Record: Blane Després, “A Question of Resistance to Home Education and the Culture of School-Based Education” in Peabody Journal of Education 88, no. 3 (2013): 365-377.
Summary: Després, President of Ripple Deep Consulting in British Columbia, here tries to apply his systemic thinking model called the FoRSE Matrix to the question of public education’s resistance to home education.
I think Després’ original plan was to do a survey study of attitudes about homeschooling among public school personnel, but he “was unable to conduct a pilot study to generate hard data.” So in lieu of data he conducted a literature review, reducing the sources he read to various categories on his “FoRSE Matrix” that I believe Després developed to help businesses look systemically at their operations to foster efficiency and success.
His review revealed two reasons for the resistance of public school people to homeschooling. First are “philosophical ideals” like the view that all children should attend public school to foster social normalization, and second are “functionality problems” like enrollment declines that happen when children leave public schools for other options. He also determined that institutional inertia also contributes, though he acknowledges that he hasn’t even proven that the resistance he’s explaining even exists.
Appraisal:
This is without question the worst article I’ve ever read in an academic journal. The summary I just gave is my best effort to make something incoherent as clear as possible. The “research” design is absurd. His so-called lit review is laughable, consisting as it does of the most random assortment of odds and ends imaginable. His earliest source comes from 1838 and his most recent from 2002. There is no explanation given for why he chose the sources he did. They include memoirs, random newspaper articles, internet ephemera, and a smattering of books about public education, business, critical theory, and other topics. It’s just crazy.
Després’ write up is just as scattered as his collection of sources. One reads a section and wonders why it was there or why it followed what had gone before. There’s really no rational organization or coherent thesis, just a jumble of thoughts. One does get the vague sense that Després doesn’t like institutional schools and likes homeschooling, but that’s about the most that can be said. The Peabody Journal should be embarrassed something like this appeared between its covers.
Milton Gaither, Messiah College, author of Homeschool: An American History
Disclaimer: The views expressed in reviews are not the official views of ICHER or of its members. For more information about ICHER’s Reviews, please see the « About these Reviews » Section.
They don’t much like private education either. Monopolists.
Ouch. Milton, you should tell us what you really think! OK, I confess, part of what you say is, admittedly, accurate. I think I could’ve done better. It was meant as a starter for a conversation, a kind of, “I wonder if…” that never got a chance to fully engage but hopefully elicits another researcher’s desire to investigate it further, and in depth, which the Matrix I have developed would most assuredly accomplish. In fact, I even opened the paper with that “wondering…” It’s a broad collection of thoughts that relate on a point. Absurd? Good grief, we’re not allowed to wonder, to put out an idea, to open lines of discussion? Has to follow someone’s notion of protocol? However, that it is between the covers of such a prestigious journal and couched with some excellent writers in the field thru the vetting process you must admit means enough other people understood it and liked it enough to publish. Hmm. Perhaps the final, caustic judgment you cast is over the top? Your opinion, of course, but maybe allow others to develop their own conclusions. Just a suggestion. BTW it’s FoRSE…rhymes with force or écorce…the rough kind.
As for preference of schooling modes, you read way too much between the lines. I like the choice to HS or not. That said public schooling (PS) could be so, so much better and I have advocated for that since I began teaching in the early 80s. Unfortunately it seems that little changes. The Taylor reference is a reminder that this issue not only goes a long ways back but persists. Or perhaps they’re not really issues or problems but, as I’ve written elsewhere, symptoms.
Alternative PS learning approaches exist, and in which I have taken part and published, but mainstream PS resists. When you know that something better is possible but are unable to get it into the play, it can be a frustrating experience regardless of research and publications (perhaps its own, self-serving industry). Resistance to change schooling, from the architecture of learning to expectations, continues but lacks documentation, at least as a systemic problem or project. And, of course, there is the dilemma of effectively communicating the same that goes beyond mere opinion. I’m still working on it. Cheers and all the best in your writing.