Words and Deeds Matter: In Memory of Gene Burkart

Gene Burkart, a lawyer, homeschooler, scholar, and dear friend, succumbed to cancer this past weekend at age 62. He met his death peacefully with his faith, family, and friends supporting him through his final days. Gene was, to me, an unsung hero of homeschooling and local politics in Massachusetts, and his death has left me with an empty feeling.

From the time I met Gene in the early 1980s until he died, he spoke about the work of Ivan Illich with clarity and passion. Indeed, Gene patiently helped me to understand and appreciate Illich’s work over time; like many, I was more confused than excited by Illich’s writing at first, and Gene offered insights and suggestions over the years that eventually led to me share his enthusiasm for Illich. Our long drives from Boston to State College, PA, to spend time with Ivan Illich and friends, were full of memorable conversations; we never put the radio on during those trips. Gene became quite close to Ivan; indeed, the last time I was with Ivan was at Gene’s house, where we had a lovely dinner, just months before Ivan died. Gene went from skepticism about Illich’s ideas to a profound embrace of them, including studying with Ivan Illich in Cuernavaca, Chicago, New York, and Pennsylvania over the years.

Gene was always willing to help homeschoolers, and in the 1980s and 1990s he would draft letters to school districts, represent families in court, and provide advice, often pro bono, for homeschooling families in need. In the past decade, homeschooling became so common in MA that Gene was rarely contacted by homeschoolers, a development he was very happy about. I not only sent a number of people to Gene for help, but I sometimes relied on him to help with legal problems we had at Holt Associates, as well as some state-wide homeschooling issues, and he always rose to the occasion with clarity and cheer.

Gene spoke Spanish and worked often with immigrants; Gene’s people-based practice of the law reflected his integration of mind, body, and spirit. Ideas and beliefs are not to be just mouthed but acted upon in life, and Gene did this with gusto and commitment. He was a cofounder of Waltham’s community gardens, and a long-time advocate for world peace. In 1982 he became an active member of Waltham Concerned Citizens, a group concerned about nuclear weapons disarmament; Gene hosted survivors of the bombing of Hiroshima at his home one year and in 2005 he began a twice-monthly peace vigil in downtown Waltham, holding signs and drawing a crowd to advocate for bringing our troops home from our current wars.

In the last few years, Gene turned to writing and he often shared his work with others and through our local newspapers. For instance, I was pleasantly surprised one morning to read this brilliant, concise letter in the Boston Globe (May 23, 2010):

SCOT LEHIGH’S May 14 op-ed “We need it, but who’ll pay for a longer school day?’’ made me wonder: What was his reaction when he was in fifth grade and the bell rang at the end of the day? Was it, “Gee, I wish I could stay here another two hours?’’ Probably he was like most of us. We couldn’t wait for the doors to open.

Many adults tend to romanticize their school days, confusing schooling with learning. Social philosopher Ivan Illich attributed this phenomenon to what he called the “hidden curriculum of schooling.’’ More than any subject matter, more than the content of what is taught, schools teach above all else the necessity of schools. They instill the belief that only in school does real learning take place.

This causes many to have an inflated sense of the benefit and effectiveness of schooling. They think that more school means more learning. The opposite, however, is true. At a certain point, prolonged schooling becomes counterproductive, actually hindering and stifling initiative, creativity, curiosity, and the joy of learning.

How many students today read a book that’s not on a required list? We need less school, not more.

Eugene Burkart

Waltham

This year, 2012, Gene started a column for the Waltham News Tribune titled “Second Thoughts.” He wrote fluently about social justice issues as well as how his local community has changed, for better and worse. Here is Gene’s last column, published just about ten days before he died. It is filled with Gene’s sense of concern and justice for the individual and his outrage at the horrors of unbridled progress: Second Thoughts: Memories and the Ethic of Hiroshima.

 If you enjoy reading that piece, here is a page that lists all of Gene’s articles that were published by the Waltham News Tribune.

After Illich died, Gene contributed an essay to a book written in Illich's memory, The Challenges of Ivan Illich: A Collective Reflection (SUNY Press, 2002). In his essay, Gene writes how he didn't understand Illich's critique of the modern economy until he had been practicing law for several years:

After a while, I saw the joke. When people asked me, "How's work going?" I would answer, "Never been better. Families are falling apart, so there is plenty of divorce and juvenile delinquency; arrests are up, so I have a lot of criminal trials; auto accidents and injures at work are high, so my personal injury caseload is huge. Business is good." In a strange way all of us in the service economy are feeding off social decay, a kind of cannibalizing of society.

Gene's questioning of his work and life, coupled with Illich's influence, made him realize he could live a good life without selling out his soul or checking out of society. In his essay about Illich's influence on him Gene writes:

I realized that I did not have to quit my day job—I could simply work at it less. I soon began a four-day week, which freed me up to read and study more, and become more active in my community. I did not have to get rid of my car, but I could ride my bicycle to work. I knew I would not be self-sufficient in growing food, but I could do composting and enlarge our vegetable garden. Later, when we had children, it was an easy decision not to put them in school. I also began to see my legal work in a new light. I knew it would not lead to social change (with the possible exception of homeschooling cases), but my clients' concerns were real, they were entangled in a morass or legal and social systems. Perhaps I could be an experienced guide for them through these thickets.

