Is there really a typical day in home schooling? I can’t really say that it is. Let’s see. We have seven children and to some degree we teach all of them. From our youngest to our oldest we have lots of stories to tell. We started home schooling roughly 6 years ago and we are in no ways regretting this decision.
Benjamin ,the baby, is learning to speak, run, feed himself, etc. Samuel, the 2 year old, is repeating everything he hears, Hannah, the 4 year old say. Rebecca is soon to be 7 and she is on the verge of being a math genius. She does math on a 4th grade level and enjoys this accomplishment. Sophia is nine and very shy. However, when we are filming she springs into action. She definitely lives up to her name Wisdom. Eric is 12 and he is our young scientist, meteorologist, theologian and political ace. He also loves reading. Tiara, our oldest has been completely engulfed in reading since we could remember. She enjoys reading so much that she would sometimes check out 6 or more books from the library at one time.
All that being said, we love home schooling our children. Quite frankly, it hasn’t always been easy and still isn‘t. When we lived in Michigan our business kept us so extremely busy that we didn’t know if we could continue effectively. We eventually hired a few people to aid us in our business so that we could lighten our load. Since moving south we still run our business from home and now have a full classroom set up for the children to learn. Our library is their classroom and it is right next to our office which makes our job a lot easier.
When it comes to home schooling our children we have tried many different methods. Our oldest uses a high school curriculum that has simplified her studies. She is maintaining a 3.71 GPA and will be graduating soon. The other children are on a more diversified course of studies. We have tried curriculum based studies with them but it was getting to be very expensive so we have developed some of our own. My husbands brother, who works for the board of education, gave us some extra books that he had. This was also a great big help to us.
We first started with all of the State required subjects and built from there. We have incorporated business, technology, videography and many other things into their studies. It is our goal to have very well rounded self sufficient children when it is all said and done. We are in no means saying that this is all easy, but what we are saying is that this is a task worth the effort.
We try to stick to a structured day starting at 7:00 a.m. each morning and ending around 3:30. It doesn’t always happen but we are very close to it. We even have school on Saturdays and Sundays if necessary. Our kids all love home schooling with the exception of our oldest. Because she had gotten a good taste of being popular in public school she has never been thrilled with the idea of being home schooled. She has made many attempts at trying to get us to let her return to public school, but to no avail. It is our belief that the public school is very damaging to many children and that it needs a major overhaul.
As Christians, my husband and I feel that the public school is no place for our kids and that we are best suited to teach them. We encourage anyone that is on the fence about home schooling to do their research and understand the ramifications behind keeping your children in public school. If you need more information there are many support groups springing up including ours, The Black Home Schoolers Association, Inc. We can be found on the web at www.BlackHomeSchoolers.com
Tamiko Banks
Director, Black Home Schoolers Association, Inc.
Email: contact@blackhomeschoolers.com
I looked in the mirror an what did I see
A beautiful brown woman starring back at me.
The world tries to tell me that the sight of me is wrong
Because my eyes aren’t blue and my hair may not be long
I found out that it was not true
That beautiful only came with eyes that are blue
My rich brown tone is as caramel melting smooth
My thick lips are envied and pigment wooed
It is strange to see the stares of the man
Who is awed by my beauty which is in great demand
The Media depicts me in a horrible light
But the truth of it is that I’m just right
I’m brown, I’m proud, I’m glad to be me
A beautiful brown woman is what you see
It’s true that natural beauty Is only skin deep
Beauty from within is something you can keep
The rap mans description of me just isn’t so
I am not his B I am not his HOE
Imus’s description is also equally wrong
Be it a Racist remark or Gansta rap song
A B or a Hoe is an individual choice
No race, no color but a single voice
They too can change and earn respect
Real beauty is what we can all reflect
It’s time to get it right, that’s ALL I have to say
Respect me for me or go your own way
I’m individual, I’m me, I’m beautiful, I’m brown
I refuse to let the media’s mark bring me down.
No need to change, no need to transform
What you see is what you get. A star is born
Your idea of me will matter no more
Your hate is really love it’s me you adore
It’s okay to love yourself for who you are
But don’t hate me if I too am a star
Not a star as in famous or known by many
But knowing that I too am good and plenty
Your outrage over my color is naïve and lame
Color is only skin deep, after that we’re the same
Your brain is not more powerful and bright
I too am a genius in my very own right
We can all co-exist and still remain our own
We are all beautiful, we are all flesh and bone.
We’re Created by God who gave us all a mark
Be it blonde and curly hair or tall and dark
AS I SAID BEFORE
I looked in the mirror an what did I see
A beautiful brown woman starring back at me.
AUTHOR TAMIKO BANKS
Emancipation from public education
As parents we must make tough decisions in regards to our kids. The decisions we make will impact their lives even after they are all grown up. Just imagine for one moment that a decision that you made ruined or deeply impacted your child’s life in a negative way. How will you deal with knowing that your decisions may have harmed your child.
Well, believe it or not the decision to send children to public school has proven to have some major negative ramifications. Many children pick up some very bad habits and ways from being in public school. Many of our young people are exposed to drugs, alcohol, sex, homosexuality, violence and more just from going to public school. Some children face the pressures of bullying and not being able to keep up among other things. All of this is the result of being in an unstable and hostile environment.
When a child is in a hostile environment they are unable to function properly. There is no such thing as telling your child to merely concentrate and ignore what‘s happening around them. A statement such as that , suggest that you don’t have an answer for your child and therefore can only put the situation on the back burner. Many parents find out the hard way that this decision may ultimately harm their child’s future. The instability in the public school environment has helped lead to the rapid decline in academic achievement in our schools. This is why there is such a huge increase in home education. The public school system has failed our children.
Home education has such a rapid increase, especially amongst African Americans, which is primarily due to the insufficient educational process of the public school. It is estimated that more than 2,000,000 American children are home schooled. This number will continue to increase as parents awareness is sparked. More and more parents are taking the plunge into home schooling as they realize that they can better educate their children.
Black home schoolers are especially motivated to take on the role as parent-teacher seeing that African American children have a higher dropout rate than any other race. The only way to protect your child from becoming a part of this dropout statistic is to become and early dropout through emancipating yourselves from the state institutional education. Please understand that I’m referring to having your child drop out of a failed institution and reviving their learning through home education. We here at The Black Home Schoolers Association would like to help in every way we can. Please feel free to contact us or visit our website at: www.BlackHomeschoolers.com
Homeschooling for Black Families
By Jennifer James
Issue 140, January/February 2007
"Mommy, I finished my book. Do we still get to see the movie tomorrow?" my daughter Annlyel asked, triumphantly removing her bookmark from its place and closing her book.
"We sure do," I smiled. "You finished Harry Potter and, as promised, we're going to see the movie when it comes out tomorrow."
When my older daughter, then five, finished reading her first full-length novel—entirely on her own initiative—I knew at that moment that my husband, Michael, and I had made the right decision to homeschool our two children.
