Homeschoolers Are Not the Problem!

By Deborah Markus, from Secular Homeschooling, Issue #11.

Here we go again. March 7: a peaceful Sunday morning, barged into by an unwelcome news article — several friends sent links, and of course the Secular Homeschoolers Yahoo group was all over it. "Top Home-school Texts Dismiss Darwin, Evolution," the AP announced.

"This is really sad," one friend pointed out in her email. And it was — but for a different reason than I expected.

The AP article started off with an anecdote about a homeschooling parent who was surprised and unhappy to find anti-evolutionary writing in a science text she purchased on a friend's recommendation.

I already had a few problems with the article. This was a homeschooling mother in Kentucky who was supposedly startled that a friend (also presumably in Kentucky) recommended reading material that turned out to be deeply Christian. If she'd been in the Novel Café in Santa Monica, okay. But she lives in Kentucky. If she only just now noticed that her state has a fairly large Christian population, maybe someone should take her and her daughter on a field trip to the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum. It's in Petersburg. Petersburg, Kentucky.

But maybe this homeschooler managed to live in Kentucky for however long it's been without noticing some of the finer details of the place. That would help explain the fact that she was shocked to find religion in materials purchased from a place called Apologia Educational Ministries. Two out of three of those words are so Christian, you can practically see Jesus' face smiling out of them. This homeschooler might have glanced past the fact that AEM's logo is a shield with a cross on it. On their web site, it's right next to their motto: "Live, learn, and defend the faith." Which you can find on the company's web site where they sell a biology text called Exploring CREATION.

These are not cheap books. Because most purchasers will hesitate to spend almost a hundred dollars on a text without knowing more about it than the title, Apologia offers free sample chapters and a look at the table of contents. No secret is made of the worldview of these books. EC mentions "God's creation" on sample page 5. And the chapter about evolution is called "Evolution: Part Scientific Theory, Part Unconfirmed Hypothesis."

I don't know how the homeschooler in the AP article managed to get these materials without learning how thoroughly they would conflict with her daughter getting a real education in science. (For the record, Apologia's textbooks are terrible even if you're able to ignore the material regarding evolution. They define a scientific law as something a theory gets to be if it works really hard. This popular misconception — that a law is bigger and stronger than a theory — has nothing to do with scientific definitions and everything to do with trying to raise yet another generation of annoying people whining about how evolution is "only" a theory.) It's possible that the AP article is somewhat misrepresenting this woman's experiences in order to make the point the author wants to make, which is that homeschoolers are scary religious extremists.

I myself wouldn't start right out with an anecdote about a secular homeschooler in KENTUCKY if that were my point; but then again, I wouldn't set out to make a point like that. Especially if I had to strangle, mangle, and maim statistical "evidence" the way Dylan Lovan, the AP writer in question, does.

Consider the following paragraph:

Christian-based materials dominate a growing home-school education market that encompasses more than 1.5 million students in the U.S. And for most home-school parents, a Bible-based version of the Earth's creation is exactly what they want. Federal statistics from 2007 show 83 percent of home-schooling parents want to give their children "religious or moral instruction."

Let's go ahead and rip that apart bit by bit, shall we? It needs it.

The U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics collects data that may give a decent idea of how many school-aged American children are homeschooled. The definition of "homeschooling" is a little vague. "Students are considered to be homeschooled if their parents reported them as being schooled at home instead of at a public or private school for at least part of their education and if their part-time enrollment in public or private school did not exceed 25 hours a week." "Not exceeding 25 hours a week" still means that a child could be spending five hours a day, five days a week, in school.

I'm all about autonomy and finding what works for your family; I'm just not sure that spending that kind of time on campus fits even generous standards when it comes to homeschooling. If you're on campus that long, how much non-sleeping, non-eating time do you have at home in which to be "schooled"? A lot of parents I know send their children to school for roughly five hours a day and then spend several hours with them every night doing academic activities. They call it "helping the kids with their homework," and none of them consider themselves homeschoolers. In fact, they say they could never homeschool because they couldn't possibly spend several hours a day teaching their kids.

