To the Editor:
Re “The Ominous Isolation of the Home-Schooled Child,” by Stefan Merrill Block (Opinion guest essay, Dec. 21):
As a 16-year-old lifelong home-schooler, I can confirm that Mr. Block includes accurate depictions of home-schooling gone wrong, but these examples should not be used to define home-schooling in principle.
To home-school correctly is to empower children to design their own education, and for their parents to structure that curriculum. I’ve examined the home-school world for over a year while filming and editing “Against the Grade,” a feature-length documentary that offers a look into the lives of home-schooled teenagers like myself. What I’ve concluded is that, in education, we should be pro-child, not always pro-home-schooling, but certainly against “one size fits all” institutionalism.
Anyone can create an institution around their beliefs, and dogma can come from anywhere: public schools, private schools and parents, too. Vast majorities of people in all these organizations and roles are well meaning, trying to accommodate children’s needs in a rapidly evolving world. What we need to avoid is dogma, in both education and civic discourse.
Mason Ember New York
To the Editor:
Stefan Merrill Block’s guest essay struck a real nerve for me.
I was home-schooled from the middle of second grade until the middle of eighth grade. My brothers were also home-schooled. It was the 1990s in Colorado and we were one of the Christian home-schooling families that used an all Bible-based curriculum.
I was pulled from an abusive Christian academy, where I had gone from being a joyful, curious little girl to a frightened, depressed one. Removing me from that school was the right move. But my family’s insistence on keeping me at home, not allowing me to have friends or to participate in activities outside the home, and indoctrinating me with fundamentalist Christian (and nationalist) values, was the wrong one. And while I excelled in subjects like reading and writing, I fell woefully behind in math and sciences, as all of my home education was framed from a “biblical perspective.”
It took years to catch up, and the impacts of being socially isolated and forced to maintain strict gender roles were devastating. There was no way out other than to hope our parents would allow us to go back to school, which they did after I ran away one night.
The fact that we continue to allow home-schooling with little or no state intervention makes me ill. That lack of oversight opens the door for abusive, controlling and mentally unstable parents to dominate their children.
Thank you, Mr. Block, for shedding light on this practice.
Lorraine Murray Bend, Ore.
To the Editor:
I deeply sympathize with Stefan Merrill Block’s experience as a home-schooled child. In our case, home-schooling was not a philosophical choice but a last resort.
In February, my wife and I pulled our 12-year-old son out of school because his primary and middle schools were wholly unequipped to educate him. He was reading above grade level since kindergarten, yet was forced to read at the designated grade level, which only bred frustration. He learned best through play — building systems, structures, and obsessively studying transit and aviation — but none of this was allowed or recognized as learning.
When he became overwhelmed, he was removed from class and sent home. Repeated calls from the school required one of us to leave work to pick him up. Over time, he felt rejected and misunderstood. We watched his self-esteem erode, day by day.
None of us like our current situation. But we could not continue placing him in an environment that seemed to punish difference rather than cultivate potential.
If we want fewer families pushed into home-schooling, we must change the system — and take into account the social and economic costs borne by parents, especially those who home-school.
Hicham Oumlil Brooklyn
To the Editor:
I’m sorry that Stefan Merrill Block experienced such abuse under the guise of home-schooling. I agree that there should be better guardrails to ensure that home-schooling families are not actively or passively abusing their children.
I do, however, want to push back on the idea that standardized testing for home-schoolers like in New York and Hawaii is the best way to monitor their learning. There are many of us who choose to home-school directly in response to the rise in standardized testing over the past 25 years. Much of public education now revolves around honing test-taking skills at the expense of actual learning. We have chosen to home-school our children to give them a rigorous education grounded in classics with the opportunity to pursue art, music and foreign languages and to enjoy plenty of outdoor time.
I also want to address Mr. Block’s assumption that home-schooling is inherently isolating. The majority of home-schooling families that I have encountered have socially adept children who are enrolled in dance and art classes, team sports and community service programs, and who appear confident talking to their peers and adults, something that has become a rarity. They rarely hide behind screens and are open to experiences and socializing in a way that their public-schooled peers often are not.
Elissa Kellner West Windsor, Vt.
The post Mixed Grades for Home-Schooling appeared first on New York Times.