Opting to homeschool came quite easily for us, though we learned about it only by mere happenstance. Casually watching television one afternoon when Annlyel was still an infant, we watched as a homeschooled student competed quite well in the last rounds of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. We knew nothing about homeschooling, but just hearing the commentator speak the word homeschooled resonated deeply with us and instantly piqued our interest to the point of action.
The very next day, we set out on a fierce quest to learn as much about homeschooling as we could, and to gather the necessary information about how to begin homeschooling in our state, North Carolina. With the aid of a helpful local school administrator, we learned whom we needed to contact, then called our state's homeschooling organization.
The rest is history. Before Annlyel could even sit up by herself, she had become a future homeschooled child. Just as quickly, we had become homeschooling parents. Little did we then know that we were yet another in a growing movement of black families who are abandoning traditional education for homeschooling. Even less did we know that I would become one of the leaders of this burgeoning national movement.
One reason Michael and I decided to homeschool was to ensure that our children received a sterling education. Based on what we learned about the steadily plummeting levels of achievement of large numbers of publicly schooled black children, we knew that that was not an option for our family. We also knew that private schools are extremely expensive. The prospect of homeschooling proved to be an excellent alternative for us—I was already a stay-at-home mother, and Michael and I are both excited about learning and are steadfastly focused on education. Homeschooling was perfect. We couldn't have been happier.
What eventually dawned on us, however, was that we hadn't heard or read about, or run into, or known any black homeschoolers other than ourselves. "Surely we aren't the only black homeschoolers in America!" we often kidded aloud. But it felt that way. After noticing the absence of black homeschoolers in our area, and after a fruitless search of the Internet, I decided, in January 2003, to start the National African-American Homeschoolers Alliance (NAAHA). Now four years old, NAAHA is the largest homeschooling organization for blacks in America, and provides the most comprehensive information and resources for black families on the Net.
As founding director of NAAHA, I have noticed some definite trends in the black homeschooling community, and have met some of the most amazing families around, some of whom have been homeschooling for two decades—something that, when I founded NAAHA, I would never have imagined had been going on.
After speaking with hundreds of families across the country, I learned that blacks homeschool for the same reasons as other families, as well as for a unique set of reasons that do not apply to other races. For example, homeschooling is one way black children in America can gain true educational parity. Although many educational alternatives are becoming available, homeschooling parents are confident that they can educate their own children well enough that they will meet or exceed state and national standards and be ready for college. In so doing, these families reject the notion that their children cannot learn, or lack the capacity to learn. Most experts agree that in order for children to be well educated, parents must be actively involved in their education. This shift toward greater, if not primary, parental involvement will undoubtedly result in black children who achieve at levels that public schools cannot replicate, and who are subsequently better prepared for higher education. In fact, in one of the only studies to take a critical look at minority homeschoolers, Dr. Brian Ray of the National Home Education Research Institute found that minority and white homeschooled students both scored in the 87th percentile in reading; and in math, whites edged out minority homeschoolers by only five points—82nd and 77th percentiles, respectively. (Of the minority homeschoolers studied, 63 percent were black and Hispanic.)1
It is important to note that as the number of black homeschoolers increases, a noticeable divorce from public schooling—an educational option that blacks have, historically, been staunchly wedded to—is also taking place. In 2004, we all saw the celebrations, remembrances, symposiums, and conferences that marked the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling. Ever since this important decision, blacks have relied heavily, almost to a fault, on public education. After all, blacks fought hard to ensure that their children were afforded the same quality of education as everyone else. What they didn't count on was that the promises implied by Brown v. Board of Education would still be light-years away from fulfillment a half century later. Those unfulfilled promises prompt families such as ours to deem public education—in its present state—categorically unsuitable for black children.
If you look at the statistics of underachievement for black children, the ever-present achievement gap between black and white children, and the excessive dropout rates and generally unequal resources for black and inner-city schools, few can deny that public schools continue to fail the vast majority of black children. Even so, when black parents decide to homeschool, some educators consider this an act of disloyalty. Although some of that sentiment is beginning to wane, especially as reforms in the educational choices available to all parents become more widespread, there persists an overarching opinion that blacks, particularly those of us committed to education, should stay in and repair the public schools. While this may seem noble in many regards, black homeschoolers no longer want their children used as guinea pigs in educational experiments to see if their test scores will rise a percentage point or two. The expectation that black families should repair public education seems greater in black communities than in others. This is a distinct difference in how black homeschoolers are perceived, compared to others who opt for home education.
Another distinction: Blacks are homeschooling in growing numbers because they believe that is how they can better provide a high-quality, heritage-based education for their children. The many black homeschooling families I speak with across the country maintain that traditional education curricula neglect the full range of black history. The textbooks and curricula in traditional schools tend to focus on slavery, the Civil Rights Movement, and such obligatory historic figures as Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and Martin Luther King, Jr.—but little beyond that. Black families want their children to have a well-rounded education from a variety of standpoints and perspectives. Above all, they want their children to know that blacks have played important roles not only in US history, but in the history of the world. Parents believe that the time is ripe for their children to learn black and multicultural history on their own terms. Without a doubt, homeschooling lends itself to this end.
One of the main sentiments echoed by black parents from coast to coast, no matter where they live and no matter their socioeconomic status or family dynamic, is that they have to give their children a fighting chance in this world. They believe, as Michael and I do, that homeschooling is the best way to do that.
I often speak with parents who have three or four children, the older ones already having gone through the public education system but not achieving at levels acceptable to colleges. These parents are now determined to make a difference in the lives of their younger children. They often mention a subtle racism that begins in the early grades and say they wish they had taken control when those issues might still have been addressed and resolved. Parents cite instances where their children were inaccurately labeled "slow" and placed in remedial classes for the duration of their public school careers. They cite the absence of advanced-placement and honors courses in their children's schools, a lack of equal resources and technology, and constant finger-pointing among parents, teachers, and administrators, all of whom blame each other for the achievement gap. Although these parents attribute their children's lack of success to these variables, they are also quick to acknowledge the apathy about and lack of interest in education among some black students and their parents. By homeschooling, conscientious black families are countering these negative attitudes about learning and the peer-led disdain for education held by some blacks. They are, in effect, creating a movement of black families for whom education is vital to their children's success and the betterment of their communities. No longer accepting that their children must go to public school, they are instead standing up for home education, touting its advantages and praising its results.