I'm also not sure about the definition of some of those terms. In California, almost everyone who "homeschools" is legally either a public or private school student. Some of us work with public charter schools, which means being assigned an educational specialist, receiving government funds that can be used with state-approved vendors in exchange for educational materials and/or lessons, and taking standardized tests. Some of us keep the paperwork necessary to enroll our children in incredibly exclusive private schools. Would we show up in this survey as homeschoolers? I can't tell.

I don't know exactly how or why Lovan decided to express it so strongly that "more than 1.5 million" children are homeschooled in America. The brief says that 1.5 million is, at best, an estimate. It includes a diagram showing that, given their margin for error, there might be as few as 1,277,000 American homeschooled children. Given all that, an AP reporter decided to present the highest number as absolute fact.

Makes you want to read the paper with a more skeptical eye, don't it?

Now that we know what kind of numbers we're working with, let's talk about that alleged 83% of parents who want creationist science materials because they're homeschooling in order to give their children "religious or moral instruction." That bit is in quotes because it's from the brief in question, which makes it a quote from an official government report, which makes it true.

Unless of course it's being ripped out of context and allowed to bleed to death all over your screen.

In 1999, a survey similar to the one quoted in the AP article was taken. The results from this survey aren't displayed in the brief that presents the 2007 results. That's because the questioning in the 1999 survey was very different. In 1999, parents were asked to explain why they were homeschooling; in the later surveys, the parents were offered various reasons to homeschool and asked if these reasons did or didn't apply to them.

Let me rephrase that. In 1999, parents were asked, "Oh, you homeschool? How come?" Off the tops of their heads, 49% of homeschooling parents said that they were doing it because they could give their child a better education; 38% of the parents specified religious as a motivating factor; and 26% mentioned a poor learning environment at school.

In the later surveys, however, the parents were asked whether specific reasons to homeschool applied to them or not.

There's a lot of possibility for bias in this. First, they're ruling out the idea that a parent might have a primary reason for homeschooling that the survey-taker hasn't thought of. More significant, however, is a kind of implied pressure that I'm sure never occurred to the people asking the questions.

Let's say you're asked to explain the reasons why you decided to homeschool. If you're like any homeschooler, you're going to mentally tally up a huge number of reasons that you only learned about by actually homeschooling. Probably you had one or two major motivating factors, at most; everything else came along later.

For instance: raise your hand if you love the fact that as a homeschooler you get to travel in the off-season and/or visit theme parks, museums, and other fun places during the day on a weekday when everything's way less crowded. Wow, that's pretty much all of us. Thank you. Hands down, please.

Now, raise your hand if that's the reason you started homeschooling. Okay. A few travel enthusiasts, but not the majority of us by any means.

What if this option had been offered as a "say yes if this applies to you" question? Pretty much every homeschooler I know would answer "yes." Sure, it might not have been the reason you started homeschooling, but now that you know how groovy it is, you'd feel like a liar if you said "no." Especially since, as a homeschooler, you want to be sure not to imply that you never leave the house.

And then some AP reporter could report that 83% of homeschoolers do it so that they can go to Disneyland any time they want to. Especially since there are plenty of states that don't have hardcore rules about what, when, and how homeschoolers will be taught. Those homeschoolers could be running off to see Mickey Mouse every day and calling it "school"! And to support this idea, the writer could report on Disney homeschool days and Disney-enthusiast homeschooling support groups! These are clearly catering to the growing homeschool education market that encompasses more than 1.5 million students in the U.S. And for most homeschool parents, a Disney-based version of education is exactly what they want. Federal statistics from 2007 show 83% of homeschooling parents want to give their children "opportunities to travel or take day trips."

