A Week of Joy (Homeschooling Positives Week)

Not Well-Rounded, But Excellent: Sean-Allen Parfitt

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positives

Not Well-Rounded, But Excellent: Sean-Allen Parfitt

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Sean-Allen Parfitt’s blog Of Pen and Heart. It was originally published on August 16, 2013. This is the second part of Sean-Allen’s three-part series for HA. Read Part One here.

My whole family has been homeschooled from kindergarten through high school. In last week’s post, I discussed how I was forbidden to learn anything that was “unapproved”. Though the effect was a deprived of a well-rounded education, I will stand by my opinion that my home education was actually quite excellent.

The base curriculum my family used was Rod and Staff. As is frequently the case with Mennonite education, the curriculum stopped at grade 10, so for grades 11 and 12 we used the curriculum by Bob Jones University Press. The BJU Press science curriculum was also used to supplement the lower grades, as was their math curriculum from 9th grade on.

The schoolwork we did was in fact quite vigorous, and Mom was a strict teacher.

We were far from “unschooled”, as some families are. Quite the opposite; we were not allowed to play until our homework was done. For many years we were required to complete every problem, question, and assignment in every lesson of every book. Every wrong answer was to be reworked and returned for re-grading until it was correct. Every reading lesson was read out loud to Mom, and any mistakes in pronunciation or inflection were to be corrected and the section read over until Mom was satisfied. Every essay was carefully scrutinized and marked up with red pen. All suggested class questions from the teacher’s manuals were duly asked, and answered. Every flash card drill was performed, with all speed times for each child written in the teacher’s book to be compared to previous work, both by the individual child, and to his or her siblings who had gone on before!

As you can see, this rigorous classroom method kept me working hard at my desk for much of my childhood. I studied math, English, science, geography, history, and other subjects. As the eldest, I did not have the competitive element that came from comparing the younger ones’ work with the older ones’. Nonetheless, the in-depth curriculum, along with Mom’s strict grading, kept me aiming for the highest grades possible. Every misspelled word was -1/4 point, and any other mistake was at least -1 point, if not -2, depending on the problem and the severity of the mistake. An A grade was 95% or higher.

I didn’t pick up as much in science and history as I did in English and math. But the education I did receive, and retain, was quite sufficient. In fact, it was superior to many public-schooled children in America.

Every 2 years our family took standardized tests, and we routinely ranked in the 99th percentile in many subjects.

When I took my SAT, even though my score wasn’t as high as I was hoping, it was still quite good. I took the entrance exam to attend Monroe Community College, which consisted of an English section and a math section. Afterward, when I sat down with the adviser, he told me that I had done so well… I had only gotten one question wrong on the whole test. They placed me in advanced composition, which in which I received an A, and when I took pre-calculus, calculus I and calculus II, I got A, A, and A-, respectively.

I believe that my academic education, though perhaps lacking in literature and humanities, was quite sound. My English skills gave me an advantage when learning Spanish, as I thoroughly understand how grammar works. My scores of essays written in school now serve me as I attempt to communicate with the world. Math was indispensable in college, and I even use it sometimes today. In fact, my career as a software engineer was born from the seeds my father planted, when he taught me how to program in MBASIC on an Osborne Executive when I was only 8 years old.

He nurtured this throughout my middle- and high-school career, and now I program for a living.

Even though there were some drawbacks to being educated at home, I emerged academically well prepared with a career path ready for me to follow. I am extremely grateful for the care my mother and father put into making sure I was ready for life. One thing I’m really not good at: speling.

*****

To be continued.

Nerdy Homeschooler: Kathryn Brightbill

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Nerdy Homeschooler: Kathryn Brightbill

Kathryn Brightbill blogs at The Life and Opinions of Kathryn Elizabeth, Person.

I’m a nerd, a geek, though I suppose not enough of one to get caught up in the arguments over which of those terms is positive and which one is the insult. I was a female computer geek back before there were enough of us for people to even start whining about “fake girl geeks” showing up at cons. When being a woman interested in tech meant you and a roomful of guys who didn’t quite know what to do with you.

I’ve read the studies, I know the statistics, and the reality is that even now in 2013, the majority of girls don’t make it out of junior high still feeling good about their abilities in math and the hard sciences. By the time they get to college, not many girls are still in the pipeline of women in technology. While the problem is multifaceted, we know that the combination of peer pressure and negative gender stereotypes makes it an uphill battle. No matter a person’s actual skill level, when the prevailing message is that people like them aren’t good at a particular subject area and there aren’t many role models, they start to internalize that message.

I missed that message.

Or rather, I should say that by the time I became aware of the idea that girls aren’t supposed to be good at math, I was sufficiently confident in my abilities that I concluded that something must be wrong with a society that says that girls can’t do math.

Being homeschooled by a former math teacher meant that it was expected that I learn enough math that the door was open to any path I might decide to pursue in college, and my sister and I were held to the same expectations as my brothers were.

I never got the message that my gender was in some way supposed to be correlated with lower math ability, or that it meant I should limit my dreams and goals for the future.

