In the years since then our family has seen many, many films.  In today’s post I’d like to share with you the very best of what we’ve seen in hopes that others looking for intelligent movies for children will benefit.

I should mention that all of these films were available to us thanks to Netflix, which is not paying me to say that!  I have no idea how I would have ever found out about many of these movies, much less been able to rent them, without it.

ANIMATION

1. There are many great animated films that most American children have never seen.  My absolute favorites are the works of the eminent Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki.  His entire oeuvre has been expertly Englished by many well-known American actors, so the movies are very accessible to children (no subtitles).  If you’ve never tried a Miyazaki film I’d suggest beginning with Spirited Away.  It’s visually gorgeous, with a sweeping, beautiful story.  If your family likes Spirited Away you’ll probably like all of his other films as well.  My own personal favorites of his are My Neighbor Totoro, which many consider his masterpiece, and Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind.  As the father of three girls, I especially love how Miyazaki’s protagonists are nearly always girls or young women full of life, intelligence, and inner drive.

2. If you like Miyazaki, there are many other neat Japanese animations.  Most “anime” stuff I don’t much care for, as it is largely just a bunch of fighting and/or silliness.  But there are some truly excellent works out there.  These include the delightful and profound Princess Tutu, about a duck who becomes a girl who becomes a princess who helps a prince defeat the evil Raven.  Every episode references either a classic ballet or classic symphonic work.  I’d also recommend Whisper of the Heart, which has a time-travel theme, Millennium Actress, a genre-bending exploration of the history of a film studio and so much more, and My Neighbors the Yamadas, a quirky look at Japanese domesticity.

3. Another director we’ve enjoyed very much is the French animator Michael Ocelot.  His most well-known work is Kirikou and the Sorceress, a winsome story about a little African boy who rescues his village from an evil witch and in the process heals the witch of the wound that makes her evil.  Some American parents might not approve of this one since the African women and children are depicted in historically accurate attire (meaning there’s tasteful cartoon nakedness), but our kids loved it.  They also loved Azur and Asmar: The Princes’ Quest.  This one is set in the middle ages and does a fine job giving the flavor of the era’s Christian, Jewish, and Islamic cultures.  It’s also a  wonderful tale.

4. Some other great animations:  The Secret of Kells, a pure delight that sort of tells the story of the young (eventual St.) Brendan and his quest to complete the famous Book of Kells.  That may sound dull, but trust me, it’s great.  Sita Sings the Blues is another really interesting and creative animation that both tells some of the stories of the Hindi epic The Ramayana and showcases director Nina Paley’s own quirky humor and heartbreak.  A Town Called Panic is unlike anything you’ve ever seen.  Of the Pixar films, our favorites are WALL-E and The Incredibles.  Finally, we loved Coraline, though young kids might find it a bit too scary, and The Triplets of Belleville, though some might find it too weird.

COSTUME DRAMAS

1. Of course the 1995 version of Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle is a family favorite.  I think it’s still the best of the many Jane Austen adaptations.  That same year’s Sense and Sensibility with Emma Thompson is also very good.

2. Of the many Shakespeare adaptations, our family favorites include Much ado about Nothing, which is in my view Kenneth Branagh’s best picture, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (the 1999 one with Christian Bale and Calista Flockhart).  My kids for some reason also really like the Branagh version of Love’s Labour’s Lost, though most critics hated it.  It, by the way, is set in World War II-era France and includes many standard songs from that era that I’m glad my kids now know.

3. There are a number of French period pieces that we have loved even though you do have to read the subtitles.  The Count of Monte Cristo, starring Gerard Depardieu is lavish and engrossing.  It’s also a pretty faithful re-telling of the novel until the very end.  Even more powerful is the flawless, beautiful, and finally tragic duo of films Jean de Florette and its sequel Manon of the Spring.  Finally there’s the delightful slice of country provincial life chronicled in another two-film work, My Father’s Glory and its sequel My Mother’s Castle.