Not long ago, there was a general misconception that homeschooling was an option only for white middle- and upper-class families. Surprisingly, I regularly get calls and e-mails from black parents who are amazed that homeschooling is an option for them as well. Now that homeschooling stereotypes are being replaced by more accurate notions of who actually homeschools, increasing numbers of black families are joining the movement, setting up classrooms in their homes, and educating their children—to the tune of 103,000 black homeschooled children in the US.2
As more blacks homeschool, it becomes increasingly apparent that black homeschooling families are as diverse as any other homeschooling group. Although there are no definitive statistics that reveal the specific demographics of black homeschoolers, I have learned through my work with the NAAHA that there are black single-parent homeschoolers, as well as homes in which the mother takes over the educational duties because she stays at home. There are black dual-income homeschooling families in which one parent homeschools during the day, the other during the evening. I have met several families in which grandparents homeschool their grandchildren. They may be retired, and teach their grandkids while the parents are at work, or they may be their grandkids' sole guardians and have the time and resources to teach them at home. There are sizable numbers of families such as our own, whose children are young and, barring unforeseen circumstances, will be homeschooled until they go to college. Other families are pulling their children out of school midstream in order to educate them themselves.
Some argue that homeschooling will never be an option for most blacks because of factors inherent in the black community, such as the large numbers of single-parent and dual-income homes. While statistics do not verify this, I have spoken with many families who say that the potential rewards of homeschooling far outweigh any personal sacrifices they might have to make. More black mothers now stay at home to teach their children, even when a second income could make things a lot more comfortable. And there are single mothers who find ways to work at home, and to rally the resources of their families, friends, and communities to help them raise and educate their children.
Black families practice a variety of homeschooling philosophies. Some are strict traditionalists because they want to ensure that their children will not fare worse educationally than they would in public schools. Others are more relaxed about their children's education, and are happy to let them learn from everyday living. These families believe that this will result not only in good learning, but in confident children who are excited about education.
In fact, according to the organization African-American Unschooling (www.afamunschool.com), there seems to be a growing movement of black families who are bypassing even traditional homeschooling to instead use "unschooling"—a method of home education that places a heavy emphasis on individualized learning in a relaxed style while still covering all educational bases. Visitors to the Unschooling website can join a thriving Yahoo! discussion group and take part in gatherings, outings, and camping trips.
While some families travel cross-country to meet other like-minded homeschoolers, some are content to stay home and form support groups through which their children can meet other homeschooled children who look like them. One such group, Umoja, in Baltimore, is one of the best examples I have seen. Well-organized and intent on using the Baltimore area's resources to their advantage, Umoja members gather for support, take cultural and educational field trips, and welcome new black homeschoolers into their fold.
Indeed, local support groups are popping up all over the country. Like me, mothers and fathers are starting these groups because they want their children to see and socialize with other black homeschooled children. It is important that a child not feel isolated in a community in which he or she is the only black homeschooled student, or one of only a few. These parents also want to be available to address the specific needs of black families who have decided to homeschool or are considering it. While home education is gathering more supporters in the black community, the option is still not fully understood and is often met with strong resistance. These support groups provide much-needed educational and emotional support to black families who have taken the step to educate their children at home.
The black homeschooling movement is just beginning to take shape. Fifty years ago, little did we suspect that black families would today be exiting the public schools in growing numbers to embrace other means of education. While we all acknowledge and appreciate the sacrifices made by those who worked in the Civil Rights Movement, we also recognize that now is a new time in America's educational landscape. While homeschooling may be picking up steam in our community, the great majority of black children ?are still educated in the public schools. Though we don't believe that public education is wrong for all black children, we know from our own experience, and from the experiences of other black families, that there are other ways of learning. Many black families across the nation are finding this to be true, and I'm sure others will as well. Now, as our daughters grow and learn every day, Michael and I are even more convinced that ?we have made the right choice for our family and for our daughters' educational futures. We have equipped them with a true and unwavering love for learning that has been made possible by homeschooling.
NOTES
1. Brian D. Ray, PhD, Strengths of Their Own—Home Schoolers Across America: Academic Achievement, Family Characteristics, and Longitudinal Traits (Salem, OR: National Home Education Research Institute, 1997): 5.
2. Daniel Princiotta, Stacey Bielick, & Christopher Chapman, Homeschooling in the United States: 2003 Statistical Analysis Report (Washington, DC: US Department of Education, Institute of Education Statistics, National Center for Education Statistics, 2006): 5.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
African-American Unschooling, www.afamunschool.com
Diversity Otherwise (UK), www.diversity-otherwise.org.uk
National African-American Homeschoolers Alliance (NAAHA), www.naaha.com
Jennifer James is the mother of two daughters and the director of the National African-American Homeschoolers Alliance. She has appeared on CNN, BET's Nightly News, and the Korean Broadcasting System, and has been interviewed by Reuters, the Chicago Tribune, Newsday, and the Boston Globe. She lives with her family in Boone, North Carolina, and can be reached via www.naaha.com.
Brown Is Beautiful
Is it really hate you feel? I don’t think so, it’s love. As I walked little Sophia through this place it seemed like 100 eyes focused in on her. This small little pint sized me. Hair Flowing, skin glowing. Is it real beauty I see? Yes. It’s a small little pint sized me. But me you hate, my eyes are open to the rage you feel towards me. The pigment you see is your reason why. But little Sophia is the apple of your eye. She has yet to discover you motive or why. You feel your rage for people of color. Her innocence has yet to discover. That her beauty is coveted by people of non-color. Don’t hate, don’t despise what you see Brown is beautiful. Brown is me.
Superintendent Says ‘No’ to Homeschooling
At the beginning of the spring semester of the 2007-2008 school year, a mother decided to withdraw her daughter from Hardin County Schools and teach her at home through the extension program of a church-related school, Gateway Christian Schools in Memphis. But the local public school superintendent refused to permit the mother to withdraw her child from public school, telling the mother that she was not permitted to conduct a home instruction program for her.
After reporting her problem to Home School Legal Defense Association, Senior Counsel Dewitt Black wrote a letter to the superintendent explaining the law to him. Tennessee law requires the notice of intent to homeschool to be filed by August 1 each year. A late fee of $20 per week will be assessed until a final, drop-dead deadline of September 1. The law then allows a superintendent to reject a notice of intent to homeschool not filed by September 1, including situations when the parents decide to withdraw their child from public school during the school year. The deadline does not apply to parents beginning to homeschool at any time by associating by a church-related school. The deadline also does not apply to situations in which the parent withdraws the child from public school for enrollment in the extension program of a church-related school. After receiving Black’s letter with this information, the superintendent changed his position and permitted the mother to withdraw her daughter and begin the home instruction program in January.
Families encountering these kinds of obstacles imposed by public school officials to homeschooling should contact HSLDA for assistance. There is a legal way to begin home instruction in Tennessee at any time during the school year period.
When Joyce Burges first started home-schooling her children 15 years ago, she didn’t know any other African-Americans who were teaching their children at home. A white home-schooling mom from her church showed her the ropes.
After a few years, Ms. Burges and her husband, Eric Burges, felt they knew enough about the practice that they could mentor others, and they particularly wanted to reach out to African-Americans.
So in 2000, the couple from Baker, La., founded the National Black Home Educators Resource Association, or NBHERA. The organization uses a Web site, a newsletter, and an annual symposium to support black families who are home-schooling. The group held this year’s symposium, its fourth, July 29-30 here in Baton Rouge.
