VHC- Article004: National Post Editorial Received to VHC: March 10, 2003 National Post article - by Elizabeth Nickson © Copyright 2003 National Post Nothing like getting beat up to focus my attention. I was whimpering like an abused kitten by the end of last month, as furious message after furious message from teachers piled into my in-box. Every so often I'd page back to see the hundreds of appreciative messages from parents, sent in the days after the column ran, just to check whether indeed I hadn't just been scraped from the bottom of someone's shoe. Heavens, thought I, those teachers might preach against hate and violence, and work for diversity, as long as that diversity does not include an argument that criticizes their monopoly over public education. If that, then watch out! There is no insult too violent, no hateful thought left unexpressed. Plus everyone wanted my sources. And I mean hundreds. Well sorry, do your own research. If you have a library card, it's free. Then, an 11th Grade advanced placement student wrote saying that my essay was being taught in her class as an example of a fallacy (how obvious is that?), and though she was offended by my tone, she thought I might be right and would like my sources so she could prove that to her class. OK, fine. But as I was laboriously typing my 19th citation, author, date, publication or think-tank or university monograph, I thought, I've got another 25 printed out, and a couple dozen more on my hard drive and I actually have work to do. In my paging back to the compliments section of my in-box, one fact penetrated the fog of injury. Over and over again, a tremendous variety of people recommended home schooling: a friend on theCowichan reserve; a United Church pastor who writes me now and then; a cultivated friend of my mother's, who is impressed by her home-schooled grandkids. Then, unsolicited, the Co-ordinator of the Education Advisory in West Vancouver dropped a package off on my doorstep, detailing her 30-year fight for parental involvement inVancouver schools, a tale of tear-producing frustration, which led her to home-school. The first person I met who home-schooled wasDavid Guterson, the author of Snow Falling on Cedars, who lives on Bainbridge Island, just off Seattle. David, who wrote his first book about home-schooling, is a contributing editor of Harper's, the least right-wing magazine in the mainstream, which indicates the most salient fact for this argument -- which is that home-schooling is not exclusively a preserve of the right. The second person I met was a Christian nurse administrator in Oregon, who quit her job to home-school her daughters, because she could not countenance government waste in her field, mixed with the socialist nonsense her kids were being taught at what is known in Christian circles as "the training camp of the enemy of my values." "What about friends?" I asked. She laughed. This, apparently, is the question everyone asks. "They are 4-H, they play on teams at the local school, they are in a church group, and go to various lessons. They have more friends than me." That home-schooled kids seem to be emotionally independent, self-starters is now, almost a cliché . They perform better too, averaging 75% on overall standardized tests, where private- and public-schooled children average 50%. On combined math and verbal SATs they routinely receive 50 to 100 points higher than their peers in public or private schools. In Canada, a study found that home-schooled children score on average at the 80th percentile in reading, at the 76th percentile in languages and at the 79th percentile in math, compared to 50% at state schools. Little wonder it is catching on. Home-schooling increased 450% in the 1990s,and is now steadying out at an increase somewhere between 7% and 15% a year. Some estimate that as many as two-million kids in the United States are being home-schooled, and 80,000 here. Folk wisdom holds that so many children are home-schooled on Vancouver Island that the teacher's union is worried about their eroding revenue base. Which brings us to the cost. Parents spend, on average, about $600 a year, this compared to the $5,000-$7,000 a year the public schools claim it costs them. However, this $5,000-$7,000 does not include construction, equipment and debt financing. State schools, says Brian D. Ray in A Nationwide Study of Home Education in Canada, cost 975% more than home-schools. Finally, by the 8th Grade, home-schooled kids are performing four grades above the national average, with 5.2 outside activities per week. The demographic of home-schooled kids is much the same as that of public schools: middle and working class. However, many more have two parents who are married (92%), and in most, but by no means all, one parent does not go out to work. However, parents who are trained teachers do not seem to get significantly better results than amateurs. Nor do differences in education or income of parents produce any discernable variation. Disabled kids do better in home schools, and Essence Magazine reported two years ago that black parents are starting to embrace home-schooling in a significant way. Families report that home-based education enriches their lives, because family discussions are substantive and not forced and hurried "quality-time" fictions. The future looks rosy for this quiet populist rebellion. Elite universities such as Harvard and Stanford actively recruit home-schooled kids. Says Stanford University admissionsofficer Jonathan Reider: "The distinguishing factor [for admissions selection] is intellectual vitality. These kids have it." Bringing to the mix, therefore, an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Hard to argue with that.