This is exactly what happened with the "desire to provide religious or moral instruction" question. When asked to tell their own reasons for homeschooling, religion was brought up by homeschooling parents significantly less than half the time. But let's say someone asked you if a desire to provide religious or moral instruction applies to you. Most people are going to say, "Oh, of course!" After all, you're allowed to agree to as many reasons as apply to you. Saying yes to this one doesn't rule out any others. And wouldn't you feel like an amoral jerk if you said no? Wouldn't you feel as if you were answering, "No, I have no desire to instruct my child in the ways of morality?"

That's exactly how you'd feel. And that's exactly why the reasons for homeschooling differed so significantly between the two kinds of surveys. And guess what? One of those surveys is more likely to be representative of what homeschooling parents are really like. And it's the earlier survey, which is never cited in articles like this AP one because its information has been replaced by more recent and supposedly more accurate figures.

Now, it's perfectly probable that the majority of American homeschoolers are religious to some degree. But that's because the majority of Americans are religious to some degree. There are several atheists and a vast majority of people who are either agnostic or very laid-back religious in my own local homeschooling group. That's because I live in a very agnostic, laid-back part of the county. The next city over from mine has a homeschooling support group, too. It's peopled primarily by parents from a more suburban setting. They're more conservative, and still pretty tolerant but definitely more overtly religious. So are their non-homeschooling neighbors. And when a Catholic homeschooling friend of mine moved to a much more conservative part of the state, she was surrounded by a brand of Protestant homeschoolers who thought she wasn't a real Christian. Unless you watched carefully to see where the school bus stopped, you couldn't tell them apart from their non-homeschooling neighbors.

But that AP reporter didn't just rely on misusing statistics to support his point that homeschoolers are primarily religious extremists. He talked to the head of a huge national homeschooling organization — and who would know the homeschooling community better? Here's the next paragraph of the article:

"The majority of home-schoolers self-identify as evangelical Christians," said Ian Slatter, a spokesman for the Home School Legal Defense Association. "Most home-schoolers will definitely have a sort of creationist component to their home-school program."

The HSLDA isn't just a homeschool-support organization that happens to be run by Christian extremists, although that's important to know. They're an organization with very specific political goals and interests.

For instance, they support, and work hard toward achieving, a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage or equivalent civil unions. This isn't on their home page, but you can find it if you poke around on their site and have the stomach to read how they manage to rationalize this as a homeschooling concern. Number 8 on their FAQ page is, "Why does HSLDA support efforts to constitutionally define marriage as between a man and a woman?" The answer is a long, rambling quote from chairman of the board Michael Farris, ending with the assurance that giving gays the right to marry "would jeopardize our liberty to teach our children at home and bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord."

It would require an entire article to give the HSLDA the thorough going-over it needs. The web site Homeschooling is Legal (http://hsislegal.com) is an excellent source of information on the subject. The little I've mentioned is more than enough to make the case that expecting the HSLDA to give a fact-based, religiously unbiased answer about Christianity and homeschoolers is completely unrealistic. The AP reporter could have found that out in under five minutes by visiting the HSLDA's own web site, but either that sounded too much like work or he was worried that he might see something that would contradict the point he'd already decided to make. Damn the facts — full speed ahead!

Yes, there are religiously motivated homeschoolers. This being America, there are religiously motivated everythings. And this being America, if you can identify a group, you can sell to it. And so there are anti-evolution "science" textbooks.

But homeschooling is not the problem. The problem is a mindset that values self-importance and emotional satisfaction over grappling with reality and its consequences. And that mindset can be found all over America.

Yes, it's a shame that there are children who aren't getting critical thinking skills or a fact-based, evidence-based science education. It's also a shame that the Associated Press didn't point out that most of those children attend public school.

The National Center for Science Education has an excellent web site (http://ncse.com). I'd like to point out that their mission statement says, "NCSE provides information and advice as the premier institution dedicated to keeping evolution in the science classroom and creationism out."

Question: why, exactly, is there any need of such an institution? From everything I read in that AP article, I assumed that homeschoolers were the only ones about whom there was any worry at all regarding evolution and science education. The schools have got it down, right? That's why there's all that energy to spare, and why every time there's any article about homeschoolers, we're accused of dragging the country down with our horrifying anti-science teachings.

