So Scholastic Book Fairs in my district have been cancelled. No one in my PTO was informed. The only reason they know is because a letter was included in my younger daughter’s elementary school newsletter that I passed along to everyone. It took a few days for the principal to chime in and say, “Yeah, this is the official decision that was made. We were going to wait to tell you at the end of next week.” Nevermind the fact that I signed the contract last Monday and everything they based their decision on was clear weeks ago.
So why cancel it? Because Scholastic capitulated to bigots by creating a diverse voices case of books that could be opted out of at the elementary school level, the district only now decided that we can’t be part of that. Fine. But they did it roughly a month out from when the fairs would be held and didn’t have an alternative in place. So, the solution to a problem started by people stopping kids from getting books is to deny kids all the books?
I’ve had a couple days to sit with this, and I’m still pissed. Scholastic and its book fairs have long had their problems. There are many alternatives available. But right now I’d rather still have something in place that raises money for the school libraries and puts books in kids hands than nothing at all.
Official word from Scholastic is that they’re desegregating the showcase in January. I’ve read that some schools have already seen the books mixed into all of the other sections, but it may not be consistent. But the district just wants to take a stance. That’s all I’m getting out of this so far.
It’s easy to act principled and avoid parents angry about what books are included by just not having the book fair. They are attempting to keep their cake and eat it too. Too bad about the kids not getting books.
Unfortunately, the media focuses more on the success stories of homeschool students than those who might be falling behind. The need for common standards and oversight don’t seem like problems that will be addressed soon, given the current political climate. The comments on the video from people who say they suffered because of homeschooling were heartbreaking.
Thank you for sharing those articles. It filled in gaps in understanding I had about homeschooling. For years I’ve heard about the good outcomes or simply how mature and well prepared homeschooled kids are when they reach college, but it all sounded hallow to me – especially when you know there are terrible parents out there. So it’s that the number of those kids who put the bright and shiny face on homeschooling is just a small sample of those kids – perhaps an even smaller number because it’s just based on those we know of. A quarter or fewer of those kids are the ones with the outcomes homeschooling proponents boast.
It’s worse than that. Those kids might have done even better in public schools - or at least just as well. Meanwhile, since the 1960s, federal and state funding for public education has cratered in response to desegregation while private schools have multiplied exponentially. Now we have states implementing voucher programs to even further erode public education.
So you could argue that if homeschooled kids - even the shiniest of cherry-picked examples - had had a chance to go to fully-funded public schools, they would have been much better off. And as a result, all of us would be better off.
They crash and burn by the dozens. Every single homeschooled kid I knew in college crashed within two years. A few managed to recover their grades. Some did ok on the grades but terrible socially. But there were dozens and they all did badly.
Homeschooling can be done. But it takes the right kind of kid, the right kind of parent, and the right kind of community. My husband had, objectively, a more thorough education than I did. But socially he was in terrible trouble and his independence was non existent. There were glaring holes in his education and he had absolutely no idea how to deal with diverse people. Homeschooling done right is incredibly difficult and can not be done by a family who can’t splash out on extracurriculars and education modules and doesn’t have a solid community of kids to slot their child into.
Some kids need homeschooling because their public schools cannot adequately serve them. Neurodivergent kids, children with disabilities, children who are being bullied. I see that as a failure of their schools. If they had the right support, they could go to public school.
Unfortunately, the cristofacists now have colleges catering to the homeschool crowd for that kind of upbringing. Those kids won’t have the chance college gave my spouse. He was able to adapt and grow away from the indoctrination of his youth. These kids will be kept steeped in it until they are too old to adapt to the real world.
Homeschool parent here, and I’m about to put more personal information out here than I generally feel comfortable doing. Did I set out to homeschool my child? Hell, no, not by a long shot. By all “objective” measures, there’s no reason for it—well-funded public school system (by deep red, southern US state standards at least), our zoned schools are well-rated, we even moved back to this city because of the reputation of the school system—and yet here we are: homeschooling in a state with ZERO standards, requirements, or accountability.
