I feel pretty. Oh so pretty.
I suggested before that if you liked the dated views of the Tennessee Republican Party and their spokesantediluvian, Bill Hobbs, then you shoulda put a corset on it.
Turns out I was wrong. It’s the 19th, not the 20th, century that Hobbs idealizes:
Incidentally, home schooling was widespread in the United States until the 1870s, when compulsory school attendance laws and the development of professional educators created the institutionalized form of education we think of today as “school.” Among the historical figures who were home-schooled: Presidents George Washington, John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt, plus Thomas Edison, General Robert E. Lee, Booker T. Washington, and Mark Twain.
As if the above mentioned legends had a choice.
Although Thomas Jefferson advocated for an “elaborate, publicly supported systems of mass education” that would ensure an educated populace, it wasn’t until the mid-1800’s that the general public and not just the very wealthy had access to any kind of “school” at all. And widespread public education did not become a reality until the beginning of the 20th century.
So according to Hobbs, “school” is not just for the elite anymore – but he sure does wish it was!
(H/T: Pith in the Wind)
“But, I have to say that in all the years that I did homeschool my boys and all the years since, the political left does not choose to recognize the non-religious homeschoolers, ever, and will only view homeschooling families as religious nuts. That is sadder than the vitriol and mis-information put forth by Hobbs and his ilk, in my opinion.”
Thank you for this long and thoughtful post. It is a shame if you’re right about not recognizing non-religious homeschoolers. I, like many others, don’t think there is anything wrong with homeschooling, but in order to get a state-issued high school diploma there should be requirements in place.
Have either of your boys graduated yet? If so, what is the process they went through to graduate?
As a former homeschooling parent, I had the opposite (of Hobbs) conversation with a few other homeschooling parents many years ago, about when, exactly did public education become compulsory in the US. It turns out that compulsory public education was actually a law in Massachusetts colony in the 1600’s — long before the US became a nation. Law enforcement, back then, could go so far as to take your children away from you should they not attend the public schools. But, again, each colony had it’s own laws on education, if any, thus, why so many of our first presidents were “homeschooled.” But, school, “public” school, was sponsored (for lack of a better word) by the church in several of the colonies (Virginia for example).
The really sad thing is that homeschooling has been totally equated with religiosity. Okay, it didn’t help that Michael Farris and the Homeschool Legal Defense Association (H$LDA) thoroughly pushed that stance on a national level. Farris, I should note, completely ignored his and H$LDA’s original mission of working to make homeschooling legal in all 50 states, but continued on to coopt homeschooling for the religious aspects (a very long and drawn out fight in the homeschooling community). Throw into the one-sided (only the religous nuts homleschool) national view, the homeschool laws in TN pretty much puts homeschoolers in this state into the religiosity category, either be affiliated with a Christian (not just religious, but specifically Christian when I was homeschooling my boys) school or jump through a bazillion hoops, and honestly, it was far easier to be affiliated with a religious homeschool for records purposes than to deal with the hoops the state puts in front of you for not being affiliated with a Christian school.
The fact is, there are many parents that are not religious and homeschool their children, as well as many parents that are religious but homeschool their children for non-religious reasons, and there are parents that homeschool their children for religious reasons. It has been, as long as I can remember, that the religious homeschoolers are the also the most vocal against compulsory public education. Farris’s fear-mongering against public schools, started so many years ago, has definitely continued if Hobbs is taking up the sword. But, I have to say that in all the years that I did homeschool my boys and all the years since, the political left does not choose to recognize the non-religious homeschoolers, ever, and will only view homeschooling families as religious nuts. That is sadder than the vitriol and mis-information put forth by Hobbs and his ilk, in my opinion.
For all the zillions of reasons why parents choose to homeschool their children there are that many different ways to approach educating your child/ren at home — from recreating school at home to the world is your classroom.
Thank you!
Great post Mary.