Homeschool vs Government School

the choice is yours

Many of you who read my substack columns know me personally. For those of you who do not, I was a California public school teacher for nearly 25 years and am now beginning a new school year in northern Michigan.

DIFFERENCES

Broadly speaking, California and Michigan are almost opposites. This may come as a surprise to some because Detroit comes to mind when folks in western states think of Michigan. If this is you, you are correct that Detroit and Lansing - both in southern Michigan - are similar to California politically and culturally. However, north of those two population centers, Michigan is almost 100% traditional/conservative.

THE GOVERNMENT SCHOOL SYSTEM

Teaching in government high schools on the California coast, I can tell you that the districts are absolutely soaked in hard-Left, woke politics. This is true for districts on the entire California coast from San Diego in the south all the way to Humbold County in the far north of the state. I know this because I attended teacher conferences over the years up and down the Pacific coast. Sidenote: The Great San Joaquin Valley in the interior is conservative but most of California’s 39,000,000 live along the “blue” coast.

In northern Michigan, the schools do not seem to be permeated with wokeness as they are in California. I’m seeing traces but the conservative culture is dominant so stories about baptism and other traditional events can be found in the ELA reader, there are no LGBTQ flags anywhere on campus, and there are no discussions about genders and pronouns. So far, so good.

Lest you become too optimistic, wokeness will be here eventually if it is not stopped at the university level. Allow me to explain: University of Michigan and Michigan State University teacher certification programs are being taught by professors that share the same hard-Left politics such that I experienced in California. So it follows that younger teachers will eventually import that alienating and divisive ideology into conservative counties in Michigan.

THE BASICS OF RUNNING A GOVERNMENT HIGH SCHOOL

As I sat through days of PDs (professional development), Open House Night, and other school events, I listened to endless discussions about what to do if students don’t get to the next class on time, what to do with that one defiant teen or the teen that skips class and roams the hallways. I could go on with examples but you take my point.

You will recall the experiments conducted by Dr. Pavlov. Pavlov trained dogs to the sound of a bell. Whenever the bell sounded, food would be dropped into the bowl. After the dogs had been habituated to the bell, they would salivate upon hearing the bell even if no food was offered. In other words, the animals had become fully programmed.

You will also recall the Industrial Revolution in which products were conveyed on belts and erstwhile farmers learned to become factory workers by responding to bells.

To my mind, whether the high school has 2,700 students like my former California high school or 100 like my current, rural Jr./Sr. high school, it involves managing young adults like Pavlov’s dogs or a factory assembly line.

Many of the legitimate behavior problems in American public high schools are manufactured problems in the sense that the environment generates an impersonal treatment of our youth and layer upon layer of rules and regulations. This is the opposite of a homeschool environment which is, by design, individualized.

HOMESCHOOLING AS A VIABLE OPTION

Last night I watched Deb Fillman’s latest The Reason We Learn podcast posted above. Her podcasts are free on YouTube though I recommend subscribing to her locals.com platform where you can subscribe for just $5.00 a month to help her continue offering these highly informative interviews.

In this podcast, Mercedes Grant provides viewers with a very enlightening idea: micro-schools. I had never heard of the concept but thought about it all night as I was supposed to be sleeping.

Many of us in my age group think of homeschooling as synonymous with social isolation: just sittin’ at home with Mom. However, homeschooling has become so innovative of late that this short article cannot do it justice.

To slightly tweak what Mercedes said, I would describe homeschooling (conceptually) as a one room school house with add-ons. Thus, Mom might be the primary educator (or the micro-school teacher) but the children would also go to a certified teacher in a given content area on which the parent feels less capable.

So consider an inner circle representing home base with lines connecting to various smaller circles. The smaller circles might represent music lessons or a football club and, academically speaking, a science teacher who donates time twice a week to offer labs in her garage for neighborhood homeschoolers. The smaller circles would also include play groups (elementary) and hang-out sessions (high school.) In this way, a homeschooler could still have a favorite teacher, a favorite tutor, a favorite coach, etc.

Parents are only limited by their own imagination and their ability to network. The homeschool situation I describe is just a bit of an expansion to Mercedes’ micro-school concept. It would deliver everything that a government high school can offer but on a much smaller, personal scale thus eliminating the behavior problems produced by the factory/whistle blowing model that is a hang on from the Industrial Revolution.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

My children are already grown and in their 30s but if I had to do it all over again I would find a way to homeschool no matter how inventive and networked I had to become. Sure, the high schools in rural America may be fine for the moment but at their core they are warehousing children and moving them about like game pieces along with the unintended consequences that ensues.

We hear about the teachers who promote communism or stalk children to induct them into a transgender identity (as was the case in the Spreckles District in California) and these teachers are an absolute threat. However, many educators are well-meaning, caring adults who know of nothing else but the government school model, a government school system that is bloated, impersonal, and out-of-date.

Therefore, even under the best circumstances, a homeschool model like Mercedes’ or the expanded model I described, is just better for our children and better for America’s future … in my view.