Stress-free learning? By some estimates, at least one million American children are
home schooled.
Keeping in tune: taking part in extra-curricular activities outside the home is just
one way of interacting with other children. |
Whether for religious reasons
or out of a strong desire to do things differently, a growing number of parents in
the United States are choosing to educate their children at home
 Twenty years ago, Christopher
and Eileen Herman would have technically been breaking the law. Opting against conventional
schooling, the parents are teaching their two children at their home in Washington
state, where until 1985, the only legal way to home school was to hold a state teaching
license–something they both lack.
But today, the Hermans not only can teach their children at home without fear of
prosecution, they also have an extensive array of resources and supports at their
disposal. They belong to three local organizations of parents who educate their children
at home, attend state-wide home schoolers’ conventions, and regularly cull advice
from similar families on the Internet. “Just about everybody knows someone who’s
home schooling,” Mrs. Herman says. “People may still think it’s kind of odd, but
there isn’t as much suspicion or hostility anymore.”
Legal
recognition
Indeed, the
Hermans are part of one of the fastest growing educational trends in the United States.
By some estimates, the number of home schooled children in the country has grown
from roughly 50,000 in the mid-1980s to at least one million today. (Others peg the
population as high as 1.8 million). While that still represents at most only three
percent of the total number of the country’s school-aged children, the rapid rise
in the popularity of home schooling deserves notice. It has quickly become the second
most popular form of non-government sponsored education in the U.S., now outranked
only by the schools affiliated with the Roman Catholic church.
“One big accomplishment of the movement is that they’ve made home schooling a viable
educational option,” says Mitchell Stevens, a sociologist at Hamilton College in
Clinton, N.Y. and the author of an upcoming book on home schooling. “It now has a
small place in the menu of educational choices in this country.”
The forces behind the movement are complex, and the bigger it gets, the harder it
becomes to describe a “typical” home schooler. Most experts see two very different
lineages. One was born in the late 1960s from the alternative school movement, whose
followers believe children learn best when liberated from the rigid structures of
formal schooling and allowed to pursue their own interests. The other was largely
fueled by the concerns of some conservative Protestant families who–at about the
same time–began to worry that the public schools could no longer ensure the proper
formation of their children’s character. “Both are skeptical of the bureaucratic
organization of education,” Stevens says. “It’s a matter of, ‘I don’t want someone
else taking care of my children.’ ”
Until the 1980s, home schooling in the United States was still largely an underground
activity, without legal recognition. But as the number of practitioners grew, judges
and prosecutors became more willing to accept that home schooling was permitted under
legal provisions allowing children who weren’t in school to be ‘otherwise instructed.’
In 1983, advocates formed the Home School Legal Defense Association to push the issue
in state legislatures and to provide legal representation to individual home schooling
families.
Today, the practice is recognized as legal in all 50 states, although its regulation
varies greatly. Idaho, for example, places very few restrictions on home schooling
parents, not even asking that they inform any state or local officials of their intentions.
Oregon, meanwhile, mandates that such families periodically have a ‘qualified neutral
person’ test their children. Nowhere in the U.S. are parents now required–as they
once were in Washington state–to be licensed teachers. A few states call for parents
to either have some college education or follow a home schooling ‘qualifier’ course
at a community college.
State laws often stipulate the number of days of instruction and the general content
areas to be covered by families. But while these provisions usually call on parents
to keep records of their children’s progress, they are generally not required to
turn these over to a government body. “Even the most rigorously regulated states
in America have some flexibility–a recognition that your child may be learning at
a different pace,” says Patrick Farenga, president of Holt Associates, a Cambridge
(Massachusetts)-based publisher of home schooling materials. State and local school
districts vary in how they accommodate home-schooled children. In some cases, they
are allowed to participate in field trips or sign up for certain classes while in
others, school officials do not let them join any extra-curricular activities.
Although conservative Protestants appear to make up the largest single bloc of home
schoolers, the movement is diversifying. In recent years, Catholic, Muslim, and Jewish
home schoolers have formed their own organizations, and the practice continues to
attract a substantial number of more secular-minded families. Surveys by the National
Home Education Research Institute in Salem (Oregon) suggest that religion still is
the most common reason for home schooling, but the research centre also has identified
five other strong motivations: concern about the academic quality of local conventional
schools; a belief that the best education also is the most individualized; the desire
to enhance relationships among family members; an attempt to mitigate the negative
influences of peer pressure; and worries that schools are becoming increasingly unsafe.
Often, these reasons overlap.
Home schooling techniques vary as much as the motivations for doing it. In a country
with no national curriculum, states are responsible for setting educational standards,
which are generally only loosely applied to home schoolers. Parents generally put
together their instructional plan themselves. Hundreds of publishers now produce
materials geared toward home schoolers, their wares sold through the World Wide Web,
in specialized magazines and conventions. They reflect a wide array of educational
approaches and philosophies, from non-denominational correspondence courses to materials
“built upon the firm foundation of scriptural truth” and not the “pseudo-scientific
jargon of the secular educationists.”
Trust
in public schools
The few large-scale
research projects that have been carried out in the United States suggest that the
home schooled children whose families participated in the studies tend to perform
well above the national average on standardized tests. But many researchers are hesitant
to make too much of such findings, because of the obvious self-selection problem.
Further, many agree that a substantial number of home schoolers remain underground,
refusing to be counted by state or local authorities, and making it difficult to
reach conclusions.
Perhaps one of the best indications of success is home schooling’s growing recognition
by American colleges and universities. The Home School Legal Defense Association
recently surveyed more than 500 institutions of higher learning and found that all
but two had admissions policies for evaluating home schooled students who lack traditional
high school records. Many colleges now accept evidence of student progress prepared
by parents, portfolios of their work, and standardized tests in place of transcripts.
Despite its growing acceptance, parents still are sometimes brought before judges
in disagreements over whether they’ve correctly followed state regulations. In a
highly-publicized case last year, a Vermont home schooler was jailed for two weeks
for refusing to let state examiners evaluate her 15-year-old son. State officials
argued that they needed to make sure the boy–reputed by local school officials to
have learning deficiencies–was being adequately served at home.
While public approval of home schooling has spread, it isn’t universal. A 1997 survey
co-sponsored by the Gallup polling organization and the international education organization
Phi Delta Kappa showed that 57 per cent of Americans think home schooling is a ‘bad
thing’–though this was down from the 73 per cent reported 12 years earlier. The National
Education Association, the country’s largest teachers’ union, also maintains a policy
statement arguing that, “home schooling programs cannot provide the student with
a comprehensive education experience.” The National Association of Elementary School
Principals has issued a similar warning, adding that government authorties should
“make certain that those who exercise these options are held strictly accountable
for the academic achievement and social/emotional growth of children.” A major part
of their concern is that home schooled students may not learn enough about relating
to children from other backgrounds.
Home schoolers themselves disagree about how big the movement will grow. Some predict
a straight-line growth for many more years, while others see it soon reaching a point
of diminishing returns. Polls suggest that most Americans remain satisfied with their
local public schools, which educate about 90 per cent of the country’s students.
But most observers agree that, however large, home schooling has established itself
as a lasting feature in the landscape of American education. As parent and publisher
Patrick Farenga puts it, “the concept of education is no longer held to the schools
like monks in a monastery.”
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