Gene ends his essay by noting his "overwhelming sense of gratitude" to Ivan Illich for all he has given him: "Friendship does not lend itself to an accounting, to economics. The only way I can hope to show my gratitude is to strive to be for others the kind of friend Ivan Illich has been to me." I can say with all my heart that Gene was a kind, great friend and that I am a better person as a result of our friendship.

A memorial service for Gene Burkart will be held at Christ Church, 750 Main Street, Waltham, MA at 11AM on August 25, 2012.

International Homeschooling News

These stories illustrate some interesting ways that homeschooling is working in other countries.

First, in heavily industrialized societies like the United States, school is incredibly difficult to change from within. Any survey of efforts to make schooling more personalized, local-community-based, and convivial over the past century will show that these efforts get subsumed or ignored by the push to make schooling more standardized, national, and competitive by educators and politicians. However, in countries that do not yet have such an inflexible, industrialized schooling infrastructure in place there are opportunities for remaking schooling into something different for families. Here is one such story, from the Philippines, where homeschooling is promoted by the Department of Education as a means to reduce overcrowding in its schools. Of note here is that this program is focused on high school students and the number of students being asked to home school: 10,000! You can read the full article here: Philippine DOE supports homeschooling to ease overcrowding. Read the comments of school officials regarding how well the homeschooled students have done in this program since 2002:

Quezon City is the only school division implementing the program so far, according to Education Assistant Secretary Jesus Mateo. DepEd started the program in 2002 but there were years when it was not implemented on such a large scale.

“We’ve explained it to the parents and they understand the system. We’ve been doing it for three years (in Quezon City) and our students do well. They graduate, go to college and even go abroad,” Cacanindin said on the sidelines of a school inspection in Cubao, Quezon City, on Thursday.

Betty Cavo, also an assistant schools superintendent in Quezon City, said home-schooled students had fared well in the National Achievement Test over the past years.

Home study is one of the alternatives recommended by DepEd for schools whose enrollments far exceed their classroom space and resources, particularly those in urban centers.

Under the program, students can take their lessons at home following modules patterned after the regular curriculum and meet with their teachers only on Saturdays. They graduate with a high school diploma just like any regular student.

I am interested in hearing from anyone with experience in the Philippine homeschooling program; I’d like to know if it is just a school-at-home program, where the parents just do what the schools tell them to do, or if there is input from the families regarding how their children learn at home (the article is very unclear on details). In any case, this is another piece of evidence that being taught by professionals in school all day is not the only way that children can learn and become contributors to society.

The second story comes from India:

Satyam Kumar, all of 12 and with little formal schooling, has cracked the tough Indian Institute of Technology-Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE). He is the youngest to do so . . . Kumar never saw the inside of a classroom in his childhood but always showed exceptional intelligence. “He used to impress everyone. But in the absence of a proper school in our village, he mostly studied at home,” his father Sidhnath Singh said.

There are many such stories in the literature of homeschooling and school reform: a poor young person, whose parents or others recognize talents to which the school is indifferent (or, as in this case, not even present), is nonetheless able to succeed in life, including getting into higher education. How many talented children are we neglecting by focusing only on learners who attend school from kindergarten to college? Sugata Mitra’s work (see Competent Children) suggests there are a great many children, in India alone, who are capable of learning many difficult things on their own (Mitra’s research shows how these children teach themselves and one another to use a computer, for instance, with no adult help).

Twitter Chats for Homeschoolers

If you are looking for online support for homeschooling and you enjoy using Twitter, here's a good article about Twitter chats you can engage in.

Essential Twitter Chats for Homeschoolers

The Vatican Comes Out in Support of Homeschooling

As homeschooling grows the pushback from educationists (professional educators who feel mandatory education is necessary for everyone’s salvation) is getting stronger. There is concern that children learning at home won’t find their place in our modern economy because their parents aren’t teaching them math properly, or that homeschoolers are creating an “I got mine, you get yours” tribal culture that undermines democracy, and so on. Of course, such handwringing by educationists neglects the vast numbers of homeschoolers who have been active for decades in our economy and democracy, as well as the large numbers of children in school who do not learn math, or families who send their children to exclusive private schools and colleges so they will be with “their peers,” and not the general public.

It is fascinating, therefore, to read an affirmation from the leaders of the Catholic Church for institutional and governmental respect for people to choose when, where, how, and from whom they will learn. A Statement by the Holy See Delegation of the United Nations (April 24, 2012) claims the

delegation has noticed a disconcerting trend, namely, the desire on the part of some to downplay the role of parents in the upbringing of their children, as if to suggest somehow that it is not the role of parents, but that of the State. In this regard it is important that the natural and thus essential relationship between parents and their children be affirmed and supported, not undermined.

