Although the issue of homeschool student participation in public high school sports isn’t exactly a pressing national concern, it hits pretty close to home in our family–both our kids are competitive club-level swimmers who could contribute to the success of our local high school’s swim team (perennial runners-up in the county championships). I’m personally conflicted about the issue as far as my kids are concerned, but don’t want to bore our readers with those private concerns.
On the other hand, this Washington Post op-ed raises at least one issue that is of broader interest. The foundation of the author’s argument against homeschool participation in public school sports is that homeschoolers aren’t part of the high school community. In an obvious sense, they aren’t. They’re not in classes with the high school kids. But in another sense, they are. They live in the same neighborhoods, play on the same club sports teams, participate in the same “afterschool” activities (like scouts), and worship in the same churches. That sounds like community to me. (Okay, I know I’m painting with a broad brush. There’s a range of community engagement by homeeschool families, just as there is a range of community engagement with non-homeschool families.)
I recognize that public high schools (and public schools in general) are in many ways identified with their geographic communities. But it seems to me that to define community membership exclusively or largely in terms of high school attendance is to leave too little to the community as it’s defined informally (by “civil society”) and too much to the community as it’s defined by the government.
Let’s say there’s a boy named Johnny who attends basketball games at his neighborhood high school. His older brother goes there, as did his big sister. He attends the school’s summer basketball camp and is counting the seasons until he can try out for the team. For years, his mom has left work early to run the concession stand at the gym on game nights.
Now spring ahead a few years. Johnny attends that high school, knows most of the teachers by name, has learned what cafeteria food to avoid, can identify his locker by smell and has designs on a blue-eyed brunette in biology.
Johnny’s school is his life. Always has been. He’s not a just a member of the community–he’ s a member of his school community.
I repeat: “Johnny’s school is his life.” Or, as the author says later, the high school is the hub of the community. I think that that’s somewhat of an exaggeration, but to the extent that it is true, we’re permitting the government to define our children’s lives and the core of our communities. Would it not be better to permit “civil society” to play a larger role and government–at all levels–to play a smaller role in defining our lives?
February 22nd, 2012 | 5:13 pm
If they don’t want my homeschool kids to participate in public sports, perhaps they could relinquish that portion of my state and properties taxes going to fund the school?
February 22nd, 2012 | 8:47 pm
Joseph Knippenberg writes:
“I recognize that public high schools (and public schools in general) are in many ways identified with their geographic communities.”
*************
In America, a public school is more traditionally spoken of as being identified with a local community. The identity of a public school is formed not just by Washington bureaucrats and federal judges (many of whom are churchgoing), but also by localparents and children (many of whom are churchgoing, too), local teachers and administrators (many of whom are also churchgoing), local parent-teacher organizations (ditto in regards to the churchgoing), local student organizations (ditto ditto), local school boards, and local city, county, and state government bodies. These are not surprising facts.
Knippenberg further writes:
“I repeat: ‘Johnny’s school is his life.’ Or, as the author says later, the high school is the hub of the community. I think that that’s somewhat of an exaggeration, but to the extent that it is true, we’re permitting the government to define our children’s lives and the core of our communities. Would it not be better to permit ‘civil society’ to play a larger role and government–at all levels–to play a smaller role in defining our lives?”
*************
Unless we’re living in a state of anarchy, we are always already “permitting government” – and, to the degree to which we have not dispossessed ourselves of our responsibilities as citizens of a democratic republic, we are “permitting our government” – to define our community life. Local and other “levels” of civil society already and undeniably have a role in defining our individual communities, too. I’d say it’s a significant role — outside of the fever-dreams of some Arlington, Virginia technocrats, how could it be otherwise? — because there is no wall of separation between civil society, “government” (at all levels), and “business” (at all levels). All three are inextricably bound together in the interminable series of negotiations that define the educational institutions that we use to civilize our children.
February 22nd, 2012 | 9:12 pm
What entity relinquishes tax revenue without a fight?
