Teachers, starved for technology, are bounty hunting homeschooled children.
Such is the case in Mason County, Ky., where The Ledger Independent reports that local public school teachers are being encouraged to make house calls to dropouts and homeschoolers alike, convincing them to return to school.
For each student that rejoins the fold and stays for a year, the teachers receive new technology in their classrooms.
While it's disturbing that homeschoolers are being equated with dropouts, I'm more concerned with the reasoning of Superintendent Tim Moore, who is behind this clever idea.
When asked to defend his attack on home educators, he replied, "Education is more than learning in books." He added, "social aspects of school are important as well," according to the article.
Ah, "socialization," that old terror of the homeschooling world. As menacing as the boogeyman - and equally as real.
I have lived between the realms of public and home education. While I spent the majority of my youth in public schools, I've had numerous home-educated friends, attended home-schooling conventions and support groups and, for a brief year in high school, homeschooled myself. And I remember a little about both worlds that the Mason County superintendent forgets.
The office-bound superintendent forgets that the socialization found in traditional schools (public and private) is appalling. K-12 students are segregated by age and denied interaction both with older people (from whom they could learn) and younger kids (whom they could help socialize).
More broadly, schools tend to represent one socioeconomic group, thus keeping people from the suburbs, the projects, and the upper crust estranged from each other. Don't look to Republican conspiracies for our society's lack of concern for the poor - look to our schools' separation of classes.
The awfulness of school socialization is no secret. Think of movies like "The Breakfast Club" and "Mean Girls. Think of your own middle-school experience.
While catastrophes like Columbine are rare, their roots are present everywhere: bullying, cliques, the hierarchy of popularity and the outcasts who are rejected from that hierarchy. By removing children from real life and by forcing them to make their own way in an alienating system, schools breed these problems.
A few of the homeschoolers I've known have lived up to the "bubble" stereotype. One in particular was so ignorant of the world and so closed in her thinking that it's hard to imagine her future options.
But public schools have these sorts of students as well - the fanatically nerdy kid whose only friend is the teacher, or the horribly shy child who whispers when called on, if she talks at all.
But I can also report incredible successes among homeschoolers. I've known dozens of kids who were outgoing, bright, and interesting; children who participated in sports and dance and art and had many friends.
I've known two grade-school girls who are among the most socially adept people I've met. They are responsible and can be trusted with infants. They are the natural leaders of their peers, and can mingle with teens. They deal naturally with adults, and are experienced with the elderly.
In my experience, I'd describe a majority of homeschoolers as socially above average.
Why the stereotype of the clueless homeschooler, then? I suspect the poor interactions between conservative Christian homeschoolers (a vocal group in the homeschooling community) and the broader society stem from cultural differences rather than from socialization problems.
Part of the home-education community has deliberately opted out of the broader culture and has put values like personal righteousness and religious orthodoxy at a premium. Relations with the rest of America are bound to be strained, and stereotyping is inevitable.
Homeschooling uniquely allows children to be well socialized. Traditional schooling, in contrast, pulls children out of the real world of community and work and hurts socialization.
The last thing Mason County, Ky., needs is for someone to order the bounty hunting of the community's independent thinkers. Good Lord. You would have thought a superintendent would have been better socialized than that.
Brandon Hendrickson is a history and religious studies graduate student. He is currently working as a tutor and studying educational theory. He can be poked, prodded, and mocked at Brandon.Hendrickson@asu.edu.