At its best, homeschooling can create a learning environment that helps to minimize the influence of societal pressures to conform to rigid gender roles and to live up (or down) to the expectations of society. That’s what homeschooling did for me. The prevailing message of my childhood was that I could be or do whatever I wanted and that no one could stop me. I didn’t internalize most of the negative gender stereotypes about women because the negative messages were drowned out by the positive. I’m convinced that one of the reasons why I was able to hold my own in the extremely male-dominated computer science major I ended up choosing in college was because I hadn’t internalized the message that I wasn’t supposed to be able to do it because I’m a girl.

It would be dishonest of me, though, to write about my positive personal experiences without also acknowledging the tension between the message I got in my own family and the messages I got from the broader homeschool world. When I was a teenager, I became acutely aware that the expectations that others had for my older brother were vastly different than what was expected for me. I was the one who wanted to go to law school, but I felt like everyone was busy encouraging my brother—who had no interest in law—to become a lawyer while not taking my interests seriously. When I changed my major to computer science in college, I got the distinct impression that it wasn’t taken seriously unless I gave the justification that programming was a career that could allow me to work from home while being a good wife and mother.

At its best, homeschooling can open up a broad range of options and free a child from the pressures of stereotypes, at its worst, it can reinforce those negative stereotypes and close off options.

For me, my homeschool experience meant that I was able to go off to college confident in my abilities and with my options open. It meant that while I was convinced that I was going to go major in history and then head directly to law school, when I discovered my freshman year that computer science interested me, I had the foundation to succeed. In the end, I discovered that studying computer science was far more interesting to me than actually doing it, and ended up with the original law school plan, but having that tech background gives me opportunities that a liberal arts major wouldn’t.

I’m not yet sure where my story ends, but it’s been an interesting ride and one that homeschooling helped make possible.

Homeschooling, The Tool My Parents Used Well: Shaney Lee

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Homeschooling, The Tool My Parents Used Well

By Shaney Lee, HARO Board Member

I see homeschooling as a tool.

Like a gardening hoe, when used correctly it can help bring life and vitality to living things. Homeschooling is not an end in and of itself; rather, the end is for parents to raise healthy, well-rounded human beings. But used incorrectly, a tool can harm the very things or people it’s meant to help thrive.

My parents were two individuals that I believe used the tool of homeschooling well.

Thanks to their efforts, I was given a solid education that enabled me to get into a well-known university on a full-tuition scholarship and graduate from that same university four years later with honors. I had a wide variety of experiences while homeschooled that I believe contributed to the well-rounded person I am today. And I grew up learning to be comfortable with being the “odd one out” when there were no other homeschoolers around, which I think at least partially contributes to my willingness to risk how others may view me in order to do the right thing.

I also have many memories of things I may not have been able to do had I not been homeschooled: volunteer projects I did during school hours, exploring subjects not typically offered in school, getting to set my own pace.

Would I have received these same benefits had I gone to public or private school, instead of being homeschooled? I’m not sure. I think I probably would have, because I believe that my parents would have taught me many of the exact same things regardless of where I went to school. Even those things I wouldn’t have been able to pursue in school probably would have been pursued in a different way outside of school.

But that’s not really the point I’m trying to make. I don’t feel any need to prove that it was “homeschooling” specifically that contributed to the many positives in my childhood that made me who I am today. The point is that, in the hands of my parents, homeschooling was a tool that they used well (even if they did occasionally make a mistake here or there). Homeschooling wasn’t the only positive experience I could have had. But, it is the positive experience I did have.

And my positive experience with homeschooling is exactly why I chose to become a founding member of Homeschool Alumni Reaching Out (HARO).

I know that many people see my decision as a sort of betrayal against homeschooling. They assume I must think homeschooling is deeply flawed and dangerous.

But that’s not it at all. It’s precisely because of my positive experience with homeschooling that I believe every child has a right to an equally positive experience. And just like any educational method, homeschooling is a tool that can be used for good or for bad. In the hands of abusive parents, homeschooling can be downright torture. In the hands of good-hearted, well-equipped, healthy parents, homeschooling can provide a child with an excellent education, and potentially open doors that wouldn’t be opened otherwise.

So I am excited for this week of positives.

I think it will show that neither Homeschoolers Anonymous nor HARO are anti-homeschooling. Rather, we are a group of individuals who have a wide range of experiences with homeschooling, but strongly believe that all children have the right to a positive educational experience.

A Week of Joy: Call for Contributions to HA’s Upcoming Positives Series

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By R.L. Stollar, HA Community Coordinator

*****

I have a very complicated relationship with homeschooling.

In many ways I have significant problems with the Christian homeschool movement; in many other ways, however, I appreciate my homeschool education. My education was lacking in some areas, particularly science, but it was also exceptionally above average in other areas, such as language arts and communication. I have suffered emotional and verbal abuse in homeschooling contexts. But this was at the hands of other homeschooling parents, not my own parents. My parents have been extraordinarily supportive of Homeschoolers Anonymous, for which I am deeply grateful. Also, while I experienced emotional and verbal abuse in homeschooling contexts, I have also experienced sexual abuse in a public school context.

