International Homeschooling News

These stories illustrate some interesting ways that homeschooling is working in other countries.

First, in heavily industrialized societies like the United States, school is incredibly difficult to change from within. Any survey of efforts to make schooling more personalized, local-community-based, and convivial over the past century will show that these efforts get subsumed or ignored by the push to make schooling more standardized, national, and competitive by educators and politicians. However, in countries that do not yet have such an inflexible, industrialized schooling infrastructure in place there are opportunities for remaking schooling into something different for families. Here is one such story, from the Philippines, where homeschooling is promoted by the Department of Education as a means to reduce overcrowding in its schools. Of note here is that this program is focused on high school students and the number of students being asked to home school: 10,000! You can read the full article here: Philippine DOE supports homeschooling to ease overcrowding. Read the comments of school officials regarding how well the homeschooled students have done in this program since 2002:

Quezon City is the only school division implementing the program so far, according to Education Assistant Secretary Jesus Mateo. DepEd started the program in 2002 but there were years when it was not implemented on such a large scale.

“We’ve explained it to the parents and they understand the system. We’ve been doing it for three years (in Quezon City) and our students do well. They graduate, go to college and even go abroad,” Cacanindin said on the sidelines of a school inspection in Cubao, Quezon City, on Thursday.

Betty Cavo, also an assistant schools superintendent in Quezon City, said home-schooled students had fared well in the National Achievement Test over the past years.

Home study is one of the alternatives recommended by DepEd for schools whose enrollments far exceed their classroom space and resources, particularly those in urban centers.

Under the program, students can take their lessons at home following modules patterned after the regular curriculum and meet with their teachers only on Saturdays. They graduate with a high school diploma just like any regular student.

I am interested in hearing from anyone with experience in the Philippine homeschooling program; I’d like to know if it is just a school-at-home program, where the parents just do what the schools tell them to do, or if there is input from the families regarding how their children learn at home (the article is very unclear on details). In any case, this is another piece of evidence that being taught by professionals in school all day is not the only way that children can learn and become contributors to society.

The second story comes from India:

Satyam Kumar, all of 12 and with little formal schooling, has cracked the tough Indian Institute of Technology-Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE). He is the youngest to do so . . . Kumar never saw the inside of a classroom in his childhood but always showed exceptional intelligence. “He used to impress everyone. But in the absence of a proper school in our village, he mostly studied at home,” his father Sidhnath Singh said.

There are many such stories in the literature of homeschooling and school reform: a poor young person, whose parents or others recognize talents to which the school is indifferent (or, as in this case, not even present), is nonetheless able to succeed in life, including getting into higher education. How many talented children are we neglecting by focusing only on learners who attend school from kindergarten to college? Sugata Mitra’s work (see Competent Children) suggests there are a great many children, in India alone, who are capable of learning many difficult things on their own (Mitra’s research shows how these children teach themselves and one another to use a computer, for instance, with no adult help).

Twitter Chats for Homeschoolers

If you are looking for online support for homeschooling and you enjoy using Twitter, here's a good article about Twitter chats you can engage in.

Essential Twitter Chats for Homeschoolers

New Issue of Journal of Unschooling and Alternative Learning is Available

The current issue of the Journal of Unschooling and Alternative Learning (JUAL) is now available on-line for free.

It can be found at JUAL (click on New Issue).

JUAL seeks to bring together an international community of scholars exploring the topic of unschooling and alternative learning, which espouses learner-centered democratic approaches to learning. JUAL is also a space to reveal the limitations of mainstream schooling.

The Vatican Comes Out in Support of Homeschooling

As homeschooling grows the pushback from educationists (professional educators who feel mandatory education is necessary for everyone’s salvation) is getting stronger. There is concern that children learning at home won’t find their place in our modern economy because their parents aren’t teaching them math properly, or that homeschoolers are creating an “I got mine, you get yours” tribal culture that undermines democracy, and so on. Of course, such handwringing by educationists neglects the vast numbers of homeschoolers who have been active for decades in our economy and democracy, as well as the large numbers of children in school who do not learn math, or families who send their children to exclusive private schools and colleges so they will be with “their peers,” and not the general public.

