Unschooling Formatted for TV
Friday, October 14, 2011 at 10:14AM Unschooling was featured on the Today Show this morning and it was generally a fair portrayal of what it is and how it is done. The Bentley family, featured in the video segment, was particularly articulate and they were shown actively learning and doing things in their community; as a result, I don’t think the audience viewed unschooling as children doing nothing or as unparenting, which is a relief.
The education experts on the show expressed the standard concerns: unschoolers aren’t tested so how do we know they’re learning compared to their schooled counterparts? Parents may not be qualified to teach certain things. The kids could be isolated if they aren’t involved in activities outside the home. Aren’t there going to be gaps in their knowledge? By the way, these are the same concerns that are often raised about homeschooling in general, which proves to me, again, that homeschooling and unschooling are inextricably linked and efforts to separate them are not wise. Since most unschooling and homeschooling resources cover these questions in detail, as have I, I won’t respond to them here.
It was good to hear Robyn Silverman, a teen and child development expert, note that unschoolers get into college with non-traditional transcripts, but it was disappointing to hear her say that unschooling is primarily for parents of “self-propelled” children. All children are born with self-motivation and a very common thread among unschoolers are stories about how they decided to unschool after their children went to school and became morose, unmotivated learners. They know their children weren’t this way before they went to school, so they view unschooling as a way to reinvigorate their children’s love of learning. Unschooling can work for any child and there are thousands of examples online and in print.
Further, both experts and the show overall make it seem like unschooling is a new trend, some recent development that doesn’t have a track record and is therefore somewhat dangerous to do with your children. There is no mention of John Holt and his creation of unschooling in 1977 after years of teaching in and writing about schools. There is no mention of the thousands of unschoolers who are now productive, adult citizens, some of them unschooling their own children now. There is no mention of teachers, in both alternative and conventional schools, who either unschool their children or take inspiration from it in their work. There is no mention that unschoolers are forging their lives earlier than those in school can, building up resumes and experiences that serve them well as adults, and that two-thirds of all American colleges and universities have admission procedures for homeschoolers/unschoolers. Indeed, according to U.S. census data only about 27.5% of all Americans have four-year college degrees, so it is odd that the media and society view getting into college as the ultimate sign of adult success. Shouldn’t we focus on how the 73.5% of Americans without four-year degrees find work, careers, and lives worth living instead of making them feel less worthy for not going or completing college? Uncollege is a concept that I hope gets further attention and it’s founder acknowledges the influence of unschooling on his thinking.
Further, unschooling is an option for families, not a mandate. You can try it and adapt it as you see fit; your kids can move in and out of school as necessary; you can do it for any amount of time. It is NOT school, which is why it is a true option for children who hate school, or don’t fit in, or find class too boring, or find class too challenging. I wish the experts had considered these issues instead of finding fault with unschooling because it does not follow conventional school techniques; that is the point, after all. As noted earlier, people often come to unschooling because their children were not flourishing in school, or because even though they did well in school (as the adult Bentley’s say they did in their segment) they want an education that is more involving for their children than marching through the steps of standardized curricula.
Unschooling is about learning and doing things that matter in the real world and in your life, and the Bentley family provides a great model of this for viewers. In six minutes, The Today Show condensed and analyzed an educational movement that has been growing for decades. Some day, I hope the deeper stories that lie beneath the surface of this one will be examined.
Reader Comments (28)
Hey, Pat,
Nice coverage of this morning's news. It's annoying to me, too, when they cover unschooling as if it started yesterday. My guess is that it's "new" to them, so it MUST be new!
I wholeheartedly agree about the community itself not trying to separate un- and home-, lest states decide there needs to be separate regulations or laws.
All best to you and your family,
Linda
Thanks, Linda. I'm also amazed at how they claim unschooling is only done by wealthy people who can afford to travel. Most unschoolers I know are not rolling the dough! I mentioned books like "Adventuring on a Shoestring" and how un- and homeschoolers do travel a lot, but inexpensively, during my "pre-interviews" for the show, but obviously such comments and support didn't fit with the show's story line.
Pat... I agree with your assessment. As a six-minute segment there was no time to get into history or educational philosophy, but the compelling unschooled kids themselves got some good air time! But I think you would have added much more value to it than that first talking head guy (not Dr Silver) that they briefly had on.