The Burgeses have persuaded a number of black families to educate their children at home. “Black people like familiarity,” said Ms. Burges, who home-schools the two youngest of the couple’s five children. “They were not familiar with home schooling, but they were familiar with me—being black.”
The annual meetings haven’t attracted large crowds. This year’s drew 60 adults and 56 children, mostly from the Baton Rouge area. But the Burgeses keep a database of about 2,000 home-schooling families nationwide, most of them African-American.
Ms. Burges contends that blacks need their own home-schooling association so they can exchange ideas about curriculum that covers the contributions of black people to American society. The kickoff event for the recent symposium included a dramatic depiction of two African-American heroes—the abolitionist and journalist Frederick Douglass and the educator George Washington Carver—given by Cedric Saunders, a home-schooling parent and storyteller from Kansas City, Kan.
The Home School Legal Defense Association in Purcellville, Va., a national home-schooling advocacy organization, supported the NBHERA symposium with a grant of several thousand dollars.
Michael Smith, the president of the Home School Legal Defense Association, said a separate association for black home-schooling families seems to be necessary because “there are a lot of black home schoolers who won’t come to home-schooling events, because let’s face it, a lot of home-schooling families are white.”
He added, “Black home schoolers think there’s a different culture in the white home-schooling community—that we won’t understand them.”
Attendees gave different reasons for why they home-school. For some, racial issues are an important factor.
“The system has failed our children,” contended Marcy Clark, of St. Paul, Minn. She and her husband, Gregory Clark, are teaching their three sons and one daughter at home.
Ms. Clark said she’s concerned that standardized-test scores of black children lag behind those of whites, a problem she attributes to educators’ low expectations for black students. She’s also worried about the overrepresentation of young black men in the nation’s prisons.
“Why would I put my three black sons in a room with teachers who have no clue about their culture?” Ms. Clark asked. “[The teachers] don’t care and don’t give significance to African culture, which is part of African-American culture.”
Ms. Clark has helped to start a resource group for black home-schooling families in St. Paul. The group, which is affiliated with the NBHERA, has 20 families participating.
By contrast, Bobbie and Daniel Williams, who home-school their five children in Jacksonville, N.C., said racial issues didn’t play a role in their decision to home-school.
Ms. Williams said she teaches her children at home so they won’t receive “negative influences” from other youngsters, and so she can spend more time with them than if they went off to school each day.
Her husband said he is opposed to some of the instructional decisions of public schools, such as his belief that they require students to read Harry Potter books and teach that homosexuality is acceptable.
The symposium’s keynote speaker, Gregg Harris, a white pastor and home-schooling parent from Gresham, Ore., gave two presentations—each more than an hour long—about what the Bible says about the roles of men and women in marriage and parenting.
Most home-schooling parents interviewed here said they are churchgoers. But some said their religious beliefs didn’t play a big part in their decisions to teach their children at home. Many said that they believe they can educate their children better than public schools do, and that home schooling is more affordable than private schools.
Mr. Burges said many African-Americans resist schooling their children at home.
He and his wife first started teaching at home because they disagreed with how their local public school wanted to handle some difficulties their eldest son was having in school. But Mr. Burges soon discovered that his own parents were against home schooling.
“They said, ‘You guys are traitors,’ ” he recalled. “ ‘We fought to get into the schools, and you are getting out of them.’ ”
But in time, they’ve come around to support home schooling, he said. “If you talk to them now, they’d think it was their idea,” he joked.
Vol. 24, Issue 44, Page 20
Suisun City parents Benjamin and Tanya Marshall are part of a new homeschooling movement led by African American families fed up with the public school system.
Nine years ago, the couple put their oldest son, Trevaughn, in kindergarten after discussing teaching him at home. When he had a substitute teacher several times in his first six weeks, they pulled him out.
"We felt like it wasn't the right environment, especially for an African American boy," said Tanya Marshall, 36. "The teachers were young and nervous. Black males were not being challenged and ending up in special ed."
Trevaughn, now 14, has been taught at home ever since. The couple also homeschools their two younger sons, 11 and 9, and their daughter, 12.
"We wanted to be the main and driving influence in our children's lives," said Benjamin Marshall, 37. "We didn't want them socialized with marijuana smokers and pregnant teens."
The Marshalls, who had both worked as teachers' aides, feared public school would contradict their Christian beliefs, and they wanted to avoid having their sons labeled as violent or hyperactive or seeing them pressured by peers to drink, do drugs and have sex.
A desire for more rigorous academics and greater emphasis on black history also has led black families into homeschooling, educators say.
Although homeschoolers often are stereotyped as white and evangelical Christians, in 2003 about 9 percent of homeschooled students were black, and 77 percent were white, compared with a total student population nationwide that was 16 percent black and 62 percent white. Homeschoolers numbered 1.1 million in 2003, compared with about 49.5 million students in public and private schools, according to the most recent federal statistics from the U.S. Department of Education.
The numbers of black and white homeschoolers rose about a third from 1999 to 2003 to encompass about 1.3 percent of U.S. black students and 2.7 percent of whites. Researchers say the number of black parents who are homeschooling their children may now be growing even faster.
More than half the students who are homeschooled come from families with three or more children, and more than one-quarter from families making less than $25,000 in 2003, when the nation's median family income was $56,500. More than half of homeschooled students came from families making between $25,000 and $75,000. Among black, white and Latino students, Latinos are least likely to be homeschooled, at less than 1 percent in 2003; no other ethnic groups are measured.
The growth among African Americans can be seen in the increasing number of networking groups, blogs and Internet sites directed at black homeschoolers -- and in who is showing up at conventions.
"There was a time when the conferences were all white," said Brian Ray, president of the National Home Education Research Institute in Salem, Ore. "In the '90s, you saw a little more color, and by 2000, a substantial number of black families started showing up.
"In some cities, the majority of those attending conferences are African American."
Many say they left public schools because their children weren't expected to learn at an equal pace or being coached on getting into college, the schools were unsafe, or the curriculum lacked black history.
"Over the last couple of years, especially in places like D.C. and Cincinnati, there have been a growing number of black homeschooled students," said Michael Apple, a professor at the University of Wisconsin who studies the issue. "You will find more in areas where the black middle class can afford to do it."
Monica Utsey of Washington, D.C., said she decided to homeschool so she had as much say as possible in 6-year-old son Zion's life.
"I didn't want him put on the road to obesity, with junk food, or to be obsessed with commercialized clothing," Utsey said. "I also don't want my son to think that slavery was our only contribution. I want to give him a world view, a cultural perspective, and assure he understands his place and his heritage."
Many black homeschoolers worry that their children will be labeled in a public school. Black public school students are three times as likely as white students to be categorized as needing special education services, a 2002 study by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University found.
"My son is high-energy, and I didn't want him to end up on Ritalin or feel bad about himself," Utsey said. "There is an assumption that black boys are violent if they are too energetic."
