Homeschool is Booming, New Study Shows

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A report issued this week by The Pioneer Institute, a Boston-based public policy think tank, sheds light on the rapid growth and diversity of the U.S. homeschooling population.

Co-authored by William Heuer and William Donovan, the comprehensive white paper explains that despite a paucity of support from government officials – and outright opposition by the nation’s largest teachers’ union – homeschooling has gained in both popularity and reach over the past several decades.

Alt Ed

According to the latest 2012 National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) data, there are over 1.8 million homeschoolers nationwide, representing 3.4 percent of the overall US K-12 school-age population. More recent data place the number of homeschoolers at well over 2 million children, placing it on par with the number of children currently enrolled in US public charter schools.

The report highlights that “there is no typical homeschooler or homeschooling family,” as the “one size fits all” prototype of conventional public schools does not apply to homeschooling families who tailor their educational approach to the needs and values of their family and their children. The report states:

Homeschooling is a viable alternative for the many students and their families who wish to opt out of traditional public schools. Regardless of a family’s rationale for homeschooling, the universal tenet of homeschoolers is the importance of parental choice and the conviction that parents are best equipped to make the educational decisions that affect their children.”

In tracing the history of 19th century compulsory schooling laws to the modern education choice movement, the report reminds us that Horace Mann, the proclaimed “father of American public education” who passed the nation’s first compulsory schooling statute in Massachusetts in 1852, homeschooled his own three children with no intention of sending them to the common schools he mandated for others.

The report says about Mann:

This hypocrisy of maintaining parental choice for himself while advocating a system of public education for others seems eerily similar to the mindset that is so common today: Many people of means who can choose to live in districts with better schools or opt for private schools resist giving educational choices to those less fortunate.”

Demographics and Costs

As the fastest-growing alternative educational option, increasing at a rate of 3 percent per year, homeschooling continues its ascent into the mainstream with families choosing to homeschool for a variety of reasons, from a clear lifestyle choice to a lack of quality alternative education options.

Despite their disparate philosophies on how and why they homeschool,” the report finds that homeschooling families “have been united in their belief that parental choice in deciding to homeschool and the manner in which their children are educated is an intrinsic right, one which should not be usurped by the state…They also hold to the belief that the overall environment of traditional public school systems is not conducive to the educational goals they have for their offspring.

Legal in all 50 states since 1993, homeschooling represents a diverse cross-section of the American population. Demographically, Hispanics now comprise 15 percent of the homeschooling population, and black homeschooling families represent 8 percent – a number the report cites as doubling in the 2007-2011 timeframe.

Highlighting NCES data, the report reveals that 16 percent of homeschooling parents are educating a child with a physical or mental health issue, and more than 15 percent have a child with “other special needs.”

Homeschooling parents assume all educational costs for their children, but homeschooling vouchers and tax credits are hotly contested within the homeschooling community, with many parents and advocates unwilling to accept the additional regulatory oversight that would likely come with public funding.

Still, homeschoolers pay taxes for schools they don’t use and reduce overall taxpayer burden:

Just like private and parochial school students (but unlike charter school students), homeschoolers not only bear the brunt of their own educational costs but also pay the same taxes to fund their district schools which they generally do not utilize to any large degree. Using the latest NCES figures reflecting the national average expenditure of $11,011 per public school student, the two million homeschoolers essentially reduce public education costs by some $22 billion per year.”

National Impact

The geographic, demographic, and ideological diversity of the expanding homeschooling population is leading to many pathways of educational and pedagogical innovation:

As learning, rather than schooling, becomes more the norm there may be much that traditional schools can learn from homeschoolers. Some characteristics that are inherent in homeschooling, such as parental involvement, flexible scheduling, individualized learning plans, and looping have long been essential elements in homeschooling families. Homeschoolers have essentially paved the way in self-directed learning, multi-age grouping, project-based learning, adapting to individual learning styles, and content mastery vs. seat-time. They continue to expand their use of alternative assessments, anywhere-anytime learning, and the use of apprenticeships.”

For homeschooling families, education choice starts at home; but as incubators of new methods and approaches to teaching and learning, their choice can have a widespread, positive impact on education innovation nationwide.

