Homeschooling is a problem…
May 30th, 2007 by COD
…because it’s just another form of unpaid labor forced upon women by society.
Because you know, no sane person would ever choose to homeschool, therefore all homeschooling moms are really victims of our male dominated society. Or something like that.
25 Responses to “Homeschooling is a problem…”
[...] Chris pointed out what appears to be a misconception about homeschoolers. Apparently we homeschool because men want to hold us back and keep us in the home where we belong. I can’t speak for all homeschoolers but as for myself I will say that I homeschool because I’m selfish and lazy. Plus, it’s what I want to do.I homeschool because: [...]
I actually don’t think that is the point the person is making. Rather they are raising legitimate questions about the impact of homeschooling. And pushing these issues under the carpet doesn’t actually address them.
I’m a feminist. And I homeschool. And I think this is a legitimate point. Are some adults being impacted less favourably than others by the decision to homeschool? And how do we address that?
Lets engage with the real question instead of seeing every criticism as someone telling us to stop doing what we are doing.
There is nothing to address. Free adults get to make decisions about how they run their life. If lots of women choose to stay home to raise and/or educate their kids it’s tough cookies if somebody in the work world thinks it impacts them negatively.
Notice how there are no homeschoolers complaining about not getting paid. These are simply socialists looking for yet another avenue to put even more people on the government dole. Because if homeschooling moms are receiving a check from the government each month, the govt now has an avenue to intrude in many ways on those homeschoolers. These people only believe in feminism if the the females in question make the “right” choices. Empowered women that choose otherwise are their worst nightmare.
Man, you know, I’m looking and looking and I just can’t find where the linked post suggests vouchers for homeschooling moms!
And “Free adults get to make decisions about how they run their life” shows a shocking* ignorance of the realities of many people’s – especially many women’s – lives.
* Not so shocking.
The magic word “choice” and its powers to make genuine feminist concerns evaporate knows no bounds. I “chose” my breast implants and to make 25% less than a man, ergo such things are feminist.
Ironically she lamented that homeschool moms don’t have lives outside of their kids. I have been gone all day. The morning was spent getting my hair fixed followed by a leisurely lunch (for me, my friend had to rush to get back to her JOB)with an old friend. Then I did go shopping for groceries, but hey I would have to do that anyway. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me, but hey what do I know I am just a homeschool mom; not a feminist.
Bottom line homeschooling is my choice and I love it.
Several people in the comments advocated paying people to stay home with their kids, whether they are homeschooling or not.
The whole “forced unpaid labor” sounds like a stereotype of a Christian fundamentalist and the husband “makes” his wife stay home. I don’t know any homeschool moms that want to be doing something else (including the fundies I know). Guess they never thought we might actually like what we’re doing and homeschool by our own free will.
Regardless of any validity there may be, which I fail to see, using the boogey man version of homeschooling and failing entirely to accept the reality and truth of homeschooling completely invalidates her argument. It’s easy to damn us and assume things about us as homeschoolers, and it’s just as easy to study your subject even a tiny bit.
And if a person has such a controlling partner or is so selfish that taking care of the children they helped produce is comparable to “forced unpaid labor” then it is no longer an issue of feminism or homeschooling as at the very least, this sort of situation is bordering on abuse.
I also know a great number of homeschooling parents, none of whom see this as labor, forced or otherwise. I have heard in fact of more mothers taking the reins, often against the wishes of their husbands, and beginning to homeschool their children.
But what do I know? I’m a stay at home father of two boys who may never attend a school. If my wife’s not empowered, then I don’t know who is. And sometimes she wishes she could quit her job, make me go back to work and take over my job of hanging out with the kids and cooking dinner.
Where do you draw the line between parenting and homeschooling when talking about “forced unpaid labor”?
Teaching my kids is the fun part. You couldn’t pay me to stop. The part of the job I’d give up is the diaper changes and the vomit and the markers on the hardwood floor and the fights… you get the picture. But I guess I’m forced to do the labor. I’m oppressed. I should talk to my wife about it, but I’ll wait for some enlightened soul to see past my protests and save me.
Whatever.
Why do people bother trying to save others that are asking to be left alone? It looks to me like they are just trying to put a righteous face on their bullying.
Huh. That one got my goat a bit. I must admit. I was going to leave a comment there but I couldn’t seem to find the end to the comments. Maybe I’ll head back that way soon.
Auguste and Amanda, are you saying that because we say we are choosing to do this, we are being manipulated by some outside force to think we are choosing it when in reality we are being suppressed? Because I’d like to know what outside force that would be….it’s not the skinny magazine ads or the television pushing homeschooling on us. It sure ain’t my partner, who agrees with the choices we’ve made but hasn’t orchestrated them. If you are talking about secular homeschoolers, which most of us here are, then you are talking about people who come to this decision on their own, not from a church.
