Schooling-at-home due to virus not the same as homeschooling
Skeptics make plenty of assumptions about homeschoolers.
They’re socially stunted and sheltered from the real world. They’re projects for uncredentialed, entitled parents. They’re all religious fundamentalists.
While these stereotypes have their share of real-life counterparts, they’re certainly not the norm. There is no “norm.” A dearth of reliable data makes it difficult to speak in exact terms, but literature on the subject generally suggests that homeschooling families are quite diverse in terms of income and race. It also indicates that the homeschool population is increasing, with around 3-4% of school-aged children studying at home, which equates to more than two million kids.
Now, COVID-19 has cast millions more public and private school students into home learning environments indefinitely, prompting heightened scrutiny of homeschooling and comparisons to traditional education.
Is it a fair comparison? Homeschooling is, at its root, a more individualized approach to education that puts the onus on the parent rather than the state. In the 10 years I spent as a homeschooler in rural Texas, I used a constantly shifting slew of online classes, textbooks designed for self-teaching and weekly co-op classes of a dozen or more homeschoolers, where parents pooled expertise and assets to teach classes or hire accredited teachers.
If a program’s speed or style wasn’t a good fit for me, my family would resell the textbooks and try something new. Still, there were difficulties, and I certainly took advantage of my autonomy at times. Out of sheer frustration, I once skipped three months of Latin lessons before a trusting parent noticed. (Hello, summer school. Nice to see you again, drastically increased parental supervision.)
Such a patchwork approach to curricula could be hard on year-toyear continuity, but when standardized testing time rolled around, my peer group and I scored just fine.
This sort of eclectic learning is similar to the hodgepodge of resources public school teachers are currently supplying to students at home. Some schools are providing laptops and virtual classes, while others are sending paper packets with worksheets and study guides or teaching lessons over the radio, as many families don’t have a home internet connection. Specifics vary.
The difference between bringing children home to school them and bringing public school into a home is one of agency.
Under normal circumstances, families cite a wide variety of reasons for choosing home education. But it’s their decision, and with that choice comes a significant amount of time and commitment to individuate a curriculum based on a child’s interests, learning style and speed.
A global pandemic foisting school closings and captive children on parents removes a family’s agency in that initial decision to home educate. Some families will adapt to meet the challenges of this new scenario. Many won’t have the resources, time or fortitude. Even among homeschoolers, many families re-enroll students in school after a year or two of home learning.
But chalking up the current education disruption to a failure of homeschooling evidences an agenda, as does suggesting that everyone will suddenly realize the positive benefits of homeschooling.
Some education experts have leaped to lament the setbacks this will cause and question the “dangers” of homeschooling generally. A May Harvard Magazine article titled “The Risks of Homeschooling” implies that students learning at home are more susceptible to child abuse. An April USA Today article ran with the headline “‘Historic academic regression’: Why homeschooling is so hard amid school closures.” And a March Washington Post article, “Homeschooling during the coronavirus will set back a generation of children,” cites data on the much-debated “summer slide” as well as studies showing that virtual charter schools underperform compared with brick-and-mortar schools.
“Those studies looked at schools specifically designed to teach coursework online, frequently with huge sums of money invested in research and planning,” according to the Post article, which continues: “If they can’t make it work, ‘it seems unlikely that parents and teachers Googling resources will’ do any better,” says Stanford
economist and education researcher Eric Hanushek.
Not a referendum
COVID-19 isn’t a referendum on homeschooling. This is a straw man argument that assumes that moving public school online resembles traditional homeschooling. It doesn’t, not in any sense but the sophistic.
Education leaders should consider focusing on what effects the social isolation, if it continues, might have on child depression rates for students of all backgrounds, as numerous studies link these issues. To their credit, many are. And while a few experts like those referenced above are using this to question the validity of home learning, they’re a vocal minority. Far more are penning articles providing constructive advice for parents new to home education, counseling flexibility, compassion and patience.
There is no easy way to transition to homeschooling. In my case, and for many other former homeschoolers, the return on investment makes that struggle worthwhile. Encouraging or forcing students to work collaboratively with parents to take charge of their own academic progress can instill a deep sense of self-discipline and the ability to self-motivate. These skills have served me well in both my transition into college — a bit bumpy due to typical teenaged shyness — as well as my professional career.
Take it from a former homeschooler. Home education isn’t a positive or negative on its own insomuch as a shift in responsibility from systems to individuals. COVID-19 certainly has done that for the time being. Whether families who have the means choose to homeschool or continue to rely on the school system is up to them.