4. Here are several other period dramas we’ve enjoyed as a family:  Babette’s Feast, the best movie about making a meal you’ll ever see; Driving Miss Daisy, set in the early 1960s American South; The Secret of Roan Inish, a charming mix of fairy tale and historical realism set in Ireland; Princess Caraboo, a little-known but wonderful tale of a mysterious stranger who may or may not be a foreign princess; The Englishman who Went Up a Hill, a heart-warming and family friendly Hugh Grant film; Foyle’s War, a terrific mystery series set in Great Britain during World War II (warning: the actual crimes are sometimes shown in a more graphic manner than I wish they were); Ballet Shoes, a pleasing British film starring Emma Watson about three orphan girls and their dreams; The Railway Children, a pleasant adaptation of E. Nesbit’s classic tale; The Young Victoria, another great British costume drama;  Dean Spanley, about a man who thinks he was a dog in a previous life; Catch Me if You Can, a great Spielberg movie about an American kid/forger in the 1960s running from the FBI; Enchanted April, about several British women vacationing in Italy; My Family and Other Animals, about a British family vacationing in Greece; Jeeves and Wooster (seasons 1-3), hilarious adaptations of P. G. Wodehouse’s classic stories; The Importance of Being Earnest (2002), a funny adaptation of the Oscar Wilde play; and Bleak House, an amazing 2005 adaptation of Dickens’ classic.

OLD HOLLYWOOD

I’ve shown our kids very many old hollywood films.  Here I’ll just list the best ones, meaning by that the ones that I thought were quality pieces of work and that the kids liked.  Viewing them in order gives a great history of the development of film technology and helps children understand the origin of so many of the standard plot lines that still make up most of the movies Hollywood produces.  You’ll notice the list is Hitchcock-heavy.  Our kids really liked Hitchcock.

The General (1926)

City Lights (1931)

Duck Soup (1933)

The Lady Vanishes (1938)

His Girl Friday (1940)

The Man Who Came to Dinner (1941)

Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

National Velvet (1944)

How to Marry a Millionaire (1953)

Dial M for Murder (1954)

Rear Window (1954)

Witness for the Prosecution (1957)

North by Northwest (1959)

Pollyanna (1960)

The Beatles: Help! (1965)

How to Steal a Million (1966)

The Taming of the Shrew (1967)

THE REST

There are a lot of other wonderful films/shows that don’t fit into the above categories but must be mentioned.  Here follows a grab-bag assortment of family-friendly excellence, again listed in chronological order:

The Princess Bride (1987)

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988)

Gulliver’s Travels (1996)

The Truman Show (1998)

Waking Ned Devine (1998)

Galaxy Quest (1999)

Shower (1999)

Arabian Nights (2000)

The Road Home (2000)

Millions (2004)

Napoleon Dynamite (2004)

March of the Penguins (2004)

The Tiger and the Snow (2005)

The Singing Revolution (2006)

Flawless (2007)

Vitus (2007)

Young@Heart (2007)

Hogfather (2007)

Pushing Daisies (2007-2008)

The No. 1. Ladies Detective Agency (2008)

The Color of Magic (2008)

Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog (2008)

Hachi: A Dog’s Tale (2009)

Alice in Wonderland (2010)

Babies (2010)

Temple Grandin (2010)

And that’s our list so far.  If anyone wants to add to it, feel free in the comments!

Koons, a recent graduate from Indiana University School of Law-Indianapolis, here explains the diversity of homeschooling law in various European countries and tries to figure out what the European Union’s legal paramaters would be for the practice.

He begins by laying out Amanda Petrie’s three categories of homeschooling law in Europe.  First are the countries that have always accommodated homeschooling though with some regulation.  England, Ireland, and France are examples.  Second are countries that historically have not allowed it but have in recent times become more accepting, though they have very heavy regulation.  Hungary is an example.  Finally are countries where homeschooling is generally not permitted.  Germany is the example given here.

Koons explains (as we have described several times) how German law doesn’t absolutely require that homeschooling is illegal, but it is effectively banned.  Koons gives several examples of homeschooling families being fined or having their children removed for doing it.

England, on the other hand, has a vibrant and growing homeschooling population, though there are forces in British government seeking to restrict the practice.  He describes how large percentages of British homeschoolers do so out of frustration with industrial schooling, and how, according to Paula Rothermel, only about 4% do so for religious reasons.

So how could a Europe-wide policy harmonize these disparate views of state vs. parent rights?  Koons explains how it all hangs on the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights, the treaty describing the fundamental freedoms and rights respected by the 47 member states of of the Council of Europe.

