Not home alone

National Review, Sept 14, 1998 by Isabel Lyman

Mrs. Lyman, who has written on homeschooling for the Cato Institute, lives in Amherst, Mass., where she homeschools her two sons.

Alexandra Swann, an attractive 27-year-old who resides in Anthony, New Mexico, could qualify as the poster girl of the homeschooling movement. Twenty-two years ago, Joyce Swann, Alexandra's mother, armed only with a high-school diploma and the Calvert School's elementary-school correspondence curriculum, decided to be her child's first-grade teacher. Ten years later, Alexandra, at age 16, had earned a master's degree in history from California State University's external-degree program. At age 18, she was hired to teach Western civilization at El Paso Community College. Today, she runs a mortgage-and-loan business with her father, John Swann.

But Alexandra isn't the sole star of her family -- seven of her nine siblings have master's degrees. That these scholarly feats were accomplished when the homeschooling movement was barely a blip on the educational-reform screen makes the Swanns' success all the more remarkable. "Twenty years ago we didn't know anyone who homeschooled. There was a concern we would become vegetables, unable to function in society," recalls Alexandra.

aaWhen the Home School Legal Defense Association in Virginia was founded by Michael Farris in 1983 to defend parents' right to direct the education of their children, only a hundred families joined up. That number has since grown to over 55,000. "Fifteen years ago, homeschooling was a criminal act in a majority of the states. Now it's legal in all fifty states," says Scott Somerville, one of six attorneys on the HSLDA's staff.

Contrast those beginnings with the environment in which Bob and Belinda Nalette of Midlothian, Virginia, have homeschooled Chyrelle, 10, and Josiah, 8. Belinda, a 38-year-old soccer mom and her children's teacher, praises Midlothian's school officials as being "supportive and positive" toward homeschoolers. The Nalettes are one of nearly five hundred families who are active with the Richmond Regional Home Educators. The group draws homeschoolers of all stripes, and volunteers organize a staggering number of activities, including a band, gymnastics and karate classes, a yearbook, and a yearly graduation ceremony for seniors.

Once, homeschoolers were largely members of the Religious Right (who homeschooled primarily to teach their children fundamentalist Bible doctrine) and of the countercultural Left (who disliked the bureaucratization of modern education). Now a broad array of Americans homeschool, and support networks exist for a variety of groups, ranging from those who are disabled to those who have a multicultural bent to those who are pursuing a medieval model of education, the trivium.

In addition, a new cadre of religious folks are homeschooling: Jews who emphasize a Torah-centered education; Muslims who dislike the integration of the sexes in public schools; Catholics who are following Pope John Paul II's advice that "parents must be acknowledged as the first and foremost educators of their children"; and Eastern Orthodox whose faith puts them at odds with the materialism and humanism found in government schooling.

New technologies, such as online courses, have made homeschooling attractive to the less ideologically inclined, especially those parents who have come to view their local schools as dangerous places. Consider the results of the Florida Department of Education's 1996 survey of 2,245 homeschoolers. Of the 31 per cent who responded, 42 per cent said that dissatisfaction with the public-school environment (violence, drugs, adverse peer pressure) was their reason for establishing a home education program. Given those concerns, it's not surprising that the number of homeschoolers continues to grow. "My official estimate is that there were 1.1 to 1.5 million students in grades K through 12 homeschooled during the 1997 - 98 school year," says Dr. Brian Ray, president of the National Home Education Research Institute of Oregon. "Ten years ago that number was about 200,000 to 300,000."

But the most successful grassroots educational movement of the century is not without its growing pains. In one corner are the "unschoolers," who prefer a relaxed, child-directed approach to learning, and in the other are the traditionalists, who favor a "school at home" approach that sticks to a daily schedule and pre-packaged curriculum.

There are two ongoing disagreements between the factions. One involves heavenly matters. Evangelical Christians, who are partial to the "school at home" method, have formed support groups which sometimes require members to subscribe to a "statement of faith." The well-organized Christian Home Educators of Colorado, for example, posts on its website the statements that the Bible is the "inspired and infallible word of God" and that "salvation is offered as a free gift to the sinner." These formulations can alienate non-believers, and also non-evangelical believers.

Patrick Farenga, publisher of the magazine Growing Without Schooling, does not like to mix homeschooling know-how with matters of faith. "We believe religion and politics are your business, not ours," says Farenga. Alexandra Swann, a self-described fundamentalist Christian, agrees: "We should be working with all people, sharing our experiences, whether their faith agrees with ours or not."