There's a tendency for the mainstream population to look at potential rather than reality, and treat public schools as if every one of them is the ideal and homeschoolers as if every one of us is the worst we could possibly be. That attitude is doing real damage. If homeschoolers account for 2.9% of the school-aged population, public schools had better be perfect before journalists and activists and armchair philosophers even think about what should be done to improve homeschooling.

So how are those public schools doing, science-wise?

Well, there's some good news to report. According to the most recent NCSE report card, "The treatment of biological evolution in state science standards has improved dramatically over the last ten years. Forty states received satisfactory grades for the treatment of evolution in their state science standards."

So four out of five states' public schools do a passable job of teaching evolution?

Well, no. According to the rest of the report, "treatment of human evolution is abysmal [in American public schools], with only seven states (and the District of Columbia) providing a comprehensive treatment." And "many states do not reference the Big Bang as the current scientific theory for the origin of the universe, and only 17 states provide a comprehensive treatment of the connections among biological, geological, and cosmological systems."

And homeschoolers are getting flack for not doing a good enough job teaching children science?

Could it be that picking out the extremists in the homeschooling community is the only way to make public schools look okay?

Speaking of homeschoolers — remember that one in the AP article? How are things in her home state of Kentucky? What kind of science education would her daughter be getting if only she were going to public school instead?

Well...Kentucky wasn't one of the five states that got an F according to the NCSE report card! That's good, right?

Oh. Kentucky got a D.

In my first thirty seconds on NCSE's site, I netted plenty of news about the state of public school science education in Kentucky, including the following from an article dated February 10th of this year:

"Kentucky is apparently unique in having a statute that authorizes teachers to teach ‘the theory of creation as presented in the Bible' and to ‘read such passages in the Bible as are deemed necessary for instruction on the theory of creation.'"

Jerry Coyne, author of the brilliant and necessary Why Evolution is True, was quoted in the AP article and expressed what a disservice works like Apologia's "science" textbooks do to young students. "I weep for the children who are home-schooled in creationist lies instead of science," he added on his blog.

Agreed. But if the NCSE's site gives an accurate picture of how public education is doing, I hope Coyne is saving some tears for the kids who have to attend lousy schools.

Coyne at least zeroed in on a target worth hitting. PZ Myers of Pharyngula fame thinks that homeschoolers are the problem, and never mind why or how we're doing it. Here's a quote from his blog:

I'm one of those people who thinks we ought to be consistent and require everyone to attend an accredited school, public or private, and that private schools ought also to be required to meet certain secular standards, such as that their science education ought to address the evidence reasonably. You want to send your kids to a school that teaches them all about Jesus? Fine. But it doesn't count as a legitimate education unless it also teaches the basics of science, math, history, English, etc. in a way that meets state education standards.

It's the same principle that warrants requiring vaccinations for all children: for the defense of our society.

If you're familiar with Myers' work, you know that he's very happy with the state of the world in general and the intelligence level of its human inhabitants in particular.

— Oh, wait. That's what he'd have to be in order for the quote above to make sense. The guy's a ranter (and remember who's telling you that). He's tired of all the stupidity. News flash, Myers! Most of the people whose moronity incenses you went to accredited schools! They followed those state education standards you think are so amazing! Who do you think came up with those standards?

Does Myers really think that anyone who Googles "American adult scientific literacy" is going to find good news? On Science Daily (www.sciencedaily.com), I learned that in a 2009 Harris survey, barely half of the adults questioned knew how long it takes the Earth to revolve around the Sun. Less than half could say with even rough accuracy just how much of the Earth's surface is covered with water. 41% thought that humans and dinosaurs coexisted.

My son, who is 12, answered all three questions just fine. As did 21% of the adults who agreed to take the survey.

Sorry, AP writers and everyone else looking for an easy target. When it comes to scientific illiteracy, homeschoolers are not the problem. The forces of ignorance are doing impressive work all on their own.

More about issue #11