Public schools have been a focus of the civil rights struggle, but many homeschooling parents said they are disillusioned with the system's failure to improve.
"Some educators and families think that because blacks fought so hard to get equal access, we shouldn't abandon it," said Jennifer James, a North Carolina mother who in 2003 started the National African-American Homeschoolers Alliance, a 3,000-member, nonreligious group that provides information for homeschoolers. "But times have changed. It was a great step, but we have to think about our kids."
Parents say the most common concern about homeschooling -- that their kids will be socially isolated -- isn't a problem.
"My children know how to socialize, especially with adults," Benjamin Marshall said. "In the real world, my children are not always going to be surrounded by people their own age."
The Marshalls not only teach their children math, religion and vocabulary, but also take them on field trips to places like the Lawrence Hall of Science, the state Capitol, the San Francisco Symphony and the Museum of the African Diaspora.
"It is kind of rough in the beginning, but as time goes on, you learn," said Benjamin Marshall, who works as a dispatcher on the graveyard shift at the Valero refinery in Benicia and teaches his kids during the day.
The Marshalls also have started Seeds of Truth Academy in Suisun City, where parents interested in Christian-based homeschooling can bring their children on Tuesdays and Thursdays for counseling, sports and field trips.
Brianna Marshall, 12, said she likes homeschooling but thinks about other options.
"I think homeschooling is better than public school because there are no bullies and you don't have to listen to all the stuff your friends say," she said. "But I am curious about what school is like. I have never been inside a school, and sometimes I get tired of being at home."
Home Sweet School
The new home schoolers aren't hermits. They are diverse parents who are getting results — and putting the heat on public schools
Earlier this month, J.C. Penney learned the hard way just how powerful the home-schooling movement has become. Penney's had recently started selling a T shirt that wickedly crystallized many people's assumptions about the movement: home skooled, giggles the shirt, which also depicts a trailer home. The folks at Penney's say they meant no harm — they didn't even design the T, which had become popular in other stores first. But they yanked it from the shelves Aug. 8 after enraged missives poured in from home-schooling families, some of whom threatened a boycott.
Penney's should have known better. Over the past decade, the ranks of families home schooling have grown dramatically. According to a new federal report, at least 850,000 students were learning at home in 1999, the most recent year studied; some experts believe the figure is actually twice that. As recently as 1994, the government estimated the number at just 345,000. True, even the largest estimates still put the home schooled at only 4% of the total K-12 population — but that would mean more kids learn at home than attend all the public schools in Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming combined.
While politicians from Washington on down to your school board have been warring over charter schools and vouchers in recent years, home schooling has quietly outpaced both of those more attention-getting reforms (only half a million kids are in charter schools, and just 65,000 receive vouchers). In many ways, in fact, home schooling has become a threat to the very notion of public education. In some school districts, so many parents are pulling their children out to teach them at home that the districts are bleeding millions of dollars in per-pupil funding. Aside from money, the drain of families is eroding something more precious: public confidence in the schools.
Thomas Jefferson and the other early American crusaders for public education believed the schools would help sustain democracy by bringing everyone together to share values and learn a common history. In the little red brick schoolhouse, we would pursue both "democracy in education and education in democracy," as Stanford historian David Tyack gracefully puts it. Home schooling forsakes all that by defining education not as the pursuit of an entire community but as the work of one family and its chosen circle. Which can be great. Despite some drawbacks, there are signs that home-schooling parents are doing a better job than public schools at teaching their kids. But as the number of kids learning at home grows, we should pause to wonder: Better at teaching them what? Home schooling may turn out better students, but does it create better citizens?
To see how home schooling threatens public schools, look at Maricopa County, Ariz. The county has approximately 7,000 home-schooled students. That's only 1.4% of school-age kids, but it means $35 million less for the county in per-pupil funding. The state of Florida has 41,128 children (1.7%) learning at home this year, up from 10,039 in the 1991-92 school year; those kids represent a loss of nearly $130 million from school budgets in that state. Of course the schools have fewer children to teach, so it makes sense that they wouldn't get as much money, but the districts lose much more than cash. "Home schooling is a social threat to public education," says Chris Lubienski, who teaches at Iowa State University's college of education. "It is taking some of the most affluent and articulate parents out of the system. These are the parents who know how to get things done with administrators."
To be sure, many public schools — and their baleful unions and wretched bureaucrats, their rigid rules and we-know-best manner — have done a lot to hurt themselves. But as the most committed parents leave, the schools may falter more, giving the larger community yet another reason to fret over their condition. "A third of our support for schools comes from property taxes," says Ray Simon, director of the Arkansas department of education. "If a large number of a community's parents do not fully believe in the school system, it gets more difficult to pass those property taxes. And that directly impacts the schools' ability to operate." Says Kellar Noggle, executive director of the Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators: "We still have 440,000 kids in public schools, and some 12,000 [in home schooling] is a small number. But those 12,000 have parents and grandparents. Sure, it erodes public support."
The thus far steep growth of home schooling does have limits, as it takes a galactic commitment of time and money and patience for a parent to spend all day, every day, relearning algebra (or getting it for the first time) and then teaching it. It's fair to assume that a majority of parents won't want to give up those delightfully quiet hours when the kids are at school. The softening economy may also begin to thin the ranks of home schoolers, many of whom are middle-class families that can't afford private schools; if stay-at-home teaching parents have to take a job, free public school will start to look very inviting.
But for now, home schooling is still growing at about 11% a year, and it's no longer confined to a conservative fringe that never believed in the idea of public education anyway. "Very different people are entering home schooling than did 20 years back," says Mitchell Stevens, author of Kingdom of Children, a history of home schooling to be published next month by Princeton University Press. According to the Federal Government, up to three-quarters of the families that home school today say they do so primarily because, like so many of us, they are worried about the quality of their children's education. A recent report by the state of Florida found that just a quarter of families in that state practice home schooling for religious reasons. The new home schoolers haven't completely given up on public education, at least not the idea of it. "The problem is that schools have abandoned their mission," says Luigi Manca, a communications professor at Benedictine University in Lisle, Ill., who home schools his daughter Nora, 17. "They've forgotten about educating."
William Bennett used to be the U.S. Secretary of Education, but today he travels the nation to preach the home-school gospel. "I'm here to talk about the revolution of common sense," he told a Denver home-schooling conference in June. Working himself up to promote K12, his slick, new, for-profit online school for home schoolers, Bennett even suggested that "maybe we should subcontract all of public education to home schoolers." It was strange to watch a man once responsible for federal aid to public schools urge people to desert them. Imagine if Colin Powell gave a speech saying we should disband the U.S. Army and assemble local militias.
But many are following. They are folks like Tim and Lisa Dean of Columbia, Md., working parents (he manages technical support for the U.S. Senate; she's a part-time attorney) who home school Bitsy, 5, and Teddy, 4. Contrary to the old picture of home schoolers, Tim doesn't leave all the teaching to his wife, and they helped start a home-school support group two years ago that includes parents who are gay and straight; black, white, Asian American and biracial; Democrat and Republican.
