A Sympathetic Screed on Homeschooling

What? You expected Reasonable MSM to give Homeschoolers a pass? Please! Still, this Detroit News story does offer some balance.

For starters, not all families that homeschool are religious freaks! Well, that's improved coverage already. Journalists begin to recognize that some families have concerns about the school--and aren't running militias in the woods! Of course, the State of Michigan is nervous. Voluntary registration remains the only regulation homeschooling families face. That means the state's education department doesn't know how many kids are being schooled at home:

The Education Policy Center estimated there were 126,000 homeschooled students in Michigan in 2003, based on comparisons of enrollment data, census figures and dropout estimates.

For the Michigan Department of Education, the number of homeschooled students is harder than ever to determine. Voluntary registration has declined. For the 2004-05 school year, 943 households reported educating 1,566 students, a figure down from previous years.

If there's a red flag that school officials should note in the rise of homeschooling, however, it's the influence that a decaying culture has on public schools--and the growing alarm of families to it:

Neal and Katherine Jackson pulled their son out of fourth grade in a Detroit public school two years ago. They didn't register with the state. After a year at home for Jamal Bermudez, 11, Katherine Jackson this fall plans to also homeschool her daughters, Jasmin Jackson, 9, and Diamond Jackson, 7.

"It's not the education; it's the social issues in the schools," Katherine Jackson said. "The children are troubled there. The parents are troubled. There's no cure in sight."

Jackson said she confirmed that homeschooling worked for her son when she took him to a Sylvan Learning Center and paid to test his reading and mathematics skills. She said he was ahead in reading and on par with math.

"I had my doubts about whether I could do it, but the one-on-one attention made an amazing difference. Everything improved, including our relationship," said the homemaker with no training as a teacher.

The Home School Legal Defense Association says a national survey of homeschoolers found about 30 percent remain motivated by religious reasons and 31 percent by the negative social environment in schools.

This concern cuts across racial lines as well:

Kathy and Gary Holcomb started homeschooling their children in 1988. They now organize homeschool seminars and support-group meetings in Southfield. They publish a monthly newsletter mailed to about 1,000 Metro Detroit families.

"We started with our kids, pulled them out of a private school. We couldn't afford it," Gary Holcomb said. "Back then, our meetings were mostly suburban people. Now our groups are probably half African-Americans from the city."

Joyce Burgess, a founder of the National Black Home Educators Resource Association, said a growing number of families is looking for an alternative.

"We are fed up with the public school system," Burgess said. "African-American families have seen the horrors of what has happened: children who aren't being taught to read, dangerous situations in the schools. New moms and dads are deciding they just aren't going to go that route."

The deteriorating conditions of Urban schools will drive the Home-schooling trend to further growth. Many parents understand that they are their children's primary educators. They may send their children to school, but that's because they trust those schools to provide for their children what they believe they can't: a sound and balanced education. But as more schools suffer from the dysfunctional and violent youth culture that rages throughout the country, parents become more frustrated.

The problem of the culture of Death in schools is a complicated one. However, Urban schools are an example of the butchering of subsidiarity. A panel or board appointed by a mayor or city council acts as the governing body of an urban school district. The schools' budget comes from City, State and Federal subsidies--and does not require the approval of parents. State and Federal regulations, as well as a plethora of city interpretations of the former, burden administrators and teachers with needless amount of red tape and micro-management. Meanwhile, parents are often given the schaft. Now all you need to really make this a fiasco is to include children socialized on Gangsta-rap from single-parent (read mother) families that struggle to break the poverty line. Welcome to Urban schools in America.

As long as subsidiarity is violated--and radical ideology given the undue influence it enjoys even in primary/secondary education--the problems of schools will continue. Therefore, homeschooling will continue to grow. I'm happy for those families that make it work. As a teacher, I'm gratified when children learn, even if I'm not the one teaching them. I tremble for the future of public schools, for the crisis does not appear to have reached its climax yet. I shudder for all of the students I will try my hardest to teach--and inevitably fail to reach. Kids deserve better than the concrete jungles we adults have all to readily helped to prepare for them.

Much better.