I had a serious identity crisis when I started to homeschool. My years of feminist thinking were called to the carpet.A few ideas helped me:
1. Feminism means that women should have the freedom to chose their path just as men do. If it were any other way, say if feminism meant that women had to work in a paying job, then it would not be freedom to choose.
2. The puritan work ethic makes most people wary of a person with no official job. If they have 3 seconds to reflect on your life, they might be less wary based on the amount of work you do.
3. Nothing is preventing me from getting a paycheck. Not even my children. I’ve worked part time while also a homeschooling mom. I’ve known homeschooling families that have their own business, families that share the homeschooling and both parents work, and even where the mom works swing shift to be able to homeschool her kids. Being a homeschooling parent does not mean being unpaid.
In other words, I think the author of the post was standing on shifting sand and calling it oak. All of the comments above already address the other excellent arguments. Now back to my unpaid drudgery.
What I posted there:
None of that is to say that I think that all homeschoolers are fundie nuts intent on depriving their kids of a reality-based education.
**
Gee, thanks.
And that is not to say that I think you are completely without a clue.
Nance — happily unschooling with two fabulous kids and a DH who supports us in all possible ways, as we support him.
Wow, here I was thinking that I was so happy, living a great life … all while I was really being oppressed (“Help, help, I’m being oppressed”).
This totally cracks me up. I think perhaps in our consumerist society it’s the husbands of these poor families that are performing the drudgery. How can He afford the 56″ screen TV’s, atv’s, new cars, and vacations in Maui when their wives are running about Museums, Art Galleries, swimming pools, and play parks all day. (Getting the educations public school couldn’t provide.) Sure there are some weird families out there who are trying to shelter their kids into a blind compliance of (insert name of controlling person or dogma) beliefs. I think though that they would still be receiving this controlling dogma if they were in school. They just won’t get publicly ridiculed on a daily basis.
So yes my husband works full time to support us while I play (with Purpose) with the kids all day. I just have some dishes and laundry thrown into the mix and he has wickedly happy kids as a result. I think of it as a fifty fifty work split. Maybe “people” would feel better if he came home and payed me half of his earnings?? It would perhaps “look” better on paper and I wouldn’t appear so unemployed?
Anything you don’t enjoy becomes a pain and drudgery. I happen to enjoy my kids, some Mum’s woudl have gone stark raving mad in my position as I might go in theirs. I can’t imagine teaching Kindergarten. Twenty four 4 and 5 yearolds who must take a crash course in standing in line, sitting still, not talking, and obeying adults who have no vested interest in their future. I think I would crack pretty quickly. Some people actually go to school for years and accumulate huge debt to get payed to do that sort of work. I don’t hear too many people fighting for their rights.
TeeBuck
If this is all orchestrated by men trying to suppress us, then why is it that most of the homeschooling moms I know had to convince their husbands to give homeschooling a try? Most of the homeschooling dads I know (my husband included) have started out against (or very wary of) homeschooling.
Unless it’s all a big plot… yes, that must be it! The men argue against homeschooling in order to make our resolve stronger, therefore exercising their control over us and getting exactly what they wanted in the first place. Then they have their “forced unpaid labor” while we “think” it was our idea. Evil men. *rolls eyes*
I’ll close that tag, if you don’t mind:
testing 1-2-3
This stuff always scares me. Not this topic, but to go over to that blog and read most of the comments. Whenever I am reminded that people are that un-informed about how homeschooling works, who’s doing it, and what homeschooled kids/parents/families are like, I just want to run away. And then I want to right all the misperceptions, introduce them to all the families in my homeschool groups, take them on a tour of the middle school I just visited the other day, let them talk to my 16 yo son’s college instructor/Eagle Scout Counselor/computer geek mentor, have them do a ride-along for a week with our family (can you say soccer-gymnastics-scouts-college classes-park day-read/read/read-playdates-church activities-drivers ed-strawberry picking?), have them visit with my oldest son’s international friends, and let them see if they can negotiate a better or more egalitarian partnership than the one I’ve got with the man I married 25 years ago. Good grief.
Ok, so one good idea comes out of that. The ride-along program. Sorta like when people go out with the cops or the EMS. Nonhomeschoolers get matched up with a homeschool family and see if they can keep up for a week and learn anything real about homeschooling.
To paraphrase Amanda: The magic word “homeschooling” and its powers to make the value of bringing up one’s children oneself in an arrangement that suits one just fine evaporate knows no bounds.
