We Have Come Full Circle

By Mia Anderson

I recently had a fascinating conversation with Mary May, a longtime Poulsbo homeschooler, on the evolution of homeschooling and alternative education in this state. In an interesting way, homeschooling has come full circle. We are again, at the beginning.

Those homeschoolers who came first educated their children at home, and underground, a fringe element by just about every definition of the word. They were educational extremists with some pretty extreme ideas.

Those ideas included such things as: children are natural learners; parents want, and can provide, what's best for their children; and that education is a much broader concept than a list of academic subjects. Those early homeschoolers absolutely knew that parents don't need educational "experts" to tell them how to teach, or government schools to dictate and evaluate what they teach.

Time moves on and homeschooling becomes legal and more commonplace, no longer an extreme idea, just a little strange. Then the studies start to appear. Homeschoolers test better than average on standardized tests. Homeschoolers are well adjusted and well socialized. Most surprising of all, homeschoolers can get into college! Homeschooling is a proven success, and, becomes a real educational alternative.

Concurrently, public education is in trouble. The system created for a burgeoning industrial society needing factory worker is not working for an entrepreneurial, computerized society needing life long learners who are creative thinkers and problem solvers. The system is failing, and the expert's answer to that failure is testing and program standardization. Meanwhile, the children within the system are being crushed first by the system failure, and then by the corrective response.

Concerned parents want options for their children, and homeschooling is one of those options. But, and here's the important part, many of these parents are moving away from a school that is failing their child, not necessarily away from a system or an educational philosophy. These parents are looking for a solution to a personal crisis. They are not necessarily embracing those independent values and beliefs of the early homeschooling community. They may not be interested in going it alone. They may believe in the "educational expert" and support the goals and objectives of public education.

So an increasing number of dissatisfied families are leaving public education to homeschool, taking their educational funding with them. Well, education is a business. In business, if a competitor is successful, you do your best to copy its product, and give that product a recognizable name. So in response to the increased popularity of homeschooling, the public system creates alternative education programs with high levels of parent involvement and often call them homeschooling programs, deceptive, but not illegal. Thus alternative education, or parent partnered, "homeschooling" programs are born.

And, for some it's a good fit. Parents who want to have more involvement with and influence over their child's education, but don't necessarily want to leave the values, security and support of the public system have the perfect program. And, that's good.

But, this new group of alternative education parents also wants to broaden the label "homeschoolers" to include them. They don't understand the loud objection from traditional homeschoolers. Do you know what they call the traditional homeschoolers who want to keep the meaning of the word clear and concise? What they call those homeschoolers who want homeschooling to mean education independent of the public system, who maintain that homeschooling parents don't need educational "experts" to tell them how to teach, or government schools to dictate and evaluate what they teach? They call them extremists.

Here we are, again.

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