The conservative Christians who worked so hard in the 1980s to make home schooling legal in every state are as committed as ever, but more politically moderate Christians have also joined the movement. Susie Capraro, who home schools her son and daughter, used to be part of the Broward County Parent Support Group, the largest home-schooling network in Florida and one founded on Judeo-Christian principles. Although she considers herself a Fundamentalist Christian, Capraro didn't like group rules that keep non-Christians from leadership roles — or other exclusionary gestures, like the ice skating event that featured only Christian music. "We wanted a place where people could get the support they needed without the religion," says Capraro, who along with 10 families co-founded Home Educators Lending Parents Support. "[Religion is] not the purpose of our group, but rather to get together for the best education." Today the three-year-old organization
includes more than 150 families representing Evangelicals as well as Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and others.
For this story, Time reporters interviewed more than 70 home-schooling parents around the U.S. to find the new faces of the movement, including a biology professor at Spelman College; a midwife and artist in Canton, Ga.; an attorney and part-time basketball coach in Houston; an Arkansas state legislator; and Leo Damrosch, a Harvard English professor who began home schooling his sons, 10 and 13, in part because "the two writers I've studied most intensively for many years, William Blake and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, were both geniuses of astounding originality, and neither of them went to school for a single day."
Many of the home-schooling parents we met were religious, but few were home schooling only to instill values. They had come to their decision after a variety of frustrations. Among them: the Fayetteville, Ga., school with 45 kindergartners in one room; the school administrators in Wheaton, Ill., who were so confused over what to do with Sue McCallum's boy that they put him in both remedial and gifted classes; the Glendale, Calif., school where Robert Phillipps' fifth-grader Bill saw too many fistfights.
These parents got fed up in different ways, but what they have in common is a willingness to sacrifice — money, career opportunities, watching soap operas — for their children's education. Sometimes these sacrifices are small, like giving up a dining room to make a classroom. But consider the Carnells of Columbia, Md., who started home schooling Erin, 6, because a shoulder injury required occupational therapy that would have interfered with school hours. The Carnells decided to keep teaching her at home because they feel they can do a better job than local schools. To teach her math and science in the mornings, Fred, a government cartographer, works the office graveyard shift, which means he and his wife Debbie, a claims adjuster, hardly see each other. The family rarely eats dinner together, and the parents are constantly exhausted. Says Debbie: "I have my schedule down to the hour on an Excel work sheet."
Erin will doubtless benefit educationally from her parents' exertions. But imagine what American public education would look like if parents who currently home school flooded their local schools with all that mighty dedication instead. One doesn't diminish a home-schooling parent's sacrifice for his child to note that he may also be abdicating some of his responsibilities to his community. "In a home school, a parent can really insulate a child from the vibrant, pluralistic, democratic world," says Rob Reich, who teaches political science at Stanford. Susanne Allen, 35, a home-schooling mother from Atlanta, claims her children will be "better citizens" because home schooling gives them the opportunity to work together, rather than sitting at individual desks. "They learn to be caring for other people by seeing an older sibling care for them," she says. But will that make them better citizens or just better siblings?
Then again, if a parent lives in, say, California, where 30 kids pack the average third-grade classroom, who can blame her for home schooling? If it's a choice between being good to one's family or good to one's community, it's not much of a choice at all. Many, of course, try to be both, but some parents say the schools are too far gone. Amy Langley, who home schools her son and daughter in Decatur, Ga., believes two-income families don't participate enough to make public schools work. "And too much class time is spent on discipline," she says.
For all that home-schooling parents give up, what are their kids getting? We know the average SAT score for home schoolers in 2000 was 1100, compared with 1019 for the general population. And a large study by University of Maryland education researcher Lawrence Rudner showed that the average home schooler scored in the 75th percentile on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills; the 50th percentile marked the national average. But not all home schoolers take standardized tests, and one suspects the better students are the ones volunteering to do so. It's also difficult to assess how a child who is home schooled would have done in a traditional school. Because of the paucity of research, no one can say much more than this: home schooling seems to require the same formula for success as parenting, which is to say, it can work when the parents are loving and open-minded and dedicated. As Simon of the Arkansas department of education says, "You've got examples of very well-structured home schools and total disasters, just like you do in the public schools."
Certainly the old suspicion of the academic credentials of home-schooled kids has waned; perhaps three-quarters of universities now have policies for dealing with home-schooled applicants, according to Cafi Cohen, author of The Homeschoolers' College Admissions Handbook. Today Harvard admissions officers attend home-schooling conferences looking for applicants, and Rice and Stanford admit home schoolers at rates equal to or higher than those for public schoolers. These schools compete for students like L.J. Decker, 17, from Katy, Texas, who scored 1560 on the SAT and was part of a team of home schoolers who won the Toshiba ExploraVision contest for their idea of a futuristic scuba device that would use artificial hemoglobin to convert the oxygen in water into air.
Some colleges, like Kennesaw State University in Georgia, aggressively recruit home schoolers. Justin Tomczak, 22, now a sales associate for Salomon Smith Barney, was one of them. After he arrived at Kennesaw several years ago, he started a group for home-schooled kids, but today home schoolers have become so integrated into campus life that the group has pretty much disbanded. "Back then, [other students] thought we were religious weirdos who couldn't cope," he says. "Now the perception is totally different."
That's partly because the old canard that home schoolers are hermits has largely been disproven. In fact nearly 1 in 5 takes at least one class in a public or private school, according to the Federal Government. Home schoolers participate in extracurricular activities too. Many of the home-schooling parents interviewed by Time were just as busy as any parents scheduling baseball practices and ballet classes. Judi Thomas of Marietta, Ga., says her daughter Juliet, 9, "has tap and ballet on Tuesdays; Wednesdays, there's choir; Thursdays, she has classes with other home schoolers; Fridays, there's usually a play date or a field trip."
Home schooling's successes didn't come easily, though the practice is actually an old tradition. In the early years of this country, most children were educated at home, either by parents or tutors. Public education started in the middle of the 19th century. When, in the 1960s, a leftist education reformer named John Holt began pushing home schooling as an alternative to conformist public schools, his ideas were seen as fringe. Home schooling was illegal in many states until the 1980s and '90s, when well-organized evangelical Christians adopted home schooling as a way to escape what they saw as the creeping disorder of the campus.
Today home schoolers run one of the most effective lobbies in Washington, with connections all the way to the White House, where the President recently hosted a reception for home-schooled students. Bush's Under Secretary for Education Eugene Hickok told Time that "we cannot blame people for exercising their choices and home schooling until we have some real changes out there."