Some communities allow home schooled kids to participate in sports and all kinds of other activities, too. I’ve read about school districts that allow home schooled kids to attend classes, private schools, too. As for sports, we watched for after-school leagues, but one home schooling mom I know found, through Little League contacts, a public school in a city 25 miles away that wanted her son on their team. He played for that school through much of his high school years and did very well. Geography? Home schooling, we take advantage of opportunity. If the community rejects the home schooled kids, it is really their loss.
As to your last point, I don’t think kids relate to school as government. They relate to school as civil society (although it is not always so civil). Communities want their schools to be part of them and resent state and federal mandates that remove their community control.
February 22nd, 2012 | 9:50 pm
It will be a huge improvement when we are capable of detaching sports and academics.
Sports should belong to the community. It makes more sense. What is sports good for? Bringing people together as a community. This is why sports has always been associated with communities. It makes sense to use sports to bring us together as a community. It does not make sense to try to use sports to bring together a group of people trying to study something; it only interferes with the studying.
Schools would do better to stop tearing their resources between rival commitments. Let sports be supported – and belong to – the communities; let the communities get sponsors for the sports without any fear of academic content becoming contaminated by those sponsors. And then let the academic part of the school focus on its actual mission.
February 23rd, 2012 | 3:20 am
Blake
Newbolt would have disagreed -
There’s a breathless hush in the Close tonight -
Ten to make and the match to win -
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.
And it’s not for the sake of the ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season’s fame,
But his Captain’s hand on his shoulder smote -
‘Play up! Play up! And play the game!’
The sand of the Desert is sodden red -
Red with the wreck of a square that broke; -
The Gatling’s jammed and the Colonel’s dead,
And the regiment’s blind with dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed his banks,
And England’s far, and Honour a name,
But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks:
‘Play up! Play up! And play the game!’
This is the word that year by year,
While in her place the school is set,
Every one of her sons must hear,
And none that hears it dare forget.
This they all with joyful mind
Bear through life like a torch in flame,
And falling fling to the host behind -
‘Play up! Play up! And play the game!’
February 23rd, 2012 | 4:39 am
Team sports in high school is not confined within the school day or the school calendar. It generally requires a large time commitment outside the normal school schedule. The identification of the school with its sports teams actually creates divisions within the school as the athletes are set apart, told they are superior to other students, their egotistical selfish behavior encouraged and protected for the sake of having a winning team. All other students are required to honor the teams and support their sense of superiority. The belief that physical prowess is character building diverts attention from actual character. Teams have nothing to do with general physical fitness for students as a whole. Disconnecting team sports from schools would reemphasize the true mission of the schools in educating students, rather than coopting them as auxiliaries of the sports teams.
February 23rd, 2012 | 7:37 am
I wonder if the public schools are unnecessarily anxious about homeschooled athletes. They might be missing out, in fact. when I was in high school, I was an athlete at a school which I did not attend, an all-boys diocesan school. Any girl from any school—private or public, Catholic or not—could join various teams or participate in activities. Cheerleading, swimming/diving, tennis, and golf were open to us. So were the symphonic band, music ensembles, and all the dramas and musicals they put on. Most girls were from Catholic high schools, but not all. The public school girls liked the “off the beaten track” aspect and the smaller scale of everything.
The opportunity to participate produced loyal, grateful, and hardworking athletes and musicians. It was an invigorating mix of people, truly an unusual experience. I guess it was a 1970s version of “diversity”‘ and it was appealing.
February 23rd, 2012 | 7:54 am
If a home schooled high school student should be eligible to play on his or her local public school’s sports teams, shouldn’t students who attend private and parochial schools also be eligible to play on their local public school’s sports teams? Their parents are paying taxes to support the public schools.
Perhaps particularly gifted athletes who attend private or parochial schools should think of themselves as “free agents” and play for the team that they feel would best further their athletic career. Also, marginal or poor athletes in parochial or private schools who can’t make the team in the school they attend might try to make the local public school’s team.
