Free The Schools

Should schools read the private journals of students?

Do schools ever have the right to read private journals, looking for a students bad thoughts? Kimberly Swygert is on the offensive again, this time taking aim at Zero-Tolerance rules that lead to the expulsion of good students, for doing the kind of harmless things that kids do, like write fictional stories in their private journals.

If I were Rachel's parents, I'd sue the pants off everyone involved in this. This is absolutely bottom-of-the barrel, negative-IQ, no-judgment-involved thinking. Her father is absolutely right to say that her constitutional rights have been violated, although I'm amazed at the restraint her parents are displaying in this article. I would not have even ceded, as does her mother, that this extremely private literature should have been brought to the parents' attention.

Even if we give the teacher leeway for confiscating the journal, on the grounds that it was a non-class-related item being passed around during class, the teacher had no right to keep it and no right to read it. And then to summon the police in and expel a creative honors student for a private work of fiction? This young woman must feel like she's been raped. I would have, if a teacher took my private journal, read it, and then pressed criminal charges against me for what was in it, resulting in publicity which declared to the entire school, not to mention the world, what was in the journal.

Every time I assume that the zero-tolerance idiocies cannot get worse, they do. Next up, I assume, is that schools will move beyond regulating all thought, speech, and action within the school grounds and start prosecuting students for "crimes" committed off the grounds (in fact, since Rachel wrote the story at home, isn't that exactly what has happened here?). No kid in the public school system will be safe.

Scary

This is the kind of attitude that occasionally makes me pause and wonder if my support for home-schooling is wise:

I don't think I would trust another family to homeschool my child any more than I would trust the public schools with her welfare.

There is not one family in the whole world that this woman trusts? The sentence suggests a fear of outsiders. I can't know the woman's situation, maybe she's lost contact with all her good friends from years past, maybe her husband was just transferred to an obscure location in Canada and now the family lives in a town where they know no one. But I worry for the child raised in an environment that closed to the outside.

The middle ground

There is a really good debate about homeschooling going on over at Crooked Timber. Chris Bertram wrote:

Children have an interest in growing up with various moral capacities, including the capacity to form, revise, etc their aims in life, a sense of justice, and so on. Schools function not just as purveyors of information about maths, physics and geography but also as social environments in which individuals learn to rub along with others and get exposed to a wider range of social influences than they would at home (or perhaps than their parents judge desirable). That’s a good thing, and is a reason to be opposed to home schooling.

BUT. It all depends what the options are. In an ideal system no child would be home schooled, but faced with the prospect of unacceptably poor schools it might well be the right thing for a parent to do. The point about a broad social environment also cuts two ways. Although being exposed to those wider influences and to peer groups is valuable, in reality the peer groups that children have available may be (really and not just in the imagination of paranoid overprotective parents) be dangerous and bad.

Where I am at in Virginia, homeschooling seems popular, but it is not really “home” schooling. It is 20 to 30 parents getting their kids together to educate them. This is not really “home” schooling, this is more like a private school run on the cheap. But it is called home-schooling and the government classifies it as such.

These are parents who can not afford private schools but love the diversity and critical thinking that is fostered at private schools. They want to give their kids something like that.

By the way, despite the religous stereotype, and despite the fact that I’m in Virginia, all the parents I know who home-school are secular and politically liberal-left. Their cultural ancestors are the hippies of the 1960s counter-culture which, lets remember, had an anti-government libertarian streak.

Some of the other, to the point, comment included:

Seems to me that homeschooling also requires a good deal of unpaid labor by women. Not saying there aren’t fathers who homeschool, but the homeschoolers I’ve come across are mothers (most in a two-parent home with a male breadwinner).

and:

Homeschooler does not always equal right wing religious conservative. I’m a liberal and I homeschool. I want my daughter to retain her freedom, her privacy, her creativity and her passions. I don’t want her dumbed down to the lowest common denominator in any classroom setting. I want her to think for herself instead of being indoctrinated by the government thought police that run the public schools. Even if I didn’t care about any of the above, today’s Zero Tolerance policies are more than any sane person could accept and there is no way I’ll sign her up for that kind of potential abuse.

