Kunzman on Regulating Homeschooling

This post reviews Robert Kunzman, “Understanding Homeschooling: A Better Approach to Regulation” in Theory and Research in Education 7, no. 3 (November 2009): 311-330

Kunzman, well known on this blog as the author of the excellent study Write These Laws on Your Children: Inside the World of Conservative Christian Homeschooling, here engages explicitly the aspect of his work that has caused the most controversy.  Kunzman’s book is an in-depth profile of several Christian homeschooling families.  He only briefly mentions government regulation in it, but that small part of the book has been the near exclusive focus of homeschoolers, many of whom now see him as just another critical academic who wants to take away their freedoms.  In this article Kunzman offers a more complete presentation of his position on homeschool regulation.  Here’s what he says: 

Winstanley on Homeschooling Gifted Children

This post reviews Carrie Winstanley, “Too Cool for School? Gifted Children and Homeschooling” in Theory and Research in Education 7, no. 3 (November 2009): 347-362

Winstanley, Principal Lecturer in Education at Roehampton University in London,  here argues that gifted children form a distinct group of homeschoolers that defy classification schemes usually employed by scholars to describe the homeschooling movement. 

Merry and Howell on How Family Intimacy is a Good Argument for Homeschooling

This post is the first in a series reviewing the recent articles published in the November 2009 issue of Theory and Research in Education.  The article under review is Michael S. Merry and Charles Howell, “Can Intimacy Justify Home Education?”

Merry, professor of philosophy of education at the University of Amsterdam and author of an important recent book on Islamic schooling, and Charles Howell, a philosopher of education at Northern Illinois University who has published many articles on homeschooling (most of them in Brian Ray’s Home School Researcher), here team up for a vigorous argument for intimacy as a guiding value in homeschooling that can justify the practice.  Here’s the argument in a nutshell: 

Special Homeschool Issue of THEORY AND RESEARCH IN EDUCATION

It’s always a welcome development when a notable journal decides to devote an entire issue to homeschooling.  This has been done only a very few times.  Back in 2000 the prestigious Peabody Journal of Education devoted Volume 75, Issue 1/2 to homeschooling,

Kunzman on HOMESCHOOL: AN AMERICAN HISTORY

The cerebral evangelical bimonthly Books and Culture just published a nice review of my book by Rob Kunzman.  You can read it here.

Theobald on Returning Rural Values to Education

This post reviews Paul Theobald, Education Now: How Rethinking America’s Past Can Change Its Future (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2009).  [An article that summarizes many of the points made in the book is available here]

Theobald, Woods-Beals Chair of Urban and Rural Education at Buffalo State College and author of two other books on rural education and community revival, here presents a wide-ranging revisionist account of the economic, political, and educational history of Europe and the United States in an effort to suggest reforms that begin in schools and ultimately will transform the U.S. into a more populist and economically stable place.  In this review I’ll summarize his main argument and then explain what it means for homeschooling. 

Marzluf on Homeschoolers in College Writing Courses

This post reviews Philip Marzluf, “Writing Home-Schooled Students into the Academy” in Composition Studies 37, no. 1 (Spring 2009): 49-66

Marzluf, professor and director of the writing program at Kansas State University, here pens a thoughtful reflection on the challenges that arise in composition courses when conservative Christian homeschoolers enroll in them. 

Fields-Smith and Williams on Why Black Parents Homeschool

This post reviews Cheryl Fields-Smith and Meca Williams, “Motivations, Sacrifices, and Challenges: Black Parents’ Decisions to Home School” in Urban Review 41 (2009): 369-389

Fields-Smith, a professor at the University of Georgia, and Williams, at Georgia Southern, here offer an important contribution to the literature on parental motivation for homeschooling.  This article is the first to look carefully at African American homeschooling parents to determine their motivations. 

Chris Klicka, Rest in Peace

Yesterday homeschooling activist lawyer Chris Klicka died after a 15 year battle with multiple sclerosis.  Klicka was hired by the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) in 1985 before it had really gotten off of the ground, and he helped grow it into the powerhouse advocacy organization that it is today.  In my book on homeschooling history Klicka gets extensive treatment because of his central role at HSLDA.

Klicka also wrote one of the first histories of the homeschooling movement, Home School Heroes: The Struggle & Triumph of Home Schooling in America.  Though it has its flaws, it contains some great first-person accounts of pivotal moments in the legal history of homeschooling and some revealing insider information about HSLDA.

As you can see from the in memoriam page posted by HSLDA, Klicka was a pious Christian and a devoted family man.  He leaves behind his wife Tracy (read her journal describing Chris’ last days here) and their seven children, all of whom were homeschooled.  Though many people with whom I spoke in the course of my research do not share all of Klicka’s political or theological opinions, he was universally regarded as a generous and compassionate human being.

Klicka’s death is a real loss for the movement and a milestone in the history of homeschooling.  I tend to interpret the history of the homeschooling movement thus far as having had three phases.  Phase one was the era of Holt and the Moores.  Phase three is the recent trend toward a more mainstream and hybridized movement.  It would not be an overstatement to call phase two, when HSLDA was the dominant force in American homeschooling, the era of Chris Klicka.

Olsen on the Constitutionality of Homeschooling

This post reviews Chad Olsen, “Constitutionality of Home Education: How the Supreme Court and American History Endorse Parental Choice” in Brigham Young University Education and Law Journal 2 (2009): 399-423

Olsen, a law student at BYU’s J. Reuben Clark Law School, here provides a fascinatingly detailed, though flawed, analysis of the famous In re Rachel L. case, the 2008 California Court of Appeals decision that unleashed a national outcry by finding that California law did not permit homeschooling.