I could only wade through so much, but the bottom line seems to be this: If you are a woman and you’re not shunting your brats off onto paid labor (on the taxpayer’s dime, preferably) and working for pay yourself, then you are being taken advantage of by the sperm donor, you poor, hopeless idiot. That’s all there is to it. And the fact that you can’t see that she is right and you are wrong really just proves her point then, doesn’t it? Hmmm?
I might as well laugh about it because I have decided to resign myself to the apparent fact that it’s not just the Religious Right that knows better than I do how I should be living MY fucking life, how my children should be living theirs, and what it really means to be a feminist.
So, rather than get all het up about the Marcottes and the Falwells and the Shaws and the Robertsons and whether or not I am living up to their plans for me and my children and The Overall Right-Ordering Of Society And The Proper Place of Women And Children In It, I’ll just have a good chuckle and then go on about my business, glancing over now and then to observe, when they happen to be within sight, my self-confident daughters living their relaxed, autonomous, inquisitive, happily school-free lives.
Several people in the comments advocated paying people to stay home with their kids, whether they are homeschooling or not.
And many of them were homeschoolers themselves.
Should I go stand by the mailbox??
Nance
Really, the whole notion of referring to what a stay-at-home parent (working or not) does as “unpaid labor” is patently ridiculous.
If we’re going to view family life in starkly economic terms, then let’s look at the whole picture instead of just one angle of it, shall we?
Rent/mortgage, property taxes, insurance, automobiles, gas, groceries, clothing, books, haircuts, furniture, appliances, movies, restaurant dinners, vacations, discretionary cash, and every damn thing else you can think of are ALL things that when provided in exchange for labor are considered reportable income.
If what a SAHM does counts as labor, then the value of her living expenses and all cash received counts as compensation.
//Several people in the comments advocated paying people to stay home with their kids, whether they are homeschooling or not.
And many of them were homeschoolers themselves. //
Which just proves that not all the homeschooling idiots are Republicans. Some of them are liberal too.
You know, I actually found the comments extremely interesting to read. Yes, there was a lot of misperceptions about homeschooling (but that does not make anyone stupid, just misinformed), but there was also a lot of interesting discussion.
I will say that I had never really thought about the “unpaid work” aspect. But then I am not gung ho on having a career. I do have some homeschool friends that struggle with this issue a bit more then me.
I definitely do not feel forced into homeschooling and I have to admit the whole “every job that is valuable must have a salary” thing a bit unsettling and cold.
But then I am a bit weird…an independant thinking, left leaning woman who had no issues with taking my husband’s last name (yet who does not like being called Mrs. Elms (that is my MIL)), who was raised to think that I should pursue a career and never thought that I would ever stay home with my kids. Until I had kids.
)
Since connecting the Pandagon essay (and comments on it all over the place) with the law prof’s Reich-inspired manifesto declaring home education to be a “public function” obliging State regulation to protect kids from learning from their own moms, I’ve been in up to my ears in (unpaid) debate in some pretty diverse communities.
Here is what I’m learning — when you finally cut through the waving tall grass in any field liberal or conservative, and get to the (grass)roots of those trying to define me and my kids into or out of their agenda, you can put your face down to it and clearly identify the smell of the same old fertilizer.
(There is only one basic formula all the brands use for their special blend: ignorance-fortified dogma, specially packaged to attract a certain market in whatever shiny soundbites are selling best to that demographic this year.)
The main producers of this dangerous but glibly advertised product, at least for our homeschool demographic, are: 1) theocrats — whether Christian, Muslim or other saviors, and 2) educrats — whether public school, private school or even HS labeled advocates. They all know best how to grow and tend our children, and if they can either woo us or force us to choose sides between their failed methods, they can keep our third way from spreading and thriving in new fields, and (as they fear) supplanting and marginalizing the demands of both theocracy and educracy.
Which imo makes organic education for the next generation (grown respectfully and holistically and close to home, free from theocratic and educratic contaminants, not to mention mob sabotage) a matter of life and death — and not just for home education families but for everybody’s children.
Maybe they are right to fear homeschool feminist moms like me then. Religion is a private choice; schooling is a public mandate, hurting worst those least able to escape it and forcing me to support its continued infliction of damage in the name of salvation. Sooner or later they will have to defend THAT as public policy, from me, and not just to opt out my own, but for everybody’s children to live and think free.
[cue patriotic music!]
[...] Girls On Girls Gone Wild (defining each other) 9 06 2007 Chris has been on top of liberal ps-supporting women defining homeschool women by class and calling for our status to become a matter of public policy concern, so I’m following his blog closely and urge you to, if you can. I just posted this comment there: [...]