The premise that Bertram opened the discussion with, "in a just society", seems a little utopian, but I haven't read Rawls, so I've no idea how "just society" is being defined here. Perhaps it is not utopian. However, many of my liberal friends take the line "rather than having people drop out of the public schools, why don't we fix the public schools?" and, another popular line is, "there are some very good public schools, and our aim should be to raise all schools to their level."

As I've said before, I believe there are no good public schools, because public schools are not and never can be wholly under the control of the parents who send their kids there. I speak of schools that collect their students from a fixed geographic region, and thus collect students whose interests and talents are unrelated. What's better is to have schools unrelated to geography, so that kids can choose them based on their interests. This could, theoretically, happen with government-run schools, though so far no society has ever done it. I've an easier time believing this can be achieved through school vouchers and private schools.

Who are we and why are we here?

In the Spring and Summer of 2002 I had a weblog called Free The Schools. That site is now dead but I still have the entries. I've decided to restart the blog, in a new form. You'll see the link below.

These are my reasons for starting this new blog:

1.) I want to republish the old entries.

2.) I want to have a site that is pro-school vouchers.

3.) I want to have a pro-voucher site that is made up mostly of interviews with parents and children regarding their experience of public, private, and home schooling.

4.) Above all else, I want to focus on convincing my friends on the political Left that this is an issue they should support, rather than oppose. Too many of my friends unthinkingly oppose vouchers for no other reason than that the Republican’s are for them. And yet, the vast majority of parents I’ve spoken to are politically on the Left. And so, my friends on the Left, I would have you consider the truth of the matter: many parents who agree with you on all other issues have broken with you on this issue. Have you asked yourself why?

Devon Sproule writes about her education

Posted on: 08-09-2002 16:03

Devon Sproule, a female folk-singer well known in the central Virginia area, was nice enough to respond to my questions about her education. I post her remarks below, and once again, as before, my questions are in bold, her response is in plain text:

1.) Did you like being homeschooled?

Most certainly. It's always difficult to say when you're right in the middle of it but looking back, I'd say I learned more in my years of homeschooling on how to get along in life than in the other forms of education I dabbled in.

2.) Do you think your education was better because you were homeschooled?

Yes, but I do think that the overall positive experience I had in my education had to do with the variety of experiences that I had.

3.) Who decided what you would study, you, your folks, or outside forces?

Mostly my mom and I. Of course, when I was briefly in public school the superintendent and teachers tended to try to get all up in it. But we two had much more of an idea about the options we had. My dad had a lot to do with a lot of the things I know now, but my mom and I made the decisions.

4.) Was there ever a time you would have prefered public education?

Yes, and I did about two and half years of it, by my own choice. It wasn't my mom's first choice of education for me but she supported me fully when I decided to give it a try, and helped me enormously when I dropped out of high school.

5.) Did homeschooling cause your folks any financial strain?

No. Twin Oaks supported all my endeavors (http://www.TwinOaks.org)

Laura Brown on education

Posted on: 08-03-2002 09:18

Laura Brown is raising two kids with her partner, Glenn, in Virginia, USA. Her kids have had experience with both public and private school, so I asked Laura about the differences between those experiences. She was nice enough to write me an email expressing her views, which I print here, almost in it's entirety:

I would like to have some kind of financial assistance go to people sending their kids to private schools. I would be interested in some kind of system where families in a lower socio-economic bracket have access to private schools. It would create better diversity in the private sector, which at this point is the only drawback (except the financial hardships) since almost everyone attending private schools is white middle/upper class.

We originally started out placing our 6 year old in public school. We were not happy about the decision, but it was a financial one. We didn't have the resources to send the children to a private school. The first two weeks were very hard for Aspen (who was then six). He has a ton of energy, even for a boy, and was accustomed to roaming around in the woods and playing all day. He had no prior school experience and adjusting to such a completely new environment and enforced structure was difficult for him. He had already experienced a lot of socialization with other children and other adults (living in an intentional community with 40 adults and 30 children), so we weren't too concerned about him adjusting socially. But, it quickly became apparent that he was having trouble. Everyday when he came home, we would ask him "How was school?" and he always replied that it was fine but the kids in his class were "just jerks." Everyday it was the same thing "The boys in my class--they're just jerks." We thought maybe he was having a conflict with a particular group of boys or a particular situation had arisen.