Despite its growing acceptance, there are nagging shortcomings to home schooling. If you spend time with home schoolers, you get a sense that some of them have missed out on whole swaths of childhood; the admirable efforts by their parents to ensure their education and safety sometimes seem to have gone too far. In 1992 psychotherapist Larry Shyers did a study while at the University of Florida in which he closely examined the behavior of 35 home schoolers and 35 public schoolers. He found that home schoolers were generally more patient and less competitive. They tended to introduce themselves to one another more; they didn't fight as much. And the home schoolers were much more prone to exchange addresses and phone numbers. In short, they behaved like miniature adults.
Which is great, unless you believe that kids should be kids before they are adults. John McCallum, 20, of Wheaton, Ill., began learning at home after fourth grade. On the whole, he valued the experience. But if he could change anything about his teen years, he would want more interaction with people his
age. "I don't date, and that's something I attribute to home schooling," he says. Or consider Rachel Ahern, 21, of Grand Junction, Colo., who never set foot in a classroom until she went to Harvard at 18. As a child, she socialized with older kids and adults at church and in music classes at a nearby college. "I never once experienced peer pressure," she says. But is that a good thing? Megan Wallace of Atlanta says if she had gone to high school, "I would have gotten into so much trouble." One could argue that kids need to get into a certain amount of trouble to learn how to handle temptations and their consequences.
"Home schoolers are often very astute," says Richard Shaw, dean of undergraduate admissions at Yale. "But they often have to learn how to live with others." Even the new home-schooling parents, who are keenly aware of this problem and try to ensure their children interact with others, sometimes miss the point. Half a dozen families told Time that the only aspect of school their kids say they miss is riding the bus. So some of them have arranged for their children to have their own private rides on a school bus. But the singular experience of going to school with other kids on the bus — which is at once terrifying and liberating — can't be mimicked in private.
The same blinkered approach can extend to academics. "I make pretty much all the decisions about what to study," says Maren McKee, 15, of Naperville, Ill., who left public school after third grade. "I wasn't interested in math or composition, so I didn't really do it. I liked to dance." But now McKee, who is dyslexic, realizes she will need more than dance steps to get into college. "My mom and I are going to spend this whole year on math and learning to write," she says, perhaps not fully appreciating that both of those skills can take much longer than a year to learn.
Brie Finegold, 22, a graduate of the University of North Texas, says she did fine without the traditional classroom. "I got to do volunteer work at the food bank at my synagogue and apprentice to a dance company when I was a teenager, when others my age were sitting in classrooms," she says. But volunteering and dancing aren't necessarily better than chemistry and poetry. The basic function of a liberal education is to expose people to fields they normally wouldn't investigate. Whether you believe the purpose of education is to shape one's character in a democracy or to prepare Johnny for his job, neither is accomplished when kids get to study only what they want.
But what if your educational goals are simpler? Skeet Savage, mother of six in Covert, Mich., argues that "graduation isn't the ultimate goal for my children. Learning is." There's a little tributary that runs off the home-schooling river called unschooling that espouses such ideas. About 7% of home schoolers today describe themselves as using no particular curricular plan, according to the National Home Education Research Institute. Not all these people would embrace the term unschooling, which sounds so anti-intellectual, but many of them follow the path of no paths, allowing their children to pursue their own interests.
The idea is that kids learn best when they determine what to study and when. "I tried to bring the classroom into the home but quickly discovered that wasn't the best way to bring out the strengths in my children," says Savage, whose children are 15 to 28. Instead, she practices what she calls "natural home schooling," using real-life projects as teaching opportunities: caring for animals on the family farm, building an addition on the house, designing graphics for the family company (which publishes Christian home-schooling material). Of her three children over 18, none has gone to college.
Of course, unschooling lies at an extreme. Home-schooling families fall along a continuum between copying the traditional classroom and "learning" by building Mommy and Daddy a lovely cedar deck. The success of the venture may depend more on the parents than the kids. If they are like Marilyn and Gene McGinnis of Atlanta, devout Mennonites who nonetheless make a conscious effort to teach their children about other cultures and religions, home schooling can broaden and enrich children's minds as much as any schooling. Home schooling also works when parents are like the Deckers in Katy, Texas, parents of five, who were humble enough to get help from another home-schooling parent for a child of theirs who was struggling with spelling.
"You have to feel like you're on a mission," says Ronnie Palache, who pulled Spencer, 9, from fourth grade in Tarzana, Calif., because the boy was bored and unchallenged but also has attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. "I wake up every morning saying two things to myself: 'I'm on a mission to have Spencer turn out O.K.' and 'I have to live outside the box.'"
And even then maybe it's not enough. Robert Phillipps of Glendale, Calif., began home schooling Bill, 16, and Denise, 11, four years ago. He works hard at it and carefully tracks what his kids are learning. But he can't provide an art class at home even though Denise likes to sketch, and ice skating three days a week has to count for PE. The kids read great books, but they have no one outside the family with whom to discuss them during class. As Phillipps says, "There is no one to hide behind. What you do is yours."
But if home schooling is flawed, and our public schools are weathered, some believe there's a way to improve both by reinvesting home schoolers in their communities and making public schools more nimble. A few school districts are showing the way. In some states, including California and Texas, school districts now allow home-schooled kids to sign up for such offerings as a physics class or the football team. A growing number of districts are opening resource centers where home schoolers come for class once or twice a week. In Orange County, Calif., two school districts have combined two reform ideas by opening charter schools that offer home-schooling programs.
This cooperation is largely motivated by self-interest — many schools can regain at least a percentage of their per-pupil funding by counting home schoolers, who get more options without being fully part of the system. "These programs can win parents back when they see the school is willing to offer alternative forms of education," says Patricia Lines, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute in Seattle and one of the foremost experts on home schooling. "There's something very efficient about [traditional] schooling, and home schooling isn't exactly efficient." That's one reason Time found so many home schoolers who had formed de facto "schools" that offer science labs and basketball teams.
But this healthy synergy would require both public school administrators and home schoolers to stop being so suspicious one another. That may take years. Too many public school administrators silently agree with what Wayne Johnson, president of the California Teachers Association, says in objecting to any public expenditure on home schoolers: "Putting money into home schooling is throwing money down a rathole. You have no idea if that money is being spent properly or children are benefiting."
For their part, many home schoolers take the hard line of the movement's leading advocacy group, the Home School Legal Defense Association. It avoids representing home schoolers who are trying to get access to public school services that their taxes help fund. Many home schoolers feel that exposes the movement to too much government interference. "We are really afraid," says James Carper, an education historian at the University of South Carolina, who home schools. "When public schools extend the opportunity to become involved, it is inevitably going to compromise our independence."
But newer apostles of home schooling like William Bennett believe the future holds more cooperation. He says school administrators will work to develop a "Chinese-menu-style education," for instance, that allows home schoolers to have a math class here and a band course there without buying the whole K-12 puu-puu platter. On the other hand, it remains to be seen whether public schools can still play a vital role in communities if they become simply another consumer good pushed by market forces and not a common good that transcends them.
