Better off at home?

Consider two examples of American youth. Daniel is becoming knowledgeable about the metric system, has read the Esther Forbes classic Johnny Tremain, easily identifies the four states that border Mexico, can confidently define "recluse" and "esoteric," and still has time to tend goal for his ice-hockey team. Daniel is eight.

Charlotte, an equestrian with awards in dressage, doubles as a Taubman piano instructor in training. She was recently awarded a generous financial-aid package to attend Mt. Holyoke College. At 17, Charlotte was the youngest non-college student in a math course at the University of Massachusetts, and one of the few enrolled who earned an A.

What these two young people have in common is that they are members of a growing popular movement known as "homeschooling." According to U.S. News & World Report, the number of students taught at home grew from 10,000 in 1970 to 350,000 in 1991. The Virginia-based Home School Legal Defense Fund has estimated the number at over 400,000.

While politicos regularly campaign on a "quality day care for all working Americans" boiler-plate platform to woo busy, overtaxed constituents, homeschoolers have politely turned their backs on the idea of "professionals" teaching their offspring. Instead, they have opted for what critics, such as Thomas A. Shannon of the National School Boards Association, call "a giant step backward into the seventeenth century."

The modern homeschooling movement had its roots, appropriately, in the 1960s. Unbeknown to one another, two educators - one a humanist, the other a former Christian missionary - were reaching the same conclusion: conventional schooling has largely failed at its task of educating and nurturing children.

John Holt was a veteran teacher in alternative-style schools when his book Why Children Fail was published in 1962. His thesis was that children's curiosity can be killed by a system that is ill-suited to individual learning needs. Mr. Holt's twin slogans - "Living is learning" and "Growing without schooling" - have become the philosophical backbone for the wing of the movement that veers to the left.

At about the same time, Dr. Raymond Moore was conducting an aggressive inquiry into previously unstudied areas. One of the questions he set out to answer was: Is the institutionalizing of young children a sound educational policy? Amazingly, he discovered that the findings of a hundred noted researchers (including eminent family psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner) recommended "a cautious approach to subjecting the developing nervous system and mind [of children] to formal constraints."

Dr. Moore's data led him and his wife, Dorothy (a reading specialist), to pioneer a renewed and enthusiastic interest in homeschooling through their research institute, the Moore Foundation. The Moores' firm, gentle, and ecumenical approach to homeschooling (balance study, work, and service with a child's developmental needs) have earned them a following that started with fundamentalist Christians but has since spread widely.

Balancing the Ledger

Following one of these alternatives has been neither cheap nor easy for potential homeschoolers. As recently as 1982, only two states had laws guaranteeing their rights. Legislative and court battles fought throughout the 1980s now make homeschooling legal in all fifty states, although homeschoolers' legal status varies from state to state. For example, Oregon requires that homeschooled children periodically take standardized tests; Texas homeschoolers can simply declare their home a private school; Massachusetts homeschoolers have to obtain permission from local authorities.

To be sure, homeschoolers do get some help. Teaching supplies, computer software, cassettes, videos, etc. are proliferating. An October 1991 U.S. Department of Education Working Paper, by Patricia M. Lines, explains that "there are approximately 25 suppliers supplying a complete, year-long package, and with at least one-hundred students enrolled."

Unlike families in earlier days whose children were "privately educated," the average homeschooler today is far from rich. A 1990 survey of Maine home-schoolers by the David C. Cook Publishing Company, for example, revealed that 70 per cent of respondents had an annual pre-tax household income of less than $35,000. Why would these parents undertake such a burden?

Homeschooling is far more flexible than conventional schooling. Homeschoolers can supplement their children's educations with private lessons, apprenticeships, correspondence courses, and hobbies. And it seems effective. In fact, the National Home Education Institution (yes, a homeschool think tank), in a recent nationwide study, "found achievement on standardized tests was at or above the eightieth percentile."

Even more important, homeschooling protects children from condom distribution, multicultural mumbo jumbo, new-age relaxation techniques, knife-wielding sophomores, etc. While smaller, religious schools are often a significant improvement over the public schools, there is no guarantee that students will be spared the difficulties that occur when X number of students are warehoused together on a daily basis. In addition, homeschooling helps children avoid the negative social aspects of school life by promoting a strong family bond. The trump card the educational establishment used to play against homeschooling is socialization, but the notion that homeschoolers are misfits has been struck a death blow by a young man named Larry Shyers. Dr. Shyers recently completed a doctoral dissertation in which he challenged the myth that youngsters schooled at home "lag" in social development. In his study, eight-to-ten-year-old children were videotaped at play. Their behavior was observed by trained counselors who did not know which children went to regular schools and which were homeschooled. Their conclusion: "The study found no big difference between the two groups of children in self-concept or assertiveness, which was measured by their social development tests. But the videotapes showed that youngsters who were taught at home by their parents had consistently fewer behavioral problems."

While not a panacea for all the educational ills of our age, homeschooling clearly deserves to be supported as generously as choice in fighting the cultural and moral relativism of the ever-fading Western civilization. Homeschooling families could use some help in their lonely battles against the foes of liberty, individual responsibility, and learning.