"Mary Hood: Dangers of Accreditation" Mary Hood, Ph.D. Monthly Column for March 2003
The Dangers of Accreditation
As many of you know, I'm the director of a home-schooling resource center in Kennesaw, Georgia. Recently, I've seen a large increase in the number of people who are calling me asking if our center is "fully accredited". This, in my opinion, represents an extremely dangerous trend.
First of all, there is a large amount of misinformation floating around about what being "fully accredited" means. I could personally start up something today that I could call an "accrediting agency for home-schoolers". The accreditation that I would offer, however, like any other accreditation, would not necessarily be worth the paper it was written on. The bottom line, for any such accreditation, are the questions, "Who is a program accredited by?", and "Who accepts this accreditation, and for what purpose?" In the south, there is really only one accrediting agency fully accepted by all colleges, and that is SACUS, the Southern Association of Colleges and Universities. Before we all go running out there and seek such accreditation, however, we'd better know what we are going to be giving up in the process.
In order to understand the dangers of accreditation, it might help to consider the current situation at the college level. Because it is already commonly accepted that "full accreditation" of college programs is required, several Christian colleges are in danger of being run out of business. For example, certain Christian colleges, which believe strongly in resisting the ways of the world, make a conscious decision to shun SACUS accreditation. Since those colleges which are SACUS-accredited are often not able to accept transfer credits from unaccredited schools, students may not be able to transfer from one school to another, including other Bible colleges, and may also have difficulty getting into certain graduate programs later.
For Christians who believe that they are responsible to God, rather than the government, this is an unacceptable situation. Let's examine some of the things I'd need to do, personally, if I wanted my organization to be "completely accredited". First of all, I'd need to take a long, hard look at my art program. It happens to be on of the best in the state. We teach art history and applied art, and have one of the best teachers I've ever seen. Oops. Gotta fire her. She doesn't have a college degree. Her only credentials are that she is a home-schooling mother and a real artist. Next, let's look at my Spanish program. After a good bit of trial and error, we have finally established a first-rate program, teaching both elementary and high school Spanish, using a combination of fun and hard work to teach a language that is critically needed in this area. Oops. Gotta fire my Spanish teacher. No college degree. Her only credentials are that she was raised as a home-schooled student, is a fine Christian role model, and her students love her. Besides, she isn't even twenty-one years old yet, so she can't possibly be a good teacher. I must be mistaken.
Next, let's take a look at the rest of my program. Hmmmm. Here's a possible problem. We use a creation-based science series. That's gotta go. It isn't "real science", despite the fact that it was written by a college professor, who wrote it in order to ensure that Christian students have a solid science background. After all, it strongly implies that we didn't evolve from apes, and that can't possibly be true. The biology teacher herself looks good. Although she isn't currently certified, we could probably get her certified, because she has a degree in biology. Oh, oh. She also teaches chemistry and physical science. Without a major in those subjects, she must not know what she's teaching. Wonder how all those students are learning so much?
Now, let's look at me. It's true that I do have a Ph.D. in education, and have twenty years of experience as a home-schooling mom and advocate, but I think I might have to fire myself, as well, because I don't have any state certification and besides, I was trained as a teacher, not as an administrator, so I guess I must not really know what I'm doing.
Then, after I fired myself, the next thing I'd probably have to do is institute grades, to which I am adamantly opposed. Not only would I need to have grades, but I'd need to make sure to give a few students "F's", even if they were trying their very best, because otherwise I'd be accused of "grade inflation". Then, despite the fact that our resource center is directly across from the public library, and the students currently make tremendous use of the resources there, I'd have to start blowing a lot of money to develop my own library, despite the fact it would be a ridiculous duplication of resources. (But we are talking about government bureaucracy here, so it probably would be fine.)
Finally, after paying the absurd amounts of money that full accreditation would require, the very last thing I'd need to do would be to raise the amount of tuition to a level that very few home-schooling families would be able to afford, so I would effectively have either shut down the program or turned it into one more school, thus eliminating any real educational choices for parents.
We MUST not let home-schooling freedoms erode in this manner. What is the general point of accreditation? Generally, it's to "get into college". I've had three of my own kids get into college without any accreditation at all. I've assisted several hundred students to get into college over the years without any such accreditation.
Every time a home-schooling parent raises the issue of accreditation, every time a home-schooling group submits to accreditation, it brings us that much closer to a day when high school will be like college. Accreditation WILL sneak up on us and some day we won't be able to get our kids into college without it. What will be next? Accrediting all home schools? What about preschool? If we give up our freedom to educate our children in high school without accreditation, we will all pay for it someday.
I don't believe home-schooling will ever again be illegal in the country. We've grown too big. Only if a dictatorship arose could it ever again go away completely. However, if the educational establishment can sink its claws into the movement through the "accreditation process", they won't have to make us go away. They will be able to control us, require all of us to get college degrees and/or certification in order to teach our own children, standardize our educational philosophies, standardize our textbooks, and eventually remove God from home education just like they've already tried to do in the secular schools.
Is "accreditation" really that important to you?
Article found at http://www.harvesthomeeducators.com/morenews.php?item=6 on April 2, 2003
Return to MommyBear's Home Ed Page