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.
Tags: home education, homeschoolers, homeschooling, homeschooling families, Linda Dobson, Parent at the Helm, pros and cons of homeschooling, Reasons to Homeschool, Voice of America
From KYTX in Tyler, Texas: Homeschooling on the rise in Texas:
Some parents are taking it upon themselves to ensure their children get a good education, which is why Texas is seeing an increase in homeschooling.
New research says the percentage of kids homeschooled jumped 75 percent in the past eight years
Continue reading at the link above.
Tags: homeschoolers, homeschooling, homeschooling families, homeschooling in Texas, Reasons to Homeschool, Texas homeschooling
Holly Craw, the Phoenix, Arizona Homeschooling Examiner, asks a question we’re hearing more and more often these days in her article Arizona loses out on Race to the Top Funds: Is this a new opportunity to strengthen homeschooling? A couple of excerpts:
The Arizona homeschool community may need to gear up for an increase in its ranks. When U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, announced yesterday the winners in the Race to the Top competition for billions of dollars in federal assistance for state education funding, Arizona had missed a $250 million windfall by 5.3 points.
This examiner predicts that there will be an upsurge in families deciding to homeschool because of the issues that are being exacerbated in the public schools.
If you are having second thoughts about your local public school, and the programs and staff that it no longer has, you may want to consider the pros and cons of homeschooling.
Tags: Arizona homeschool community, Arizona Homeschooling Examiner, Arne Duncan, deciding to homeschool, federal assistance for state education, Holly Craw, home education, homeschooling, homeschooling families, homeschooling in Arizona, Phoenix Homeschooling Examiner, pros and cons of homeschooling, public school, Reasons to Homeschool
Huffington Post blogger Kate Fridkis writes about the New York Style Magazine article on upscale New York homeschool cooperatives:
The New York Times Style Magazine piece about the trendy Brooklyn homeschoolers, “School’s In,” both did and didn’t remind me of my own pre-college education. My family called it unschooling, because we didn’t have any classes. We were living in one of the parts of New Jersey that has a surprising number of farms, and our neo-Nazi neighbors harassed our black neighbors. We had “group,” which met every week or so–not for French lessons, but for random fun. The kids from group, local homeschoolers of different ages, went ice skating in the winter. We were the only ones on the rink, except for a foul-tempered skate guard with a bristling mustache. We went to parks in the summer. We built a raft out of recycling buckets and plywood and floated on the pond. We were not cool. Some of us ate processed cheese. No one had very much money.
Continue reading Kate’s outstanding article at “School’s In,”. But for those who won’t click the link, here is an important reminder about homeschooling (but we suggest skipping this and just reading Kate’s entire excellent article):
Both of my parents are very, very smart. They are both good at networking. They are both creative. But most importantly, in terms of my education, they both somehow were able to agree that I would turn out fine, even if I never sat in a classroom. They somehow trusted that children will always learn, as long as they are encouraged.
The Brooklyn homeschoolers’ world, as described, sounds so delicate to me. Which is funny, because people have always imagined my world to be constructed out of fragile materials and a rare brand of naïve idealism. This is a narrative about homeschooling that people repeat. It’s not “real.” It’s sort of a fantasy. It’s not gritty and down to earth and diverse. Maybe this is always at least partly true, but maybe it also just depends a lot on who is doing the homeschooling, or the unschooling. Because the truth is, school and home are never really perfectly balanced alternatives to one another. They aren’t opposites. School is controllable and uniform to an extent that unschool can’t possibly be.
Tags: Alexandra Jacobs, Brooklyn homeschooling, cooperative homeschooling, home education, homeschool co-ops, homeschooling, homeschooling families, Huffington Post on homeschooling, Kate Fridkis, New York Style, New York Style magazine, Reasons to Homeschool, upscale homeschooling
School’s In
In an article for the New York Style magazine, an article titled School’s In explores the trendsetting approaches to homeschooling being taken by Brooklyn hipster parents (including fashion photographers, a cinematographer, a dancer-choreographer and a sculptor among them) when the local schools didn’t quite pass muster.
Read the entire article at the link above.
Tags: Alexandra Jacobs, Brooklyn homeschooling, cooperative homeschooling, home education, homeschool co-ops, homeschooling, homeschooling families, New York Style, New York Style magazine, Reasons to Homeschool, upscale homeschooling