February 23rd, 2012 | 9:15 am
Besides what Joseph Knippenberg has said, why is there the assumption of hostility toward those who are not *already* part of the community? Where is the perceived harm in incorporating kids *into* the “school community?”
It is not as though participation in sports teams is not in itself a route into the community. Even the kids on the team who are in the school might not have much school-based interaction other than the team — they may not have the same classes, and when they do, they’re supposed to be listening and working, not doing much else. School sports teams in themselves have always been regarded as a means, not a product, of building school community. So what’s the big problem with incorporating a few kids who do their academics in a different setting?
At any rate, Pennsylvania passed an equal access law a few years ago, and my middle school aged daughter has been participating in public school sports teams for two years. Even given my bias, I’d be hard pressed to figure out how the team spirit has actually *suffered* for having an extra member.
February 23rd, 2012 | 9:19 am
“If a home schooled high school student should be eligible to play on his or her local public school’s sports teams, shouldn’t students who attend private and parochial schools also be eligible to play on their local public school’s sports teams? Their parents are paying taxes to support the public schools. ”
I believe in some jurisdictions they are, when the private school does not provide a team in the same sport. When there is a rival team in place, it is disallowed by interscholastic sports rules, because that would lead to competitive recruiting, which is held to be against the spirit of school-based sports.
February 23rd, 2012 | 11:24 am
To be clear, in my home state rules do not permit homeschoolers to participate in public high school sports. In some sports, there are parallel homeschool programs, and there is a smaller school sports association (populated mostly by small religious schools) that allows homeschool organizations to field teams to compete with the schools. It would be nice for my kids to have the experience of competing with their neighborhood friends for the local high school, but I’m not about to enroll them for the sake of that experience, which (by the way) is quite different from competition at the club level (at least in swimming).
But that wasn’t really the point of my post, which was intended to challenge the notion of community implicitly deployed by the author of the op-ed. it’s one that, er, “marginalizes” all those who don’t participate in schooling on terms dictated by the government. Can we not remember that family and community are in a certain way prior to government?
February 23rd, 2012 | 12:24 pm
It is odd that commenters focused on the sports aspect. I find the idea that there should be no homeschoolers as public high school is the (true) community circular reasoning. It seems to me, there are some high schools that should not be socializing our youth yet efforts to close them down always seem to fail.
I think of New Orleans. There, Katrina destroyed the public school system. Charter schools started to pick up the slack but when the improvement in education became evident, charter schools became dominant. The school system was failing beforehand, was destroyed, and then replaced. Now, the city has excellent education. You’d think someone might ask why.
February 23rd, 2012 | 2:36 pm
“Can we not remember that family and community are in a certain way prior to government?”
No. that’s the point. “Communtity takes several forms. Local “government–”We the people”–is one of those forms. -our families,our community have organized that government.
“Government” is not ineherntly better or worse than other forms of community. We have met the government and it is us. (to paraphrase)
February 23rd, 2012 | 3:05 pm
If I may introduce a point: Seventy years ago there were roughly 24 times as many school boards per 1000 children as there are now, what with the massive consolidation of districts and the building of enormous warehouses for children.
What community can we possibly be talking about? The kids from my town of Coventry come from an area covering 68 square miles. Almost all of them are bused to the high school, which is built well outside of normal driving areas, and far from the main population centers. No one really knows what goes on in the school; the school board is dominated by ex-teachers and spouses of teachers; and since the warehouse is out of the way, nobody can simply saunter over to the gym to watch a basketball game. There is the residue of a community, but that’s it. I have before me the first issue of Boys’ Life magazine, March 1, 1911. The advice given for starting up Boy Scout troops in one’s community could not now be followed — it would be incoherent. One was supposed to gather together the “leading men” of the “town.” Well, there isn’t any town, and there aren’t any leading men, or leading women for that matter.