Article 2 of the Convention’s First Protocol reads,

No person shall be denied the right to education. In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions.

Several German parents have appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, arguing that Germany’s policy violates this statute.  In 2006 the Court ruled in Konrad and Others v. Germany against some of these families, citing a worry that homeschooling would lead to the creation of separatist, parallel societies.  Koons notes that in this decision the Court equated “education” with “schooling.”  He worries that this line of reasoning could threaten the freedoms homeschoolers currently enjoy in homeschooler-friendly countries.

On the other hand, there is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948.  It mandates compulsory education, but also specifies that “Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their child.”  This language has recently been interpreted to allow for homeschooling.

Well, ever since 1993 when the European Union was formed, all the countries that are part of it are supposed to abide by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Thus we have a fundamental conflict.  Furthermore, the European Union’s treaties guarantee that all European citizens have economic rights, rights which Koons claims have been violated in Germany when their homeschooling policies forced several German citizens to flee at great financial cost.

Koons concludes by recommending that the European Union would do well to be friendly to homeschooling.  He makes a case for the positive political and social benefits homeschooling would bring.  Here his text sounds many of the same notes Americans have been playing for decades, arguing that homeschooling does not equal bad socialization, and that there’s plenty of negative socialization going on in government schools.  His discussion here draws on much of the best normative literature to come out of Europe of late and as such would be a great primer for those interested in such issues.

What I just said of this last section applies to the entire article.  It’s a clear, expert summary of most of the key issues and the important literature pertaining to homeschooling law in Europe.  There are a couple of themes I wish Koons had discussed that didn’t show up, however:

First, does the growing Islamic presence in Europe play a role in any of this?  Could this be at least one reason why so many Europeans worry that homeschooling threatens social cohesion?  Second, as I understand it the European Union is currently under severe strain as countries with successful economies grow increasingly restless about propping up those whose economies are on the verge of collapse.  Koons writes as if the European Union’s future is certain and that Europe is moving inexorably toward social unity.  What if it’s not?  What if the EU doesn’t make it?

I sort of wonder if Germany or England, either of whose current positions on homeschooling would potentially be threatened were some EU law to supercede national laws, might see EU efforts to bring their national laws into conformity with the pan-European standard as just another excuse to secede from the EU rather than have their national sovereignty challenged in this domain?  Koons is arguing basically for a one-size-fits all approach.  He just wants that approach to include homeschooling.  I wonder if that will happen.  Not being a scholar of European affairs I have no business even talking about such things, but I sort of doubt we’re going to see an aggressive Europe-wide educational system for a long, long time.

Lois, about whom I’ve written before (in one of my most popular posts since it contains the provocative heading “deviant homeschooling moms“)  here gives us another fascinating look at some of the struggles homeschooling mothers go through.

This time she’s looking at how homeschooling mothers deal with the frustrations they feel due to the lack of free time they have.  She begins with Sharon Hays’ famous and powerful description of how the standards for being a “good mother” went up and up over the course of the 20th century, resulting in the “ideology of intensive mothering” that is so central to many homeschooling mothers’ self-image.

The amazing amounts of self-sacrifice that is required of these mothers leads to a severe lack of “me-time,” as these mothers often put it.  One way mothers often rationalize this self sacrifice is to think of it as just a season in their lives–eventually they’ll have free time again, just not now, a process Lois (following others) calls “sequencing.”  But sequencing alone doesn’t get rid of the emotions of guilt, resentment, and selfishness that haunt maternal psyches.

Lois’ study of homeschooling mothers (if you want the details of her sample and methodology, see my review of her earlier study) found that many of them had little to no discretionary time, which led them to experience “problematic emotions” they tried to manage through time-use strategies.  They’d try to get their husbands to help out, but the men were either uninterested or incompetent (though lots of them liked the idea of homeschooling).  Mothers tried to have their kids’ experiences be their own as well (say, taking piano lessons with the kids or using ethnic cooking as geography class), or redefined “me time” to include running errands like grocery shopping or even doing the dishes alone in the kitchen.   But these were deceptions that weren’t really satisfying to the women.  When such strategies inevitably failed, mothers had to manipulate their subjective experience of time in a process Lois calls “temporal emotion work.”