She started public school in kindergarten. My kiddo went from an enthusiastic eager learner at the beginning of kindergarten to a child who was either sobbing or raging every single day after school in third grade. It took until after the Xmas holiday break for her to begin to tell me some of what she was experiencing: relentless, frighteningly sophisticated bullying led primarily by one kid who happened to be the other high-performing kid in her class. It was rarely physical, only when he or his deputies could hide it under accidental contact, usually during Phys Ed, so lots of plausible deniability. She had been afraid to tell me anything because 1) a teacher had punished her the one time she had pushed back against him and 2) in kindergarten she had completely internalized that the school had a “no tattling” rule (yes, I saw the poster in the classroom). That winter I met with her teacher and the school counselor repeatedly. Whatever measures we agreed to would only be temporary. First the teacher and then the principal told me the same thing: what I had to understand about the bully was that he was just so smart. WTAF? The central admin was non-responsive. At spring break she was able to tell me that much of the class was now participating in the bullying, and at the end of third grade she told more about the actual extent of the physical bullying, that she must be worthless for “friends” to have treated her like that, and that maybe she really should kill herself because they were telling her that the world would be better if weirdos like her didn’t exist. After multiple attempts to get the school system to respond before the next school year started, I withdrew her. I did not and still do not see that there was any alternative to help my child. The school system made it abundantly clear that they wouldn’t.
The last 5 years of homeschooling have been HARD, for Kiddo, for me too. She still deals with the aftereffects of the bullying (yes, she sees a therapist). I doubt myself every single day because I don’t have a background in education, and here I am, putting together an educational plan and practice with the goal of preparing her for higher education and life in the “real” world. We are not religious; it would be SO much easier if we were. Finding a nominally secular “hybrid school” for some academic and elective classes has helped some, but it’s not an all-in-one solution. Good science instruction has been the hardest find. There are so many self-appointed experts, so much grift, so much wishful thinking to filter out. Identification of a long-suspected neurodiversity has both complicated and opened up things up. It’s shocking and validating how many teachers, both active in and retired from our school system, have told me that I did the right thing.
I suppose the TLDR is to please not paint all of us who homeschool our kids with a broad brush of wanting to keep our kids ignorant, unprepared, and under our control. Sometimes what goes on in even “good” school systems is deeply harmful. Oddly enough, I do still believe in public schooling; I wish so damn much that “our” public school system believed in my child.
My heart breaks for you and your child. That should never have been done to her. Her school failed her utterly. It boggles my mind there was a poster about no tattling?! Our kid’s school the exact opposite, tell the teachers and the school counselors. There is a lot of social-emotional instruction. Something ever school needs more of. Every school should have rigorous anti-bullying.
I apologize if I made you feel attacked or belittled. That was not my intent. My exposure to homeschoolers are of the ones being raised either in a very christian conservative home or a crazily libertarian home. The libertarians were the worst. They thought their kids were so smart they would just learn by themselves. No structure and no guidance. Hardly any engagement by the adults. I know a boy, now 16, who has been homeschooled all along and I see the damage that has done to him socially.
You sound like you are doing homeschooling well and it is incredibly difficult and undoubtedly expensive. I sincerely hope you are successful and your family is able to get your child the socialization she needs.
Your example is one of abject failure of the school system. You had no choice in order to protect your child, and i respect that. The instances i see around here are far more of the “protect children from science and arts” kind of homeschooling, including one family related to us. These tend to subscribe to the educational packets kind of thing, fill out these worksheets and move on. They do pretty much universally flame out in college. Almost all wind up at Liberty U, which if you are not familiar, is a christofascist hell hole of a “university.” Even if they survive there, the education leaves them poorly prepared for most fields, although i guess they do alright in business. Sciences? Forget it. As you know, home schooling is hard. Doing it right is really difficult. Most of the folks i know doing it are not interested in hard. One told me that her kids got their schoolwork done in 45 min every day, then they helped on the family farm. I give full respect to those doing it right, i could not do it, and talked about it with my youngest. But you are in a small minority. More power to you!
I’m glad so many decent people are running! My family has discussed it but unfortunately I don’t have the emotional bandwidth for that right now. It is on my list of things I might do when I retire.
This reads like the author is unaware of how right-wing groups engage in projection, and how complicit the mainstream media is in helping them to achieve their goals.
an industry of very concerned pundits has been laser-focused for years on what they have presented as a “free speech crisis” on campus
It’s not odd when someone doesn’t see what never existed. What’s missing here is that same media focused on falsehoods keeps repeatedly reporting TFG is gonna win bigly and make the entire country a stronghold of rightwing authoritarianism and censoriousness. I hope the students are preparing to vote in record numbers against the folks who are really trying to end free speech.
The comments on the video from people who say they suffered because of homeschooling were heartbreaking.
I hope the students are preparing to vote in record numbers against the folks who are really trying to end free speech.