— With reporting by Steve Barnes/Little Rock, Amy Bonesteel and Leslie Everton Brice/Atlanta, Beau Briese/Cambridge, Deborah Fowler/Houston, Kathie Klarreich/Miami, Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles, Maggie Sieger/Chicago and Rebecca Winters/New York
Here are some opinions on this controversial question:
Home schooling veterans Gilbert and Gloria Wilkerson, of Richmond, Virginia, also started home schooling about 12 years ago. Gloria felt the Lord had given her a vision to home school, but Gilbert wasn't so sure initially. "I was a little against it when we first started," he said, "because our society was against it and I didn't know much about it."
But after the Wilkersons attended a Home Education Association of Virginia conference, Gilbert was sold. "It was seeing the parents, children—whole families together. They answered the question of socialization—children do not go to school to socialize, but they go to school to learn. Over the years, we've seen the spiritual benefits, too. I'm more convinced now of the value of home schooling than I've ever been."
"We are a very close knit family," Gilbert explained. "We have nurtured and brought our children up in the admonition of the Lord. It has given our children a sense of destiny and courage.
"Our reward is greater than what we could have worked on Wall Street for. Our children have grown up to be great kids, levelheaded, spiritually sound, and having the peace of God in their lives.
"We just had a commitment to raise our kids in the Lord. And God has honored that over the years. We can't write any books, saying this is how we did it, A,B,C. We don't have a formula. It's just been God's grace, as we sacrifice to raise our kids unto the Lord."
In 1998, the Wilkersons launched the Network of Black Homeschoolers, a national organization to help African-American pioneers connect and find resources.
Home schooling veterans Gilbert and Gloria Wilkerson, of Richmond, Virginia, also started home schooling about 12 years ago. Gloria felt the Lord had given her a vision to home school, but Gilbert wasn't so sure initially. "I was a little against it when we first started," he said, "because our society was against it and I didn't know much about it."
But after the Wilkersons attended a Home Education Association of Virginia conference, Gilbert was sold. "It was seeing the parents, children—whole families together. They answered the question of socialization—children do not go to school to socialize, but they go to school to learn. Over the years, we've seen the spiritual benefits, too. I'm more convinced now of the value of home schooling than I've ever been."
"We are a very close knit family," Gilbert explained. "We have nurtured and brought our children up in the admonition of the Lord. It has given our children a sense of destiny and courage.
"Our reward is greater than what we could have worked on Wall Street for. Our children have grown up to be great kids, levelheaded, spiritually sound, and having the peace of God in their lives.
"We just had a commitment to raise our kids in the Lord. And God has honored that over the years. We can't write any books, saying this is how we did it, A,B,C. We don't have a formula. It's just been God's grace, as we sacrifice to raise our kids unto the Lord."
In 1998, the Wilkersons launched the Network of Black Homeschoolers, a national organization to help African-American pioneers connect and find resources.
Joyce Burges can identify with that feeling of striking out all alone into unknown territory: "When we started home schooling 12 years ago, I didn't know even one other family in our town who was home schooling."
The Burges' eldest son, Eric, then 14, was in a magnet public high school for gifted students. But he was failing—in more than grades. "We were losing our son," said Joyce. "His confidence was lacking, his spirit was literally dead—it was horrible."
The school recommended keeping Eric back a year or sending him to another school across town. "I am sorry, miss, but neither of those choices is something I will do. I will home school my son," Joyce responded firmly.
Looking back, she realizes, "I had no idea what I was saying. I hadn't read a thing about it. All I knew was that five years before we had known one home schooling family. They had planted the seed of this idea. They had since moved away, but that "seed" opened up a whole new world for our family."
Joyce took Eric "under her wing" for a year, making extensive use of the local library. The next year, the Burgeses brought their three youngest children home. Since then, "It's been a whirlwind," Joyce said with a smile. "I think home schooling has done more for me than for my children."
Shortly after they began home schooling, the Burgeses joined their statewide home school organization, Christian Home Educators Fellowship of Louisiana (CHEF). They served as board members for over eight years, Eric as CHEF president the last three years. The Burgeses credit CHEF with being "pivotal" in their starting NBHERA, and Eric continues to serve on the CHEF board as immediate past president.
When asked what she values most from her years of home schooling, Joyce thoughtfully replied, "Mainly the closeness we have as a family. I want each of my children to experience this wonderful blessing. My husband calls it a 'lifeline.'"
The Wilkersons, through the Network of Black Homeschoolers, and the Burgeses, through the National Black Home Educators Resource Association (NBHERA), are connecting African-American home schoolers.
Both groups are actively working to make access to African-American history and cultural resources easier for home schooling families.
For example, in a recent NBH newsletter, the Wilkersons published a list of Black inventors, Gilbert said. "A Black inventor invented the typewriter, the horseshoe, the helicopter, the machine for cleaning seed cotton, the food press, the hairbrush, the dust pan, the rail trace, and the letter drop mailbox—all those were invented by Black inventors, which our readers don't know anything about. We try to educate them, and help them feel proud of the history of Black America."
Upcoming NBHERA newsletters, Joyce says, "will feature topics such as 'How to Get on Mailing Lists.' I don't live in Washington, DC, but I get information from just about every museum in DC. I know that I will probably not visit all of them. But, just knowing what's going on, especially with the African-American Museum—how they update certain sculptures and pictures and why they do it—that's very informative for me. Then when we do have an opportunity to be there, we're already familiar with the museum and what's going on there.
"NBHERA also seeks to encourage Black American writers: I have written A Gentle Woman's Guide to Greatness and we are looking for other positive, family—oriented African-American authors. We will have a list of recommended Black speakers for convention workshops and will profile Black speakers in our newsletter."
"Future growth [in home schooling] could occur most rapidly among ethnic minorities. Though African Americans and other non-Caucasian groups are under-represented among homeschoolers, the next generation of minorities is seriously considering it. In a survey of selected classes at Vanderbilt University and Nashville State Tech (a selective private university and a two-year college), almost half (45.3 percent) of the African-American students said "yes" or "maybe" when asked if they would homeschool their own children in the future. Among other non-Caucasian groups, two-thirds indicated "yes" or "maybe." In contrast, less than one-fourth of the white students said this. The survey was small (254 students) and nonrandom, representing students enrolled in the classes of the researchers, whose influence was perhaps stronger among the non-Caucasian students. Nonetheless, the results are startling. Public educators who count on the loyalty of ethnic minorities as the backbone of their big-city clientele may be in for yet another surprise."
Patricia M. Lines, "Homeschooling Comes of Age," The Public Interest, no. 140 (Summer 2000): 74-85.
African-American Homeschoolers on the Rise
by Nancy Mullane
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Weekend Edition Sunday, September 16, 2007 · Homeschooling is one of the fastest growing forms of education, expanding about 10 percent per year. Until recently, African Americans have made up only a tiny percentage of homeschoolers. But researchers say they are now the fastest growing minority in the homeschool movement.