Home schooling is growing ever faster

Home schooling is growing ever faster



Who needs teachers?


Every morning five-year-old Tristan starts his school day by reading
in bed with his mother. He especially likes Enid Blyton. And even though
he often doesn’t bother to get out of his pyjamas in time for his first
class of the day, at the age of five he has a reading age of between
seven and eight. He is also ahead of his peers in a variety of
subjects—all, his mother reckons, thanks to home schooling.
Three decades ago home schooling was illegal in 30 states. It was
considered a fringe phenomenon, pursued by cranks, and parents who tried
it were often persecuted and sometimes jailed. Today it is legal
everywhere, and is probably the fastest-growing form of education in
America. According to a new book, “Home Schooling in America”, by Joseph
Murphy, a professor at Vanderbilt University, in 1975 10,000-15,000
children were taught at home. Today around 2m are—about the same number
as attend charter schools.


Although home schooling started on the counter-cultural left, the
conservative right has done most to promote it, abandoning public
schools for being too secular and providing no moral framework. Today
the ranks of home-schoolers are overwhelmingly Christian, and 78% of
parents attend church frequently. According to the National Household
Education Survey in 2007, the main motivation for home schooling was for
religious or moral instruction (36%), followed by school environment
(21%) and the quality of instruction available (17%). After this comes
concerns about special education, the distance of travel and even nut
allergies.

Home schooling is not exclusively white and Christian. In 2007 a
report found that Muslim children were one of the fastest-growing
groups; black-home schoolers are around 4% of the total and comprised
61,000 children. The super-wealthy, and parents who must move around a
lot, are also taking up home schooling in increasing numbers because of
its flexibility.

According to Mr Murphy’s book, parents want to control not only what
their children learn, but the values they pick up and the company they
keep. They are also increasingly convinced that schools are not that
good at teaching. Academically, home-schooled children seem to do well;
they enter higher education in proportions similar to those who are
conventionally educated, and score as well or better on college entrance
exams. Nor, on the evidence of Mr Murphy’s book, are they socially
backward: most seem confident, assured and well-adjusted. They also have
fewer behavioural problems. But one study did find higher attrition
rates when they enter the armed forces.

State laws vary widely in how much regulation they impose on
home-schoolers and how much accountability they require. Pennsylvania,
California and New York are stricter than most, but parents are not
deterred. Mr Murphy says the movement is all part of the breakdown of
American schooling from public monopoly; home schooling, he says, “is
the most radical form of privatisation”. Public schools can do little
but co-operate these days, and most offer access to school facilities,
websites, books and other materials. Some even allow home-schoolers to
take specialist courses—allowing the school to tap into a portion of
public financing they would otherwise lose entirely. Home schooling
still has its enemies, but pragmatism is becoming the order of the day.


Source:-
http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21568763-home-schooling-growing-ever-faster-keep-it-family