Show Us the Body

by Celeste

This essay is about homeschooling.  Honest.

But first, a few words about…..Bigfoot.

Bigfoot, as we all know, is a large, legendary creature said to inhabit the woods of North America.  Most people consider Bigfoot to be purely imaginary.  So when I googled Bigfoot on my computer a couple months back, I expected some absurd National Enquirer sorts of stories, and a few laughs.

When I’d finished reading, I wasn’t laughing.  While there certainly have been many Bigfoot hoaxes and delusions over the decades, there also are a number of sincere, otherwise sane, rational-sounding people out there who claim to have seen Bigfoot.  There are hundreds of people every year who say that they personally saw, heard, or smelled a 7-10 foot tall bipedal primate wandering around in the woods.  Some of them even have footprint casts, anthropomorphic measurements, blurred photos, hair, or scat to support their claims.   Many of these “believers” are former skeptics who did not believe in this creature until they saw one for themselves. 

Despite all these sightings and all this evidence, the skeptics remain unconvinced that Bigfoot exists. “Show us the body of a Bigfoot (alive or dead), and then we will believe you,” the skeptics say.   “Easier said than done,” the believers protest.  The believers point out that bodies of large dead animals are extremely hard to find in the wild, and that most who unexpectedly encounter a Bigfoot do not have the means or opportunity even to photograph it, let alone shoot it.  The skeptics, of course, take these excuses as further proof that the creature never existed in the first place. 

I still don’t know whether Bigfoot exists, but I do empathize with the poor believers who are struggling to produce evidence.  As a homeschooling parent, I’m very familiar with the challenge of working with intangible evidence and trying to convince people that SOMETHING is happening, even though it can’t be seen or measured.

How much do my children know?  How much did they learn today?  How long did it take them to learn it?  Are they ahead or behind?  Homeschoolers are constantly being asked questions like these, and it’s really hard to give answers that will convince a skeptic.

Part of the problem is that we like to think of ourselves as rational creatures, and we like to surround ourselves with “objective evidence” and “tangible proof”, impressive sounding statistics and educationese.   But we humans are not quite as rational as we imagine, and deep down at our core, we think with our guts and our hearts, not our heads. 

When we poor homeschoolers get asked what our children are learning, we bombard our skeptical friends and family members with curriculum plans, samples of our children’s work, printouts of standardized test scores (if we have them), and long, complicated explanations of what we are doing and why we are doing it.  Sometimes this evidence convinces the skeptics, but usually it doesn’t.  Why not?  Because the skeptics (whether they know it or not) need something far bigger, far more profound, than what we are showing them. 

Deep down inside, the skeptics are afraid that homeschooling is going to ruin our children, and they need proof that this is not going to happen.  Before they admit that homeschooling is ok, they need to see our happy, smart, well-adjusted, successful children grown to adulthood without any ill effects.  In short, they want us to “show them the body”.

Unfortunately, it’s just as hard to prove that our children are going to turn out ok in the future as it is to prove the existence of Bigfoot.  It’s also extremely difficult to “prove” that learning is actually taking place at a particular moment.  “Learning” doesn’t happen on a precise timetable, and does not lend itself to quantification.  Exposure to a subject does not necessarily equal “learning”.  Getting a passing score on an exam does not necessarily equal “learning”.  “Learning” happens in mysterious ways, and often its presence can only be proven months or years after the fact.

Yet there is still hope for homeschoolers.  While Bigfoot hides unseen in the woods, real, live homeschooled children and adults are extremely visible and tangible.  Teen and grown homeschoolers are wandering around our communities every day, leading successful, meaningful lives and interacting with the skeptics. 

Meeting one of these confident, capable young people scores more points with the skeptics than a thousand curriculum descriptions.  Overnight, many skeptics are transformed into homeschooling fans.  Why?  Because now they’ve seen for themselves that homeschooling works.  They’ve “seen the body” with their own eyes.

Celeste  has been unschooling her kids for well over a decade. She does homeschooling advocacy work for her state homeschooling organization and spends way too much time on the computer. In her spare time, she does tae kwon do, plays the piano, and plays a glamorous, powerful, purple lady bunny in an online virtual reality game.

 

Comments

[Stacie]

Great article! The comparison to Bigfoot is brilliant. My son recently became interested in Bigfoot, and we've been renting documentaries on the subject. It's very interesting!

[JoVE]

And the same could be said about learning in school. Most of the so-called objective evidence isn't evidence of learning at all. We seem to want to work out a fool-proof method for raising happy, healthy adults that contribute to society but there just isn't one. We all do the best we can.

[lori]

I second Stacie's comment about the brilliance of the Bigfoot comparison. Well done!

As a new homeschooler (year 1) of children who previously attended day care, preschool, and K-2, I know how hard it is to relax and take the long view of the homeschooling journey. If it's hard for me, then it must be nearly impossible for family members and others who don't see the kids often. I try to remind myself how much I enjoy those moments when my kids surprise me with what they know and can do, things that I wasn't aware of because the kids learned them a long time ago or when I wasn't paying any attention. 8-)

Kids have brains like sponges and memories like steel traps, and they learn an awful lot in their day-to-day existence that we have no way of tracking or recording (not that we'd want to).

But you're right, communicating that to others is very much like defending Big Foot's existence. At least in the short term. In the long term, that they were learning all along will become self-evident.

[Summer]

Wondrful article! Proving that homeschooling works to the skeptics can be a lot like trying to prove there is a bigfoot. They have to see it with thier own two eyes before they'll understand. Unfortunately there are plenty of skeptics who don't want to see proof, they just want to see you fail.

[Augustin]

I for one don't find the comparison to Bigfoot as being that inspirational.

For better or worse, home education was around for centuries (some may say this holds true for Bigfoot too). It shouldn't be that hard to point out some successful people that were home educated. You know, the kind of people that even the more skeptical types would agree that they managed to get quite well in life.

On the other hand, I don't know of any undisputed evidence as to the existence of Bigfoot.

So I'd say the comparison is a little bit stretched. But, well, that's just me :-)...

[Robin]

Sometimes examples of real people who our personal dissenters do not know first hand, in person can seem mythological to them. What others have accomplished is not evidence that your child will be successful. They want hard evidence in traditional terms, not examples of what others have done. Where's the evidence that *your* child is succeeding in her education? Is she reading yet? She should be reading by now. She's 9! What is she scoring on her tests? Well, we don't do tests, sorry. I know what my child is learning without them. How do you know that? Where's the proof? She should be in school.

[Sunniemom]

If someone asks me about our home education endeavors, and I sense that they are genuinely interested, then I answer their questions.

If I perceive that they are asking so that they can criticize and argue, I tell them my personal private life is none o' their cotton-pickin' bizness.

The only body they will see is the one lying in the parking lot as they head through toward the light through that long dark tunnel.... :p

Seriously, since when do we feel obligated to answer when rude people ask personal questions? Do any of us ask these kinds of questions of public educated kids and their parents? I don't see that I have anything to 'prove' to anyone- but I'd be glad to share my experiences with someone who is politely inquisitive.