Dad Engagement in Homeschool Politics

My latest comments from the ongoing conversation about engaging dads in unschooling– and btw, see NHEN’s Dad Essays collected here.

Thanks for that link, BigNut - it sounds very much like the arc of understanding I traveled as a newbie to homeschool politics 10-15 years ago. I railed against the religious right and sought out secular unschoolers online to join up with, became part of the heady grassroots generation of NHEN and a prolific contributor to their legislative discussion list (Scott too, despite all the abuse he took for it) and later became the moderator of their education news and research forums.

These are read-only now, but they are still the best I’ve seen for what you say you’re seeking. I URGE you to set aside several hours or make several shorter trips as you can, and go unschool yourself at a very high level. (Be prepared to confront your own cognitive dissonance, that’s what they are for!)

As I said there back in April 2003:

“Really not meaning to sound cloying or creepy or anything, but this is the only place I know of that diverse homeschoolers could even be having this conversation at this level.

Research and market analysis and public policy and public relations and Constitutional law — these are not exactly hobbies. It’s some demanding stuff! Participants in the conversation here rise to the level of intellectual engagement the issues require.
It does my heart good to have to look “up” to stay with it, instead of feeling dragged down, and it gives me hope. For homeschooling as an independent learning adventure, and for its future, and for ours. JJ”

Look Scott, I even used the word ENGAGEMENT way back then!
Surely intellectual engagement is part of what you hope to encourage and equip more dads to bring to their homeschooling?

A few of my favorite thoughtful, wide-ranging discussions were:
2004 American Educational Research Association
Family/Marriage Issues as Related to HS Frames”
What’s In A Name? — Not Clarity

But almost all of them are top-flight thinking fodder.
Speaking of which, I read and discuss Sam Harris in the same context you do, BigNut (Scott does too, look back over this very blog!) Notice how Harris writes about all True Believers as dangerous — not what they believe but how absolutely they believe it — so there is a secular brand of Homeschool True Believer you need to watch out for just as skeptically and independently, imo.

Like anything else, when homeschooling becomes a “sacred value” reason goes out the window!

You want deep, can’t get deeper than Edge.org imo!
“Sacred Value Conflict Resolution - When Reason Leaves the Building”

Sacred education values are not limited to Christians or the extreme right. Teacher unions have all sorts of hallowed ground to protect but so do some “secular” homeschool leaders and so-called “support.” And I learned the hard way that some supposedly secular homeschoolers have staked out some of that ground too.

I think we’ve even met a few of the same “unschool” sacred-value zealots, from what you said earlier about not expecting to ever be good enough for their acceptance.

Here’s my own independent, speaking-for-myself take on what happened to close down new input at the NHEN forums:

this marvelous resource was systematically throttled by repressive True Believer forces trying to control home education in their own image all right, but it wasn’t Scott and HSLDA. In your reading about Cheryl Seelhoff et al, did you also happen across an anonymous manifesto titled “We Stand for Homeschooling?”

You mean to be REALLY independent in your home-education affiliations? Then choose your friends and frame your own principles even more carefully than you choose your enemies and targets. . .I wish someone had given me that advice before I had to learn it the hard way, but OTOH maybe that’s the only way to learn anything that matters, which brings me full-circle to why I see unschooling our own thinking as indivisible from successfully unschooling with children . . .
and why I’m grudgingly coming to suspect typical dad-brains may be naturally better at this than typical mom-brains, which Scott might want to pursue quite seriously for K-dads . . .