New at Reason

Tim Cavanaugh | April 11, 2005

A super homeschooling triple play from Greg Beato: Why aren't education philanthropists giving to homeschool organizations? What are the facts on America's legion of living room Miss June Crabtrees? And the long, strange trip of a homeschooling family and the local industry they developed.

Reason needs your support. Please donate today!

Try Reason's award-winning print edition today! Your first issue is FREE if you are not completely satisfied.

← Hand Jive | Main | New at Reason →

See all 14 comments | Leave a comment

Editor's Note: We invite comments and request that they be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of Reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment or disable your ability to comment for any reason at any time.

|4.11.05 @ 8:17PM|#

Beato answers the question...philanthropic giving goes to public schools because, for better or (probably)worse, that's where the kids are.

Three cheers though for the homeschoolers--their kids will be the winners....

|4.11.05 @ 8:40PM|#

Philanthropic organizations give to public schools because the public schools are much more sophisticated about asking for it and grantmakers get a bigger payoff for their money spent in terms of demonstrating how many children they've assited.

|4.12.05 @ 12:04AM|#

great articles, thank you.

|4.12.05 @ 10:07AM|#

I was homeschooled through elementary and middle school. Glad to see the stereotypes of the crazed, antisocial homeschooler are dying!

|4.12.05 @ 11:03AM|#

Here is a question: are the SATs of the homeschooled kids higher than those of the districts that they live in? My experience with homeschoolers are that they primarily come from school districts that are not the "failed" ones that everyone likes to point out. (I don't know the answer; I am just curious.)

M1EK|4.12.05 @ 12:09PM|#

If the stereotypes are dying, it's not a good thing, because every homeschooler I've met is a frigging basket-case.

|4.12.05 @ 12:20PM|#

M1EK,
I'm curious, how many homeschooled folks have you met, and how exactly are they basket cases?

|4.12.05 @ 1:01PM|#

I've taught writing, literature, and calculus to homeschooled kids. Any generalizations about homeschooling can easily be shredded by counterexamples. It works for some kids and some families, and it's a sick joke as perpetrated by others.

|4.12.05 @ 1:35PM|#

I'm fairly neutral on the idea of homeschooling. But if public opinion of homeschooling is getting better it's sure not because of help from the mainstream media.

About a year ago I saw the movie "Mean Girls" (which, all in all, I actually enjoyed.). It's written by Tina Fey, one of those SNL alumus, 'adapted' from a nonfiction work by a public educator. Safe to say that Lorne Michaels doesn't hire too many Red State types. Anyway, in the movie the premise is that Lindsay Lohan's character has just transfered into a high school in some affluent SoCal area and has never attended public school previously. Within the first ten minutes of the film her voiceover explains that this was because she was "homeschooled". Immediate cut to:

A group of scrawny hick boys in faded bib overalls sitting in some dusty midwest hellhole. They look like they're straight out of the Grapes of Wrath. In a droning zombified monotone the eldest boy recites something like "... and on the seventh day, God created the Remington bolt-action rifle, with which to shoot homo-SEX-uals...."

Cut back to the beautiful Lohan, who explains that HER homeschooling was because her parents are biologists who raised her in Africa while studying endangered animals.

I was so impressed by this little bit. In a tiny bit of film the meme was made perfectly clear: HOMESCHOOLING = BAD. All homeschoolers are ignorant, violent, homophobic religious nuts... UNLESS the homeschooling is done by liberal educated multicultural environmentalist professionals!

Yup.

|4.12.05 @ 2:20PM|#

Serafina - those kids were not homeschooled, those kids were educated by private tutors. Or, perhaps you were in one of those situations where a small group of "homeschoolers" hired teachers to give lessons to their children. Movie stars and royalty do this all the time.

Unless you mean that you taught these things to homeschooled students as some point in their life when they needed to catch up fast. I support homeschooling because, from what I can see, it pays better than post-doc work and I'm tired of buying more than my share of rounds just because there are jobs in my field.

Phil - Last time I looked at a major test study - it was another case in which many of the homeschool students tests had been proctored by the homeschooling parents. You can see why did didn't read the whole thing. That was nearly a year ago - perhaps things have changed.

|4.12.05 @ 2:30PM|#

"I was so impressed by this little bit. In a tiny bit of film the meme was made perfectly clear: HOMESCHOOLING = BAD. All homeschoolers are ignorant, violent, homophobic religious nuts... UNLESS the homeschooling is done by liberal educated multicultural environmentalist professionals!"

Gee, just another lurker, my impression after seeing this same bit was only the clueless would think homeschooling was uncool. The IVHRN's were presented to poke fun at common prejudices against homeschoolers. I was glad to see homeschooling get a boost here.

|4.12.05 @ 2:57PM|#

The kids I taught and their parents would certainly identify themselves as homeschooled. They never attended public or private schools and most of their instruction was arranged by their parents, but as often happens, when kids get older, their parents don't personally have all the academic background needed to teach them particular subjects.

I'd make a fabulous private tutor to celebrities and royalty, I must modestly admit, but I have no inroads there. Only in the middle-class midwest. They couldn't pay me enough to make it a worthwhile regular gig, but it was an interesting experience.

|4.12.05 @ 4:58PM|#

"...my impression after seeing this same bit was only the clueless would think homeschooling was uncool. The IVHRN's were presented to poke fun at common prejudices against homeschoolers."

Hmm... well Scarlett, your take on it had not even occurred to me. You must be a sincerely positive thinker. Possible I suppose-- "Hey! Here we're making these blatant denigrating stereotypes about people that choose to do something that would seem to be contrary to our ideological agenda, but we're JUST FUNNIN' Y'ALL after all...."

This didn't strike me as supportive of homeschooling. It struck me as 'if someone was to choose to homeschool their kid, unless it was for some rare, unavoidable, politically correct reason, they must be doing it to pass on hateful values to their offspring'. Almost a kind of child abuse. And I felt the meme was conveyed very concisely and effectively.

Of course, this may show some of my filters at work. How do you think this would play with the target audience of teenage girls?

I don't have any kids, and again, don't have a particular dog in this fight. I was just impressed by how it was done.

|4.12.05 @ 5:06PM|#

If the stereotypes are dying, it's not a good thing, because every homeschooler I've met is a frigging basket-case.

Okay, so how many have you met?