I think the biggest problem is that unschooling is about a real paradigm shift in how we view education. Most Americans tend to be focused on "can do" algorithms for achieving concrete goals, rather than thoughtful assessment of the basic underlying values and principles that drive our lives. The latter is viewed as "contemplating your navel" by many, if not most of us. And that contemplation, even if attempted, cannot be done justice in six-minute segments.
In case anyone is interested, here is a rather long synopsis of my own kids' unschooling experience during what would conventionally by high school and college years...
http://www.leftyparent.com/blog/2011/07/01/unschooling-rather-than-highschooling/
Great to see your take on it Pat, as I was frustrated by much of it. I understand the questions because as you point out, they are the standard questions most people have who aren't familiar with unschooling and whose reference norm is the conventional system.
What was frustrating to me was that those questions were thrown out there with the weight of judgements (coming from the host), rather than simply questions, and as judgements made to an audience mostly uninformed I felt they would lead to simply dismissing the whole thing as not valid in any way.
I would love to see you call Lauer out on that and ask for a follow up segment that answers those questions...after all, he doesn't want to leave his audience hanging does he, or remain uninformed himself? :) I would especially like the point to be made this is an entirely different way of going about things and as such we simply can't compare the conventional schooling and unschooling point for point (such as in statements about not being able to compare how kids are doing in unschooling compared to their age mates in a grade level in school). The overall outcomes about becoming effective adults are the point as you write about in your piece.
I too picked up on the characterization of unschooling being something new on the scene, with no sense of the numbers of happy "customers" out there, or the schools like Sudbury Valley that operate on the same ideas. Would like to see that corrected as well.
I thought the 15-year old was representative of "outcome" in her ability to be articulate, engaged, thoughtful and deeply involved in her chosen paths...and worried that got overlooked in all that judging going on.
I also noticed the common tendency to think the implication is we're saying this is for everyone, rather than opening up the many paths possibilities.
Lots of work to be done!
Thanks Pat!
To whoever might be interested:
Early in our marriage my wife and I determined that the conventional education we had received (the common ordinary kind through the 1940-1963) was perhaps useful in some circumstances, however in our own personal and family situation our conventional education was pointlessly destructive, taking far too long to teach far too little.
From our point of view, our children’s formal education would have to wait until our children had finished their childhood play period, assuming such a period actually existed. What our children might learn throughout the their uninterrupted play time would have to be those things they sought out and accomplished on their own, without any impact from us. Our only function, so far as we could judge, was to seek out and keep their environment as plentiful, as rich, as abundant as possible.
There is no need to describe what was involved, every family will have their own, different requirements and there is no way anyone could usefully copy or duplicate how we chose to live. Because we traveled for over 15 years, our three children learned natively without accent to speak, read and write in five languages. Math emerged out of shear necessity, you change countries and you learn to change money and so on.
All three of our children chose to attend University, my oldest and youngest attended in Germany. My daughter (in the middle) graduated from university in Brisbane and in conversation five years later she declared that her academic undertaking … including her graduate degrees … were a colossal waste of time.
There is much more to be said, but all that matters is my children (now in their middle to late forties) have also chosen to maintain an ‘unschooling’ household, maintaining a very rich … or should I say ‘pregnant’ environment.
It is wonderful to experience the joy that is expressed by adults who have the maturity that develops from having completed their childhood play. Otherwise their life and the life their children experience continues to unfold in much the same way as life emerges for everyone else.
Bruce
Thanks for all your good comments. Thanks Bruce, for sharing your story with us. If you don't mind, I'd like to copy it to the "Voices of Experience" section on the Growing Without Schooling website: http://holtgws.com/gwsvoicesofexpe.html
I can't agree more with you, Sally. There is a lot of work to be done. Upon reflection and conversation about the unschooling segment over the weekend it I have more respect for how challenging our task is today. As one friend said about the show, "They emphasized the role of the parents, rather than the role of the kids themselves. The idea that kids can take charge of their own learning (and in fact, really are the only people who can take charge of it, no matter whether they go to a conventional school or not) is so far removed from the standard way of thinking that they just don't get it at all."
Here's the Bentley family's own take on the whole experience:
http://www.doliferight.com/2011/10/15/yesterday-on-today/
Sally, I agree with your take. I'm tired of judgments that masquerade as questions. I thought the 'expert' they had on did a rather poor job of answering them - she ended up validating traditional coercion and presented unschooling as just another 'method' to achieve a similar end.