Ironically, perhaps unexpectedly, homeschoolers may enjoy far more of the benefits of community life than do the poor kids walled up in the warehouse.
February 23rd, 2012 | 3:08 pm
The identification of the school with its sports teams actually creates divisions within the school as the athletes are set apart, told they are superior to other students, their egotistical selfish behavior encouraged and protected for the sake of having a winning team.
I once had a history teacher who resented having to let certain students (athletes and marching band students) out early every Friday for pep rallies.
So he scheduled a quiz every Friday, and refused to allow make-ups.
I don’t know how it ended – I seriously doubt he actually got away with flunking anyone because they skipped his tests (but attendance at pep rallies was not optional). I do however remember how much tension it generated.
February 23rd, 2012 | 3:56 pm
“Government” is not ineherntly better or worse than other forms of community. We have met the government and it is us. (to paraphrase)”
Precisely. Which is why it makes no sense to define “community” based on participation in *one particular* government-based institution, rather than considering, all the other possible community connections those kids might have to each other, or treating that particular institution-based community as inviolate and only diminished if other types of community are allowed to influence its makeup.
February 23rd, 2012 | 4:03 pm
Joseph Knippenberg writes:
But that wasn’t really the point of my post, which was intended to challenge the notion of community implicitly deployed by the author of the op-ed. it’s one that, er, “marginalizes” all those who don’t participate in schooling on terms dictated by the government.
***************
If a family, for whatever reason, chooses to forego placing their children in the local public schools, I think it’s much fairer to say that it’s the family that chooses to “marginalize” themselves, not the (local? county? state? federal?) government.
However, I think that “marginalize” might be too crude a concept for handling what we’re discussing here — perhaps we should be talking about levels of participation in or alienation from a local community (here defined as a combination of civil society, government, and business, all expressed at several levels and all inextricably bound together at a certain place and at a certain time).
Also, as Joe Mc Faul points out, when we speak of local government we’re referring to something organized by “our families, our community.” I’d say that applies to not-so-local government, too. So, when you write of “terms dictated by the government,” I can only conclude that you are engaging in hyperbole since that “dictation” would, according to American traditions, necessarily be a “self-dictation.”
&
Joseph Knippenberg goes on to write:
“Can we not remember that family and community are in a certain way prior to government?”
*************
Well, logically or historically prior? Please make your case.
Regardless, according to my everyday experience of living in my locality there is no wall of separation between my family, my government, and my community. Sure, I can distinguish between the three, but that’s a far cry from alienating “the government” — which is actually my government — from me to the extent that it’s spoken of as “dictating terms.” (BTW, why the martial rhetoric: as if, say, the State Board of Education were a conquering army dictating terms to the vanquished?)
February 23rd, 2012 | 4:38 pm
Classical liberal political philosophy, Catholic social thought, and the neo-Reformed theory of Abraham Kuyper all distinguish levels of social and political organization. The latter two indubitably and the first somewhat more problematically seem to prefer that tasks be handled by the smallest competent social unit. That seems to me to lead to a generalized preference for family first, and then local communities organized for a variety of purposes.
Our “local” schools are governed by laws made and the federal and state levels and administered through a county school board. Given the size of the county in which we live, even the lowest level of authority seems pretty far removed from my family and me. Yes, my wife and I vote in county school board elections, and are even indirectly acquainted with the school board member who represents our district. But she represents a constituency of around 140,000 people. And when our son was enrolled in the local elementary school, the principal had a somewhat adversarial relationship with the parents (which isn’t altogether unusual, from what I can gather).
Perhaps if I lived in a classic New England township (if such things still exist), I’d think somewhat differently. But schools governed by at such a distance from the parents who send their children there can’t unproblematically be called “our” schools.
By choosing to educate our kids at home (loosely speaking, since both of them are enrolled in a variety of co-op classes at this stage of their educational careers), we didn’t alienate ourselves from our community. We’re still involved in a number of ways (among them the ones I described in the post). It just doesn’t make sense to me to define the community in terms of the school and to regard homeschoolers as somehow alien to the community.
