Planning for harm reduction

The good intentions and great effort put forth by homeschool parents do not guarantee that homeschooling will not harm their child, or that it will provide a better education than public school would. Most parents choose homeschooling because they want the best for their children. And most teachers want the best for their students. Both fail their students all the time. Good educators acknowledge up front that good intentions are not enough. They expect to fail at times, and are open reflection, learning, and confronting their own biases and shortcomings.

Teachers who assume that their good intentions, passion, or love for children is enough to ensure good educational outcomes are the ones I’ve seen do the most harm to their students. 

The homeschool discourse is full of black and white statements that miss the nuance needed to educate well. It should raise a red flag when you hear all or nothing thinking, such as “homeschooling is always best” or “parents always know best” or “home is always safest.” Criticisms of homeschooling are also often all or nothing thinking, like “homeschooling is abuse” or “no parent is qualified to teach” or “homeschoolers are all socially stunted.”

The black and white reveals that that person has closed themselves off to new information, or to the possibility of being wrong. And this puts them in a position to allow a lot of harm. A parent who believes homeschooling is always best will continue to homeschool even if it isn’t working for their child, if the education they are providing is lacking. A parent who believes homeschooled children are always safer than their traditionally schooled counterparts will not be vigilant about the kinds of danger that children encounter as homeschoolers. A teacher who believes all homeschoolers are socially stunted may be unaware of what kind of social stunting that can occur in a traditional school.

Flag all extreme statements as unreliable, and reframe them in a way that allows for nuance. Instead of “homeschooling is always best” reframe as “homeschooling can be a success or failure for students in the same way public school can.” Instead of “parents always know what their children need best” reframe as “not all parents are equipped to homeschool.”

This change in thinking can be very threatening for some homeschoolers, if their choice to homeschool is based on the incorrect assurance that their choice means they cannot fail. In fact, the best way to fail is to convince yourself that it cannot happen.

Think of yourself not as a teacher in a classroom, but as the founder of a school. Homeschoolers don’t just need to provide curriculum and teach lessons, they need to do everything a school does to plan and facilitate a twelve year education that prepares a student for life as an adult.

Homeschool resources and advice can focus too much on the details of teaching, planning creative lessons, finding great materials to use, and educational activities. But the larger picture does not always get the same attention. Homeschooling means not just stepping into the shoes of a teacher, but of all the people who make a school function: boards of education write state standards, school districts and admins decide which classes to offer to cover those skills. School departments map the curriculum for the whole year, with each unit they will teach. And finally, after hundreds or thousands of hours considering the big picture, a teacher sits down to develop a lesson plan.

Homeschoolers can benefit from dedicating some time to considering all the questions that a school has addressed before a child ever walks into the building. Parents should consider the whole twelve years of education, not divided by grades or subjects, but as an entire project that needs to be sketched out before any of the work begins. At every point in the planning process, challenge yourself to see if you can step back and see things on a larger scale, and plan in a wider scope. What kind of adult do you see your child being at eighteen, with what skills, what understandings, what critical thinking? In kindergarten you may be eager to read picture books, but thinking about all twelve years could bring the realization that online media literacy is also a vital part of our world today. Today, English classes can encompass all sorts of media beyond books: research papers, journals, newspapers, social media, videos, even memes.

When you are feeling overwhelmed by planning, consider if stepping back and thinking bigger picture helps things fall into place.

One of the flaws of traditional schools is that they can provide too much independence. Parents have limited control over what happens at school, what experiences their child will have, what things they will be exposed to.

The goal should be a balance between the independence of school and the oversight of parents.
A lot of what we think of as good and involved parenting is a parent working to ensure that their child’s life at school is not too separate from their life at home. Good parents know their kids' friends, their teacher, checks homework, practices and reinforces academic skills at home. They know what their child’s grades are, they know if they are not following the rules at school. They talk with their children about what they hear and learn at school, and help contextualize things from their family’s values or morals. 

All of this in an effort to balance school with home, teachers with parents, and safety with independence.