Reprinted from Intellectual Takeout.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

The Fidget Toy Craze: What’s Really Driving It

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You’ve likely seen the headlines lately regarding the latest fad frenzy: fidget toys. These toys, most popularly fidget spinners and fidget cubes, are simple gadgets that have taken over schools and classrooms across the country, to the point that they are now being banned by many of them.

Initially touted as a concentration tool for children with attention issues, these hand-held fidget toys are apparently becoming distracting for teachers and disruptive to classrooms. In a recent Working Mother article, 6th grade teacher, Cristina Bolusi Zawacki, writes:

“Fidget spinners: the very phrase makes me cringe. Its claim to fame is that it allows one to channel their excess energy to help maintain focus. The only thing my students seem to focus on, however, is the spinner, itself, and not their work. It’s like a friggin’ siren song. The allure of someone else’s spinner spinning is too much to bear.”

The teacher goes on to ask:

“How is it that my 2-year-old is able to sit long enough to fill the pages of an entire coloring book, yet adolescent students cannot function without these helicopters of distraction whirling feverishly on their fingertips? Mind you, these are the same kids who can sit and text for hours, spend incalculable amounts of time on social media, and take enough selfies in one sitting to carpet The Cloisters.”

Perhaps the problem is not the fidget toys but the lack of autonomy, self-direction, and relevance characteristic of the mass schooling model that gives rise to the fidget toy craze. Boston College psychology professor and author of Free To Learn, Peter Gray, writes that all children love to learn and eagerly explore their world with enthusiasm and great dedication–until they go to school.

In his research on unschoolers and others who have rejected mass schooling for alternative forms of education, Dr. Gray discovered that human curiosity and commitment to learning endure beyond early childhood. He writes: “This amazing drive and capacity to learn does not turn itself off when children turn 5 or 6. We turn it off with our coercive system of schooling. The biggest, most enduring lesson of our system of schooling is that learning is work, to be avoided when possible.”

Dr. Gray’s observation is not new. Decades ago, the well-known educator and homeschooling advocate, John Holt, wrote in his best-selling book, How Children Learn: “We like to say that we send children to school to teach them to think. What we do, all too often, is to teach them to think badly, to give up a natural and powerful way of thinking in favor of a method that does not work for them and that we rarely use ourselves. Worse than that, we convince most of them that, at least in a school setting, or any situation where words or symbols or abstract thought are concerned, they can’t think at all.”

Through the process of mass schooling, childhood curiosity and exuberance for learning are steadily replaced by a system of social control that teaches children that their interests and observations don’t matter. Is it any wonder that within this educational framework young people would gravitate toward behaviors, like fidget spinning, that grant them some semblance of freedom and control in the classroom?

For adolescents, like those with whom the teacher quoted above interacts, fidget toys likely provide much-needed relief from the tedium and artificiality of mass schooling. Largely cut-off from the authentic adult world in which they are meant to come of age, adolescents immerse themselves in behaviors that grant them some degree of control and autonomy that are otherwise absent from their daily lives.

Playing video games in which they are in charge, participating in social media, and texting friends are all examples of adolescents seeking freedom, engagement, and usefulness within a culture that does not provide many authentic opportunities to do so.

In their book, Escaping the Endless Adolescence, psychologists Joseph and Claudia Allen conclude: “There’s been a gradual, insidious change occurring in the very nature of adolescence over the past several generations–a change that has been stripping this period of meaningful work and of exposure to adult challenges and rewards, and undermining our teens’ development in the process.”

Rather than complaining about this latest fad, and banning these fidget toys from schools across the country, we should look more closely at what the toys reveal: children and adolescents who are bored with and frustrated by the irrelevance of mass schooling and who crave education freedom and autonomy.

Education models, separate from mass schooling, already exist and are wildly successful at retaining childhood curiosity and promoting academic excellence. Perhaps these fidget toys can help turn our attention to those alternatives.

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This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

How Schooling Crushes Creativity

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In 2006, educator and author, Ken Robinson, gave a TED Talk called, “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” At over 45 million views, it remains the most viewed talk in TED’s history.

Robinson’s premise is simple: our current education system strips young people of their natural creativity and curiosity by shaping them into a one-dimensional academic mold. This mold may work for some of us, particularly, as he states, if we want to become university professors; but for many of us, our innate abilities and sprouting passions are at best ignored and at worst destroyed by modern schooling.

