Teaching Ain't For Sissies, part deux

When I read the guest column by Pat Neusch on the Amarillo Globe-Republican Opinion page on Sunday morning, I immediately told the S.O. that we should watch for the reaction. I expected it to go nuclear. The columnist wrote about homeschooling, and while I found the column to be far more balanced than I would have been, my experience is that the homeschool crowd doesn't take well to criticism of any kind. Perhaps it's the isolation and lack of opportunity to interact with others to develop social skills.

I personally related to the column because I have experienced the situation Neusch describes, from more than one perspective:

I watched as the parent marched out of the administrator's office followed by her "problem child." The parent had decided that the public school system had not met her son's needs, so she would school him herself at home.

As a teacher, I've signed withdrawal forms for students who were now going to be homeschooled. When I worked in the social services bureaucracy, I frequently encountered food stamps and AFDC (as it was then) clients who were allegedly homeschooling their children.

I've yet to meet anyone in either context who was qualified or capable of homeschooling and who was actually doing so. As Neusch points out

Neither the state not the Texas Education Agency requires homeschooling families to submit curricula for review or approval. . . Who, then, will hold parents to the same high standards that are required of public and private educational institutions?

Standards are actually required of both public schools and their students. In Language Arts classes, for example, students are required to do their own writing, and they learn what plagiarism means.

So I was surprised at the specific form that the homeschool crowd's criticism of Neusch took. Beverly Hernandez, who operates a homeschool website, wrote a column of her own claiming that Neusch had plagiarized and misrepresented her. She refers to the portion of the column that I describe as "more balanced than I would have been." In this section, Neusch states that

Beverly Hernandez . . . tells parents to consider the following before making the homeschool decision

and then offers up several bullet points. Although Hernandez states that

including nine paragraphs [the bullet points] from my article crosses the line of fair use and enters the copyright infringement realm

it's pretty clear that the major bullet points are Hernandez's while the commentary below is Neusch's opinion and commentary. Hernandez herself misrepresents Neusch's column when she states that whole paragraphs of her work were included; they weren't.

Hernandez further alleges that Neusch misrepresented her article in several places. She quotes Neusch and herself (it's generally best to avoid people who quote themselves extensively, but again, perhaps this is a result of the isolation of homeschoolers):

[Neusch] "Hernandez . . . informs parents that homeschooling is usually difficult and shouldn't be taken lightly."
From my article:
"Making the decision to homeschool is usually very difficult and not one to be taken lightly."

Riiiiight. Back before sampling became socially acceptable, Vanilla Ice defended his use of a lick from Queen's "Under Pressure" by saying "Their song goes da-data-da-da-da-da-duh. My song goes da-data-da-da-da-da-duh-ching!." No one could hear the difference between the two songs, and I doubt many can hear the difference between Neusch's paraphrase and the actual words Hernandez said. At the risk of misrepresenting her, I think she's trying to say that educating kids isn't difficult, but deciding where to educate them is. That statement is, of course, absurd. But the word "decision" is the only "ching!" that separates Hernadez's words from the paraphrase.

Although the bullet points are clearly Hernandez's and the commentary below Neusch's, Hernandez further states

It is clear that the author is trying to use my article to deter parents from homeschooling their children. The rewording of my article by Ms. Neusch steers away from the intended spirit of my article and takes on a whole new twisted meaning that I don't agree with or appreciate.

Well, it is obvious that Neusch has reservations about homeschooling. Most of us who work around schools, particularly in Texas where homeschools haven't been regulated, monitored, or improved since the Wild West, have such reservations. Neusch's article was an opinion piece and she could have just ranted. Instead, she provided and responded to the other side-- to a fault, in my opinion. She quoted and credited the other side's own arguments and got accused of plagiarism for her trouble.

It's obvious that Ms. Hernandez has trouble distinguishing between new technology and the "real" world, since she also took Neusch to task for not including a "link" in a printed column. Many kids have similar problems today, and that's why we have to spend a lot of time in classrooms discussing reliability of web sites. We also discuss plagiarism extensively since many kids see no problem with cut-and-pasting entire articles from the Net and presenting them as their own work.

Ms. Neusch certainly did nothing of the kind; I can only conclude that Ms. Hernandez might do well to spend some time in public schools learning what plagiarism and fair use is and what they are not.

I do not know either Pat Neusch or Beverly Hernandez personally. Good luck finding either column on amarillo.com; neither is available at this writing. I have print copies of both; e-mail me at PTS if you need scans.

SPACEDARK