Feature news stories on social trends and movements should avoid the temptation to start the article with an extreme. In what seems to be a continuation of the newest beat at The New York Times — home schooling — the story starts out with an interesting anecdote about American Muslims homeschoolers with what likely will become an unfortunate stereotype if it is not already:
LODI, Calif. — Like dozens of other Pakistani-American girls here, Hajra Bibi stopped attending the local public school when she reached puberty, and began studying at home.
Her family wanted her to clean and cook for her male relatives, and had also worried that other American children would mock both her Muslim religion and her traditional clothes.
“Some men don’t like it when you wear American clothes — they don’t think it is a good thing for girls,” said Miss Bibi, 17, now studying at the 12th-grade level in this agricultural center some 70 miles east of San Francisco. “You have to be respectable.”
Muslim homeschoolers out there can’t be thrilled with this lead. Perhaps its fairly representative of the reasons American Muslims choose to school their children at home, or even the families the reporter talked to. But this type of imagery can become permanent in the public consciousness even after the reasons Muslims school their children at home change.
On the positive side, the story did a solid job of surveying the reasons Muslims choose to home school. What is somewhat amazing is that the reasons are not all that far off from the reasons many Christians in America choose to homeschool their children:
No matter what the faith, parents who make the choice are often inspired by a belief that public schools are havens for social ills like drugs and that they can do better with their children at home.
“I don’t want the behavior,” said Aya Ismael, a Muslim mother home-schooling four children near San Jose. “Little girls are walking around dressing like hoochies, cursing and swearing and showing disrespect toward their elders. In Islam we believe in respect and dignity and honor.”
Still, the subject of home schooling is a contentious one in various Muslim communities, with opponents arguing that Muslim children are better off staying in the system and, if need be, fighting for their rights.
Here is a question that might be worth exploring as part of the home school/education/religion beat: are American public schools becoming more inhospitable to religious people in the United States? And is this a problem that local school boards should consider addressing? Consider the following example:
Hina Khan-Mukhtar decided to tutor her three sons at home and to send them to a small Muslim school cooperative established by some 15 Bay Area families for subjects like Arabic, science and carpentry. She made up her mind after visiting her oldest son’s prospective public school kindergarten, where each pupil had assembled a scrapbook titled “Why I Like Pigs.” Mrs. Khan-Mukhtar read with dismay what the children had written about the delicious taste of pork, barred by Islam. “I remembered at that age how important it was to fit in,” she said.
Another thing that’s interesting about this story is how it very easily could have just been an education or an immigration story. Instead it’s a news/feature story that combines the immigration, education and religion issues into one generally solid story. In other words, religion isn’t off in some religion-page ghetto.
The key is for reporters to avoid missing the religion aspects of stories like these. Please let us know if you find a story where they do.
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Comments (18) |
March 28, 2008, at 1:05 pm
I think it would be better to say that as “The key is for reporters to put the religious aspects in proper context” given that the stereotype is the religious fanatics homeschool their children to keep them from being exposed to people with different values when the reality is that parents who homeschool have different motivations including wanting the best possible education for their children and not having the money for private school.
March 28, 2008, at 1:24 pm
what is wrong with the imagery in the story? Are you saying that it is offensive that a woman should want to care for the men in her life and even if it is true, we should not say that? Sorry, maybe I am missing your point here, please tell me what in the imagery you find so bad.
March 28, 2008, at 1:36 pm
I’m personally waiting for the day that society catches up with Horton Hears A Who and we see materialist-rationalist homeschoolers protecting their kids from all the dangerous imagination and creativity out there in the public school system
The contrast would be nice - these muslim homeschoolers seem pretty sensible to me, in spite of the patronising article (eg. What if the kids actually agree with, rather than submit to, their parents’ worldview?).
Actually, I thought the most interesting part of the story was ignored completely:
Parents who home-school tend to be converts, Mrs. Khan-Mukhtar said. Immigrant parents she has encountered generally oppose the idea, seeing educational opportunities in America as a main reason for coming.
Surely that would mean that such homeschooling converts are seeking not to protect an existing culture but to ‘de-Americanize’ themselves? That would be a very interesting story/cultural phenomenon to investigate.
—-
Ps. Is it ‘homeschool’, ‘home-school’, or home school’? All three are present here …
March 28, 2008, at 1:48 pm
Joe:
I don’t think anything is per se wrong with the imagery of the story. The problem I’m fussing over is that it is a strong imagery that may or may not be representative. I don’t think it’s a major issue but it is a major issue for those who have been schooled at home.
As for how to spell the term, I really don’t have a good rule and I apologize for any inconsistency.
March 28, 2008, at 3:51 pm
I can’t help but wonder which comes first: home schooling or the establishment of cultuiral/ethnic ghettos?
What gets started as voluntary activity can degenerate (or elevate) into “expected” (if not required) activity. Certain cultural groups may encourage the activity for their members. Then the wider society comes to expect and count on the practice and encourage its expansion.
