what our language tells us

Sputnik Point of View:  Deficit Language in US Education has a wonderful take on the strange language of so-called education reform and its attendant language.  It's an academic take but lots of homeschoolers have discussed holes or gaps and I've heard many a pep talk on why the whole idea is nuts.

In his 1968 treatise for social justice in education, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire lays out his famous criticism of the “banking concept of education.” In practice, such a concept approaches learning as a process that can be rationalized – made efficient, predictable, calculable, controllable – so that knowledge can then be transmitted, measured, invested, and measured again as if it were capital. Emphasis is on the getting: get an education, get more knowledge, get “facts” (and only facts), get ahead. In banking practices of education, students participate actively in their own learning only insomuch as they are “receiving, filing, storing” the knowledge they are told they must take in (Freire 1993: 73). The relationship between knower and known becomes like that between a piggy bank and some cash, a to-go cup and some coffee, a tick and the plasma of your poor dog: it is the relationship between a “receptacle to be filled” and the material that will fill it (Freire 1993: 72).

Also, a look at mother-daughter relationships. Homeschoolers spend a lot of time talking about relationships and socialization and improving relationships within the family is often cited by homeschoolers as why they go through it all.  I think we can generalize from that to our communities .... but that's another post.