So we continued to ask him "Well, what do you mean? What makes them jerks?" His response had nothing to do with anything that had personally happened to him. He told us that the boys "don't listen to the teacher and they talk when she's talking and they tell each other to shut up." I asked him if anything had happened to him specifically--if he had any problems with anyone or any fights. He said no, but that he kept a boy from hitting another boy on the playground. It seems the standards of behavior he was accustomed to at home were not applied at school.

Aspen became increasing upset and was crying almost every night -- not just crying, but sobbing. At this point, we contacted the private school near us and they worked out a lot of financial aid for us. We cleaned the school two nights a week and Glen taught a class there once a week, plus they lowered the tuition. As soon as Aspen switched to the private school his complaints about school stopped, he stopped crying every night, and adjusted well to the new environment. He is still "all boy" but has a teacher who stresses politeness, manners, and being kind to each other. Any conflicts are addressed as a whole class with group discussions. His teacher also works on building the children's self-esteem -- she prioritizes that.

There is also a sense of community in the school -- it is very small, maybe 70 students total and everyone knows each other. The older children are paired with the younger ones for "book buddies" time and also for school assemblies and activities. If the middle schoolers have learned a new song, they might visit the nursey to share it. One of Aspen's favorite parts of the day is in the morning when he visits the nursery kids and gets to play with them a little in their room. He likes being the "big kid," which is a nice role for him to be in since he was a bit younger than his classmates.

This private school also does not place children into grades according to age. There are no true grade designations and children are placed in classrooms according to their academic and social capabilities. Both Aspen and Kyra will have the same teacher next year and have a chance to be the older ones in the class. This will be helpful for their self-esteem and give them a chance to build more academic skills before moving on to a more challenging level. If they were enrolled in public school, they would be forced on to the next grade and be falling behind their peers. Kyra is six years old, but she just hasn't been ready to remember all the letter sounds, and Aspen is also behind grade level for his age. I'd rather see them do well in an appropriate placement than get discouraged and give up trying because they were forced into a grade that's beyond their abilities.

This private school has values that are more in line with ours. They emphasize taking care of the environment. The kids were in a school play about a rain forest and all the animals and trees that lived there. They emphasize community and parent involvement and are staffed by many parents like us who are working off tuition credits. They did not promote patriotism after Sept 11th (no flags and 'What I love about this country' and 'What it means to be an American' essays on the school hall walls like I saw in public school), but instead had the children reflect about the event and express their feelings through poetry and letters to world leaders.

E.J. Dionne Jr attacks school vouchers

Posted on: 07-07-2002 12:39

In his most recent column, Education Reform in the Abstract, E.J. Dionne Jr writes critically of school vouchers:

Vouchers have a chance to work in some of our older big cities because those cities have reasonably extensive systems of Catholic schools built by earlier generations of immigrants. Those systems are cheap enough that modest public expenditures can make them affordable. Cleveland's voucher system, approved by the court last week, gives low-income parents all of $2,250. In most private schools that amount would not even come close to covering costs.

And in impoverished school districts in rural America -- not to mention large stretches of the country outside the Northeast and Midwest -- alternative systems do not exist. Those who claim that vouchers would call forth a whole new system of private schools are relying on hopes and prayers, not data and experience.

Public charter schools are an excellent way of pushing reform. But as a friend involved in education research said recently, new schools have about the same failure rate as new restaurants. An exaggeration, perhaps, but his point is right: Starting a new school is very hard. To think alternative systems will pop up all over the country is to engage in utopian wishful thinking.

Nor do voucher advocates have an answer to the very inequality questions they raise. ...Consider a Census Bureau study in May. It found that New York and New Jersey spend more than $10,000 per public school pupil, while Mississippi and Tennessee spend a little more than $5,000. Even taking into account differences in the cost of living, which pair of states has the better chance of attracting the best new teachers? Vouchers won't help Mississippi or Tennessee solve this problem.

I like this essay because it hits all the points that can be made against vouchers, and it does so concisely and forcefully. However, before anyone takes Dionne's argument seriously, they should ask themselves some questions.

