Home Education Without the Alberta Home Education Association (AHEA): On the Alberta Home Education Association (AHEA) (Part 13)
After a mother attended one of AHEA’s marketing meetings this fall, she asked me what AHEA actually is, what they are doing and whether they truly represent and defend home education. Tough questions! Let me try to answer them as best as I can, but before I do, let me make it clear that from a biblical perspective, things tend to fall into two categories such as: right or wrong, true or false, heaven or hell, or for Him or against Him.
In order to understand the issues at hand, it is important to know that the home education movement is mostly divided into two main camps. While we tend to use the terms home schooling and home education interchangeably, the two terms differ because they conflict over whether parents or government have authority and control in the training and teaching of children.
Before I begin, I must make you aware that within most families there is usually a progression to greater educational freedom and parental authority that goes from school at school, to school at home, to home schooling, followed by home education and eventually ending up with unschooling. This process can take time, even though we have witnessed some fairly quick transitions from school to unschooling. Please note that unschooling is not a verb used to describe “leaving school”, but rather an adjective describing an educational program free from school ideologies.
AHEA Proposes Yet Another Boondoggle: On the Alberta Home Education Association (AHEA) (Part 12)
Now, as if the Notification Only non-solution and the advancement of terrible accounting practices aren’t enough, AHEA has come up with yet another very bad idea. Why not make students with physical ailments and learning issues worth more money, just like schools do?
Twenty-five years, mostly as a high school teacher, have led me to be very cynical about “special needs” funding. I could write a book about how to make nearly every student have some kind of “special need” in order to increase his/her “value”.
How many children are judged and penalized for having an abundance of energy? Why not have students diagnosed by a psychologist employed by the school to see if the school can claim them as “suffering” from some disorder? Why not prescribe some drugs while we are at it, so we can increase their “value” even more?
Understanding “Special Needs” Funding Abuses: On the Alberta Home Education Association (AHEA) (Part 11)
My last few years as a public school teacher were blessed ones for me. I moved from teaching French to teaching upper academic Biology courses, which was more in keeping with my interest and training. I had more than a few experiences with “special needs” students in my day, but these last years were especially enlightening.
One would think that students taking advanced academic courses would not have learning issues, but that would be a mistake. Take for instance, this example:
I was given a long list of students noted as special needs and after the list the document read, “If you know of any other student who could qualify for extra funding, please inform the office”. This caused me great consternation.
Carrying Forward: On the Alberta Home Education Association (AHEA) (Part 10)
Moving on to another concern respecting the new funding arrangements being advanced as improvements by AHEA, we will now address the carrying forward of funds.
At first brush, this looks like a good thing, but we must ask a few more questions. If we are aiding home educating parents, is it a good thing to help them be bad money managers? Secondly, if the money is not needed this year, will it be needed next year? On the other hand, does advancing a use-it-or-lose-it approach to home education funding make parents creative in their efforts to “get all their money”? Most importantly, if there was no funding would you still be home educating? I hope so.
I have mentioned it before and it is very much worth repeating: if anybody, and I include parents, providers and schools, is putting money first, it is a mistake. Money is what created the home education industry in the first place. Money is what keeps it alive. To be sure, not everybody is moved by money, but unfortunately, there are some who are. Providing for bad accounting practices or inappropriate usage of funds will exacerbate this problem, not fix it.
Continue reading “Carrying Forward: On the Alberta Home Education Association (AHEA) (Part 10)”
AHEA’s Funding “Advancements”: On the Alberta Home Education Association (AHEA) (Part 9)
Before addressing the next AHEA misstep, we need to look at some more history.
By the time the new millennium was in full swing, there were a fair number of home education providers vying for home educated students and the associated cash. The trickery, the manipulation, the falsifications, the buying of parent affiliation with the reimbursement of questionable items, not to mention the unethical advancement and cheating associated with blended programming, caused the education bureaucracy to unleash an inquisition to stop funding abuses that lasted for ten years.
Government clawback of funds deemed to have been inappropriately spent became so commonplace that home education providers were forced to seriously take note. Although most providers were included in these “raids”, Education Unlimited was little affected. This was most certainly not as a consequence of favour, but more a result of our having always been very strict about properly accounting for taxpayer money. Eventually a truce with the bureaucracy was reached, when it finally provided some guidelines that could be followed.
