Special Ed

Factory-like schooling may soon be a thing of the past.

Britton Manasco from the July 1996 issue

(Page 3 of 3)

The new resources "have made a lot of difference in terms of what the children have been exposed to and have had a chance to see and learn," she says, noting that her kids are now taking courses from on-line tutors and using software programs to do everything from creating a newsletter to learning to play the piano. Her family is on the leading edge of an expanding market. Hal Clarke Inc., a publishing and market research firm in Boulder, Colorado, estimates that home schoolers spend about $1,500 a year on books, software, videos, and other educational materials. "What is emerging is a more consumer-oriented home school family that wants more help, more conveniences, more books, and more software, and is willing to purchase what is needed," according to the Education Industry Report.

Critics of individualized learning--and home schooling--stress schools' role in developing social skills such as cooperation, collaboration, and communication. "One of the principal functions of school is to teach children how to behave in groups," writes NYU professor Neil Postman in the journal Technos. "School has never been about individualizing learning. It has always been about how to learn and how to behave as part of a community."

Such comments are misdirected: No one is arguing that technology be employed to the exclusion of human contact and personal warmth. Individualized learning hardly implies learning in isolation. Communications technologies and networks can enlarge one's set of possible associations and even allow for collaborative learning projects that cannot be replicated in the classroom. In a proper setting, they can help facilitate both individual and interpersonal skills.

And the "community" of the traditional school, like the community of the assembly line, is not necessarily something to be celebrated. It often includes bullying, contempt for learning, and rigid conformity. The tedium and monotony of institutionalized education is more than many--perhaps, most--children can bear. As Tracy Kidder writes in Among Schoolchildren, "It is as if a secret committee, now lost to history, has made a study of children and, having figured out what the greatest number were least disposed to do, declared that all of them should do it." Kids enter school bursting with energy and enthusiasm. Such fires, however, are often extinguished by a regimen that offers no real outlet for them.

In fact, recent surveys reveal a staggering amount of apathy and ennui among adolescents. In his new book Beyond the Classroom, Temple University psychology professor Laurence Steinberg presents the results of a three-year longitudinal study involving 20,000 students in nine high schools in California and Wisconsin. He found that an enormous number of students are "disengaged"--that is, listless and jaded "toward education and its importance to their future success or personal development." Writes Steinberg, "between one-third and 40 percent of students say that when they are in class, they are neither trying very hard nor paying attention." It's also worth noting that the number of children given Ritalin treatments in school for alleged cases of Attention Deficit Disorder exceeds 1 million, a 250 percent increase since 1990. One wonders if ADD is not in some way built into traditional school models. While such developments cannot be blamed squarely on the schools, they are no doubt a big part of the problem.

Similarly, the case against learning technologies is weak, especially when all firsthand experience suggests that such technologies can stimulate interest and bring abstract concepts to life in a way that traditional pedagogical techniques cannot. Like critics of individualized learning, opponents of emerging technologies are locked into an either/or mindset. For instance, in Silicon Snake Oil,Clifford Stoll, an astronomy professor at the University of California at Berkeley, argues that today's technologies are a poor substitute for real experience. "Every hour that you're behind the keyboard is sixty minutes that you're not doing something else," he says.

Stoll's math is flawless, but his reasoning is off the mark. Current learning technologies certainly have significant limitations, but they also can provide an excellent alternative to classroom lectures and other school activities that fail to enliven young minds. They are powerful tools that can extend our range of experience and enhance our faculties of learning, just as new technologies enhance our work. Most important, one doesn't have to choose between, say, a multimedia software program about ancient forests and, as Stoll prefers, "a quiet meditation among thousand-year-old redwoods": One can do both. Indeed, this sense of expansive opportunity is something that families involved in home schooling already understand. They are not merely trading in one set of limited options for another. Far from creating antisocial computer geeks, individualized learning has helped make children active, involved members of their communities.

Jeremy and Jonathan Rockett, for instance, both joined the International Thespian Society and have performed in plays under its auspices. They've also participated in sports leagues and tournaments put together by home school support organizations. Volunteer work--tutoring young children in Washington, D.C., and delivering books from the local library to homebound adults--has been an important part of the learning process too. While home school parents often are accused of sheltering their children from cultural diversity, Marilyn Rockett argues that her own family's experiences speak to the contrary. "It's life that's diverse," she says. "Not a closed classroom."

The Boones are similarly engaged in social and community activities. They too are active volunteers at their library. They are also involved in several informal learning groups. Curtis, Paul, and Cristie all participate in a sign language class and a creative writing club held in their home. Such gatherings bring together numerous children--and debunk the myth that one needs a conventional school to learn how to interact with others. "People don't question whether you can get a good education through home schooling," points out Jill Boone. "But they do raise questions about socialization." One thing the Boone children say they are often asked is, "How did you learn to stand in line?" It's a telling question.

The experience of such families underscores an important point: Families do have choices. Whether or not political efforts to encourage taxpayer-funded alternatives to government-run schools ultimately succeed, families already have the option of withdrawing from the educational system. (Many home schoolers oppose tax-funded schemes, which may entail greater regulation.) As leaving or supplementing traditional schooling becomes more attractive and less costly, the egalitarian ideology and assembly- line pedagogy that dictate one-size-fits-all education cannot remain unchanged.

Britton Manasco, who lives in Mountain View, California, is founder of the high-tech consulting firm Quantum Era Enterprises. He also is editor and publisher of Knowledge, Inc., an executive newsletter exploring business opportunities in the emerging knowledge economy.