February 23rd, 2012 | 5:32 pm
It appears the Joseph K. and Tony Esolen want to return the the “good old days” that probably never existed.
For example, in 1911, when Boys Life first appeared, the entire population of the United States was less than 100 million people and the majority lived on farms. Not very many people had cars. Many people were born, lived and died within a few miles of a small town. Not very many rural people had electricity. Both cars and electrification were decades in the future.
If you were black in America in 1911–well, let’s just kindly say that Boy’s Life and the Boys Scouts were “inapplicable” to your situation. You were ineligible for membership. For another 40 years, troops were segregated.
Public schools in those days taught a brand of protestant civic religion that was intended to exclude Jews and Catholics. There was often a singel church in the nearest town and it would often not be Catholic or Jewish.
Those were the good old days. Not all of us long for them.
Coventry’s 68 square mile school district describes a square about 8 miles on a side–not that bad. Rural kids in the 1900′s would have had a bit of a treck crossing from one side to another, but could have done it. With today’s modes of transportation cross town travel by either public or private transportation is swift. There are several elementary schools in the district and the high school has about 2000 students–less than the Catholic High School I sent my kids to, located about 8 miles from my house. It appears that Coventry kids go to school in their neighborhood until high school–probably the norm for most of urban and suburban Americans today.
Are there governance problems with school districts? Yes. Could they be better organized? Yes. Are they sometimes in the grasp of special interests? Yes. Can the same be said of Churches and Church organizations, Boy Scout Troops, Little Leagues and other community organizations? Yes.
Should home schooling be an option? Yes. Should all students (home, private, public) be required to pass standardized proficency tests? Yes. Does the presence of an active homeschool community tend to keep the public schools “honest?” I believe it does.
The current US population is 312 million people who are mostly city dwellers. Those people are extremely mobile. The “community” today draws from a wider range of people and is a lot less homogenous ethnically, in terms of core values and adherence to religions. We are no longer a rural economy and the New England Township is mostly historical. A lot has changed. Our children will compete for economic success on a global stage.
Pining for the good old days is not the answer. Organized local government is a “local community” and can be a force for good in our society. Thre is no inherent reason that local government and local public schools cannot serve as a basis for that next level of “community” above family. If public schools do serve that role for most of the people in a geographic locale, then failure to participate is voluntary self-marginalization. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, just as much as a failure to join the largest denonimation in town is also a form of self-marginalization.
February 23rd, 2012 | 6:33 pm
Those were the good old days. Not all of us long for them.
So you are seriously saying that wanting to recover a lost thing – such as lost virtues, lost traditions, lost social conventions, or lost social cohesiveness – that we must therefore also want to recover every other aspect of the past?
That’s illogical.
A man may wish to get back the sense of romance and closeness he once shared with his estranged wife without necessarily wanting to have the same next door neighbor they used to have. Nor does it mean that wanting to fix his broken marriage means he wants the neighborhood school to reinstate policies that excluded Asian kids.
The entire argument is a fallacy of composition: it relies on confusing the whole with its parts and vice versa.
February 23rd, 2012 | 8:34 pm
Joseph Knippenberg writes:
It just doesn’t make sense to me to define the community in terms of the school and to regard homeschoolers as somehow alien to the community.
*************
Let’s go back to William’s op-ed. He writes:
“Johnny’s school is his life. Always has been. He’s not just a member of the community — he’s a member of his school community.”
All Williams is saying here is that public schools can exist as “micro-communities” that are nested within larger communities. This idea lies at the heart of his criticism of an argument used by supporters of the Virginia Commonwealth’s “Tebow bill,” as is obvious from paragraph #13 of the op-ed. Williams thus does not “define the community in terms of the school,” as you put it. Instead, he merely claims that a school can be a special kind of community with its own history and “spirit,” one whose boundaries don’t exactly overlap with those of the larger community of persons it’s embedded within.