Is the Solution Truly A Positive Change? On the Alberta Home Education Association (AHEA) (Part 8)
Every once in a while, someone gets inspired to fix a problem and, with much effort, accomplishes the task. The big questions are: what problem was being solved and was it really a problem in the first place? Furthermore, was consideration given to the fact that each new development comes with its winners and losers? How much did the losers lose and how are the winners really benefiting? Sometimes, victories are shallow. When truly evaluated, did the “solution” end up causing more harm than good, in the long run?
Take Alberta’s new home education option for Notification Only as an example. Had this been offered in 1988, it would have been a spectacular triumph. Thirty years later, however, with parents having full choice in where to register for home education, we must ask why we needed to solve a problem that essentially no longer existed. Today, anybody unhappy with their existing situation need only request a change of facilitator or find another willing non-resident board to work with.
Considering that since the early 1990s there has been a facilitator, a school and a board buffering parents from the government, one should question how the new Notification Only option is an improvement when it makes the government the direct family supervisor. The winner is clearly the government, while the home educator’s benefits are debatable.
AHEA’s Notification Only: On the Alberta Home Education Association (AHEA) (Part 7)
If AHEA is informing us that it has taken decades to get the Notification Only option passed, is it possible that it is no longer needed? Or does it indicate a level of ineptitude on AHEA’s part or intransigence on the government’s part? Perhaps all of the above.
Until I did my facilitation visits this year, I was completely at a loss as to why anybody could see Notification Only, with no funding and no school supervision, as a positive option. Now that I have come to see just how abusive some of the home education providers can be, I can understand why some parents would want to escape the tyranny of schools and agencies who believe they know better than parents.
What a heart breaker! Once upon a time I saw my “competitors” as colleagues with the common goal of validating parental claims to authority and responsibility in education. Now I see them more as compromisers, far more interested in leading their “flock” back to the better paying public programming we were all wanting to escape at the dawn of this province’s home education movement.
A Basis for Notification Only: On the Alberta Home Education Association (AHEA) (Part 6)
As a school teacher, my all-time favourite principal was a great fellow with a big heart for education. Even though he was the leader of a large school in Edmonton, he insisted that everyone in possession of a teaching certificate teach at least one class. He himself taught two, one at a grade ten level and another at grade twelve. He simply did not want to have an educational environment where people were out of touch with the purpose of the school, namely the children and their education. To him, they were more than just a commodity that brought income. He saw them as real people in need of a service he intended to make sure everybody in the school delivered.
I also believe everyone with a teaching certificate who works with Education Unlimited should be involved in facilitation. Of course that is silly, since all our teachers are facilitators and they most certainly are well aware of who the “clients” are! This rule actually applies to me. I never want to lose touch with who we are, who we serve and what is needed to make our facilitators’ jobs as easy and stress free as possible.
The truth is the parents are our clients, even though, technically speaking, they are not the ones being funded. We stress the importance of family and the authority of the parents, especially fathers, while those with a greater focus on the students and the associated funding normalize the claim of government authority in education.
Clarification of Position: On the Alberta Home Education Association (AHEA) (Part 5)
Before proceeding with this presentation, I really must take the time to make a few things more clear.
To start, I am at a loss as to what or who I am having issues with. AHEA is a corporate entity, a not-for-profit society and as such is a bloodless, heartless, gutless, spineless, brainless “something” that cannot think, feel or act on its own. It requires people to create it in the first place and people to provide it with the human characteristics we often find ourselves at odds with.
It is therefore useless, even silly to accuse me of any emotion towards this “thing”. However, it is noteworthy that I have had issue with the folks acting in leadership capacities since AHEA’s inception. After all these years, I have come to see why I have mostly opposed the Alberta Home Education Association’s positions and actions throughout its history.
Who Are Home Education’s Enemies and Friends? On the Alberta Home Education Association (AHEA) (Part 4)
History clearly shows that home education has not really been in danger or threatened in this province. From the government’s perspective, the biggest issue has actually been how to best deal with this educational option, but never how to eliminate it. Indeed, although the Government of Alberta had to eventually reduce and allocate its distribution of funding, it has never refused it for home educated students. This shows at least some evidence of support, even though some see funding more as the government “buying” access to greater influence, rather than a help.
To be sure, home education has its enemies, in particular the Alberta Teachers Association (ATA) which advances home education as inferior to public education, as it likely sees it as robbing them of dues-paying members. However, I believe the greatest threat has always been from the inside, not from the government or the ATA who can only complain.
There has always been opposition from within the church and religious agencies which have succumbed to the notion of government having greater authority over children than parents.