Nostalgia
[Rod Dreher  03/18 10:31 AM]

Steve writes with some choice words for the homeschool crowd:

The education topic drives me nuts because everybody on the left and right are holding hands in agreement although they don't know it. They all believe in being easy on their kids in one way or another.

I was raised in the lower class in the US. The real lower class. We lived in rented flats for most of my childhood in lower or lower-middle class urban neighborhoods. I attended Catholic schools when they were free to parishioners. We had 50 students per class. These were not the gentle children of good Christian homes in the nostalgic stories. These were the rowdy "Catholic" kids that the nice protestants from the better neighborhoods were afraid of.

While they were largely 2 parent homes, the dads were rarely involved in child rearing. The Dads worked in factories or construction and after work they visited the many taverns before returning home late in the evening. I worked part-time and summers in the factories and in construction and became well acquainted with the life style so I know of what I speak. At most, the Dads served as the court of last resort with a thick belt. Some were brutes who were anxious for such duty but most were reluctant nice guys like my own Dad who ducked the role as much he could. Home however was for women and children.

The kids however exceeded everyone's expectations. When state testing was implemented, we routinely surpassed public schools in better neighborhoods where the parents were mostly college graduates. From homes where most parents never attended high school, most of the kids became college graduates. It is the single greatest instance of upward mobility that the US (and perhaps the world) has ever witnessed.

So how, with largely absent fathers, poorly educated mothers, low socio-economic status and lord of the flies conflict out on the playground was this achieved. Marine boot-camp discipline in the classrooms.

Instead of soft upper middle class housewives who now teach in the public and Catholic schools, we had tough nuns who weren't afraid of putting us in our place. Nobody worried about the self-esteem of troublemakers and nobody was seeing a therapist. Nobody was on psychotropic drugs and in my experience, nobody was kicked out. The ultimate threat however was a call home. Tough as the discipline was in school, nobody wanted a call home because there the discipline was tougher and sharper. No parent wanted their family to be shamed and no kid wanted to pay the price for shaming their family.

I live and work among Asians and my wife teaches in a high school with an overwhelmingly Asian-American student body. In almost all cases, both parents work. When the kids write in their journals about the weekends, they routinely say: "my dad went to work." The kids are disciplined, polite, successful, and devoted to their families. They are accepted into the best public and private universities in the country even though they have none of the alumni privileges and they even face reverse affirmative action to prevent too many Asian students. When they graduate from these elite schools, they return to the family home and work to help themselves and their families. Why? The answer is high expectations, high-investment, family pride, and discipline. The parents work like hell to provide the best opportunities for their children and the kids are very aware of that. They feel obligated to pay back and they love their parents for the very real sacrifices they have made.

The home-schooled kids I've seen from personal relationships and from coaching soccer are too often little hot-housed flowers. They aren't used to taking orders from strangers and they are unskilled in the give and take of peer relationships. This is a particular difficulty for boys who must get used to the tough pecking-order relationships that boys naturally develop and are mirrored in the working world. The parents (mostly mothers) of home schoolers will complain about the discipline and want special treatment for their children. They are more likely than public or private school kids to drop out regardless of their natural athletic ability.

As far as the extra closeness blah, blah, blah. I defy you to find a closer parent-child relationship than I have with my son because I have never see it. Where I can't provide the best for my kids, I have no problem paying people who are more capable and I work like hell to provide that ability. My son goes around without prompting saying: "my life is awesome" and "my life is all about opportunities." He is well aware of where I came from and how hard I worked to move up. I have a saying that we have adopted as our motto: "you stand on my shoulders." I work a more than full-time job and my wife teaches high school. We live and work to provide the best opportunities for our kids and I defy you to find more successful parents than we are.