Over the years our family learned at home, many terms floated across the homeschool communities describing different homeschooling styles. For many parents, one phrase – “Christian homeschooler” – turned into “Christian who also homeschools” because of the assumed connotations within our community. We can all breathe a sigh of relief that thorny subject is not my focus today, except to point out our varied interests.

The intent today is on “homeschooling writers” or “writers who homeschool”, or all of the above. An enjoyable pastime for me is observing various homeschooling writers’ engagement with the public in columns, books and articles. On one of my first days as editor and since we seem to have a slow homeschooling news day, I aim to list a compilation of homeschoolers with public opinions.

I am fully aware the phrase – “homeschoolers with opinions” – is redundant, but there are always rumors floating on the ‘socialization’ muck accusing us of the little lady abiding our husband’s wishes of barefoot, pregnant and in a denim jumper. As many in the media and the education research department might assert this backwoods image, the notion should be swept right out our back door.

These authors’ writing interests I’m showcasing are not necessarily revolving around homeschooling. but there does seem to be a link with lifelong learning. Farming/good food and love of the land, science/branches of education, family/that is a major reason we homeschool and of course politics/’homeschool politics are local’ turned into specialties of these different homeschoolers’ trade. I think they’ve served their communities well with thorough knowledge of the subject at hand. So let’s get started.

Author Laurie Couture  has an article in the current November – December Home Education Magazine – Keeping The Parent-Teen Connection Strong Through Unschooling. Laurie was also interviewed in the provocative documentary – War on Kids. She’s the one in the movie trailer noting school students are often told to “sit down in that chair and keep your mouth shut”.

Indiana’s News and Tribune Columnist Debbie Harbeson puts her point of view out there for inspection every Thursday. Covering various current events in her articles, Debbie also does not like educational coercion while liking the idea of educational anarchy.

Mississippi homeschooler Natalie Winningham also writes a column in the Clarion-Ledger. Natalie offers her take on family, education trends and homeschooling.

Fran Eaton homeschooled her children and they are continuing the tradition with their own children. Fran writes a column for the south Chicago suburbs – Southtown Star. Her start as a defender of Illinois homeschooling rights sparked a political affairs passion. Fran also edits The Illinois Review and actively participates in Illinois politics.

Another Illinoisan, Deborah Niemann-Boehle, homeschooled while working as a reporter. Then they made a huge lifestyle change and a started up a new homestead. Deborah added to that busy life with her writings about their experience and now has a popular farm blog and two books – Homegrown and Handmade and EcoThrifty.

New Yorker and multi-generation farmer Shannon Hayes has four books to tout, including the start of a new turn of phrase with this title – Radical Homemakers. She has written numerous articles in publications such as the New York Times and you can read her Radical Homemaking thoughts in Yes magazine’s blog.

Home Education Magazine championed many writers along the way, including Kathy Ceceri and Laura Grace Weldon. Kathy is now the senior editor for Geek Mom in Wired magazine and has written several activity books for many homeschoolers’ favorite projects – Hands On Learning. Both these ladies are smart, savvy and let those who are not enlightened never forget – social,  offering fun resources in the realm of geekmomdom. Laura also produced a book- Free Range Learning, with a HEM column by the same name.

We can’t forget Parent at the Helm’s Linda Dobson! Her books are on my shelf and her Good Housekeeping article way back put homeschooling in the news in a good way.

As I review this off the top of my head list, I recognize these are all of the female gender. I know there are more, and there are certainly men in this group of writers that homeschool (or homeschoolers that write). Pat Farenga, David Albert, and Snow Falling on Cedars award winning author David Guterson immediately come to mind. But it’s a bit fun to highlight the power mamas in this piece. Hats off to them and many others. I will be reading and learning from their pieces and you will surely see their influence here in Home Education Magazine’s News & Commentary.

If you have other writers to add, please feel welcome to note them in comments.

Prime Minister of Jamaica is a homeschooler

Exciting news from Linda Dobson, an HEM columnist, author of many books on homeschooling, and founder of the website, Parent at the Helm:

“I became aware of Prime Minister – and Education Minister – Holness’ decision to homeschool last week when a friend in Jamaica contacted me. She let me know she had loaned Prime Minister Holness one of my books. She said he still hasn’t returned it yet, kindly insinuating that maybe the book (and hers!) had something to do with the minister’s announcement.

