The Third Kind Of Homeschooling Families

Just read the following article in Business Week, and felt compelled to comment on it:

Meet My Teachers: Mom And Dad
A growing number of affluent parents think they can do better than any school

Slater Aldrich doesn't attend any of the top-shelf public or private schools near his family's Madison (Conn.) home, not even his mother's alma mater, the $18,000-a-year Country School. Instead, the 11-year-old spends his days playing the role of town zoning officer, researching the pros and cons of granting approval to a new Wal-Mart. Other endeavors include pretending he's a Sand Hill Road venture capitalist, creating Excel-studded business plans for a backyard sheep company, and growing his own organic food. "It's kind of like living on a white-collar farm," says his dad, Clark Aldrich. Aldrich vowed he'd never put his kid through the eye-glazing lectures he endured in school, even at prestigious institutions like Lawrence Academy and Brown University.

[..]

No longer the bailiwick of religious fundamentalists or neo-hippies looking to go off the cultural grid, homeschooling is a growing trend among the educated elite. More parents believe that even the best-endowed schools are in an Old Economy death grip in which kids are learning passively when they should be learning actively, especially if they want an edge in the global knowledge economy.

[..]

In some circles homeschooling is even attaining a reputation as a secret weapon for Ivy League admission.



I applaud the authors of the article for finally identifying the THIRD and DEFINITIVE demographic category of people who choose homeschooling as part of their lifestyle: the sophisticated, brainy, affluent, and overeducated ELITE! Those are the trailblazers of today, a far cry from the backward Bible-beating fundamentalists and equally austere and unappealing pot-smoking types. Finally, a group of people I can identify myself with! or, wait, can I really? I am definitely overeducated but, alas, far from affluent! oh no, not again![sorry, couldn't resist :):) -- sarcasm off now].

On a more serious note, the article paints a pretty little picture indeed, save for the following nuances.

American people are notorious for their complete lack of class conciousness. It seems that everyone, from a department store clerk to a Lexus driving $300K+/year doctor or lawyer, refer to themselves as MIDDLE CLASS. A joke, really -- but IMO this is the basis of the "American Dream", keeping the system going. People appear to think that they can achieve everything no matter what the starting point, with hard work and a bit of luck.

The article American equality? That's rich provides chilling statistics about upward mobility and the decline of real term wages, that rips the American Dream assumption to shreds.

My guess is that people from both the low and high end of middle class are aware of these trends, even if subconciously. Perhaps this is why they all are desperately afraid to take a wrong step and become poor. Which doesn't stop them from keeping dreaming, of course.

What this means, in reference to the Business Week article, is that the very term AFFLUENT EDUCATED ELITE is an oxymoron. Ironically, the educated are most often neither affluent, nor are they elite. And sometimes, they aren't even 'educated' in a true sense of the word.

By the time a professional goes through an exorbitantly long and expensive stint in college, she is often neck deep in dept. Thus, affluence, i.e., being financially well-off, doesn't start until late in life, almost too late for many to start a family of their own.

So much for affluence.

Prestige of academic professions is plain low among people in general and young adults pursuing a degree. Which is why a lot of researchers, especially lower tier ones, are foreign-born and educated.

And in any case, it is not the educated who influence the real life social and political decision -- it is the rich who own and head big corporations. The CEOs of large companies often are graduates of second-tier schools. No surprise here: the skills they need for business aren't learned in the white towers of academia. Rather, these innate, often times sociopathic, tendencies are perfected in the game of real life, which these are determined to win.

So much for the elite.

Lastly, with the formal college education now viewed solely as a 'job training', most people are going into law, medicine, and business for money that those professions promise to bring, rather than pure and selfless interest. These are the people I have seen plenty of when I was TAing: all they cared about was getting an A in a course, no matter what the means, cramming or cheating. Forget 'bringing out what is best in you', as is the original meaning of the word 'education'.

I understand that the article in Business Week is trying to present homeschooling as a viable and constantly evolving lifestyle option. It seems to achieve its goal, making it obvious to the readers that homeschooling touches the lives of people exactly like them: the average successful college-educated folks.

However, I am concerned that the article actually does homeschooling a disservice. The booming frontier of homeschooling is shifted from a remote Christian fundamentalism and dated hippism to a more modern, but equally artificial 'affluent educated elite', i.e., yet another elusive group that one can't truly relate to.

The truth of the matter is that most homeschoolers are average people like you and me, who are simply fed up with the lies of the system. Many of them have some education under their belts, and each of them falls somewhere on a wide of continuum of beliefs and convictions. There is a great diversity within the community, but one can always find a niche. It is about as diverse as the society itself.

And that's the story I am sticking to.


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