According to Stephen Duncombe in his Introduction to The Cultural Resistance Reader, cultural resistance is “A ‘haven in a heatless world,’ an escape from the world of politics and problems.” (123). Increased privatization of public space was a major form of cultural resistance in 1998. Looking at other forms of cultural resistance I noticed homeschooling and the resistance it generates. In the early 1980’s homeschooling in America increased due to speculations that public schools were teaching unconventional ethics. Since this period, an increase in the number of children home schooled has been recorded. 2.9 percent, or about 1.5 million kids of age to attend school were home schooled in 2007, an increase from previous years. But why this sudden increase when public and private school have been around for so long? Looking further into it, I saw that parents felt that with homeschooling they had more freedom, family time and less worry about what their kids were learning since they are the ones teaching them. After looking at each of these arguments praising homeschooling, I realized that these were not aspects benefiting the children and their futures. Homeschooling is a form of cultural resistance because it escapes reality by having each family deciding their own curriculum and isolating them from social interaction, but since it doesn't generate broader change to the education system, it is ineffective.
Although the reason some families choose to home school is because they want a stronger, more personal education for their child, it has been seen that some children simply drop out of school and say that they are homeschooling, when in reality they are not studying anything since tradition education is not required in the Un...
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Duncombe, Stephen. "Introduction to The Cultural Resistance Reader." Critical Encounters with Texts: Finding a Place to Stand. By Margaret Himley and Anne Fitzsimmons. New York: Custom Pub., 2009. 117-23. Print.
Duncan, Arne. "The Well-Rounded Curriculum: Secretary Arne Duncan's Remarks at the Arts Education Partnership National Forum." U.S. Department of Education. 9 Apr. 2010. Web. 07 Dec. 2010. .
Scaccia, Jesse. "The Case against Homeschooling | Teacher, Revised." Teacher, Revised | Real Talk From Real Teachers. 30 May 2009. Web. 07 Dec. 2010. .
Sowell, Thomas. "Postponing Reality." Capitalism Magazine. 21 Feb. 2006. Web. 07 Dec. 2010. .
Good evening and welcome to tonight’s episode of Learning Literature. Tonight we will be celebrating the 20th anniversary of Gattaca by analysing the techniques text producers employ to construct representations of social issues relating to marginalised groups. We will focus on two classic pieces of literature, Ken Kessey’s, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, as well as Andrew Niccol’s Gattaca. Through a range of techniques, the text producers have included representations of freedom and independence, power, as well as discrimination in each of their respective texts.
Fetterley, Judith. The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach to American Literature. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, xi-xxiv. Print.
Colombo, Gary. “Thinking Critically, Challenging Cultural Myths.” Rereading America: Cultural Contexts for Critical Thinking and Writing.Ed. Gary Colombo, Ed. Robert Cullen and Ed. Bonnie Lisle. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin, 2010. 1-6. Print
Cox, a professional writer for the CQ Researcher, compiles information for and against homeschooling and its impact on fundamental American values. Her argument condemns homeschooling for threatening the American public school system. Cox states that public education is what enables democracy to work well as it levels the playing field allowing all both rich and poor opportunity to acquire an education. She also combats studies that show that home schooled parents are more likely to be involved in civic affairs with a conclusion from the Education Department that says, “We have reason to believe that the organizations and practices involved in private and home schooling, in themselves, tend to foster public participation in civic affairs” showing that there is not conclusive evidence that just home schooled parents are more involved. Cox addresses the fact that many parents are realizing the importance of their involvement in their children’s education, and that, “public education [is] the great equalizer in a democracy.” Without public education we cannot be equal. Cox knows that public schools are not perfect, but is an advocate for making them better for the good of
According to Mary Griffith, author of the book The Homeschooling Handbook, the concept of homeschooling is nothing new to society. It is only in the past 150 years that public school system as we know it came into effect (Griffith, 1999). Prior to that, “…the family was the basis for social life…the home was where children learned what was necessary to function in their community” (1999). By the mid-1970s, there were barely any people practicing homeschooling (Ray, 2004). However, over the past twenty years there has been a resurgence in people choosing homeschooling (2004). There has been a 500 percent increase in homeschooling from the 1990-1991 school year to the 2002-2003 school year (2004). The National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI) estimates “that between 1.7 and 2.1 million students were being homeschooled in the U.S., in every grade level from kindergarten through twelfth grade…Indications are that the growth rate is between 7 percent and 15 percent per year ” (2004).
According to Gretchen M. Wilhelm and Michael W. Firmin, in their article Historical and Contemporary Developments, the Department of Education found that over 1,700,000 students are homeschooled. That’s 3.4 percent of all school age children (304). Homeschooling is defined as an education that contains less than twenty five hours of public school teaching each week and is based out of a household. The earliest forms of education were originally taught from home, then later developed into public schools (Wilhelm and Firmin). Homeschooling not only affects the students taught, but also fellow Americans in the race to advance a nation. Homeschooling needs to be understood in order to revise education into a better and
Moreover, some families choose to Homeschool in order to screen their child’s curriculum to remove secularist views found in modern day public school curriculum (2002). Others have children with special needs or learning disabilities, so they choose to homeschool (Maaja, 1997). Ultimately, families are looking for what they believe is best for their children. And these families want to be actively involved in the education of their children. Homeschooling parents do not want strangers raising their children. They want to raise their children with freedom from government systems and institutions (Ray, 2000a).
