http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/01/29/why-urban-educated-parents-are-turning-to-diy-education.html
I find this incredibly encouraging. Once they take the step of homeschooling their little one, several things are likely to happen. First, they will have taken a massive step towards Reaction. Homeschooling a child is a pretty explicit acknowledgment that there are limits to one's submission to the Cathedral. The second thing is that homeschool families tend to become larger. I suspect part of this is that the marginal cost of additional children once you've gone ahead and restructured your family life and economics for homeschooling is pretty small. This in turn tends to drag the family further towards Reaction. Approaching Reaction from what Americans deem the Right is not the only way to get there, you can also approach from what we call the Left, especially the 'Old Left'.
As the fraction of non-public school children increases, support for the accursed Cathedral public school system dwindles. We already see this reduction in public support as the various states have been squeezing the teacher unions to make their budgets balance. Bringing a bunch of SWPLs into the orbit only accelerates this positive feedback process.
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6 comments:
Interesting that the article just touches on the major question that faces homeschooling parents: after you discover that educating children to the "official" standard only takes 1-2 hours a day, what do you have them do for the rest of the time?
The "activities" discussed in the article are popular for that reason. Of course, it is possible to just accelerate their education massively, but we were uncomfortable with the idea of doing that with our boys, and so they are no more than 2 years ahead of their schooled age-group.
Most of the homeschool parents I know let their kid's natural bent decide what else they get supplemented with after the obligatory couple of hours a day to keep pace with the public school benchmarks. Some go pretty hardcore into one specialty or another. Nearly all finish 'high school' by 16 or earlier.
Jehu,
I've been in the (mostly) far left corner of the homeschooling endeavor for most of the last 10 years. My impression is that there's been a strong presence of leftist homeschoolers for a while, even though the rightists (HSLDA, etc.) are much better organized.
Aretae,
Yes, the left presence has always been there, but it's been mostly a far left presence. The SWPLs represent a less fringe left.
I can say I (with wife) are personally responsible for a substantial number of these SWPL conversions. 2+ in at least 3 states.
Turns out the organic food people are playing in this place as well.
So is this slow education, by analogy to slow food?
Slow education: faster than whatever the schools are doing.
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