Who are and where are homeschoolers? Who should care?
New homeschoolers would likely want to find a support network, along with encouragement from other homeschoolers. Families looking at homeschooling as a way out of the public or private school building would also be looking for state and local resources. Homeschoolers tend to know the states’ homeschool regulations (or lack thereof) better than many school authorities. We have to know them, to protect our family.
When homeschoolers ‘left the system’, why is ‘the system’ hunting down homeschoolers to study them? My Kid is Not Named Data, after all.
Counting seems to be irresistible to the eduwonks, along with the media.
Profound shift in kind of families who are home schooling their children USA TODAY 5/28/09
By Greg Toppo
Parents who home-school children increasingly are white, wealthy and well-educated — and their numbers have nearly doubled in a decade, a new federal government report says.
No one was counting my kids, or most other homeschooled kids in Illinois, Texas, Oklahoma, Alaska, or other states, where homeschoolers do not report to the state school authorities. Some others might also disagree with those reported ‘statistics‘.
From Mothering.com:
Homeschooling for Black Families
By Jennifer James
Issue 140, January/February 2007
The black homeschooling movement is just beginning to take shape. Fifty years ago, little did we suspect that black families would today be exiting the public schools in growing numbers to embrace other means of education. While we all acknowledge and appreciate the sacrifices made by those who worked in the Civil Rights Movement, we also recognize that now is a new time in America’s educational landscape. While homeschooling may be picking up steam in our community, the great majority of black children ?are still educated in the public schools. Though we don’t believe that public education is wrong for all black children, we know from our own experience, and from the experiences of other black families, that there are other ways of learning. Many black families across the nation are finding this to be true, and I’m sure others will as well. Now, as our daughters grow and learn every day, Michael and I are even more convinced that ?we have made the right choice for our family and for our daughters’ educational futures. We have equipped them with a true and unwavering love for learning that has been made possible by homeschooling.
Personally, I like being mysterious. But if anyone wants to join the homeschool party, the mystery will be resolved. Each family is a unique and autonomous body. All different and all impossible to analyze, except by those who really count.
Does Homeschooling Research Help Homeschooling
Who benefits from homeschool research? by Larry and Susan Kaseman
Originally published January-February 1991 issue Home Education Magazine
Given all the problems and pitfalls, why would anyone do research on homeschooling? Who benefits? Obviously, researchers and the universities and other institutions with which they work or who support and use their work benefit directly in terms of money received and increased status and privilege. Homeschooling research may be particularly in vogue now, making it easier to get grants and other support for homeschooling research than for other seemingly less timely topics. When more than 100,000 “scholarly” articles are published each year (as reported in Phi Delta Kappan, Vol, 71, No. 3, Nov., 1989, page 226), there must be intense pressure on graduate students, instructors, and professors alike to find an original topic. Do homeschoolers have an obligation to serve as fodder for this arm of the educational establishment?
Conclusion
There are two major reasons why homeschoolers should not participate in research: First, research poses a serious threat to homeschooling because it increases the opportunities for increased control and regulation of homeschooling. Second, even if research did not have serious risks, it still would not be the most effective way to communicate information about homeschooling to others. It is much better for homeschoolers to share their personal experiences, to show how well homeschooling works for their families, and how important it is that homeschooling exist as an alternative that is not controlled by conventional schools or the government.
If homeschooling is to survive as an alternative approach to education and as a stronghold of parents’ and children’s rights and responsibilities, homeschoolers must be prepared to stand up and say, “We have chosen an alternative that works better for us.” One important area in which homeschoolers have to be prepared to do this is research. They need to say, “We don’t want our families poked and prodded and invaded. We don’t want our position weakened and our strengths lessened by research which cannot give a full and accurate picture of homeschooling anyway. We object to what research does to people and to alternative movements and the way in which it promotes the values and practices of conventional schooling. Therefore, we oppose homeschooling research.”
ProntoLessons said on May 30, 2009
Re: USA Today article – you are right about the numbers – great point. The fact that the article quotes 1.5 million students enrolled in homeschool is probably underestimated since the states mentioned above do not require that homeschooled children be registered.
I also believe that some good points came out of that article, though.
I mean, here’s more proof that parents can provide a (gasp!) better social environment for their homeschooled students than those available at pubic schools. As the data in the article shows, a huge reason for NOT enrolling students in public school is because homeschoolers want to AVOID the social environment at public schools.
Since homeschoolers can dictate when, with whom, and how frequently their students will interact with others, not only in their own age group (i.e., Boy/Girl Scouts, after-school team sports, YMCA, etc.), but with others outside of their age group. With appropriate supervision, entire curriculums can be built around interacting with others such as your neighborhood postman, your local grocery cashier, or for older kids, the employees during a local corporate office tour.
In addition, since core lessons don’t typically take 6 hours to teach (like public schools), the student has even MORE time to interact with community groups, non-profit organizations, or whatever worthy social interests the student wants to pursue.
This gives the student opportunities to really build some notable accomplishments that would be tougher to achieve in a public school environment (You can just imagine this exchange from a public school student talking on the phone with her favorite charity, “What? A once-in-a-life-time series of charity events that starts at 10AM and lasts for the next 4 days? Sorry, but I don’t get out of school until 2:30PM”. Bummer).
In fact, if the social environment is designed right, the parent can BETTER prepare their students for college in this respect because college is all about interacting well with people across ALL age groups (like the real world) instead of being forced to interact 99% of the time with people within 1-4 years of the student’s actual age for 12 years of the public school student’s academic career.
Judy Aron said on June 2, 2009
yeah – I contend that these statistics are meant for media sensationalism… and the need to call us all white and rich – implying we are some sort of segregationists shielding our children from government schooling’s much trumpeted “diversity and tolerance” indoctrination (as if our kids live in a vacuum or are chained to the kitchen table). There are of course many factors that these statistics don’t wish to expound upon, and one is the growth of non-white homeschoolers.
Read more here: http://yedies.blogspot.com/2009/06/yet-another-set-of-homeschool.html
ProntoLessons said on June 3, 2009
Judy,
I couldn’t agree with you more, especially since I belong to the fastly growing group of homeschoolers that are not white.