I don't have the statistics to back this up, but my intuition tells me that in our new dialed-down "more value with less spending" economic trajectory going forward, that school systems and the whole "schooling" approach, with its hierarchies to enforce standardization, expensive school facilities, hard-copy textbooks (now perhaps unnecessary because of the Internet), is not a sustainable system (akin to conventional agriculture using, pesticides & GMO).
Unschooling still suffers as an alternative approach because it is tied up with economic privilege. I'm not sure what to do about that. I think for now the best we can do is to keep promoting it as "one of many educational paths" and support a simplified school paradigm built around students & teachers while continuing to attack the hierarchy that is weighing it down.
Pat... particularly curious on your thoughts on this!
Cooper, I am not Pat but I hope that is OK.
Cooper Zale has suggested: “Unschooling still suffers as an alternative approach because it is tied up with economic privilege. I'm not sure what to do about that. I think for now the best we can do is to keep promoting it as "one of many educational paths" and support a simplified school paradigm built around students & teachers while continuing to attack the hierarchy that is weighing it down.”
Cooper, at the risk of sounding unpleasant or ill-mannered, you make the noise of someone without experience, interest or affection so responding to your ‘speculation’ cannot serve a useful purpose.
Unschooling, whatever is meant by this term, does not have any special “… economic privilege …”. I assume you mean the parents need to be wealthy an impulse that is so far off the mark, the only thing to be say is ‘grow-up’, go out with your children and live life together, involve your children in the process of living life as it unfolds, which is the meaning … if there is a meaning … to the term ‘unschooling’.
You will be surprised … and I have to break off here … the list of what will surprise you is far too long to be described here.
When your own ‘unschooled’ children are raising your teenage grandchildren, you may then be experienced enough to hold and offer some opinions. Until then, there is far too much for you to learn before you are qualified to hold or express any opinions. In the interim you have a lot of reading and far more thinking to do than you have currently invested in the subject so far.
Begin reading carefully the U.S. Senate report regarding the Brainwashing of the Korean Prisoners of War. Note that after their 30 to 40 page effort, in summary they conclude that our own national education processes, the literal ‘ring the bell …’ and the metaphorical “… salivate …” process is a method we in America employ far more competently than the Chinese and Koreans have ever accomplished. The Koreans infected only one in ten prisoners. Here in the west our conventional educators infect nine out of every ten children once they have captured then within our common, currently employed system of indoctrinating a process that masquerades as educating.
Responsibility – the experience – is attained, if it ever is, only through a day to day contact with the home and parents who themselves have passed through the developmental stages that result in personal maturity. Otherwise, the only thing a child can learn is ‘Obligation’ a burden that overloads even an adult. Responsibility is best understood when viewed as the “Ability to Respond” a spontaneity and therefore an honesty that is always absent from ‘Obligation’ training.
I have perhaps fifty or so questions I might ask you, but I assume – rightly or wrongly – that you are not truly interested.
Study and learn about Pavlov for example … learn about child development, independent of what the narrow academic world writes … learn from your own children as they live day to day deep within your affection, all the while sharing the world that unfolds before you from moment to moment. At best your children are with you for about 20 years (only 170,000 hours) which is not very long and their education is far more important than their bed, clothes or whether their hair is brushed.
Above all, you need to learn how to learn, how to learn, how to learn, (ther are four learns here) which after all is something your current level of education was not able to teach and so you have not yet learned how to accomplish, though I am sure you imagine you do already know.
Bruce
Bruce,
If one is not allowed to hold any opinions until they have grown-up, unschooled children raising their teenage grandchildren, we won't have much of a comment board here. I'm sure glad you're not in charge of the Internet. I'm only 30, have no children, and have been teaching in traditional school for about 7 years. Am I allowed to hold an opinion? How about your unschooled kids - were they allowed to hold opinions?
Reminds me of Holt, when he talked about how a set curriculum is silly because of how little we actually know compared with how much there is to possibly know. What percent of the sum of human knowledge do you know, Bruce? A trillionth? More likely, a trillionth of a trillionth?
How much does Cooper know? Perhaps because he is, in your words, inexperienced, he knows HALF a trillionth of a trillionth? Or, more likely, a DIFFERENT trillionth of a trillionth?
Perhaps when we know a trillionth of a trillionth like you - and not half a trillionth of a trillionth like Cooper - we are allowed to hold opinions.
And I love how you defended unschooling by giving Cooper reading assignments.
