Homeschooling

Fighting the good fight

[Reprinted from Issues & Views March 11, 2002]

In the January/February 2002 edition of Brown University's Brown Alumni Magazine, we learn some good news about homeschooling and meet some of the parents and students who make it a success. In "Homeschooling Comes of Age," Jennifer Sutton first tells of the discrepancies in statistics, where some analysts claim that in the year 1999-2000, 850,000 children were taught at home, whereas others claim the figure is closer to 1.7 million.

Whichever figures are correct, one thing is certain: homeschooling has become an increasingly popular alternative to public schools judged by many parents to be inadequate and unsafe. As its popularity has grown, what was once the oddball practice of isolated families has become a widely accepted educational approach, with its own lobbyists, organized support networks, and how-to-get-into-college guidebooks. These days, two thirds of homeschoolers go on to college, according to a National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI) study published five years ago. . . .

Education scholar Patricia M. Lines, a former senior research analyst at the U.S. Department of Education, has studied the homeschooling movement extensively, from its beginnings in the late 1950s and early 1960s as a liberal alternative to what some people viewed as rigidly conservative public schools. In the 1980s, Lines observes, “school culture drifted to the left,” and conservative families turned to homeschooling to keep religion in their children’s education. Today, “both groups are running strong,” she says, and they have been joined by an increasing number of parents “who simply seek the highest quality education for their child, which they believe public and even private schools can no longer provide.” . . .

Although the number of homeschoolers applying to college is still small, it represents only the first wave. The next homeschooled generation--the real boom--is just hitting puberty. A school like Brown, with its reputation for valuing independence and self-direction, may be particularly attractive to homeschoolers accustomed to charting their own course. Brown’s curriculum, too, may be a good academic match for homeschoolers, many of whom have shaped their own curriculum with their parents or have simply followed their own interests with their parents as guides. . . .

Tibet Sprague gave Brown a transcript that included no grades (except for those he earned at UMass). Instead it detailed the books he had read (among them, Animal Farm and Fahrenheit 451), the musical instruments he played (saxophone and recorder), the science projects he completed (building rockets to demonstrate trajectory physics), and even the cultural events he attended (the Bill T. Jones Dance Company). In some ways, he says, he had an advantage over college applicants with typical high school backgrounds. “Their acceptance was based almost entirely on grades and scores,” he wrote in a Pathfinder Center newsletter. “But I could present everything I had done during the last four years, show every aspect of my intelligence and creativity, without lingering on my shortcomings.” . . .

“When I have kids, I can’t imagine sending them to school,” Maria Taylor says. “I want them to have what I had. We were empowered. My mom would say to us, ‘Whatever you want to do, you can do it, and if you need tools, come to me.’ I know it’s a huge responsibility, and it’s going to be hard. But I’m definitely going to do it.”

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