 The Statement largely reaffirms Catholic Church teachings, so it is quite specific about defining the family as an “indissoluble union between man and woman,” supporting greater investments in education to enroll more children in school, and ensuring obedience: “Parents must cooperate closely with teachers, who, on their part, must collaborate with parents.” What’s the difference between “must cooperate closely” and “must collaborate?” There seems to be an unequal footing that keeps teachers firmly in the driver’s seat in this formulation, but we’ll only know how this works out in practice over time.

However, for Catholics and non-Catholics, this section caught my attention not just because of the questions it begs, but also because of its support for homeschooling:

As affirmed in international law, States are called to have respect for the freedom of parents to choose for their children schools, other than those established by the public authorities, to ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions which equally applies to their right to make judgments on moral issues regarding their children (cf., e.g., UDHR, Article 26, 3, ICESCR, Article 13, 3, and the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, Article 12, 4). There are about 250,000 Catholic schools around the world. The Catholic school assists parents who have the right and duty to choose schools inclusive of homeschooling, and they must possess the freedom to do so, which in turn, must be respected and facilitated by the State. Parents must cooperate closely with teachers, who, on their part, must collaborate with parents.

By linking homeschools to private schools, the Vatican affirms the importance of choice in education as being more than just choosing how to learn to read, write, and calculate. The Vatican ends this statement with a paragraph that I find echoes the unschooling ethos in particular, namely that the learner should be at the center of all “development concerns” (“development,” as Illich so often notes, is an incredibly loaded term, but I’ll save that for another day) and that young people should be recognized for their contributions to society.

An authentic rights based approach to development places the human person, bearing within him or her infinite and divine inspirations, at the center of all development concerns, and thus respects the nature of the family, the role of parents, including their religious and ethical values and cultural backgrounds, and affirms the contribution that young people can and do make to their community and society (cf., ICPD Programme of Action, Chapter II). The more the countries recognize this, the more they will be able to put into place policies and programmes that advance the overall wellbeing of all persons.

It is good for homeschooling to have a powerful, international ally that supports diverse religious, ethical, and cultural backgrounds as a model to strengthen society, rather than the economy-driven, one-size-fits-all (unless you can afford a better one), educationist model. Homeschooling, as this Statement shows, creates mixed alliances that we should build and nurture as best we can, because the juggernaut of mandatory continuing education as a requirement for participating in society shows no signs of stopping anywhere in the world.

To read the Statement in its entirety, click on this link.

Never Judge Someone Based on Their Schooling

Grant Colfax, the homeschooler who made headlines in the eighties by getting accepted into Harvard and going into medical research, has now made headlines today as an adult. The San Francisco Gate reports:

President Obama on Wednesday appointed Dr. Grant Colfax, San Francisco's top HIV public health administrator, to head the Office of National AIDS Policy.

Grant spent much of his youth on a dairy goat farm in Northern California, helping his parents make the farm work and following his interests, such as searching for Indian arrowheads. Micki and David gave the keynote speech, How Children Learn from Everyday Life and Work, at the Growing Without Schooling 20th anniversary conference and I wrote about it on the HoltGWS site; here is an excerpt:

"Micki analyzes how education became separated from work—indeed how education demeans most work—and cites many historic examples to support her points. She then takes issue with descriptions of her family's unschooling as a sort of "physical work program" that was imposed on her family. She notes, "Work is not construed as a means to, but an end in and of itself, as we and our children are shaped by the work we do." She discusses Illich's Deschooling Society and Holt's work and how "we do not need to make special arrangements for learning."

Then Micki talks about how play is the work of children and how it isn't necessary to seek work for children in order to fill up their days. She further explores the nature of work as an ordeal and the types of work her children did as youngsters and teenagers. Micki wraps up her talk by describing how none of the activities, work, and play that her children did could easily predict what they would be or do as adults. For instance, she and David long felt Grant would be an archaeologist, but he became a doctor and medical researcher."

In today's conventional media I detect a backlash against self-directed learning, against learning outside of school, and against parents and teachers who support change that does more than alter curricula in schools. This zero-tolerance policy towards change agents who are not in agreement with school dogma can be stifling, if not depressing at times, so it is most refreshing to see one of the tenets of unschooling/homeschooling—that you can't predict what the future holds for anyone based on their performance or nonparticipation in school—publicly verified again.

There are many ways to learn and grow, many paths to successful careers, and we need to keep expanding, and creating, these paths instead of letting educationists block access to them. Grant's continued success is his own, not homeschooling's, but his example and contribution to society is another piece of evidence that homeschooling and unschooling do not necessarily make children anti-social, parent-dependent dolts ("My momma said I don't have to do no book learnin'" is the punch line I heard one comedian knock homeschooling with recently), nor does homeschooling make them nonparticipants in the civic arena.