"To think alternative systems will pop up all over the country is to engage in utopian wishful thinking." Is this a line of reasoning that you would be comfortable applying elsewhere? Does the private sector fail to create alternative systems when the government stops doing a task? We are now 30 years deep into the era of deregulation, if it is failure, why has there not been a backlash against it? With the possible exception of the airline industry, isn't the American consumer happier with the quality of goods and service they now get than during the era of heavy regulation?

Would any of us be comfortable applying the same sentence to other countries? I'm thinking in particular of the ex-Communist countries. Would anyone be comfortable saying "To think alternative systems will pop up all over the country is to engage in utopian wishful thinking" when speaking of Russia? Has not the whole of Western civilization engaged in this utopian thinking since 1917, and do we not now generally consider ourselves to have won that particular argument?

Getting back to the heart of Dionne's argument, does the free market sometimes fail to provide services to poor rural areas? Absolutely. An example would be phone service. Early in the 1900s, during the Progressive Era, the Progressive Republicans commited this country to the principle of universal access to phone lines. It was clear that the free market would not be able to provide phone service in outlying areas, the infrastructure costs per customer ratio was too high. And so the universal access tax was imposed. With this subsidy, phone technology reached about 99% of the population. Nowadays there is no corner of America from which you can't make a call.

The same is also very likely true for schools: without a subsidy the market would fail poor rural areas. However, no one has ever suggested that schools shouldn't be subsidized. They are currently paid for entirely with a tax, and that will go on being true under a voucher system, just as it has gone on before. The goverment will provide what funds are needed.

One could argue that in some areas the government already fails to provide sufficient funds for education. Yes, but that is not an argument against vouchers. That is an argument for more funding of American education. Personally, additional funding is something I support. But the extra money, by itself, won't give America the kind of school system that it wants.

Eve Tushnet on school vouchers

Posted on: 07-22-2002 14:50

Eve Tushnet has been writing some great stuff on the issue of school vouchers. Here's one of many bits that I liked:

Some voucher opponents ask whether Christian voucher supporters would still favor vouchers if large numbers of parents began using them to send their children to radical Islamist madrassas. My response is basically, again, rich parents can already do this! If you're OK with madrassas for the rich--if you think they're wrong but you won't outlaw them, say--then saying poor parents can't use vouchers at madrassas is pretty weird. The basic claim here is that parents can direct their children's education in almost all cases. (There are obvious exceptions for child abuse; there are also restrictions such as testing that all children must pass, or school-certification requirements; but there aren't religious litmus tests.) If you deny that claim, you should oppose private schooling in general. If you accept that claim, you may have other reasons for opposing vouchers, but "some parents might make bad choices!" can't be one of them.

Follow up questions for Alex Davis

Posted on: 06-26-2002 13:04

I asked Alex Davis some follow up questions. He's been nice enough to reply. Below are the questions, in bold, and his answers.

I'm sure at least some people will read [what you wrote] and wonder if your education has any structure at all. Can you wrap some context around this for us? Could you say something about how decisions get made? I'm looking for something concrete. What role, if any, do your folks play in shaping your education?

What I wrote does seem a little loosey goosey. Luckily my family and friends and this community is supportive of unschooling and so I have the support to follow my interests. For example, I had a passion for music when I was younger (I still do). Some friends who homeschooled were taking Irish dance classes. I decided to try the classes since my friends were taking them and eventually I followed the dancing to Irish fiddle. I had a teacher Tes Slominski and another teacher and her and some other friends founded the Blue Ridge Irish Music School (which you might have seen ads for in the paper.) Anyways, I sort of fell into the fiddle through following friends, that's how that decision got made. My folks help get me set up with the teachers I need to study the subject and the time and place and money if I need it (my Grandmother is very helpful with financial assistance as well) and then I learn with mentors etc. In this way my education is more of a dialogue, studying with other people rather than swallowing what the public school system decides. My folks and I have worked together in the past, but at this point I'm pushing for independence and studying what I want to learn on MY own time.

You list a very wide and impressive range of activities. Was the whole range drawn entirely from your interests or did your folks have any influence on what you did? Did any outside force shape decisions at all (I guess I mean the government)?

My folks but also friends etc. I took an Eastern Philosophy class at Piedmont last semester that has shaped my decision to further study Taoist beliefs. PVCC is the government i don't know if that's the answer you're looking for tho'..... Another example is that we decided to try out the American School curriculum instead of taking the placement test at the end of the year.

