Feminist Jill Filipovic McCormick is not a fan of home schooling:
Right-wing groups love to push homeschooling because it helps keep kids away from material that might challenge their conservative worldview, and it keeps women out of work and in the home. It’s a pretty transparent set of motivations, not good for women or children.
This is a pet issue of mine and some day I’ll write about it at length, but the whole conversation about homeschooling would go very differently if we believed children had a right to a high-quality education — or if we believed children had rights at all, separate from parents.
Please do note that my tweet talks about what motivates right-wing groups to push homeschooling — it does not say that parents who homeschool have a single set of motivations (they certainly do not). Plz work on reading comprehension before you teach your kids.
…and just observing how many people on the right are big mad at the idea that “children should have rights.
The previous four paragraphs are the rest of the Twitter thread Mrs McCormick posted; it’s simply easier for the reader for me to copy and paste them; no changes to her text have been made.
Twitchy noted many objections made to Mrs MCormick’s tweets, which you can read if you follow this link.
I had made a few reply tweets to her:
Yet the teachers’ unions, which are 75% female, want to keep the public schools closed to in-person classes, forcing primarily women to stay at home to care for their children. The teachers still get paid, but many of the other public school employees are out of work.
It’s been women’s careers which have been more negatively impacted by the virus, yet it’s the heavily female, politically liberal teachers’ unions which have been most resistant to resuming in-person classes.
Here’s How the Pandemic Is Affecting Women’s Careers: Women have been disproportionately hit by job losses and many of those who are working say they may have to step back.
And, of course, parents who can somehow afford it have shown a tendency to pull students from the closed-to-in-person instruction public schools in favor of private, frequently religious, private schools
Public Schools Will Struggle Even More as Parents Move Kids to Private Ones During the Pandemic.
Then there’s the President attempting to force acceptance of ‘transgenderism’ on the public schools. Why would it surprise anyone that some parents might not accept that, and choose to abandon the public schools?
Now, I was going to let it go at that, until I opened The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website this morning, and found this gem:
by Kristen A. Graham and Maddie Hanna | February 4, 2021 | 9:20 AM EST
The city teachers union says it doesn’t have confidence buildings are safe for reopening, setting up a showdown with the Philadelphia School District over a planned Monday return for some teachers.
Philadelphia Federation of Teachers president Jerry Jordan (David Maialetti/ The Philadelphia Inquirer)
That’s a move open to Jordan based on a memorandum of understanding signed by the union and district in the fall, requiring the involvement of the Mayor’s Office of Labor and a “world-renowned physician” to weigh in swiftly on reopening disputes. If the outside expert determines the district is not in compliance with safety standards, they will direct the school system to fix the problems.
After weeks of back and forth and meetings with district officials Monday and Tuesday, Jordan said he still had deep concerns over ventilation, especially in schools where window fans are still being installed to improve air flow, and other safety issues.
There’s more at the original, but it all boils down to one thing: no matter what the school district does, it will never be enough. Here in the Bluegrass State, the Fayette County schools remain closed for other “reasons,” even though the Commonwealth has begun COVID-19 vaccinations prioritizing teachers.
The Inquirer article noted that the Philadelphia public schools have been closed to in-person instruction since last March; that’s eleven months! And if the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers gets its way, the schools will be closed to in-person instruction for a full year.
We might as well face facts: we have lost an entire educational year! From The Washington Post:
Opinion by Helaine Olen, Columnist | December 2, 2020 | 11:32 AM EST
Whenever someone expressed concerns about the quality of remote education back in the early days of covid-19, they were all but shamed into silence. No, the spring did not go well, but that was done on the fly, with next to no preparation. No, it’s not an ideal solution, but staying with in-person instruction is out of the question. There is a learning curve, we were told. We’ll get this thing right with time.
Here’s how that worked out: In Houston, the number of students with failing grades is exploding. In St. Paul, Minn., a high school student is almost as likely to be on track to fail a class as pass it. In the junior high and high schools of Fairfax County — one of the wealthiest counties in the United States — 1 out of 10 students flunked at least two classes, and the number was almost double that for those with disabilities. Enrollment is falling in closed school districts from coast to coast and many points in between. Some children are exiting for private schools, or private pods. Others are simply MIA.
In the vast majority of cases, remote learning is a poor substitute for in-person education — no matter what efforts are made, no matter how many teacher trainings are offered.
It’s not simply a matter of subpar or nonexistent Internet or computer access, something that impacts students from more than 4 million households. Small children, as it turns out, will not sit in front of a computer to listen to a teacher or complete an assignment without supervision. That means millions of parents — for the most part, moms — got conscripted as unpaid teacher’s assistants. And while older children don’t need parents next to them in order to do their work, they often won’t do it regardless.
There’s more at the original, and yes, it is an opinion columnist who wrote it, but Helaine Olen included a lot of linked information, which is why I chose to use it.
We have frequently noted the efforts of private schools to open, despite the orders of state Governors. And private school enrollment has reversed a decades-long decline and showing increased enrollment. The number of students being homeschooled has shot up as well, though some officious bureaucrats are trying to stop that.
I will admit to some schadenfreude here: it is the actions of the public school teachers and their unions which are helping to increase both private and parochial school enrollments and homeschooling, the very thing Mrs McCormick hates. It isn’t we evil reich-wing conservatives forcing and keeping the public schools closed; it’s the actions of the primarily liberal and Democratic public school teachers and their unions.