I've been reading a recent edition of John Holt's book of homeschooling, Teach Your Own, mostly because I think John Holt is brilliant. I don't, of course, need to be convinced that homeschooling is a good idea, but sometimes it is helpful to be reminded why I'm choosing to keep my children at home instead of sending them away and getting a little peace and quiet! In the 1970s, Holt wrote a letter to the ACLU, which I'm quoting at length below. It's a little extreme, and I don't necessarily agree with everything he says, but it's a perspective that still isn't considered, even with homeschooling becoming more widely practiced. It's interesting. Read it and see what you think.

[I've omitted a few items that are not, I believe, relevant any longer, such as corporal punishment in schools.]

...compulsory school attendance laws, in and of themselves, seem to me a very serious infringement of the civil liberties of children and their parents, and would be so no matter what schools were like, how they were organized, or how they treated children; in other words, even if they were far more humane and effective than in fact they are.

Beyond that, there are a number of practices, by now very common in schools all over the country, which in and of themselves seriously violate the civil liberties of children, including:

1. Keeping permanent records of children’s school performance. This would be inexcusable even if there were nothing in the records but academic grades. It is nobody’s proper business that a certain child got a certain mark in a certain course when she or he was eight years old.

...

4. Filling these records, as experience as shown they are filled, with many kinds of malicious and derogatory information and misinformation. These may include not just unconfirmed teachers’ reports of children’s misbehavior, but also all kinds of pseudopsychological opinions, judgments, and diagnoses about the children and even their families.
5. Compulsory psychological testing of children, and including the results of those tests in children’s records.
6. Labeling children as having such imaginary and supposedly incurable diseases as “minimal brain dysfunction”, “hyperactivity”, “specific learning disabilities”, etc.
7. Compulsory dosing of children with very powerful and dangerous psychoactive drugs, such as Ritalin.

...

9. Lowering students’ academic grades, or even giving failing grades, solely for disciplinary and/or attendance reasons. Not only is this practice widespread, but school administrators openly boast of it, though what it amounts to in fact is the deliberate falsification of an official record...

...

To return once more to compulsory school attendance in its barest form, you will surely agree that if the government told you that on one hundred and eighty days of the year, for six or more hours a day, you had to be at a particular place, and there do whatever people told you to do, you would feel that this was a gross violation of your civil liberties. The State, of course, justifies doing this to children as a matter of public policy, saying that only thus can it keep them from being ignorant and a burden on the State. But even if it were true that children were learning important things in schools and that they could not learn them anywhere else, neither of which I admit, I would still remind the ACLU that since in other and more difficult cases... it does not allow the needs of public policy to become an excuse for violating the basic liberties of citizens, it ought not to in this case.

A few months ago, my husband and I decided to embark upon a Jane Austen Retrospective, re-reading and discussing each of the novels together. So far we've read Sense and Sensibility, Northanger Abbey, Emma, and Mansfield Park, and of course I've intended to write down my thoughts about each one as we've finished our discussions! I will try to return to the first three, as we did have some very interesting thoughts and conversations about them, but for now I'll just ramble about Mansfield Park, since I'm impatiently waiting for Bill to finish reading it.

I'll admit it: I used to be a Mansfield Park/Fanny Price hater, like many Jane Austen fans. Now, both have risen highly in my esteem, as I've recognized more of Austen's brilliance in this novel. It is, especially at first, hard to enjoy reading about Fanny: she is too self-effacing, even for someone in her position. Yes, she owes everything to the Bertrams, and could be sent back to her own wretched family if she makes a wrong move, but we see in the end that the more vivacious Susan is also welcomed by Lady Bertram (though this may be because of Fanny’s example). She hides behind her shyness and humility to such an extent that no one really knows her, and her humility frustrates people who are trying to be kind to her (at the ball, etc). But it’s unfair to dislike her because of her shyness, and also unfair to dislike her because of her physical frailty--she is not a strong and healthy person, and that’s clearly not her fault. She does take walks and ride; she’s not indolent, like Lady Bertram. And I think her bodily state greatly affects her emotional state.

It’s also easy to dislike Fanny because of her shy and stuttering inarticulateness, and her dissolution into tears at the slightest provocation. This is annoying, but I think Jane Austen is sly here. None of the characters in the novel know or understand Fanny, and they all think they can control her--but they can’t. Not a single person, not even the awe-inspiring Sir Thomas, not even the worshipped Edmund, can persuade Fanny to accept a marriage that appears astoundingly fortunate and beneficial. Any other woman in her position would have swallowed her scruples and accepted Henry Crawford, but Fanny did not.

Which brings me to another point about Fanny--she is amazingly intuitive. As I read the novel, I found myself being annoyed by all the other perspectives shown to the reader, and began to wonder about it. Jane Austen doesn’t do this in any of her other novels, but here we are allowed to see exactly what other characters think and feel. This is not poor writing style (obviously, since it’s Jane Austen!); on the contrary, I think that she is emphasizing Fanny’s intuitive knowledge of the people around her. She sees their true characters and is not fooled by outward appearances or flowery speeches. She’s not even flattered by the Crawfords’ attentions, but instead is made highly uncomfortable by them because she knows they are insincere.

Fanny also sees the real desires behind the theatrical madness. It is not, as many have claimed, simply a group of young people wishing to entertain themselves with playacting at home. Rather, they want to playact so that they can express the desires that must remain hidden in their real lives. Maria Bertram and Henry Crawford want to flirt with each other, as do Edmund and Mary--there’s nothing innocent about the play or the emotions that it excites. Fanny recognizes this immorality, and refuses to take part.

It has also been said that Fanny does nothing throughout the novel--indeed, she rarely even speaks. And yet, everywhere she goes, she makes changes. She makes people notice her because she is not what they expect. She brings a small oasis of calm to her family home in Portsmouth, and improves the lives of her sisters Susan and Betsey with her small yet effective actions. She devotes herself to the comfort of her aunt Bertram, who might otherwise quickly devolve into a whining invalid. She is a much more devoted daughter to Sir Thomas than his real daughters, and shows him how to be a good father. I think she makes Mrs Norris and Mary Crawford uncomfortable as they recognize their own faults in comparison to her own steadfastness. She never breathes a word of her love to Edmund, and yet eventually he notices her as something other than a young cousin.

This is a book about goodness, about morality. It’s not about the romance (in fact, I suspect that the last rushed chapter is not because Jane Austen didn’t know how to end what she’d started, but to emphasize the real point of the novel), and there’s so much that happens. One just has to be patient, and dig deep, and trust in the brilliance of a literary genius.