Life with Nin

What about the Children

Around the country this spring there appears to be a major concern about truancy.  Many states seem to be grappling with the issue and, at least in some cases, there appears to be some risk that homeschooling laws and regulations may be altered as a result.  I am concerned with the “us vs. them” mentality which seems to be resulting, especially since the “us” and the “them” are both homeschoolers.  Are we going to allow institutional schools to divide us?  That only allows them to win.

What makes one group of homeschoolers “better” than any other?  Is that not what we are trying to avoid in HELPS as an inclusive group?  Each family came to homeschooling out of their own experience and needs.  No one family’s reasons are any better or any worse than any other family’s.  One of the pillars on my favorite homeschooling e-mailing list came to homeschooling because of truancy related issues.  Her then 14 year old daughter was refusing to attend classes.  In the current mind set, she would be one of “them” and yet homeschooling has been one of the best decisions for her family and she has become a wonderful support to others who are starting along the homeschooling path.  Setting up extra regulations would only have made their path more difficult.  In this family’s case, I think they would have gotten to where they are now anyway, but many other families would have given up.  And then where would the children be?

Our homeschooling law is already restrictive enough.  Of the three states in which my family  has homeschooled, Florida’s law has the most requirements.  By asking families who are already struggling with a system which has obviously not met the needs of their child – or why else would that child be refusing to attend? – to jump through even more hoops than “we” do only sets them up to fail.  How many of us have continued to use the very first method we came to when we started homeschooling?  How many of us would have the confidence to try another way if someone will be looking over our shoulder in a few weeks or months?  How many of us would have been happy to “prove” our homeschooling program within a few months of starting?  Considering the comments I have heard from first year homeschooling families who were asked to bring in their portfolios this year, I am pretty sure of the answer to that one!  What about the time for healing that both the child and the parents need before embarking on a new approach to education?  Adding any more restrictions to these families only makes it more likely that they, too, will fail to meet their child’s needs.

Many public schools decry the lack of parental involvement in the children’s education.  It is so easy to assume that these officials are correct and that parents of truant children do not care.  I do not believe that parents do not care.  I think they care very much indeed.  Some, I think,  have come to their wit’s end and do not know what else they can do and may cover that up with appearing to be indifferent.  Discovering another way, that of home education, may be just what they need to help their children find a better path.  Let us not become tools of institutional schools by accepting their assessment of these families as losers and helping the institutions to further bring them down by making them second class homeschoolers.

This issue, for me, is not about politics or money or even about truancy.  It is about meeting children’s needs in the best way that we know how.  Somehow, all too often, this gets lost in the rhetoric.  By allowing a two-tiered system of homeschooling, one for “us” and one for the formerly truant, we only continue to hurt the children who need help.

Copyright 2000 Carol E. Burris  Originally published in my local homeschooling group, HELPS, newsletter, April 2000