The Homeschool Choice. Kate Henley Averett

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ a spectrum. On one end is what many refer to as the “school-at-home” model, in which things look pretty similar to a public school, just with far fewer students and (usually) mom in the place of the teacher.27 Some families I interviewed who follow this model have a dedicated “school room” or school space (a table, a desk or two) within a room. These families usually follow a structured, purchased, comprehensive curriculum, and while children may “work ahead” in some subjects (for example, by completing two grade levels of math in a single year), their parents usually keep track of the grade level at which they are currently working in each subject. These families often have a regular daily schedule for “doing school,” such that school time and play time are kept separate.28

      On the other end of the spectrum is unschooling, or “child-led” learning, in which children follow their own inclinations to learn about the world, primarily (at least for younger children) through play and exploration. Unschooling parents may put opportunities (books, musical instruments, other instructional materials) into their children’s environment to encourage them toward certain topics—a practice some of the parents I interviewed referred to as “strewing”—but the choice of what to do is the child’s. In unschooling, the line between learning, play, and the rest of life is blurry, if not completely nonexistent.29 In states where there is greater regulation of homeschooling, such as requiring the submission of specific curricula and other materials, unschooling can be much more difficult to do. Several of the unschooling parents I interviewed wondered aloud to me how parents in more restrictive states manage, and noted that they appreciated not having to force their children to fit into somebody else’s predetermined idea of what education should look like.

      Though unschoolers tend to avoid prepackaged curricula, this does not necessarily mean that unschoolers avoid any kind of curricular materials or activities that outsiders might see as more “traditional” forms of learning. Several of the unschooling parents I interviewed talked about their children’s use of online resources like Khan Academy and YouTube tutorials to learn any number of subjects, like math or coding. Others talked about their children being fascinated by science and picking up science textbooks at the library and reading them cover to cover. Several also took part in weekly homeschool co-ops, in which a group of families gathers weekly and parents volunteer to teach classes on topics of interest to the children. Several unschoolers with high school–age children told me that their children were taking or were planning to take classes at local community colleges as part of Texas’s “dual enrollment” program, in which high school students can take a certain number of credits, for free, at community colleges and receive high school credit. Some did this in order to prepare for college, while others did it in order to learn something that was harder to pick up independently, such as Japanese language.

      In between these two ends of the spectrum are a variety of other practices and approaches. Some of these approaches, such as Classical education and the Charlotte Mason method, are centered on specific educational philosophies. Classical education, which a few of the Christian homeschooling families I interviewed used, centers on what is called the “trivium” of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, each of which corresponds to a developmental stage and segment of a child’s schooling (elementary, middle, and high school). In the Classical approach, children are exposed to many of the same topics (e.g., history) over the course of their education, but with a different focus at each stage: memorizing facts as elementary schoolers, analyzing and critiquing the logic of arguments in middle school, and effectively communicating arguments in high school.30 The Charlotte Mason method, which a couple of the families I interviewed had used when their children were younger, centers on the use of literature to teach subjects such as language arts, history, and geography. It emphasizes the importance of journal keeping, creative play, and time spent in nature as important components of children’s intellectual development.31 Other homeschoolers borrow from other forms of alternative education, including the Waldorf and Montessori philosophies.

      Finally, those who patchwork together an approach from a variety of sources and philosophies, including prepackaged curricula, online resources, and learning-through-doing, are often referred to as “eclectic” homeschoolers.32 Many, if not most, of the homeschoolers whom I interviewed used this term to describe their approach to homeschool instruction. As some of these parents explained to me, everyday experiences can become part of the “curriculum” very easily: a trip to the grocery store can turn into a math lesson on weights and measures, a nutrition lesson, a budgeting lesson, or even a lesson in manners and etiquette. Like unschoolers, then, many eclectic homeschoolers see the boundary between “school” and “life” as fluid.

      This observation points to one of the common misconceptions about homeschooling: that it takes place always, or even primarily, in the home. No matter the approach they take to education, nearly all of the homeschooling parents I interviewed described activities that their children took part in outside the home with other children—often, but not always, other homeschoolers. Many belong to homeschool co-ops or organize specialized classes for small groups of children that could be taught by a parent. Those with young children usually attend regular “park days,” where homeschoolers gather at a local park or playground for play and social time. Most children take part in what would typically be called extracurricular activities, including sports teams, science or robotic teams, scouting, and 4-H—though homeschoolers tend to talk about these as curricular, rather than extracurricular, pursuits.33 Families also go on regular outings, at times with other homeschool families, to museums, zoos, and plays and other cultural events, and many of the children are regular fixtures at their local public libraries.

      Homeschooling Outcomes

      One of the most frequent questions I get when I tell people that I research homeschooling is whether it “works”—in other words, is homeschooling an academically viable practice? While outcomes (academic or otherwise) are not the subject of my research, the question of outcomes is certainly a valid one. Homeschooling advocates are often quick to cite studies that show that homeschoolers have better academic outcomes than their peers, saying, for example, that homeschoolers tend to perform at least one grade level ahead of their peers in public and private schools, that they score higher than students in public schools on various standardized tests, and that they attend and graduate from college at higher-than-average rates.34

      That said, many scholars argue—and rightfully so—that it is important to take the statistics on academic outcomes for homeschoolers with a grain of salt.35 Because homeschoolers are a diffuse population, it is hard to collect random samples of homeschoolers, so there is likely some degree of sampling bias influencing these statistics, wherein those who choose to take part in research are not statistically representative of the whole population.36 Additionally, the practice of homeschooling itself has a high degree of selection bias: those who opt in to the practice of homeschooling are not representative of all parents in a lot of ways.37 Perhaps most notably, homeschooling parents tend to be highly involved in their children’s education, and it is likely that they would have been highly involved even if their children were enrolled in public schools. Because parental involvement is a key predictor of academic success, it is highly likely that these youth would have better-than-average academic success no matter where—or how—they were educated, and most of the existing studies of homeschool outcomes do not contain the necessary data and/or control variables to account for this selection.

      This does not mean that homeschooling is more or less the same as any other academic option. What it does mean, however, is that we cannot necessarily rely on measures of academic success, such as test scores, to determine whether homeschooling “works.” My research indicates that it could be helpful to approach this question by looking at differences in skills, such as critical thinking, time management, and self-motivation, between homeschoolers and those in traditional schools. Many parents I interviewed argued that homeschool students are better prepared for college courses than their peers in public schools because the methods of learning are more similar; homeschoolers are used to taking charge of their own learning, rather than relying on classroom instruction as the primary site where learning takes place. СКАЧАТЬ