Attention: This blog
post is not a condemnation of home-schooling.
The main point is to highlight misuse of information and how it can be manipulated
to someone’s advantage.
A critique of Bill
Flax’s “Want to tell the state to stick it?
Home school your kids”
On January 22nd of this
year, an op-ed piece by Mr. Bill Flax appeared on the Forbes Web site. The goal of his article was a bit unclear;
Flax seemed to alternate between bragging over the superiority of homeschooling
while encouraging the ever-widening cultural divide in American society. The goal of this rebuttal here is not to
argue the superiority of homeschooling versus public school education but to
highlight how Flax demonstrates a seeming ignorance of information literacy in
a very poorly written essay.
To understand the point of this
critique, one must first understand the definition of information literacy. According to the Association of College &
Research Libraries (ACRL), it is “a set of abilities requiring individuals to
recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate,
and use effectively the needed information” (2013) . The current flow of information is
overwhelming, especially through the Internet where it is readily available to
anyone with a computer and an Internet Service Provider (or access to a
library. This brings a major concern to
light: how does one know if the
information presented is credible? The
ACRL describes the challenge individuals face when consulting such easily-found
resources for its “authenticity, validity, and reliability” (2013) . In a nutshell, one must be able to identify
such concerns as bias on the part of the resource’s author.
First, consider this statement
from Flax’s article: “A limited study by
J. Gary Knowles found no home-school graduates who were unemployed or residing
on welfare.” Flax’s reference to this
resource (without proper citation) included an embedded hyperlink to this
study’s location: the Web site for the
Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA).
This resource appears biased coming from a party which clearly benefits
from such claims.
Second, what does Flax mean by “a
limited study?” According to the HSLDA
Web site, Knowles surveyed a mere 53 adults.
The estimated number of home-school students between the ages of five
and seventeen was 1.5 million in 2007 (Cogan, 2010) . The number of adults in Knowles’ survey is
too small to represent the number of potential graduates from this 2007
estimate, including demographics such as, race, ethnicity, religion, family
income, etc.
Third, credible research studies
can be found in peer-reviewed journals.
That is, the study must undergo scrutiny by a team of professionals in
the writer’s field before a journal will consider it for publication. Why is this important? To be credible, a research study must follow
a specific set of conditions: it must
detail the intent, supporting literature (previous studies also published in
peer-reviewed journals), the research method used to obtain results, the
resulting data gathered, the researcher’s interpretation of the data, and the
researcher’s conclusion from those results.
Moreover, the study must be one subsequent researchers can easily replicate.
Finally, before any research can
be conducted on human subjects, the researcher must obtain approval from an
Institutional Review Board associated with a university. There is no such evidence with Knowles’
article. In any case, the article was
not published in a peer-reviewed journal but a local newspaper (Klicka, 2007) .
Additionally, all of the references
Flax used for his claim that there is no socialization issues among
home-schooled children come directly from the HSLDA Web site, specifically, an
article posted by Chris Klicka (2007) , which leads to this
conclusion: Flax did not retrieve the
resources to read personally. More
troubling is all the references for the socialization issue in Klicka’s article
are 20-plus years old and only two came from a peer-reviewed journal (both from
the same journal).
In conclusion, Flax demonstrated a
lack of information literacy in failing to locate and utilize references that
are authoritative, credible and unbiased.
Plus, he failed to use proper citation methods in his writing. Flax’s article demonstrates a clear need to
ensure all students, regardless of public school, private school or home-education,
receive instruction in critical thinking skills and information literacy so
vital to their development.
Bibliography
Association of College & Research Libraries.
(2013, January). Information literacy competency standards for higher
education. Retrieved January 25, 2013, from American Library Association:
www.ala.org/acrl/standards/informationliteracycompetency
Cogan, M. F. (2010). Exploring Academic Outcomes of
Homeschooled Students. Journal of College Admission , 18-25.
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=52253079&site=ehost-live.
Flax, B. (2013). Want to tell the state to stick it? Homeschool your kids. Retrieved January 2013 from Forbes http://www.forbes.com/sites/billflax/2013/01/22/want-to-tell-the-state-to-stick-it-homeschool-your-kids
Flax, B. (2013). Want to tell the state to stick it? Homeschool your kids. Retrieved January 2013 from Forbes http://www.forbes.com/sites/billflax/2013/01/22/want-to-tell-the-state-to-stick-it-homeschool-your-kids
Klicka, C. (2007, March). Socialization: homeschoolers are in the real world. Retrieved January 2013, from Home School Legal Defense Fund: http://www.hslda.org/docs/nche/000000/00000068.asp
