Typical local homeschooling piece, Homeschooling in Huntsville, for WAAY-TV, asks the usual questions, provides the usual answers: “HUNTSVILLE, AL—From the first day of kindergarten to graduation, a student’s progress through school is marked with regular rites of passage. Lockers, hall passes and high school cliques are all part of life along the way. But more and more families are choosing a different path: homeschooling.”

In this brilliant video lecture, The history of alternative schooling and homeschooling, Canadian-American documentary filmmaker and writer Astra Taylor describes her own homeschooling – specifically unschooling as promoted by John Holt in his ground-breaking publication Growing Without Schooling (“delivered to our mailbox in a brown paper bag”). She contextualizes her unschooled experiences and the progressive homeschooling movement by reference to the history of alternate education, especially the public conversation about it in the sixties and seventies:

“Raised by independent-thinking bohemian parents, Taylor was unschooled until age 13. Join the filmmaker as she shares her personal experiences of growing up home-schooled without a curriculum or schedule, and how it has shaped her educational philosophy and development as an artist.”

This piece – Homeschooling the right choice for Great Falls family – is short, predictable, and merely a lead-in to an evening newscast for Great Falls, Montana, but still…

“It’s a common afternoon scene in kitchens across the country: a teenager sitting at the kitchen table doing homework.

“But for 8th-grader Ryan Keith in Great Falls, the kitchen table isn’t just a place to do homework – it’s his classroom.”

Mothering magazine’s web site has a good article by Becky Jackson titled No Time for Teaching: Spontaneous Learning at Home:

“In the four years I spent pursuing an education degree, I learned a lot about what to teach and how to teach it. Then I spent four years as a full-time mother. I would have to say that I learned more from the latter. In fact, I’ve discovered that the most effective way for young children to learn is not the Program for Effective Teaching model or the whole-language approach: it’s the natural relationship between a mother and child.”

And too wonderful not to share here: “I am, indeed, well qualified to help my children reach their potential-but not because of my teaching degree. My real qualifications are these: I’m their mother, I love them, and I know them better than anyone.”

Read Becky’s entire article at the link above!

In an article titled Does Your Homeschooling Support Natural Learning Behaviors? homeschool mom, advocate and blogger Sara McGrath explores the concepts behind how children learn through following their curiosity, through play and exploration, and through experience. Sara, the author of Unschooling: A Lifestyle of Learning, The Unschooling Happiness Project, and Memoirs of A Strange Little Girl, lives near Seattle with her husband and three daughters. She writes about homeschooling and many other topics for online publications and print magazines.

Susan Ryan at the Corn & Oil blog is upbeat about an article on homeschooling titled Grooming the Next Generation of Leaders. Good quotes:

“We have greater opportunities as homeschoolers to dance to the beat of our own drums,” Alyssa said, adding, “The only downside is that we can never just watch a movie without having to dissect the plot afterwards.”

“As a mother, I am always told, ‘You homeschool? I could never do that.’ I consider myself the most fortunate woman in the world to have the privilege to invest my life in three spectacular young ladies,” Austin-Taitt said. “In the process of teaching them through the years, it is I who have learned the greatest lessons from them. I have learned to laugh hilariously, cry passionately – and learn incessantly.”

“Look at people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison. They all dropped out of school.”

The Unschooled Life is an interview with bOING bOING’s Mark Frauenfelder, by Ted Balaker, from the November 2010 issue of Reason magazine. bOING bOING is a small technology-culture magazine that eventually evolved into one of the Web’s most popular blogs. In addition to blogging at bOING bOING, Frauenfelder is editor in chief of MAKE magazine. Another excerpt:

“Unschooling is letting kids get bored at home and get bored with their friends and come up with their own ways to learn.”

Read the article at the link above.

While not specifically about homeschooling, an article by Brian Gresko, a stay-at-home dad and writer, explains his view that childhood is under attack by the very people who should be protecting it: parents. His article In Defense of Childhood: Let Kids Be Kids! explains:

Many of the most important skills are untestable — imagination, general optimism and lightness of heart, the capability to love another creature, to empathize and demonstrate compassion. These are things a child can’t bubble in on a Scantron sheet, and yet cultivating these attitudes matters more in determining how my son will exist in the world and what kind of contribution he’ll make with his time on Earth.

Read the entire article at the link above.

The Air Force Times features an article on homeschooling by staff writer Jon R. Anderson, titled the ABCs of Home Schooling:

Experts estimate there are 2 million home-schoolers, with their numbers growing as much as 12 percent annually in recent years. And there is data to indicate that military families are home schooling at perhaps twice the national average.

That doesn’t surprise the Rexfords, who have been home schooling for 10 years. “Home schooling fits the military lifestyle very well,” James Rexford says. “When you move, the school goes with you. When you have time off, the kids can take time off with you.”

Former News & Commentary editor and Home Education Magazine columnist Valerie Moon, who runs the website The Military Homeschooler, remembers when the brass in Europe tried to forbid homeschooling, but adds, “That’s all gone now, the military has become very supportive.”

A sidebar highlights support resources for military homeschooling families, and explains how writer Jon R. Anderson’s family got into homeschooling: “My gut tightened when my wife first floated the idea of home schooling six months ago.”

The Military Times Media Group has been the premiere source for military news and information for the military and government sectors for over 60 years.

A good roundup post of mainstream news articles by Amy Wilson on the VA Homeschoolers site, titled Positive Press for Homeschooling:

It seems that the back-to-school season has inspired some recent media coverage of homeschooling. “Not everyone is going back to school” is the basic theme that VaHomeschoolers has noticed, accompanied by a human-interest angle that dispels stereotypes of homeschoolers as isolationists on society’s fringes and portrays us as a cross-section of the general American population that has chosen a different educational approach. Since VaHomeschoolers’ mission is to serve Virginia’s diverse homeschooling population, which includes families of all ethnic and national backgrounds, religious beliefs, and educational styles, we are pleased to see reporters for local and national media outlets portraying the diversity of the homeschooling community in their coverage.

Amy shares links to recent articles from CNN, MSNBC, and NBC News at the link above.