I have particular conversations about ‘help’ every so often. Some on-line, some with people who want to help or are helping.  There is a generally embedded notion in our country that there always ’should be someone here to help’.  The "someone" not necessarily a someone, but a bureaucracy called our government.

I hear this below from people.  Many of them are homeschoolers:

"I think more people than you realize are completely negligent of their children’s education."

What does completely negligent of your child’s education mean?  Do they mean:

  • Not having a library card
  • Not having writing utensils or paper in the home
  • Not having books in the home

It’s possible (but not yet illegal) to not have those learning tools in homes where children attend public schools.  But the children are fulfilling compulsory attendance laws with funded clock hours and seat time.  No problem, ay?  It should certainly be feasible that when the educational experts took over, that the children graduated with 12th grade skills, including reading, writing, and arithmetic. 
What about the dropouts and pushouts and college attendees taking remedial classes? Our governmental leaders are planning on expanding the system.  From "the day they are born to the day they begin a career".
That growth might miraculously work where it hasn’t before? 
For example, from the Latin American Herald Tribune:

Only 49 percent of Latino children go to preschool learning centers, compared with 60 percent of non-Hispanic tots.

By eighth grade, only 16 percent of Hispanic students are reading at grade level or better, compared with 39 percent of non-Hispanic white students, according to data of the 2006 National Survey on Educational Progress.

Some 22 percent of Hispanic students fail to complete high school, a proportion three times higher than that of their white classmates.

As much as governmental stats are worth…not much…11% doesn’t seem to be much of a difference related to reading successes 9 years later, let alone what happens to these kids in high school.

Aren’t families supposed to be negligent of their kids’ education?
We’re not the experts, after all.  No one hears that more than the homeschool community, when more governmental oversight is demanded by the experts/educational entities outside our family.

Here’s another one I hear a lot:

"Not every person in the world is willing or able or should be allowed to homeschool. Schools will always be needed."

How do we determine who should or shouldn’t be allowed? Who will decide that? The schools or other governmental authorities? Those same interested parties who don’t want us (any of us) to be able to homeschool at all. Slippery slope.

We hear about how experts’ hands are tied as they can’t get parents to care about their child’s education, or even read to them.  But why should they, when the experts will fix all that up in time….Right?  Right.

I’ve worked with public school families at a food pantry/clothes closet. They’re doing the best they can. Their hope, as many barely scrape by, is that the schools are at least doing their job. When I’ve listened to some of their stories, I hear of derision and intimidation by many in the school.

There are several wonderful teachers in our school district. Those teachers who can help a child read and educate the children in a classroom are absolutely amazing. Their salaries could be increased triple fold and I’d be satisfied. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way in the school system.  Those same individuals have been frustrated many times with ‘the system’ and the ties that bind them.

The schools are often creating bigger problems for families…their kids need to go to the pede and get the foregone conclusion of drugs for the disorder the teacher diagnosed. The conferences sometimes are a matter of "You listen while I talk" without regard to the parents living with the child and having to deal with the end results of a school day.
Many of the individuals that I met in the clothes closet are 100 times better people than I’ll ever be. They are taking care of extended family with limited resources and trying to make sure all have a safe place to land. They are overwhelmed.

I think these are the same folks that there is concern about, but I think they’re the most failed in the public schools. Often, their only educational hope in their minds is the public school. They’re dealing with a lot of helplessness and lack of empowerment in that finality.

What happens when those families look to the homeschool community for help?  Do they get it, or do they get a kick in the pants/hands off, you’re truancy poison to us?

I tend to get a little nervous about homeschooling accountability demands from within and outside the homeschooling community; thinking about the various possible learning styles that parents choose for their kids. With a range from school at home to unschooling chosen by individual parents as the best educational choice for their individual children in our homeschooling community; I want to respect their choices for their family and assume that they know best.
Haven’t homeschoolers all heard this sort of statement when the question is raised about educational funding accountability:

Schools need funding or less children can go to school. More parents will be "homeschooling" (in quotes because we all know people who don’t care about their children’s education). Those parents who let their children sit in front of the TV all day and call it homeschooling.  That is a problem for "serious" homeschoolers who actually do care about their children.

The official solution to educational neglect is entry back into the schools and a potential jail sentence for the parent.  Seems logically odd to me.

I don’t know any parents that want their children to be dumb or ignorant when they’re grown up. Even more importantly, I don’t know any kids who want to be dumb or ignorant. Kids just can’t help themselves as time goes by. If their parents let them do whatever they want (also known as radical unschooling, as I understand it) then kids will likely find something very interesting to do.

Rhonda Robinson wrote a piece in the Illinois Review about some bullying Illinois Regional Offices of Education/superintendents and in support of all homeschooling families’ freedoms:

Homeschooling Freedom– Is it ebbing away in Illinois?

All of these families retained their right to homeschool.  But there is a two-fold underlying problem that left unchecked can and will erode our homeschooling freedom in Illinois.

First, are the school officials who believe they have authority over our children while learning in our home, and that parents are to answer to the school for their children’s education rather than the other way around.

Illinois Law is clear and simple.  We are considered private schools.  The local school district has NO jurisdiction within our homes. Unless of course, you grant them that authority.

Second, there seems to be a disturbing trend of appeasement.  The Joliet family was lucky enough to have had a teacher’s certificate.  They however, were at least ready to fight in court, had her plea’s not have been heard. 

How might this story have turned out if they were unschoolers with a mother who had no teaching credentials.

I think our community should take care of everyone who needs help, but that’s lost now in too many ways. Many of the communities’ caretaking possibilities have been lost to governmental oversight for this and that. How’s that been working?

Personal empowerment can make a world of difference for folks.  How is that being sustained, even in our homeschooling community?

Grandma's help
Grandma’s help

Underground History of American Education

Government ‘Services’

Public Education labels for children