Temporal emotion work comes in two varieties.  When a mom feels resentful toward her husband and children because of the relentless self-sacrifice she’s making, and then feels guilty for having these feelings, she has to do something about it.  The first thing she does is the sequencing thing I mentioned above.  The mother says to herself, “this is just a time in my life…eventually I’ll have time again to pursue my own interests.”  Homeschooling mothers draw on “nostalgia” and “regret” to buttress sequencing, reminding themselves of the good times they had when their child was a baby and then imagining that they would likely eventually look back on these current days with the same nostalgia.  They told themselves that they would hate to look back and regret the time they failed to spend with their children while they were still children.  Sequencing in effect is a form of emotional banking–the mom is putting in the memories now, and she tells herself that she’ll be able to look back with fondness on these days in the future.  Homeschooling mothers love hearing stories from movement veterans whose children are now grown and who say over and over, “enjoy it while you can, for soon they’ll be gone.”  They also love recounting how working women often say that they wish in hindsight that they had spent more time with their children when they were young.

The second strategy mothers used to handle their negative emotions was “savoring.”  Whereas sequencing leads mothers to think ahead to the future, savoring calls them to to dwell deliberately, to meditate on the present in all of its richness and complexity, to “live in the moment” as we say.  Homeschooling mothers dwelt on the parts of the day they liked best, usually snuggling with the child on the couch in pajamas reading a good book or some other informal, unscripted interaction.  By savoring such positive experiences, the rest of the day became more manageable.

I always enjoy reading Lois’ work.  There’s an underlying subtext that is, I think, sort of critical of all of this self-sacrifice, but she never says anything like that.  She seems to truly love and understand these women with whom she spent so much time in her research, and she gets them right as she describes the complicated emotions with which they struggle.  But I sort of think she wishes women in general wouldn’t be so masochistic.  Maybe I’m just reading that into her work, I don’t know.  Regardless, she’s one of the only researchers studying homeschooling who looks at the impact of the practice on the adults who do it, and she does it with thoughtfulness and rhetorical elegance.

Safran, a British researcher who has written a few other works on homeschooling and in 2008 completed her doctoral dissertation, titled Exploring identity change and communities of practice among long term home educating parents, here introduces an interesting theoretical concept that she thinks helps explain how novice homeschoolers only marginally or temporarily committed to the practice become more engaged and committed practitioners.

That concept is called “legitimate peripheral participation,” a theory articulated by Lave and Wenger’s 1991 book Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation.  The theory holds that people new to a group begin on the periphery but are gradually socialized into the values and knowledge the group possesses, becoming in time full-fledged members.  For this to happen, old timers have to trust the newbie, and the newbie has to have a basic affinity for what the group is up to, even if she or he doesn’t fully understand everything.

Safran, begins with a brief review of the homeschooling literature, concluding, quite rightly, that hardly any of it has focused on the effects of homeschooling on the adults who do it.  (One standout exception is the fine work of Jennifer Lois, one of whose studies I reviewed here).

She next gives a short history of homeschooling in England, noting John Holt’s influence on the movement.  In the 1996 Education Act the practice, which had always been legal, was legitimated by name.  As in the U.S., it is hard to know how many Brits homeschool–probably somewhere between 40 and 80 thousand she thinks.  While a fair amount of study has been done on homeschool support groups in the U.S., very little is known about them in the United Kingdom.

To rectify this, Safran conducted 34 interviews of parents who had been homeschooling for more than three years, 13 from the U.S. and the rest from England and Wales.  It’s a much wider mix than you typically get in American samples, including one lesbian couple, seven single parents, and three homeschooling fathers.   A full 22 of the parents only turned to homeschooling after a child began having problems in school.  Religion did not play a large role as a motivator for any of the families in this study.

25 of the 34 parents were involved in some sort of group.  These parents found their local groups online or through word of mouth, and, since they had taken the step of removing their children from school, they were embraced as legitimate by group veterans.  Sometimes a newbie would find her or his values conflicting with those of the group, so the newbie would leave–revealing that the newbie must have an affinity for the group’s agenda if successful acculturation is to take place.