In his TED Talk, Robinson concludes:

I believe our only hope for the future is to adopt a new conception of human ecology, one in which we start to reconstitute our conception of the richness of human capacity. Our education system has mined our minds in the way that we strip-mine the earth: for a particular commodity. And for the future, it won’t serve us. We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we’re educating our children.”

Education by Force

Robinson echoes the concerns of many educators who believe that our current forced schooling model erodes children’s vibrant creativity and forces them to suppress their self-educative instincts. In his book, Free To Learn, Boston College psychology professor, Dr. Peter Gray, writes:

In the name of education, we have increasingly deprived children of the time and freedom they need to educate themselves through their own means… We have created a world in which children must suppress their natural instincts to take charge of their own education and, instead, mindlessly follow paths to nowhere laid out for them by adults. We have created a world that is literally driving many young people crazy and leaving many others unable to develop the confidence and skills required for adult responsibility.”

Compelling research shows that when children are allowed to learn naturally, without top-down instruction and coercion, the learning is deeper and much more creative than when children are passively taught. University of California at Berkeley professor, Alison Gopnik, finds in her studies with four-year-olds, as well as similar studies out of MIT, that self-directed learning – not forced instruction – elevates both learning outcomes and creativity.

Gopnik’s research involved young children learning how to manipulate a specific toy that would make certain sounds or exhibit certain features in certain sequences. She found that when children were directly taught how to use the toy they were able to replicate the results and quickly get to the “right answer” on their own by loosely mimicking what the teacher demonstrated.

But when the children were instead allowed to learn without direct instruction – to play with the toy, explore its features, and discover its capabilities on their own – they were able to get to the “right answer” in fewer steps than the taught children. The self-directed children also revealed other parts of the toy that could do interesting things – which the taught children did not discover.

Gopnik summarizes this research in her Slate article, stating:

Perhaps direct instruction can help children learn specific facts and skills, but what about curiosity and creativity – abilities that are even more important for learning in the long run? …While learning from a teacher may help children get to a specific answer more quickly, it also makes them less likely to discover new information about a problem and to create a new and unexpected solution.”

Learning Not Schooling

Conformity may have been the social and economic goal of the 19th century architects of the top-down, compulsory schooling model, but the 21st century economy demands creativity. We now need a learning model of education, rather than a schooling one.

As former Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, stated, “every two days we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization up until 2003.”

It is impossible to think that an archaic, industrial model of forced schooling can keep pace with a new, technologically-enabled, information-saturated economy that requires agility, inventiveness, collaboration, and continuous knowledge-sharing. A truly transformative 21st century education model will cultivate, rather than crush, human creativity.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Is School Driving Kids Literally Crazy?

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May can be a particularly dangerous month for schoolchildren. According to 13 years of recent data collected on mental health emergency room visits at Connecticut Children’s Mental Health Center in Hartford, May typically has the most.

Under Pressure

Boston College psychology professor, Peter Gray, looked more closely at this data and found that children’s mental health is directly related to school attendance. Dr. Gray found that children’s psychiatric ER visits drop precipitously in the summer and rise again once school begins. The May spike likely coincides with end-of-school academic and social pressures.

The suicide rate among 10 to 14 year olds has doubled since 2007.

Dr. Gray concludes: “The available evidence suggests quite strongly that school is bad for children’s mental health. Of course, it’s bad for their physical health, too; nature did not design children to be cooped up all day at a micromanaged, sedentary job.”

School-related anxiety and depression are real, serious issues that can lead to catastrophe, as evidenced by the rising suicide rate among children. In fact, according to the CDC, the suicide rate among 10 to 14 year olds has doubled since 2007. And for girls in that age group, the suicide rate has tripled over the past 15 years.

Beyond these extreme mental health crises, Dr. Gray’s research, and that of others, has shown that generalized anxiety and depression are skyrocketing in children. Dr. Gray maintains that much of this rise in anxiety and depression in children is due to lengthier, more restrictive schooling over the past several decades. He writes:

Children today spend more hours per day, days per year, and years of their life in school than ever before. More weight is given to tests and grades than ever. Outside of school, children spend more time than ever in settings in which they are directed, protected, catered to, ranked, judged, and rewarded by adults. In all of these settings adults are in control, not children.”

