To a Degree

            It’s been a year since I wrote Part One of this series of reflections on effective teaching. I really didn’t intend that such a length of time to intervene; it simply happened, and I won’t waste time reporting on what transpired. I will simply continue on this and other topics in this blog. My subject matter will center on the follow remark directed towards me the other day: “Students who are homeschooled don’t get the necessary ‘real-world experience’ they need to navigate their way in [fill in adjective] society.” Taken aback at this glib statement – and hearing this at the end of a very tiring day – I reserved comment until later. Now, it’s “later.”             Let’s unpack this statement. It starts out with fallacious assumptions: 1) Homeschooled students are sheltered in an anti-social manner. 2) Their education lacks exposure to ‘real-world problems.’ 3) They are confined to “homeschool subjects” – as if this severely limits their ability to comprehend and explore

              Great balls of fire! Just the other day, Smith College, the largest of the “Seven Sisters” colleges – and open exclusively to “cis, trans, and nonbinary women ” – has flexed its intellectual muscles in an area to which it believes it is entitled. Recently, the Department of Field Education became – by an act of magical decree – the Department of Practicum. Now this department refers specifically to social work – roughly the work that people do “in the field of living.” Why on earth would a supposedly-serious institute of higher learning do such a foolish thing as to ban this word?             The rationale behind this bizarre move has something to do with – what else? – slavery (i.e., racism – that “scourge of American society”). Here’s how their thread – and it is barely a thread – of logic goes: Slaves were present in America from the 1600’s. They worked in fields , without pay, so naturally the ancestors of those slaves are highly incensed – more like outraged