From: scottj@magic.dml.georgetown.edu (John L. Scott)
Subject: Re: Education and the Environment by Gregory A. Smith
Followup-To: rec.arts.books
Organization: J. Random Misconfigured Site
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1992 14:55:10 GMT
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Mike Morris wrote:

>                 I thought approximately the same thing as John: There is
>   no way I'm going let them carry out their experiments in indoctrination
>   on *my* children. It is this rot---together with the fact that there is
>   so very much like it already in the schools that most of what my wife and I
>   consider real education gets ignored of a necessity---that has us committed
>   to homeschooling our children.

And I wrote:
>  I will bring my kids up to understand that they are individuals and that,
>  as such, they are responsible for their own actions (with regard to the
>  environment and otherwise).  This does not require indoctrination or
>  "socialization" of any sort.
>
>  I have many reasons for wanting to homeschool my children, only one of
>  which is the desire of some to use the schools to mold the personalities
>  and politics of the children to their liking.  Such efforts are not
>  insidious plots but are simply the acts of well-intentioned but in my
>  opinion, misguided people.  I doubt that many of them, if any at all, are
>  "satanists".


Michael McDonald then wrote:

>   Thus far, the arguments proffered here in favor of homeschooling strike me
>   as profoundly selfish, as primarily a matter of wanting to ensure that 
>   children are good little reflections of their parents.  Talk about
>   indoctrination!

To which Mike Morris replied:

> Point the Sixth
> (Related to my previous point) It would be foolish of you to believe
> that homeschooling would produce carbon copies of parental
> teachers. It would be equally foolish of you to believe that that
> might be its goal.

Mike Morris' entire response to Michael MacDonald (only a small part of
which is quoted above) is excellent and reflects my own opinions on this
matter almost exactly.  There is only one thing I'd like to touch on.

Michael MacDonald claims he has seen nothing but "profoundly selfish"
arguments in favor of homeschooling in this thread.  I have extracted the
relevant portions of the thread above, and frankly, I can't see where he
gets that idea.

This bit from Mike Morris is as close to looking selfish as I can find:
"There is no way I'm going let them carry out their experiments in
indoctrination on *my* children."  If that is selfish, let's try to make it
unselfish by negating it: "I will let them conduct such experiments on my
children."  Now that's a parent saying that he will not lift a finger to
protect his children from a very possibly misguided experiment in social
engineering.  Which statement do you think is really the selfish one?

Nowhere in this thread is any statement that could lead one to believe that
the goal presented for homeschooling is to produce children that are "good
little reflections of their parents".  In case that isn't enough: here is
my goal in homeschooling.  I want my kids to have to the skills to learn
anything they want about the world, to pursue any interests they have, to
try to do anything they want to do.  I want them to be able to think, to
have confidence in that ability and all their other abilities, and to have
respect for themselves and their own minds.

They are free to do with all that what they will.  If they decide to become
environmental activists, that's fine with me.  If they decide to become
nuclear engineers and build nuclear power stations, that's fine too.  They
can become capitalists or communists, atheists or Jehovah's Witnesses,
anything they want.  The only thing I'll make sure of is that whatever
decisions they make for themselves they made with their own free minds. 
Michael McDonald may still call that "indoctrination"; I think it is
exactly the opposite.

Michael's first post implied I was some kind of right-wing religious nut,
his second that Mike and I are selfish.  There is absolutely no evidence
for either implication.

John L. Scott

ObBooks:  Try John Holt's _Better Than School_ for excellent arguments in
favor of homeschooling.  For the benefit of this man's insight into
education try _How Children Fail_ and _Why Children Succeed_.  By all
means, get the 2nd editions of both, in which you also hear from an older
and wiser John Holt.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books