some choose to educate their children, he says, but their right to do so must be defended if we believe in democracy and freedom.
"[The government] can’t on one hand say the most significant educator in the child’s life is the parent, and then turn around when the parents want to be the home educator and say, ‘you can’t do this because you haven’t got the training.’ It’s almost like saying there’s one true church and everybody has to belong to it, and anybody with a different view from that is aberrant or devious or something."
For the time being, Forest and Hammond will continue to educate their daughter at home, more or less following the Alberta curriculum. Elyse also attends the Argyll Home Education Services Centre one day a week, a program supporting home educated children to which she submits a portfolio of work twice a year.
Together Elyse and her parents will continue to reflect on the life worth living. When and if Elyse decides on her own to return to school, Forest says she won’t resist.
"I don’t want to be protecting Elyse from things that are part of the world," she says. "I wanted very much to work within a public system. We believed in that, and I still feel that way.
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