“Thrilled with the news, I wrote a letter to the minister and his wife that appears in yesterday’s Jamaica Observer.” An excerpt from Linda’s letter”

“We get only one fleeting childhood, and you can make it count for your children. Cherish each heartwarming experience as your children’s eyes light up with their “aha!” moments, and their questions fill your days with curiosity and wonder.”

Click this link to read Linda’s wonderful open letter to the prime minister and Mrs Holness.

In this first of three posts, titled Compelled to Attend, HEM’s Road Less Travelled columnist, Linda Dobson, is revisiting her first book, The Art of Education: Reclaiming Your Family, Community and Self, published by Home Education Press in 1995. An excerpt:

And if colleges and universities ignore the true meaning of education and accept indoctrination as their function in society, what then is the purpose of all the years of schooling that lead up to college, starting at the tender age of five or, in many cases today, even younger?

Continue reading at the link above.

From Voice of America’s News USA, an article titled Education Begins at Home in Many US Households and subtitled Homeschooling has broadened to include parents of all faiths:

Before 1918, when Mississippi became the last U.S. state to require that school-age children attend public or private schools, many children were taught by their parents at home or by teachers informally hired by the community. Quite often in rural areas, kids of all ages were taught in the same one-room schoolhouse.

Decades later in the 1980s, homeschooling made a comeback when religiously conservative parents convinced states to approve and give full credit for the teaching of children at home. The homeschooling movement has since broadened to include parents of all faiths – or no faith at all.

Linda Dobson’s Parent at the Helm is featured in this quick overview of homeschooling.

From Linda Dobson at Parent at the Helm (PATH):

“I can’t say for certain that I possess the entire collection, but this is an Historic Homeschooling Magazine Giveaway of an insanely large number of issues of none other than America’s oldest and most trusted homeschooling magazine you know and love as Home Education Magazine (HEM for short, of course). As you may be aware, I have written for Home Education Magazine and served as columns editor since Truman was President (What? I know, but it’s only a small exaggeration!), and I wouldn’t have been there forever if I didn’t believe it’s the best product available out there – both yesterday and today. Think about what a GREAT gift these would make for someone just beginning to homeschool!”

Here’s the deal.

Linda Dobson, HEM’s long-running columnist for “The Road Less Travelled” and the administator of Parent at the Helm (PATH), writes: “I’ve been invited to do an hour radio call-in talk show next month. I don’t know anything about it except that it’s well-syndicated and, well, they asked me to talk about homeschooling. I never have to be asked twice to talk about homeschooling, in the hope that reaching just one more parent will make life and learning richer and more meaningful for yet another child (who will soon be yet another adult in our society).

“I write to ask for your input and ideas as to what you believe are the most important aspects of homeschooling today that should be shared with listeners.

“If you were to tell people just one thing you think is most important about homeschooling, what would that be?”

Linda has a list of other questions she’d love to see your answers to in preparing for her radio show. Click over to her PATH site and share your insights and experiences!

On Linda Dobson’s Parent at the Helm (PATH) long-time homeschooling advocate and writer Mary McCarthy shares her observations about a troubling tendency: “…I believe, although this is the only “evidence” I have, that young people are being taught to hate homeschooling, and by extension, home schooled families. They are being taught that its perfectly permissible, even rewarded with good grades, to make homeschoolers targets for hate speech and writing.

“Would teachers assign students to write negative essays about any other minority and get away with it?”

It’s a thoughtful essay about a problem of increasing concern.

Larry and Susan Kaseman wrote about this situation in their column titled “Working for Homeschooling Freedoms: Chore or Opportunity?”

Linda Dobson at Parent at the Helm, “PA School Spycam Case: Computers Rigged to Spy; Protocol Ignored”:

And yet again, I implore you to share this information with all parents, regardless of where their children go to school or how they are educated. …while this appears to be an isolated incident, I don’t for one moment believe that others aren’t taking advantage of the technology. Couple it with just a bit of that “we know what’s best for you” attitude sweeping through government employees today like the plague and said technology is employed to…help educate your children? Crucial lines have been crossed here, and it’s up to parents to start drawing some lines of their own in response – or to tell the system it will just have to get along without your children.

And a critical point to keep in mind as you read about these developments: Children enrolled in charter schools are public school students.