For Professors' Children, the Case for Home Schooling

[MountainLaurel]

A supportive article in this week's Chronicle of Higher Education. (Note: Since CHE is subscription based, I'm not sure whether everyone will be able to access it. But anyone interested can PM me, and I'll e-mail a copy.)

If you want to bring a conversation to a dead stop on the academic cash-bar circuit, just mention casually that you are home schooling your children. You might as well bite the head off a live chicken. Most professors are likely to be appalled, and those who are not will keep their mouths shut.

Still, all indications are that the number of families who home school is growing rapidly — somewhere between 5 percent and 15 percent per year, according to the U.S. Department of Educationand the number of home-schooled children now hovers somewhere between one and two million. A recent Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll indicates that 41 percent of families had a positive view of home schooling in 2001, as opposed to only 16 percent who did in 1985. By almost every measurable outcome, home schoolers in general outperform their public-educated peers, and many colleges are beginning to rework their admissions procedures to accommodate the growing numbers of home-schooled applicants.

snip

I'm an English professor, and my spouse used to work in academic administration. We have three daughters, ages 6, 4, and 2. And we have been home schooling them for two years now. If all goes well, we plan to continue teaching them at home at least until they are old enough for high school.

snip

Teaching our daughters to read and write, beginning around the age of 4, seemed like a natural thing for us to do. Along with potty training, it was just part of the ordinary business of being a parent. Being avid readers ourselves, we have about 4,000 books in our house, which now includes a children's library. I suppose it was inevitable that we would spend a lot of time reading to our children, and they would have an early desire to learn to read for themselves and for each other.

We live surrounded by woods and farmland, so our daughters are constantly asking us to look up plants and insects in the Audubon field guides. We have a reasonably well-supplied children's science lab and art studio. And, in the course of routine travel and shopping, it's easy to cultivate our daughters' curiosity about the world by visiting museums, zoos, libraries, schools, factories, and farms. These are things that most parents do, though they may not regard their activities as part of some kind of curriculum.

http://chronicle.com/weekly/v52/i17/17b01401.htm

[fight4my3sons]

1. Thank you!

Just wanted to thank you again for sending me a copy of the article. My husband and I really enjoyed it! :)

[funflower]

2. I've known several college professors who have homeschooled one or

more of their children for at least part of the child's K-12 education. Professors are usually very committed to their child's education and tend to be on the unconventional side, so I don't find it particularly surprising.

[Dora]

3. My mom was an elementary teacher, now a prof of elem ed...

She has said that if she was having children today in the middle of our government's attack on public schools, she would homeschool.