But what about the 9 parents who aren’t part of groups?  Are they also legitimate peripheral participants in the homeschooling movement?  Safran says yes, for these parents benefit by proxy from the many networks homeschoolers have created.  They visit internet sites, read newsletters, purchase curriculum, and so on.  If they WERE to join a group, they would immediately be recognized as legitimate homeschoolers.  Safran found in her interviews that the unattached homeschoolers used the same vocabulary and repertoire as the grouped homeschoolers, they just didn’t have the time or inclination to join up.  That they responded to Safran’s broadcast requests for interview subjects suggests just how connected these “unconnected” families really are.

And therein lies the obvious methodological flaw in this study.  Of course Safran’s sample of ungrouped homeschoolers exhibit similar characteristics.  Homeschoolers out of the loop wouldn’t have ever found out about Safran’s study in the first place.  For this reason I think we can’t make very much of the claim that group or no group, homeschoolers all share this quality of legitimate peripheral particiation.

But for those who are in the loop, I agree with Safran that this phrase as defined by Lave and Wenger does a decent job of describing how their beliefs and practices are formed.  A few weeks ago I reviewed an article by Ruth Morton finding that novice homeschoolers may begin without a really strong sense of identification with homeschooling as such, often turning to it only as a last resort given a child’s difficulties in school.  But after a while many of these families, who at first thought of homeschooling as a temporary stop-gap, have transformed into true believers.  How does that happen?  Safran’s “legitimate peripheral participation” paradigm explains it pretty well I think.

A couple of weeks ago Angie Renich contacted me and asked if I’d like a free copy of her book for review.  It’s been a while since I’ve reviewed a piece of children’s literature, though I have done so on many occasions before.  A summative post that has links to most of my reviews of children’s books where homeschooling features is available here.

I googled Ms. Renich and couldn’t find much except that she doesn’t like Mitt Romney’s Mormonism and that she composed some music for a ballet version of C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.  That last one is relevant to the story, so here goes…

Without giving away too much of the plot, The One and Only Miss Violet Remy focuses on the lives of four families, all of whom are part of a homeschooling co-op that began as an informal thing and grew gradually as the children grew.  Renich explains it like this,

[Violet] and Ruthie Bewkoski had played together as toddlers, when their moms met at the park at the end of Lupine Lane…. When the girls were three, their moms decided to do preschool together for their kids, sort of like a co-op.  The Green family had recently moved into a house just a few blocks from Lupine Lane, and they were invited to join the group…. As preschoolers, they spent one morning a week at each family’ shouse, playing and counting and saying their ABCs.  Then suddenly they were kindergartners and it became five days a week, each mom sharing the job of teaching reading and writing and two plus two.

By the third grade a fourth family has joined, and that’s when the story takes place.  It begins at a field trip when Violet, the titular protagonist, defies her conscience and walks with her friends through the restricted section of a park so that they can identify a plant species.  While off the beaten path one of the children discovers a mysterious bag with a roll of film and $200 in it.  As the story unfolds we see several plotlines come together, culminating in the solution to the mystery of the bag and much more.

As a straight up narrative I found the book to be a success.  It reminded me a bit of the Boxcar Children series, what with the mystery and the sense that nobody at any time is in any real danger.  There is no mortal peril, no bad guy, no cosmic good vs. evil metanarrative.  It’s just as story about a few kids working through some of the daily events of life, complete with funny kitchen accidents, jitters before a ballet recital, feelings of inadequacy when Violet compares herself to her more athletic and graceful friends, and so on. My eight year old started reading it and plans to finish.  She said she’s enjoying it, but I do note that she’s not eating it up like she does many books.

I’d like to make a couple of comments about other aspects of the book, though.  In the post about children’s lit I linked above I note that to date none of the homeschooled characters I’ve come across in children’s fiction have represented the world of conservative religious homeschooling, despite the fact that religious conservatives constitute the great majority of homeschoolers.  Well, Renich’s characters are from this world.  It’s not foregrounded, but it’s clear from the setting and interactions between characters that this is a Christian co-op closely identified with religious values.  Perhaps the most explicit statement of this comes from an interaction between Violet and her father, who Renich portrays as a sort of idealized version of the perfect Christian husband and dad:

“Remember Violet,” he said gently, “you are a child of God, a princess.  And a princess knows she must be a shining example of dignity–wherever she goes and whatever she does.  A princess must be careful to behave in such a way as to always bring honor to the King and his kingdom–even when she thinks no one is looking.”

