Part 8 Series My Experience With and Theories About Learning Styles

Part 8: New State Homeschool Law?

This was really bad timing for me!

One month after getting those test results, my state (Connecticut) had a bill in the legislature regarding withdrawing children from school in order to homeschool. There had been a number of cases where as soon as families pulled their children out of public school in order to homeschool, the school staff turned them into the state’s DCF for educational neglect (and/or medical neglect and/or emotional neglect). The bill was to make it easier for a family to pull the child out of school and to start homeschooling without false investigations being launched against them. The bill would not affect current homeschoolers. That sounds good, doesn’t it?

At one point the bill was modified in committee and suddenly was a BAD bill for ALL homeschoolers. What started out as helpful for potential new homeschoolers trying to leave the public schools had turned bad for every single homeschooler in the state (even if the children had never been in public school). The revised bill placed more constraints on homeschoolers in our state including more government monitoring. We homeschoolers didn’t want any additional monitoring!

Being An Activist

I got involved with the bill by reading the bills and informing myself. I contacted my representatives to share my opinions.

I chatted on local homeschool discussion boards to try to get the word out. I phoned friends I knew were in the dark and clued them in. I called relatives and asked them to write letters about this to share their own opinions of it.

My children and I attended the public hearing in our capital. I marched in a protest alongside my children.

The worst part of this which I didn’t know would happen was I heard some horrible stories from parents falsely accused of educational neglect. Since some were turned in for educational neglect on day one or two of their homeschooling that makes them false reports in my opinion as how could the parent have failed to home educate them well when they’d only started that same day or were just one day into it? That’s impossible.

By hearing some terrible stories which included very bad things happening to kids in public school and on public school busses and about how the schools failed to remedy the situation, I got even more turned off to public schooling. You would not believe the stories if you heard them. I’m tempted to share the stories but will refrain. Some have been shared in newspaper stories.

Due to our negative experience with school testing and my experience with our homeschooling being judged by an outside party I didn’t like the idea of regular government evaluation of my child such as using test scores to evaluate my children!

It is a very strange feeling when you know something is real from being very involved in that thing for a long time then suddenly have an outside person judging the entire thing on small bits of information. When the data used to judge someone is filled with errors or the flaws in testing used to come up with scores and rankings is known, relying on those measures is not only questionable but is dangerous in my opinion.

On the one hand I wanted citizens to have more freedom to pull their children out of school so I worked toward passing that bill but when the bill’s content shifted, I want more government monitoring that the bill suddenly contained. The bill never made it to law.

How Our Homeschool Changed

Another effect this killed bill had on me was I increased my documentation of homeschool work that was done. I also made both of my children do work that honestly I’d rather not have them do but that schools do. I shifted some of our learning to methods that are more closely aligned with ‘the school way’.

At its worst I think this has just wasted some of our time and energy. I don’t think any of it was damaging to my children so am consoling myself with knowing that “doing that kind of work can’t harm a child”. Perhaps it might dull their curiosity and make them think some kinds of learning is boring but my hope is they’ll clearly see the more free homeschooling lessons we do are more fun and more effective while the school-y learning is boring and seems stupid. Some of the school-y stuff may be a means to an end. Maybe knowing better test taking abilities may help the child take the SAT and take community college courses in homeschool high school then might help them get into a good college to pursue the career of their choice.

Learning Styles?

While dealing in this kind of emergency mode, this fear based mindset that I was in for a while, learning styles went out the window for me. To document remedial work done I used school-y assignments that were not in alignment with any part of my older son’s learning styles or with my homeschool and educational philosophy. I knew he mastered the stuff before the remedial work was even done so I just wanted proof to show I did the remedial work in case we were evaluated by an outside party. I was cramming information and checking off boxes, something I normally don't like to do.

Later I’d revisit learning styles when my sons were to learn new information I preferred it to be learned faster and easier so if I could change my teaching techniques to be something that would help this effort then I was willing to try it.