Homeschooling offers students a more time efficient education that allows the student to focus on education in which is the sole purpose for school. Homeschooling also gives the teacher a thorough evaluation of a student’s strengths and weaknesses by visually seeing what subjects they excel in and what subjects they are weak in. At this point students can increase their individual progression in each subject. Homeschooling permits control of the environment a student learns in to retain the focus of the student. This will reduce the chances of drug usage, bullying, and violence. Samuel Blumenfeld said this on the importance of homeschooling “The home is a safe haven for the children in a world awash with drugs, sexually transmitted diseases, violence, and moral corruption” (Cindy Mur et al.76). When parents come to realize that the home is the safest place for their children, then will they act as Blumenfeld concludes “I look forward to the day when the public schools will be virtually empty not because we have abolished public education but because the parents will have abandoned it” (Cindy Mur et al.
While the majority choose to do so for academics, the reasoning goes beyond simply that. Homeschool families are often stereotyped as extremely religious and attempting to hide their children from the corruption and sin of the world. Families that do keep children out for these reasons are still prevalent within the homeschooling community; my mother contemplated homeschooling me and my brothers for this reason, and one of my best friends is homeschooled in a religious home. As homeschooling grows more mainstream, more families believe that public school squashes a child’s creativity and attempts to conform all children into the same person. Lynn Schnaiberg, a writer for Education Weekly, gives the reasons for four homeschooling families in her article “Staying Home from School.” In this article, the first family, the Scandora’s, believe “learning is not a product of teaching” and that their children should be free to learn at whatever pace they want. Another family featured in Schnaiberg’s article, the Collins family, is dissatisfied with the Baltimore city schools, which had some of the lowest test scores in the state. The Hoyt family has two children who are considered “gifted.” Because public schools do not give proper attention
In today’s American society, quality education is important for one to succeed. Without proper education, a person will find it extremely difficult to apply for college, a job, or to pursue his or her dream. Typically when Americans think of education, public education is the first to come to mind. Public education has been around for centuries and is provided to most children throughout the United States. Due to this fact, public education has been the go to education source for years. Though, this trend is slowly changing with many parents deciding to home school their children instead. Many factors are the cause for this issue, but the common arguments arise from a certain few. For students, public school provides many opportunities ranging from social connections, school sports, and the exposure to teachers who are experts in their fields. But homeschooling is often superior because it offers additional time for students to participate in various extracurricular activities and community service, allows for more individual attention, personal character development, and it offers less exposure to discrimination that is received in the public school environment.
As the population in public schools increase, the problems in these schools are also on the rise. These changes are leasing to the way parents are schooling their children. Many parents are leaning towards homeschooling as a solution to this problem. This increase in homeschooling can be directly related to an increase in school violence, the offering of a lack luster curriculum, and lack of student teacher interaction.
All children in America have the right to a quality education. Most students receive that education through conventional means, going to a public or private school. There is another option for today's children, home schooling. Home schooling is a controversial issue. While it does have its benefits, some people believe it has too many downfalls to be an effective method of education. In this paper, topics such as academic impact, social impact, and parental opinions of home schooling will be discussed.
I have chosen to write this essay about homeschooling. Homeschooling is one option for schooling children, along with public and private schools. Many people do not believe in homeschooling because they do not trust that parents are teaching their children correctly. They argue that parents can’t teach their children without proper training and that without it. They also worry that students will not learn to socialize or function in society and that homeschooling is just a way to hide children from the real world. A lot of people fear homeschooling because they do not know very much about that form of education. On the other hand many peoples opinion is that homeschooling has many benefits and that it gives
Studies have shown year after year that homeschooled students consistently perform just as well as (or in many cases better than) traditionally schooled students on standardized academic exams. But very rarely does anyone ask why this is, or what caused the student to do so well, because they are usually too concerned with questions about the student’s social life or if they would be able to handle the transition into college. Therefore, my thesis statement is: Homeschooled students often achieve higher academic success and are more active in their communities than traditionally schooled students, due to a personalized approach to learning that emphasizes individuality. My research paper will debunk some popular myths about homeschooling, and give the real reasons why homeschoolers are so successful.
Today, many parents are homeschooling their children. A U.S. Department of Education’s report shows that approximately 1.5 million children were being homeschooled in 2007 (Lips & Feinberg, 2008). This is almost 3 percent of all school age children (Lips & Feinberg, 2008). A private researcher, the National Home Education Research Institute, estimates 2.5 million children were being homeschooled in the 2007 – 2008 academic years (Lips & Feinberg, 2008). By either count, homeschooling is growing exponentially.