The homeschooled dyslexic child

If one were to read through this blog history then the reader would see that at one point I considered (briefly) homeschooling my daughter.  But earlier this month I talked to a woman who homeschools and it has taken me the better part of this month to get to the point where I can write down what she told me.  I'd like to share it now.  (For privacy purposes I will change a view minor details of this story but I am basically writing it as it was told to me).

My family lives in an urban neighborhood which is close to a major university.  Our neighborhood is known for being eclectic and mostly educated.  In the 1970's this is the area where the hippie types all lived and it's still somewhat like that.  I could go on but I wont.

There is a large community of homeschoolers that live in this area.  It's so common that 3 of my neighbors homeschool their families.  Additionally,  we know others that homeschool.  Personally I haven't felt convinced by what I've seen. 

My daughter has a friend she sees every so often that is her age and is homeschooled.  The mother is adamant about homeschooling and they participate in homeschool activities at the local recreation center (which is in our neighborhood and some families drive many miles to be a part of it). 

From the outside I would have thought that perhaps her children were getting a fine, if a bit unusual education.  Many of the homeschool mothers in this area give off an air of superiority about their decision to homeschool.  (For example I have seen bumper stickers that say: My unschooled child will hire your honor student). 

When I recently told a homeschooling mother about our change out of the Catholic school and into our Orton Gillingham based school she mentioned that all 4 of her children had dyslexia.  She also told me in great detail about her attempts to educate them in spite of their dyslexia.  It sounded quite challenging and yet, in a way I understood because of my own struggles to get my child what she needed.

She confirmed my feeling about the local group that use the children as guinea pigs to "educate" tutors.  Her family had a horrible experience with that group. 

(While she was talking though I wondered how well a child who has never been expected to sit in a chair and listen to an adult who isn't a sanctioned homeschooling adult is going to listen to a person who is mostly dealing with children who are from a traditional school setting and know how to listen to an adult with authority).

She went on to admit that none of her children could actually read due to the dyslexia issue.  The oldest is a teenager (would be in about 10th grade). 

I'm really trying to reign in my judgemental ism here but I want to say for the record that I am astonished that a homeschooling mother would let their child get to that advanced age and not be able to read. 

The mother went on to say that she knew her daughter (which is my daughter's age) cant read either but that she didn't think it was that big of a deal in first and second grade. 

She then asked me what I knew about the University program.  In my opinion the University program agenda is this:  Professors trying to make a name for themselves (publish or perish) have created a center which provides tutoring to prove and/or disprove techniques like Orton Gillingham (which has been around since the 1930's).  Children and young people could benefit from this but I certainly wouldn't want to base my child's whole education on this sort of setup (where the child isn't actually the focus). 

As I am not a homeschooling mother I do not know the ins and outs of getting my child to the point where they could graduate (question: don't homeschooled children have to actually prove they are learning to graduate?)

Still if  our society has a public school system that fails to educate dyslexic children and a large (and growing) group of homeschooling parents that cannot or will not get their children to the point where they can read then we are going to have a future that includes a lot of undereducated and/or mostly illiterate population.

Being under educated and or illiterate will expose these same people to all sorts of exploitation, brainwashing (by TV or religion mostly).  These people are very vulnerable to being compromised.  At the heart of education is the idea of empowerment.  This is the opposite.

I don't want to  bash this homeschooling mother who confided in me but I don't think that excuses or being manipulated by children who have been taught not to like tradition school setups is okay.

After this talk I now greatly suspect that homeschooling is being used by at least some people in ways that are unacceptable.  In the case of dyslexia I think it would be a mountain-like challenge to educate a child at home (unless someone was already specially trained).