I can understand disagreeing with Williams’ notion, which is neither opaque nor ambiguous; however, I fail to see how you can say it doesn’t “make sense.”
Also, Williams is NOT arguing that homeschooled children are alien to “the community”: he’s just saying that they are outsiders or “alien” in relation to the micro-community of a public school. He’s NOT arguing that they are outsiders in relation to the town or city the school is located within (cf. his paragraphs #13 and 14). This seems to me unexceptional, albeit insuffucient to clinch his claim that homeschooled kids should thus be excluded from a school’s sports program in the interest of fairness.
Williams is also NOT, as far as I can see, concerned with “homeschoolers” or the homeschooling movement per se, as you seem to imply in your last sentence.
February 24th, 2012 | 3:00 pm
I have to admit that until I was inspired by this discussion to look it up on Wikipedia, I did not realize how big Coventry was. With 35,014 people, it is the largest town in Rhode Island in terms of population (several larger places are classified as cities) and is significantly larger than such neighboring towns as East Greenwich (13,146), Scituate (10,2329), and tiny Foster (4,606). It is also the largest town or city in Rhode Island in terms of area (59.5 square miles). Quite likely it is time for the town government to consider building a second high school.
But – I realize many here would prefer to have no public schools at all and would like all schools to be privately funded, but clearly that isn’t going to happen any time soon. If cities and towns were to embrace the building of neighborhood schools as a compromise between warehouse schools and no schools, would those opposed to warehouse schools be willing to pay the taxes necessary for construction of all these new buildings, or would the solution be regarded as worse than the original problem?
On the original point – If I were a Virginia legislator, of course I would vote to let home-schoolers play on public school teams, because there’s no point in being a jerk for no reason. Still, I am perplexed by the attitude that public schools are to be shunned as wicked up until 2:00 and suddenly embraced as advantageous afterwards. Maybe that was why Lot’s wife looked back – she wanted to make sure God hadn’t destroyed the athletic fields. Wouldn’t a more consistent attitude be for home schoolers in a particular region (obviously it would have to be a larger group than just those from a single town) to form their own sports teams and apply to the state athletic governing body to compete against public and private school teams? The major problem would be finding a home field/court.
February 24th, 2012 | 3:29 pm
My partial apologies – I see Mr. Knippenberg mentioned that organizations of home schooling teams do exist in his state.
February 25th, 2012 | 10:27 am
“Still, I am perplexed by the attitude that public schools are to be shunned as wicked up until 2:00 and suddenly embraced as advantageous afterwards. ”
Not everyone who homeschools “shuns public schools as wicked.” Some of us just make a preferred choice.
It often seems like there is a common cultural assumption that public schools are the default, and some overwhelmingly compelling reason must be given to choose another option. We can’t just think homeschooling is better, we must think public schools are wicked. We can’t just think teaching our kids at home will serve them better academically; we must think public schools are incapable of teaching them to read. We can’t just think home is a healthier, safer environment; we must believe that the public schools are cesspools of death and immorality. We can’t just think that we’d prefer to socialize our kids differently than the schools do it; we must fear any and all contact with people different from us.
I realize there are homeschoolers who do use rhetoric that implies that the public schools are the worst possible thing in every way. But it is fallacious to attribute that attitude to everyone who homeschools, and then conclude that we’re somehow being inconsistent if we teach our kids at home and let them play sports at school. Some of us just think that educating them at home is better, and letting them play sports somewhere else is fine.
February 27th, 2012 | 9:03 am
Some of us just think that educating them at home is better, and letting them play sports somewhere else is fine.
Ironic that one of the first complaints against homeschooling is that the “kids will miss out on socialization”.
You’d think the critics would be happy to have the kids come in for sports – since the parents pay the same tax dollars either way.
Of course the real problem is about control and responsibility: the schools want to be perceived as authorities to be obeyed, not as service providers who are expected to deliver results.
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