I'm actually curious about the point about economic privilege. Is there no connection? I work in a juvenile detention center and can't imagine my students (most of whom live in single-parent households, where the single parent has two jobs) ever getting a chance at responsible unschooling, due to economic and cultural restraints. I know Pat recommended a book that I'd like to check out, but I'd love to hear some other answers to that question, with some concrete facts, rather than belittlement. I don't think the question - or any question - is too stupid that it doesn't deserve an answer.
Bruce -
i'm at work, so I may have been guilty of making my previous comment a little less detailed than I normally would. My intention was to keep the discussion going by talking about the pragmatic path forward for unschooling. FYI... Sally & my kids (now young adults) both unschooled during what would conventionally be their high school years. I am a big unschooling advocate.
The issue is that Sally & I are white middle-class people with the economic situation to have our kids just live their lives outside of school, outside of constant adult supervision, and just live their lives in an enriched environment with access to caring adults, the Internet, and other resources. Kids from low income families, particularly urban kids, do not have this kind of situation, so for them, "just living their lives" would involve being either vulnerable out in unsafe neighborhoods or holed up in their house without any sort of enriched environment for learning. For those kids, perhaps their neighborhood school is the only thing even close to an enriched environment. Unschooling does not really seem like a viable option for them.
So as I continue to push for unschooling as "one of many educational paths", I do so understanding that there is a certain amount of privilege needed to make that path viable, and that's a problem in terms of advocacy.
Mark,
No doubt what you say has merit, “If one is not allowed to hold any opinions until they have grown-up, unschooled children raising their teenage grandchildren, we won't have much of a comment board here.” On the other hand though it took us (my wife and I) some time to connect and then work with a mentor, we were eventually able to find our crippled way, but only after we had (with guidance and close association) begun our own maturity in a number of personal areas, all accomplished while our children grew close in around us.
You ask, “ I'm only 30, have no children, and have been teaching in traditional school for about 7 years. Am I allowed to hold an opinion? How about your unschooled kids - were they allowed to hold opinions?” The answer is both yes and no, if you lack experience in a certain area, no is the only possible answer.
You state, “I'm only 30, have no children, and have been teaching in traditional school for about 7 years. Am I allowed to hold an opinion? How about your unschooled kids - were they allowed to hold opinions?” I am a little dense, I assume you are being rhetorical, with an apparent ‘self answer’ to questions that are otherwise unrelated to the subject. Your notion, “Am I allowed to hold an opinion?” is ridiculous. Without experience and lacking information, go ahead and hold all the opinions you can generate, they are useless of course. 7 years has been long enough, move on, when you have your own children and your capacity for affection has matured, perhaps then your opinion(s) might be something more, something other than false imagining … for example, allowing or not allowing only applies when safety is involved. Your imagining has clearly mislead you, are you well served by the opinions you generate?
Here again you are talking silly, “And I love how you defended unschooling by giving Cooper reading assignments.” Your lack of thought and experience is painful, all knowledge has an information component, it seemed to me that Cooper could useful use the suggestion … perhaps you could. Lacking the needed and useful information, all opinions are useless and knowledge is not possible.
You declare, “I'm actually curious about the point about economic privilege. Is there no connection” Of course there is no connection, I am surprised you ask. Most of what you described … two jobs etc. … I have lived. I also knew I needed to address the circumstance in an appropriate manor. I assume we did and today with their own children they now address the same limited income circumstance in their own way, entirely different from the way we focused upon the necessities.
Go get some experience out in the world. Start in Central Turkey, find a job. Then perhaps in the middle of the Algerian Sahara … Adrar perhaps … and how about the middle of Beverly Hills where we began our inquiries. I am addressing your need for broader experience, not where you actually should go. Go to Kuwaiti, together we made a substantial income in a very short time and then we traveled for a considerable time. We also built a boat and sailed the Pacific for a number of years just before our children left off into their own independent existence.
You state, “I'd love to hear some other answers to that question, with some concrete facts, rather than belittlement.” No belittlement was intended or implied, you seem to be describing yourself. You go on to say, “I don't think the question - or any question - is too stupid that it doesn't deserve an answer.” You are wrong again, most questions (99%) are pure manipulations, expressed in order to avoid revealing where the questioner stands. You already know this fact, you have learned it hundreds of times over and have employed the technique in your current posting. Perhaps you will not bother, but if you are interested, rewrite your posting, continue the same topic but this time fill in where you stand … if any questions remain leave them unsaid.
Bruce
Cooper,
Thank you for the brief background.