A national study of trends in adolescent depression rates found that teens reporting a major depressive episode (MDE) within the previous year skyrocketed from 8.7% in 2005 to 11.5% in 2014. The report, published last November in the journal Pediatrics, reveals: “The risk of depression sharply rises as children transition to adolescence.” The researchers cite stress and bullying as contributing factors.

More Stressed than Adults

A 2013 study by the American Psychological Association found that school is the main driver of teenage stress, and that teenagers are more stressed-out than adults. According to the study: “Teens report that their stress level during the school year far exceeds what they believe to be healthy (5.8 vs. 3.9 on a 10-point scale) and tops adults’ average reported stress levels (5.8 for teens vs. 5.1 for adults).”

“We don’t need to drive kids crazy to educate them.”

The report reveals that 83% of teens said that school was “a somewhat or significant source of stress,” with 27% of teens reporting “extreme stress” during the school year. Interestingly, that number declines to just 13% in summer.

Curious about mounting data showing correlations between school attendance and anxiety, Dr. Gray conducted his own informal, online survey of children who left conventional schooling for homeschooling or other forms of alternative education.

He found that, specifically for children previously labeled ADHD, often with related anxiety issues, “the children’s behavior, moods, and learning generally improved when they stopped conventional schooling…” Results were particularly positive when children engaged in self-directed education, like unschooling, where they had more freedom and control of their own learning.

An advocate of autodidacticism, and founder of the Alliance for Self-Directed Education, Dr. Gray urges parents and educators to think critically about the potential negative impacts of coercive schooling on children’s health and well-being. He asserts: “We don’t need to drive kids crazy to educate them. Given freedom and opportunity, without coercion, young people educate themselves.”

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

The Benefits of Delayed Schooling

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If you are one of those parents who decided to delay your child’s schooling, or forgo it altogether, you have plenty of company.

According to Education Week, in the years 2008-2010 fewer than half of U.S. children under age five attended preschool, and the number of stay-at-home-parents has been rising over the past decade. Additionally, there are more than 2 million homeschoolers in this country and those numbers are increasing dramatically. A 2013 report by Education News found that the number of children being homeschooled in the United States has increased by 75 percent over 14 years. The report noted that “the number of primary school kids whose parents choose to forgo traditional education is growing seven times faster than the number of kids enrolling in K-12 every year.”

Many of these parents who choose to delay or forgo schooling for their children may be influenced by mounting research showing that early schooling is not beneficial to most children, and in fact may be harmful to many. Most significantly, a 2008 longitudinal study by psychology professor, Dr. Howard Friedman, of the University of California, Riverside, concluded that “early school entry was associated with less educational attainment, worse midlife adjustment, and most importantly, increased mortality risk.” In an article in the United Kingdom’s Telegraph, Professor Friedman asserts:

“Most children under age six need lots of time to play, and to develop social skills, and to learn to control their impulses. An over-emphasis on formal classroom instruction– that is, studies instead of buddies, or staying in instead of playing out–can have serious effects that might not be apparent until years later.”

In fact, the UK seems to be taking Dr. Friedman’s research, and that of others, to heart in an attempt to halt the expansion of formal schooling to earlier ages. In 2013, a respected group of more than 130 researchers and practitioners in the early childhood education field argued that formal schooling should be delayed until age six or seven, citing the “profound damage” that early schooling is causing children.

Here in the U.S., a 2015 research paper by Stanford University professor, Thomas Dee, found that delaying school entry led to less hyperactivity and more attentiveness. Children who entered formal schooling closer to age 7 were able to exhibit more self-regulation and had better mental health markers than children who entered school at age 6 or earlier. Even more remarkable is that this effect was sustained until at least age 11.

But what about the poor and disadvantaged children who purportedly benefit from earlier, more formal schooling? Dr. Richard House, a senior lecturer at the University of Roehamptom in London, argues:

“There are of course some children from very deprived backgrounds who on balance would, and certainly do, gain a net benefit from such early interventions. But the evidence is now quite overwhelming that such an early introduction to institutional learning is not only quite unnecessary for the vast majority of children, but can actually cause major developmental harm, and at worst a shortened life-span.”