Despite what this quotation may suggest, the book is not a heavy-handed morality tale for the most part.  It is, however, and this is important and gets at something fundamentally true about many Christian homeschoolers, totally free of irony.  In her wonderful spiritual memoir Facing East, Frederica Mathewes Green explains this very well:

Christian art is, in general, in a dilemma.  The great bulk of painting currently done on Christian themes is produced for popular consumption…. Is it good art?  Apparently, it does a good job of what it’s trying to do, namely to present scenes to the faithful that will provoke feelings of devotion, assurance, and comfort.  Most popular Christian art is, like popular music and popular novels, aimed at a broad sensibility.  As such, it’s not subtle or complex and usually is ignorant of ambivalence, conflict, and tragedy (though a sentimental pathos may apply)….  Popular Christian art is lambs and children and happy Jesuses. (p. 94)

That’s the feeling I got when I was reading this book.  It’s a nice story, but it just didn’t seem plausible to me, for the characters are all so one-dimensional, so good, so free of any real problems.  What problems that do exist (one of the fathers is a workaholic and misses his son’s birthday party, for example), are easily resolved (he reads his son’s newspaper article, is convicted, and vows to spend more time with his family) in ways that to me oversimplify human reality, a reality children intuit even if adults try to whitewash it.  To me this is a serious dilemma for an author wanting to tell stories about Christian homeschooolers.  For those stories to be interesting, they’ll need to engage real issues truthfully.  But if they do that, some Christian parents will not want their kids to read them.

A second and related issue that bugged me as I was reading the book was the depiction of the children themselves.  Very, very frequently I found the dialogue put into their mouths to be simply implausible.  Here’s an example:

“You and I need to talk,” Aaron said to his sister once they were home from writing class.  Karen was unloading her backpack in her room.

“What about?” She asked indifferently, ignoring Aaron’s apparent urgency.

“About you,” Aaron replied with authority.

“Oh yeah?” Karen raised one eyebrow, unimpressed with both Aaron’s topic and his commanding tone.

Aaron put a hand on his sister’s arm.  “I’m serious,” he said persuasively.

Karen shrugged.  “Okay.”  She settled into her pink bean bag chair on the floor.

[Aaron confronts Karen for being sullen to the other girls in the co-op because she misses her old home and school.]

“Did you ever think that me being sullen is me just being myself?” Karen snapped.

“I know you, Karen,” Aaron said, the tone in his voice softening.  “And I know that it isn’t you.”

Aaron had been waiting for the right moment to say what he’d been getting at, and the time seemed right.

“You’re smart and funny and talented and caring,” Aaron said kindly.  The room was quiet as Karen absorbed the compliment her brother had just paid her.  “I know it’s been hard here, adjusting to a new town and to new friends and to Dad being gone all the time.  But I miss my old sister.”

This is how the kids talk throughout this book.  In my view this just doesn’t get it right.  To me scenes like this do to children what Thomas Kinkade does to woodlands and cottages.  Renich romanticize them, turning them into stereotypes that are closer to Precious Moments figurines than to real people.  Now, I know that many Americans deeply love Kinkade and Precious Moments figurines.  But to me these cultural products are not fully Christian, for they try to deny or at least ignore the reality of sin and evil.  Ned Bustard, in It was Good: Making Art for the Glory of God, says,

Inevitably it seems that most attempts to picture good tend to offer the viewer disingenuous, sugary sweet propaganda. Ignoring the implications of the Fall, these artists paint the worlds as a shiny, happy place. The quintessential example of this in our day is found in Thomas Kinkade’s general philosophy. Kinkade professes to be a Christian but has said, “I like to portray a world without the Fall.” [hat tip to Richard Beck]

That’s the sense I got reading Renich’s book as well.  There’s no real evil in the world or in the human heart.  There are only little mistakes we make that, if we’re good little boys and girls, we feel really guilty about and confess to our parents, who always respond with the perfect mix of forgiveness and discipline.

Having said all of that let me conclude by reiterating that at the level of plotting and craftsmanship the book coheres and is quite engaging.  Its multiple storylines converge and are resolved in a satisfying way.  This aspect of the book suggests to me that Renich has the storyteller’s gift and, if she’d allow her characters to be thicker and her dramatic tension fuller, I bet she could produce a real masterpiece illuminating the world of Christian homeschooling.

