Homeschoolers, surprisingly, are a fractious bunch.
On your one hand, you've got the biblical-creation, God-hates-gays, keepers-at-home religious crew. And on your other hand, you've got your free-to-be-you-and-me, crunchy-granola, curriculum-is-for-the-weak nonreligious crew. And on your other other hand, you've got the Objectivists.
Yes. Ayn Rand, unsatisfied with having beyond-the-grave sway over the minds of thousands of underexperienced college freshmen, has extended her skeletal libertarian fingers to clutch at the throats of homeschooling families everywhere. And the results are just as logically unsatisfying as they would be if extended to any other facet of civilized society. ("Irrational exuberance," anyone?)
Here, via Ute*, is a snippet from Rational Jenn's blog, which is in turn a snippet from something else:
In Case You Haven’t Seen This Yet
This op-ed, entitled “Your Child Is Not State Property,” by Thomas Bowden of the Ayn Rand Institute is particularly awesome. It concerns the recent homeschooling hoopla in California, but of course speaks to deeper issues. Some of my favorite parts (emphasis added):
“Allowing”? By what right does government presume to “allow” (or, in this case, forbid) you to make your own standards concerning your child’s education?
Government has no such right. Neither the state nor “society as a whole” has any interests of its own in your child’s education. A society is only a group of individuals, and the government’s only legitimate function is to protect the individual rights of its citizens, including yours and your children’s, against physical force and fraud. The state is your agent, not a separate entity with interests that can override your rights.
Now, first of all, let me say that I agree completely that a child is not the state's property. However, I don't think a child is his or her parents' property either. A child is primarily the parents' responsibility, and parents have primary interest in their children's welfare; but children are also partially the state's responsibility, and states have interest in children's welfare as well.
And I also believe that a child's own individual rights trump a parent's rights to do whatever s/he wishes with that child. A child's rights to be fed, housed, educated and provided with medical care outweigh a parent's rights to force that child to undereat, sleep under a bridge, be ignorant or die of criminal medical neglect.
Homeschooling, obv., gets major points in our family. Hanging out with the little guys talking about subatomic particles or permutations or why calico cats are alwas female or Calvin and Hobbes seems to be, so far, doing a pretty good job of inculcating them with the stuff they're going to need to know through life. (Most importantly: how to figure out what you're interested in and how to go about learning more about it.) We're doing quite well without the state leaning over our shoulder, thankyouverymuch.
But I have to say that just because parents exercise their right to educate their children themselves doesn't mean that the state abdicates any interest in that child. The child is still a citizen, even if he or she isn't old enough to vote, and the state necessarily takes interest in the welfare of its citizens. If we expect the state to butt out completely with regard to homeschoolers, we should also expect it to butt out when mentally disabled women are left to sit on toilets for months or years or when polygamist cults force thirteen-year-old girls to bear the children of fifty-year-old men. 'Cause, y'know, there's no "physical force or fraud" involved.
And that's why, even though one of our major reasons for homeschooling is to avoid the test-oriented, multiple-choice environment of public schools, I have no problem with my kids being required to take a biannual standardized test. And I have no problem with the idea that, should they fall below the 15th percentile on those tests for two years in a row, they would be required to be enrolled in a classroom school. Because that would be proof positive that I was not doing my job as an educator, and my children's right to be educated supersedes my right to (not) educate them as I see fit. I would rather see a more holistic means of evaluation used, such as a portfolio of work (yeah!), but I think the need for a baseline standard means that some measure of a child's learning, no matter how flawed, needs to be used.
OK, that's the homeschooling part. Now for the Objectivist part:
Objectivism, like pretty much any libertarian philosophy, strikes me as both unworkable and smug.
Unworkable, because a system built on the idea of people behaving as 100% rational and self-sufficient actors 100% of the time breaks down as soon as you encounter any real-world obstacles... you know, those inconvenient sticky spots such as mental illness, physical disability, inequality of opportunity, racial/religious/sexual/heterosexist discrimination, economic vagary, divorce or separation, childbearing, the list goes on.
Smug, because libertarians often strike me as more convinced than just about any other group that they are smarter and rational-er than anybody else in the whole wide world. Because they're doing so well standing on their own two feet, y'know, and the stupid freakin' government with its stupid freakin' rules is just getting in their way and bringing them down, man. If it weren't for all those ding-dong welfare-queen tax-slurping bleeding-heart Üntermenschen, they would be living fat and happy in their little rationalist encampments, puffing on tax-free joints and stroking the barrels of their unregulated assault rifles.
And, after running away from my main point as hard and fast as I could, I'll finish up by shambling groggily back in its general direction:
Society is made up of individuals, but it also transcends the individual. A society does not collapse because one member leaves or dies, whether that society is a government, a college or a homeschooling support group. And part of society's responsibility is to protect the rights of every member from the uncontrolled excess of the individual. Whether that takes the form of "infringing the rights" of a corporation by not allowing it to dump chemicals into a river that runs past a group of houses, or "infringing the rights" of a mother by requiring her to give her daughter a basic education in math and science so that she has other career paths than "helpmeet" available to her... that means society is doing its job. It is protecting entities with less formal power from those with greater formal power. It is ensuring liberty and justice for all.
* I am hoping, hoping Ute will still be my friend. I'm hoping, hoping that since I went all rantificational at a quote cited on her blog, rather than anything she wrote herself, that she'll still hang out with me and swill red wine and complain about creeping Christofascism. Whaddaya say, Ute?
Whold Your Whorses
Most little girls have a moderate to serious obsession with horses. I, not being a Real Girl, never did. Well, I read Black Beauty and Misty of Chincoteague and a couple of the Black Stallion books, from whence I developed an unholy love of the name "Alec." But the whole horses-are-beautiful thing? Just kind of passed me by.
My sister was a much more wholehearted horsie fan. She loved and adored her Breyer horses, which I have to admit were pretty cute.
But you know what was wrong with those Breyer horses?
They just weren't slutty enough.
No boobs. No sparkly eyelashes. No high freakin' heels.
Thankfully, though, Playmates Toys--makers of such quality products as (Slutty) Disney Fairies and (Slutted Up for a New Millennium) Strawberry Shortcake--has found the perfect way to combine prepubescent girls' age-old fascination with horses with contemporary American culture's focus on glitter, cell phones and underage sexuality.
Presenting: Struts!
The inaugural "Runway Magic" collection includes four different horse figurines, each of which comes with "a head shot and a personal bio... just like a real model!" That's awesome, because if there's one thing young girls are missing out on today, it's the opportunity to learn all about the vast career potential offered by the modeling industry.
Sadly, the little one with the pink shoes is doomed to failure when she turns up at her first audition and is told they're not interested in anyone less than 15 hands high at the withers. And the purple-togged one next to her is far too ethnic for the cover of Equestrienne. The other two? They can look forward to two or three wild seasons of coked-out jet-setting before they pack on a couple extra pounds around the fetlocks and end up getting pregnant by some washed-up racehorse. Look for them hanging all over the Budweiser Clydesdales in the paddock at Super Bowl LXV.
Here's what a real Strut looks like:
Look, you can brush her tail and play with her pearl bridle. I wonder if her platform shoes come off, or if they've been nailed on by the farrier equivalent of Sergio Rossi?
March 06, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (20)
Tags: breyer horses, horses, struts, toys
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