It is fascinating, therefore, to read an affirmation from the leaders of the Catholic Church for institutional and governmental respect for people to choose when, where, how, and from whom they will learn. A Statement by the Holy See Delegation of the United Nations (April 24, 2012) claims the

delegation has noticed a disconcerting trend, namely, the desire on the part of some to downplay the role of parents in the upbringing of their children, as if to suggest somehow that it is not the role of parents, but that of the State. In this regard it is important that the natural and thus essential relationship between parents and their children be affirmed and supported, not undermined.

 The Statement largely reaffirms Catholic Church teachings, so it is quite specific about defining the family as an “indissoluble union between man and woman,” supporting greater investments in education to enroll more children in school, and ensuring obedience: “Parents must cooperate closely with teachers, who, on their part, must collaborate with parents.” What’s the difference between “must cooperate closely” and “must collaborate?” There seems to be an unequal footing that keeps teachers firmly in the driver’s seat in this formulation, but we’ll only know how this works out in practice over time.

However, for Catholics and non-Catholics, this section caught my attention not just because of the questions it begs, but also because of its support for homeschooling:

As affirmed in international law, States are called to have respect for the freedom of parents to choose for their children schools, other than those established by the public authorities, to ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions which equally applies to their right to make judgments on moral issues regarding their children (cf., e.g., UDHR, Article 26, 3, ICESCR, Article 13, 3, and the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, Article 12, 4). There are about 250,000 Catholic schools around the world. The Catholic school assists parents who have the right and duty to choose schools inclusive of homeschooling, and they must possess the freedom to do so, which in turn, must be respected and facilitated by the State. Parents must cooperate closely with teachers, who, on their part, must collaborate with parents.

By linking homeschools to private schools, the Vatican affirms the importance of choice in education as being more than just choosing how to learn to read, write, and calculate. The Vatican ends this statement with a paragraph that I find echoes the unschooling ethos in particular, namely that the learner should be at the center of all “development concerns” (“development,” as Illich so often notes, is an incredibly loaded term, but I’ll save that for another day) and that young people should be recognized for their contributions to society.

An authentic rights based approach to development places the human person, bearing within him or her infinite and divine inspirations, at the center of all development concerns, and thus respects the nature of the family, the role of parents, including their religious and ethical values and cultural backgrounds, and affirms the contribution that young people can and do make to their community and society (cf., ICPD Programme of Action, Chapter II). The more the countries recognize this, the more they will be able to put into place policies and programmes that advance the overall wellbeing of all persons.

It is good for homeschooling to have a powerful, international ally that supports diverse religious, ethical, and cultural backgrounds as a model to strengthen society, rather than the economy-driven, one-size-fits-all (unless you can afford a better one), educationist model. Homeschooling, as this Statement shows, creates mixed alliances that we should build and nurture as best we can, because the juggernaut of mandatory continuing education as a requirement for participating in society shows no signs of stopping anywhere in the world.

To read the Statement in its entirety, click on this link.

The Benefits of Homeschooling Teenagers

Ken Danford, one of the founders of North Star: Self-Directed Learning for Teens, has written an excellent essay for Huffington Post about taking teens off the college production line and focusing on their passions and interests as a way to nurture self-awareness, expertise, and confidence. He ends his essay with this observation:

When teens experience schooling as more stressful than helpful, we can do better than simply telling them, "Make the best of it until you graduate." We can offer information and support for a different way to grow up. Instead of forcing teens to remain in the "race" to win college admissions, scholarships, and a place for oneself in the world, we might provide teens with a coherent perspective that encourages them to set their own pace toward these same goals. Many families are already doing so. What we need now is a social commitment to make this option widely available.