Many homeschool parents see that involved parents are good in traditionally schooled children, and assume that homeschooling is then even better. It’s as involved as a parent can be in their child’s education! They fail to see that the goal of involved parents at school is to have a good balance and collaboration between home and school. 

Eliminating school altogether, and consolidating school and home into the same place does not succeed in balance. It introduces imbalance in the opposite direction. There is too much time at home and with family, too much control and influence given to parents, too little independence for children, too little variety in the kinds of experiences and people they are exposed to. Homeschooling is inherently imbalanced. School and home cannot balance each other when they are the same place. Parents and teachers cannot balance each other when they are the same person. 

So while a parent of a traditionally schooled child needs to work to be involved in their child’s education in order to be a good parent, homeschooled parents are already too involved. Good parenting for them is going to look very different. While most parents need to lean in, homeschool parents need to lean out.

Spend some time reflecting on both the positives and negatives of your own schooling experience. What do you hope is different for your child? What do you hope is the same or better?

Many homeschool parents were traditionally schooled, in a public or private school, so there is something different than their own experience they want for their child. A parent who wants to exclusively homeschool is comparing their idea of homeschooling against their idea of traditional education, which, consciously or not, is usually modeled heavily on their own experience in school. 

Reflect on whether you are unconsciously or consciously assuming that your child will have the same school experience you did if they go to a traditional school.  If you struggled socially and experienced bullying, are you homeschooling to protect your child from that experience? If you were unsupported as a student with special needs, are you scared your own child will go through the same? If you hated school and dreaded it every morning, do you assume your child will have the same experience?

Our own schooling experience is often the only model we have to draw on for what our child’s school experience will be. But it is important not to fall into the assumption that your child will have the same experience you did. Children have their own personalities, intelligences, and interests. They may excel in a subject you struggled with, or be extroverted while you are introverted. They may thrive in the activity and noise of a busy classroom, while you found the same experience overwhelming.

I hear many parents say they want to homeschool because they faced a certain issue as a child, and they don’t want their child to face that same issue. Take for example bullying. Bullying is a horrible reality of childhood, and can leave long term trauma in an adult who experienced it. It would be understandable for a parent who experienced bullying to want to shield their child from the opportunity for bullying to happen. So while you add “avoid bullying” to your list of reasons to homeschool, keep in mind that your child’s experience will not be a repetition of yours. They may not experience bullying. They may handle bullying differently, or have friends or teachers who stand up for them and stop the bullying. Or they may face bullying as a homeschool student among their own friend group.

If homeschooling isn’t automatically the best form of education, then it is important to identify your reasons for wanting to homeschool outside of the hope for providing a better education. When you picture your child’s school day, what do you see? A quiet and more child-paced day? Lower stakes learning? More time outside? Sheltering your child from societal ills like drugs and porn? Are you looking forward to planning lessons? Traveling with the flexibility that homeschooling gives? Being part of the homeschool community and culture in your area?

A powerful way to guard against homeschooling that does harm is to make sure that you are assessing how it’s going, according to the goals you identified.

This includes reflecting on whether homeschooling is meeting your hopes, as well as checking in with the homeschooled children and the working parent to make sure everyone is enjoying and benefiting from the current set up.

A homeschooler who insists on homeschooling no matter how it is going, whether the children want to be homeschooled or not, and no matter the toll it takes on the family is setting themselves up fail their children. Responsible homeschooling means identifying the point at which you can acknowledge that homeschooling is no longer advisable.

Divorce, illness, disability, death, job loss. A lot can happen in the time you plan to spend educating your child at home. Responsible homeschooling includes planning for the unexpected, and having a plan B in case homeschooling is no longer possible.

Functionally, this means homeschooling in a way that would allow a child to transfer to their local public school if the need arose. This means keeping the skills being taught on pace with their public schooled peers, even if the curriculum and materials being used to teach them are different. It also means not speaking negatively about public schools and public schoolers in order to sell your child on homeschooling.