‘Most important, best-qualified teacher’ will always be a parent, says former school assistant principal

Another former schoolteacher has joined the ranks of homeschool defenders – Daniel Buck, director of the American Enterprise Institute’s Conservative Education Reform Network.

“I’ve taught every grade level from 6 to 12, was an elementary school assistant principal, and attended one of the top-ranked graduate schools of education in the country, and I’m here to tell you quite simply: The haters are wrong,” he writes in a recent commentary for the Institute for Family Studies. “You are indeed smart enough to homeschool your own children.”

Buck encourages homeschool families by highlighting the way modern educators are trained to teach – through content and pedagogy.

“In theory, there are two bodies of knowledge that an educator needs: content knowledge about history, math, science, and English, and pedagogical knowledge about how best to teach,” he explains. “Neither one creates a prohibitive barrier to homeschooling.”

‘Quite literally not rocket science’

Just as parents have taught their children how to crawl, walk and speak for centuries, Buck argues teaching in itself “is quite natural and intuitive.”

“Explicitly teach kids to sound out letters and ask them to repeat it; Explain concepts to them clearly and use analogies that they can understand,” he writes. “Model procedures and have them practice; Read a book and ask them a few questions to see if they comprehended the material.”

In fact, modern-day education colleges can hinder public-school teachers by introducing them to “discredited theories of instruction” instead of focusing on data-driven outcomes.

“For example, the ‘science of reading’ is arguably the most widely studied and confirmed theory in education research. Put simply, the theory posits that children learn best to read when explicitly taught letter sounds. Quite literally not rocket science.”

However, only one-fourth of all teacher-prep programs cover all the components of this science, Buck notes.

“Instead, they either omit the topic altogether or hawk pseudoscientific theories such as balanced literacy, whole language, or three cueing.”

Buck also points to the lack of “comprehensive reviews” for educator training, adding these programs often tout the “latest left-wing academic theories” at the expense of real learning.

“The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty … found that teachers were not reading manuals of instruction of classroom management but instead things like ‘Anti-Racist Baby,’ ‘White Fragility,’ and ‘Just Another Gay Day in the Campus Three-Year Old Room.’ … Perhaps it comes as no surprise, then, that teachers who graduate from such programs are no more effective than their unlicensed or alternatively licensed counterparts.”

‘Ill-advised attacks’

What about pedagogy?

Buck acknowledges “a parent cannot teach what they do not know,” but he also contends most of them already have the required expertise for teaching grades K-8 without further training.

“Can you read? Can you perform multiplication and division with fractions and do basic algebra?” he asks rhetorically. “Congratulations, you’ve got the majority of the elementary and middle school curriculum covered!”

Even at the high school level, Buck argues, homeschool parents who have worked with their children over the years “are typically more fluent in high school subject matter than the average student.”

“Moreover, higher level homeschool curricula is often designed to be self-taught with the parent as a guide, not necessarily the expert,” he adds. “That being said, homeschool co-ops – where several families come together to pool their time, resources, and expertise – online classes, and even YouTube provide access to instruction that a homeschooler simply would not have had even 10 years ago.”

Buck is careful to emphasize he isn’t issuing a “blanket call” to homeschooling, but he does want to dispel the assumption that parents aren’t qualified to educate their children.

“Let’s call these insinuations that ‘you’re not smart enough’ exactly what they are,” he says, “ill-advised attacks from over-credentialed dilettantes without the faintest understanding that parents are the most important, best-qualified teacher any child will ever have.”