Your declaration, “Unschooling does not really seem like a viable option for them.” You may be right, I cannot say. The families we associated with here in the US, Holland, Belgium and England (and many other countries to a lesser extent) easily fit your description of, “Kids from low income families, particularly urban kids, do not have this kind of situation, so for them, "just living their lives" would involve being either vulnerable out in unsafe neighborhoods or holed up in their house without any sort of enriched environment for learning.” Yet it is important to note, they found their way and their children felt the impact of their efforts (as limited as that may seem to be) and today I can say every child benefited greatly, if only because of the affection their parents’ efforts developed and carried them. A rich environment is in most situations a ‘mud hole that you fall into as you climb the tree, while chasing your friends.
I agree there is little hope in a neighborhood like you describe, what you seem to miss … they can move until they find the place where their kids are at least less vulnerable and unsafe, which clearly would be a richer environment. I have seen this occur in the US, Britain, Holland and Tunisia. But this concern is too far off the point.
You also describe, “So as I continue to push for unschooling as "one of many educational paths", I do so understanding that there is a certain amount of privilege needed to make that path viable, and that's a problem in terms of advocacy.” There is no other privilege needed than the personal strength (maturity) to move on out physically from where you happen to be. Not moving assures the conditions you address will continue to dominate.
Please Cooper, learn what a cult is. Your current interest, your “… push for unschooling …” sounds like you are a cultist who is looking to form or join a cult.
Bruce
Bruce -
I would agree with you that the bottom-line issue on whether unschooling can work is the kid having access some sort of enriched environment that is reasonably kid-friendly, including the opportunity to interact with or even assist adults who care and are willing to engage. Economic privilege (particularly in the U.S.) can tend to foster that sort of environment.
In case you or anyone else is interested, here are some of the major activities our two kids engage in as part of their unschooling in their older youth...
http://www.leftyparent.com/blog/2011/07/01/unschooling-rather-than-highschooling/
Coop asked for my thoughts on this: "Unschooling still suffers as an alternative approach because it is tied up with economic privilege. I'm not sure what to do about that. "
So much to say, but so little time to say it. Please pardon my terseness. First, this line has been used as a critique of ALL alternative approaches. Sudbury Valley and others are always put down with this line, as if helping lower and middle-class families whose children aren't doing well in conventional school is not as important as helping kids in the lower income brackets. I think we need to help anyone who is suffering or asks for help as best we can to the best of our abilities. I believe you put your oar into the water and you start rowing where ever you are; John Holt worked and wrote about privileged private school children and how barren their educations were in tony high-priced schools. His work continues to give great support to those working with lower income, difficult to teach students in poor school districts. Holt is cited as a guide and inspiration by inner-city teachers like Jim Herndon, George Dennison, and LouAnne Johnson, to name a few. Holt came from a background of privilege, but he spoke the truth as he saw it and has helped a great many people by doing so.
Second, and this deserves more space than I can give it now, is something Matt and Bruce have touched on: unschooling as a program, as a method, as a cult. I really wish we could talk about learning and living, but these terms have been marginalized by schoolspeak: now babies and children must learn how to learn (it isn't something they have a biological imperative to do); unschooling is a program administered by parents rather than a description of how children can grow while they explore the real world with different types of support from their families and others. The social capital unschooling/homeschooling provides to children—access to adults who are doing things besides teaching children; strong interest by parents in making sure the emotional, nutritional, physical, and spiritual needs of their children are met—is far more important for helping children learn and feel secure in their lives than focusing on improving their test scores. In the long run, as some teachers have noted (for instance, Susan Ohanion and Kirsten Olsen), the important lesson that children take away from their school experiences isn't what or how the children were taught, but how they were treated by adults and society while they were children in school.
This is the real message to parents and the schools about unschooling that gets lost in all the talk about improving schools: it isn't schools that need to be made better; it is how we raise and treat children in our society that needs to be made better. Most unschooling/homeschooling is done by lower- and middle-class families according to the research I've seen for the last 30 years. They are using a variety of methods and many parents do not have teaching degrees or four-year college degrees, and their children flourish though the parents are spending, according to some homeschooling researchers, an average of $500/year per child on academic materials. Why do their children find work worth doing and lives worth living? There is an awful lot more going on in homeschooling/ unschooling than children learning on their own or parents instructing them, but that doesn't fit into the paradigm of schooling. That paradigm requires one to organize the students in ways that allow technocrats to control and predict academic achievement in the classroom (represented as test scores) so as to feed into the economic machinery for the national interest (currently defined as STEM: Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). All other factors are ignored, so the importance of good nutrition, physical exercise, solid relationships with people, freedom to explore one's ideas, and emotional stability are not considered in evaluating one's performance in school. However, it is exactly those things, and many other non-academic factors, that allow unschooling to work. Getting that message out is hard, and the economic privilege argument is often a smoke-screen used to deflect that message.