I am under no delusion about the universality of abuse.

It is for these reasons that I do not primarily see my identity as a survivor of homeschooling. In many ways I am a survivor: I am a survivor of abuse, sometimes from abuse in homeschooling and sometimes not. But my experiences are too mixed to be able to fairly isolate only one community from which I am a survivor. I have instead channeled that complex pain into wanting to make the world a better place in whatever context I can. Since homeschooling was my life for so many years, I see myself as an advocate for other homeschoolers who have had far worse experiences than I have.

Honestly, most of my experiences growing up in SELAH and CHEA, my California homeschool groups, were positive. It was while traveling around the country with Communicators for Christ that my eyes were opened to all the different subcultures and ideologies that can create real and serious damage to children. Growing up, I only had an inkling about some of these phenomena. I did not begin to connect the dots until I came into contact with thousands of other homeschoolers and began observing patterns.

Much of my life has revolved around this sort of tension, or dialectic: there is so much good, and there is much bad; there is so much pain, and there is so much joy.

As we begin our next “week series,” I am hoping that as a community we can explore this sense of tension and the reality of dialectic in our experiences.

On July 15, we asked you as a community to pick the next topic you’d like to see us address as a community. We received votes via Facebook comments, private messages, emails, and Tweets. Honestly, there was a good number of votes for all four of the options: (1) Mental health, mental illness week, (2) Abusive relationships week, (3) Grandparent(s) appreciation week, and (4) Positives (what you liked about homeschooling) week.

No one topic won by a landslide.

So obviously we need to cover all of these at some point in the near future. Mental health came in second, with a lot of vocal support for it. So it seems that would be the most appropriate topic for the series after this next one.

For the immediate next series, the winning topic was positives.

While this topic was the winner, it also received a lot of pushback — which, frankly, I understand. If you have suffered neglect or abuse in homeschooling, you’ve probably spent the majority of your life wearing a “I love homeschooling and nothing is wrong with it” mask. This might be the first time in your entire life that you’ve felt the freedom to talk about the negatives. You might be thinking, “I don’t want to talk about positives. I’ve done nothing but talk about the positives since I was a kid.”

Honestly, I personally relate to that sentiment.

At the same time that every fiber of my being wants to finally talk about the negatives, there is a place for the positives in our community. Not everyone in our community has had a bad experience. Not every ally here has experienced our pain. But they are here, supporting us, and listening to us.

I want to give people with positive experiences a place to be heard, too.

Our allies’ positive experiences are fundamentally vital to making homeschooling better for future generations. Those of us with good stories are examples of how homeschooling can be done well.

For every story that says, “This was a problem,” the question is raised: “What is the solution?” Sharing positive experiences is crucial to teaching current and future homeschooling parents the difference between those environments that led to pain and those environments that led to joy.

We need to hear those.

So those of you in our community that have had positive experiences, this is your time to speak up.

And to those of you in our community that have had negative experiences, this is actually also your time.

A week of positives does not mean we are just talking about generally positive homeschooling experiences. Yes, it means that we are taking a week to celebrate the good things. But it also means we are dedicating time to celebrate those moments of joy that contrasted with those moments of pain. This is a week of joy for everyone: to share in others’ good experiences, and also to celebrate those people or those moments that gave us a hope to carry on, that gave us maybe a unique experience of unconditional love.

I have moments like that. I remember when a horde of parents surrounded me and yelled at me (no exaggeration), and one parent silently pulled me out of that crowd and went for a walk with me. That one parent in a very real sense rescued me. He told me that, regardless of what the other parents might say, I was valuable. I was a human being and I was to be unconditionally loved.

I learned that lesson from a conservative Christian homeschooling father. So I celebrate him.

I remember that moment because moments like that, though maybe few and far between, are some of my favorite memories to this day.

Our upcoming positives week is an official celebration —

Of parents that succeeded in giving their kids a good education, of those adults or peers that showed you real compassion, love, or respect, of those moments that gave you hope and healing amidst not-so-positive experiences.

Let’s celebrate all of those things together.

*****

To contribute:

If you are interested in contributing, here are some ideas for what you could write about:

  1. Your personal story of a positive homeschool education
  2. Your personal story of positive aspects of your homeschool education
  3. An experience you had where another person in your homeschool life (one of your parents, another homeschooling parent, a friend, a tutor, etc.) showed you love or respect that maybe you had not experienced before
  4. An experience you had where another person in your homeschool life taught you something that gave you hope about the future, or maybe a personal struggle you had

You do not have to pick just one topic. You could combine several of these ideas, or bring your own ideas to the table, or — if you have a lot to say — contribute several pieces on a variety of these topics.

The deadline for submission is August 23, 2013.

As always, you can contribute anonymously or publicly.

If you interested in participating in this, please email us at homeschoolersanonymous@gmail.com.