Is it imaginable that in this pluralistic country there would come a day when there will be public pressure for a number of cultural and/or ethnic groups to remove their childdren from the public schools that mainstream Americans use, and to home school their own children? If so, is this conducive to the kind of unity and cohesiveness necessary to these several states to continue United?
March 28, 2008, at 4:44 pm
Encouraging homeschool stereotypes
Damn, skippy!!!
March 28, 2008, at 4:47 pm
Speaking as a homeschooler: can I get that graphic (“Warning: Unsocialised HomeSchooler”) on a T-Shirt? That completely rocks!
March 28, 2008, at 10:07 pm
In my experience, public school kids tend to be cliquish, sullen, and often downright rude. They are, sad to say, stereotypical miserable teenagers straight off the television. I’m sure there are exceptions.
The home school kids I know are bright, relate well to adults as well as their peers, and generally display an adaptability and openness to those around them. I’m sure there are exceptions.
March 29, 2008, at 10:56 am
The New York Times seems to have an agenda in portraying all homeschoolers as religious fanatics. The Muslim homeschoolers I personally know are very Westernized. The moms and older daughters don’t wear the hijab. They may want to incorporate their faith into their children’s education, but they wouldn’t be the type to ship their teenage daughters off to Pakistan if they didn’t homeschool like the families profiled in this article.
Why did the reporter travel all the way out to some agricultural hick town in CA? Couldn’t they find any Muslim homeschoolers living in the NYC metro area? My suspicion is that the NYT went looking for Muslim homeschoolers who fit the stereotype they wanted to portray…
March 29, 2008, at 2:01 pm
Crimson Wife writes:
This is making up evidence to support a theory. It’s supposed to be done the other way around.
March 29, 2008, at 2:16 pm
Homeschoolers generally use the compound term in all its forms, for a variety of reasons.
One is that a “home school” is defined by law in many states as the local school a child would attend based on where the child lives, as opposed to a school the child might apply for transfer to, or attend for special classes. It is also sometimes defined in law as the practice of a school system providing in-home education for students who cannot attend school temporarily, as might happen if they are seriously ill for an extended time.
It is also much more convenient, in the electronic age, to use the compound forms. Do a search for home school on Google, and you will get everything under the sun, including anything that has mentions of home and school - over 100 million results. Homeschool and its variants are more specific.
March 29, 2008, at 2:28 pm
Umm, how can a suspicion be considered “evidence”? By definition, a suspicion is a personal belief.
I do not know why the NYT reporter chose to travel to Lodi. It is my belief that it was done because of a particular agenda. That’s not “making up evidence”, it’s voicing an opinion…
March 29, 2008, at 7:22 pm
American usage of the word “socialised” is often interesting. Given that that it seems to be spoken in the same tones as “bubonic plague” or “kitten-killer”.
March 29, 2008, at 8:00 pm
The public schools have serious problems, especially in crowded California towns and cities. I can understand why Moslem and Christian parents want to homeschool. Today many of the homeschool situations provide classical education, which is far superior to the typical public school curriculum. Classical education produced some of history’s greatest thinkers: John Milton, Rene Descartes, C.S. Lewis… For more on this go here:
http://teachgoodwriting.blogspot.com/2008/01/dorothy-sayers-lost-tools-of-learning.html
and here:
http://teachgoodwriting.blogspot.com/2008/02/response-to-dorothy-l-sayers-lost-tools.html
March 29, 2008, at 11:01 pm
Crimson Wife:
You of course have a right to your suspicion that the NYT was venue-shopping in Lodi to give a certain cast to Muslim home-schoolers persuant to an agenda. But it’s purely your invention.
April 2, 2008, at 4:51 pm
Re. #3:
That day came a long time ago, but I don’t know about all the “dangerous imagination and creativity.” Imagination and creativity are a couple things that schools tend to suppress, and my identification of that decrease was one reason I decided to take the homeschooling plunge in 1990.
Click on “Part 1” to read about one of the reasons I began homeschooling my three younger children.
The parents who homeschool their children are a diverse group — as diverse as the society from which they spring. If there are people believing XYZ in Society, you’ll find at least a few homeschoolers who are also XYZists. Homeschoolers are far from uniform.
One example of the diversity is the Evolved Homeschooler wiki.
And as for the venue shopping in Lodi, that’s not a surprise. The homeschooling Muslim community in Lodi was newsworthy in 2006.
April 3, 2008, at 10:57 am
http://www.sunnisisters.com/?p=2863
Hello everyone,
I was one of the interviewees for the NY Times article on homeschooling and wanted to make sure that the “truth” of what I actually said gets out to at least some readers. Please click on the link above to read what really was discussed during the interview…
~ Hena Khan-Mukhtar
April 9, 2008, at 11:14 pm
Speaking as a homeschooler who is now in public school, I would agree. Even in conservative Texas, drugs and profanity are rampant (I cannot imagine what a more liberal state like Ohio would be like). Is it worth sending children off to public school to get an education at the price of their values?