Also, are you under pressure to eventually conform to the SOLs? Does the state impose any limits at all on the freedom of your education?

I'm taking my GED this July and then I'm FREE for life. SOLs? They never bother us. There are some limits: we have to report to the school system at the end of the year with test results or a curriculum description so that they know that I learned something.

Alex Davis writes about being homeschooled

Posted on: 06-12-2002 16:48

Alex Davis is 16 years old. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is being homeschooled. I sent him some questions by email and he's been nice enough to write me back. I post here the questions and his answers (with some very light editing, like capitalizing "I"s):

1.) Do you like homeschooling?
Yes. I love it. Because it gives me freedom to study the things I want to
learn about instead of what the school system believes is important. The
world is my classroom instead of the narrow confines of sitting at a desk
for 6 hours a day. What I love about homeschooling is FREEDOM. Freedom to
study what I want to study at my own pace. Freedom from rules and hall
passes. Freedom to decide when I want to go the bathroom.

In general I like homeschooling because it gives me freedom to discover and explore the world and come to my own opinions about what is important to me in life. It allows me to follow the subjects I am passionate about instead of being forced to study facts that mean nothing to me.

Homeschooling is a personal education that is different for each person's needs and interests. For example some prefer a rigorous school-at-home approach complete with workbooks and book reviews. Others prefer a more relaxed way of education (more where I come from) encouraging learning by living, also called unschooling, where a student studies a subject once he or she is motivated to do so. This means that many students go at different rates - a homeschooling friend of mine didn't learn to read until they were 10. This isn't a bad thing, but it's realistic, we don't all learn in the same way at the same rate. Unschooling is geared towards the self-directed and self-motivated student.

2.) Do you think your education would be better or worse in a public school?
It depends on your definition of education. What is a good education? Is it memorizing the dates of the American Revolution? Or is it learning what is interesting to you at your own pace through unique mentorships and independent projects? I think my education would be much worse if I were to be subjected to the machinery of the factory of massive compulsory schooling (public school).

[What I've got now] equals unique self-directed education, learning by living, freedom to follow my own interests. Public school equals loss of individuality, conformity, no time for what I'm interested in, cramming for the test then forgetting everything after it's over, filling my brain with meaningless facts instead of meaningful questions about what I am interested in.

3.) Do you homeschool at home or at other people's houses or where? Whom do you homeschool with?
This past semester I took Orchestra at CHS, two classes at PVCC (Tropical Ecology and Eastern Philosophy) studied History/Government/Philosophy/Economics with my Grandmother, photography with Alexandria Searls, theater at Live Arts, math workbook at home, for social studies I interned at the Virginia Organizing Project, for music I studied fiddle with the Blue Ridge Irish Music School, and I also founded a community garden, visited Puerto Rico, participated in a Lighthouse film workshop in which I created a film about the April 20th protest in DC, was a member of the peer education sexual assault awareness group VIVA: Voices for Interpersonal Violence Alternatives. So my homeschooling happens in the home, at other people's
house and in the larger community. Like I said the world is my classroom.

There are several homeschooling groups. I founded a classics book club that meets monthly. Last Fall I was with a Shakespeare club and there have been writer's groups etc. My Grandmother who founded the Observer (before it became conservative) is a mentor to me, as well as Ernie Reed, founder of
the Living Education Center, folks at Live Arts, Alexandria Searls (photographer and City Council candidate) and many other community minded folk. I homeschool with all different kinds of people from old to young.

4.) Does homeschooling cost much? (I'm assuming your folks get no help from
the government in terms of money for your education.)
It depends on how you want to homeschool. We're lucky: my father works for the Friends of the Library book sale so we get a lot of free books. Also my Grandmother (who is well off) finances many of the classes I take. Generally our method is very cheap: see where the student wants to go. For things
like photography which are expensive I used Alex's darkroom and Will May's darkroom (another photographer). I held a job for a while to pay for chemicals to start a film developing darkroom of my own. In general if there are price obstacles there are ways to go around it.

5.) How do you think education should be financed in America?
Imagine independent learning centers that would help self-motivated students
hook up with mentors and resources that would be financed by the government much in the same way public education is financed by the government now.