Pat -
I appreciate your long and thoughtful response, and at least on first read, find it hard to disagree with anything you wrote!
As you already know, like you I am an advocate for unschooling, but I'm trying to wrestle this whole privilege thing to the ground, so I appreciate you laying out some counter arguments, which I'll have to really ponder.
I would be interested if you could point us at those stats about the demographics of homeschooling/unschooling. Would most of the folks homeschooling on the lower end of the spectrum be doing it for religious indoctrination? As unschoolers can we accept that as one "flavor" of this natural learning approach that we support?
Pat... you talk about John Holt seeing the worst of the schools of the economically privileged, but there is the flip side as well. I have a niece who attended one of the best progressive private prep schools in her home city of Cleveland, got a great education including and internship doing real work in stem-cell research. Now she's attending the University of Chicago and has a trajectory to become a scientist. And to top it off, she loves every bit of it. That degree of middle-class economic privilege her family has facilitated the adventure of the path she is on. That said, her younger sister is a tremendous artist like her dad, and I think is languishing in that same school, bombarded by all her academic requirements and maybe unable to take a deep dive into her art. But given their circumstances, she would definitely have the opportunity to do so if her parents would just let her.
What I see it their degree of economic privilege, just middle-class mind you, giving them that range of options, including unschooling.
My hope is that our public education system will back off on the extreme standardization that limits any sort of truly alternative public schools, including democratic-free schools like Sudbury Valley. If schools like that could pass muster as public schools, they could be the “halfway house” to unschooling for economically disadvantaged people.
Sorry to just cut and paste this, but I'll be away from my computer until Sunday night and don't want you to think I'm indifferent to this conversation. First, I base my statements about income and demographics on studies and personal observation over the years. In recent years some researchers, such as Rudner, claim homeschoolers are wealthier than the average family. I doubt this, but I may be wrong. The stats below put the top level of household income for homeschoolers at $75K, but I can see how that isn't a definitive answer to the question. Dr. Brian Ray has collected data over the years about family income and notes in Worldwide Guide to Homeschooling (2002) that the total annual household income for homeschoolers is close to the median income for American families.
Question:
How many children are homeschooled in the United States?
Response:
In 2007, the number of homeschooled students was about 1.5 million, an increase from 850,000 in 1999 and 1.1 million in 2003. The percentage of the school-age population that was homeschooled increased from 1.7 percent in 1999 to 2.9 percent in 2007. The increase in the percentage of homeschooled students from 1999 to 2007 represents a 74 percent relative increase over the 8-year period and a 36 percent relative increase since 2003. In 2007, the majority of homeschooled students received all of their education at home (84 percent), but some attended school up to 25 hours per week. Eleven percent of homeschooled students were enrolled in school less than 9 hours per week, and 5 percent were enrolled between 9 and 25 hours per week.
More White students were homeschooled than Black or Hispanic students or students from other racial/ethnic groups, and White students constituted the majority of homeschooled students (77 percent). White students (3.9 percent) had a higher homeschooling rate than Blacks (0.8 percent) and Hispanics (1.5 percent), but were not measurably different from students from other racial/ethnic groups (3.4 percent). Students in two-parent households made up 89 percent of the homeschooled population, and those in two-parent households with one parent in the labor force made up 54 percent of the homeschooled population. The latter group of students had a higher homeschooling rate than their peers: 7 percent, compared with 1 to 2 percent of students in other family circumstances. In 2007, students in households earning between $25,001 and $75,000 per year had higher rates of homeschooling than their peers from families earning $25,000 or less a year.
Parents give many different reasons for homeschooling their children. In 2007, the most common reason parents gave as the most important was a desire to provide religious or moral instruction (36 percent of students). This reason was followed by a concern about the school environment (such as safety, drugs, or negative peer pressure) (21 percent), dissatisfaction with academic instruction (17 percent), and "other reasons" including family time, finances, travel, and distance (14 percent). Parents of about 7 percent of homeschooled students cited the desire to provide their child with a nontraditional approach to education as the most important reason for homeschooling, and the parents of another 6 percent of students cited a child's health problems or special needs.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. (2009). The Condition of Education 2009 (NCES 2009-081) Indicator 6 .