As efforts mount both domestically and abroad to push academics and expand government schooling to increasingly younger children, it is important for parents to look at the data and implications of such early education policy. While the relatively small percentage of children from “very deprived backgrounds,” as Dr. House states, may benefit from more rigorous early schooling, the vast majority of young children are not helped–and may in fact be harmed–by accelerated institutional learning.

It is no wonder that more and more parents are recognizing the serious effects that play-deprivation and forced academics can have on young children. In growing numbers, these parents are choosing to delay formal schooling–or avoid it altogether–and cultivate a nurturing, play-filled, family-centered childhood in their homes and throughout their communities.

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[Image Credit: U.S. Air Force photo/Airman 1st Class Joseph A. Pagán Jr.)

This post The Benefits of Delayed Schooling was originally published on Intellectual Takeout by Kerry McDonald.

Ruled By Playground Rules

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Playground rules.

This has been a topic of discussion the past few days at our house. It started when I watched this video about a “no rules” playground in New Zealand. Then one of my daughter’s schooled friends was finding so much joy doing things on our neighborhood playground that wouldn’t be allowed at school, we decided to take a closer look at what are the typical playground rules and do they have merit.

We complied a list of the playground rules my daughter remembered from her short time at public school kindergarten, the rules her friend said were currently being enforced at her school and other rules we pulled from school websites. I was surprised by how many rules were commonly enforced on school playgrounds—and how many appeared to be senseless.

We discussed why certain rules seemed unnecessary, appeared irrational, or could even be counterproductive.

Below is the list of playground rules we compiled:

Playground Rules List

  • NO “roaring”, “growling” or other “mean” animal noises when pretending
  • NO handstands or cartwheels.
  • NO swinging on your stomach
  • NO twisting on the swings
  • NO side-to-side motion on the swings
  • NO more than one person on a swing at a time.
  • NO using a swing for more than 30 swings.
  • NO standing on the swings.
  • NO twisting the seats on the swing.
  • NO help from others when swinging. (NO pushing from a friend!)
  • NO sitting on the swings facing the incorrect way.
  • NO using or even touching the handicap swing.
  • NO playing tag or other chasing games.
  • NO “negative comments” to peers.
  • NO climbing on walls, fences, railings, ledges, dirt hills, trees, or equipment (unless it is meant for climbing).
  • NO jumping off any bars or other equipment.
  • NO hanging upside-down on any bars.
  • NO sitting on the bars.
  • NO going the wrong way on the bars. One way only.
  • NO running.
  • NO talking while in line going in and out to the playground (have a bubble in your mouth).
  • NO forgetting your place in line.
  • NO waving to anyone while waiting in line to go in or out to the playground.
  • NO horseplay.
  • NO going down the slides any way except seated feet first.
  • NO walking up the slides.
  • NO playing in any areas without adult supervision.
  • NO going outside playground boundaries.
  • NO pens or pencils allowed on the playground.
  • NO throwing or picking up dirt, sand, woodchips, rocks, or sticks.
  • NO eating or drinking on the playground.
  • NO saving swings or seats for anyone.
  • NO acting like characters in video games.

What happens when these rules are broken? Perhaps a warning at first if they are lucky, but punishments can be imposed even without warnings. Punishments can be timeouts, loss of recess, lunchroom detention, referral to principal’s office, or even paddling (yes, 19 states still allow corporal punishment in school).

There is overwhelming evidence showing the importance of free play, but can recess with these type of rigid rules and strict punishments still be considered beneficial “free” play? It seems this activity could more appropriately be described as: “Brief exposure to, and extremely limited use of, outdoor equipment under strictly controlled supervision”.

When that school in New Zealand removed rules from recess what was the result? According to the principal: “Concentration is up, incidents of bullying are way down, confidence is sky high, and injuries—far fewer.” I must say that I’ve seen similar results after observing our daughter participate in regular free play opportunities at local parks and playgrounds, where rules are few to none. There aren’t adult rule enforcers on constant lookout for offenders. Kids are free from being ruled by rules. This is what true free play should look like.
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Further Reading: http://www.kidsplayspace.com.au/pla…