Homeschoolers in College

Home-based education led by parents is becoming increasingly popular in the United States, and materials designed for homeschooling are available for almost any type of curriculum. There are now over 2 million homeschooled students in the US. One important question for homeschool students as well as their parents is how well they’ll fare in college compared to the students who received conventional public or private education. For researchers, an important aspect of this question is whether parents who homeschool their children are just as qualified to teach subjects required for college entrance as university-trained professionals in regular schools.

Most findings show homeschooled students tend to do just as well as conventionally schooled peers, and they may even have some advantages. Even without graduating PhD programs or receiving any formal training, homeschooling parents seem to be quite able to match the education provided in conventional schools. Colleges and universities are increasingly admitting homeschooled students, as their potential for success is becoming more widely recognized and backed up by academic research.

Concerns are frequently raised about whether homeschooled children are exposed to the same social norms as children who attend school, and whether those children may experience culture shock when they enter a college environment. Studies have shown children who are educated at home develop self-concepts just as healthy as those of their peers. The experience of homeschooled students entering college in their first year was found to be quite similar to the experience of students who were educated conventionally.

Standardized testing is often considered the benchmark of academic achievement for young students, and researchers found that home-schooled students did better on these tests than their peers. One reason for this finding may be that homeschoolers can receive focused attention on their very weakest areas. A home-based education may also lead students to become more self-reliant in completing assignments on their own, which is a very necessary skill for college success.

College admissions personnel have weighed in on this question, and findings overwhelmingly show admissions offices believe homeschooled students are prepared to excel in college. A nationwide survey conducted by the National Center for Home Education found 96 percent of colleges surveyed in 1996 had at least one homeschooled student admitted to their programs.

Colleges and universities are beginning to adjust admissions policies to recognize the potential of homeschooled students. Of the colleges surveyed, 93 percent stated course descriptions or portfolios could suffice instead of a high school diploma or GED certificate for homeschooled students. However, many schools had no written policies on admissions requirements for homeschooled students.

A similar percentage of homeschooled students attend college (about half) compared to their conventionally educated peers. At colleges across the US, homeschooled students routinely receive higher grades in many different areas. Colleges and universities are increasingly providing funding for students entering the program who were homeschooled, and associations for homeschoolers may also be able to provide grants and scholarships.

While homeschooling is still considered controversial because many people believe students should develop alongside their peers, research shows most homeschooled students are often better prepared for college than other students. For some homeschoolers, lack of documentation of grades and coursework can be a hurdle in college applications. However, colleges are increasingly recognizing that homeschooled students do quite well regardless and are adjusting admissions requirements to give homeschooled students the chance they deserve to succeed.

Morton, a doctoral student at the University of Warwick whose dissertation is a qualitative study of homeschooling motivations and practice in the United Kingdom, here gives us a taste of what the dissertation will contain, describing how there are three basic motivational types of homeschoolers.

In 2007 Morton interviewed 19 homeschooling families and one Local Authority official, went regularly to homeschooling meetings, and attended a week-long home educators’ camp.  She says that her generalizations are based upon the experiences of “40 to 45″ families.  In all but two of these families the father was “peripheral or even completely absent” in terms of homeschooling decisions. (p. 46)

Her interviews and other experiences suggested to Morton that there are three basic categories of homeschoolers, though they sometimes overlap:

1. “Natural Choice”–Some parents (really mothers) choose homeschooling out of a desire to return to a pre-industrial lifestyle free from the artifice of mainstream society.  These parents are often sharply critical of the capitalist structures and social conformity that they believe predominates in mainstream public schooling, and they possess romantic ideals about childhood and education.

2. “Social Choice”–Some parents do not object to formal education as such but to the negative socialization they believe their children will experience there.  Many of these families are conservative Christians, many of whom would send their children to private religious schools if they could afford it.  Basically, these parents didn’t want their kids mixing with other kids who might lead them morally or religiously astray.

Morton found that “social” motivation homeschoolers tended to follow a more structured curriculum (usually imported from the United States) than natural motivation homeschoolers.

3. “No Choice”–Some parents choose homeschooling only as a last resort, having exhausted other options.  In Morton’s sample there were 8 families in this category.  The presenting cause varied widely, from bullying to special education needs to a child’s emotional instability to personality conflicts with school officials.  Most of these families had tried numerous times to “make school ‘work’” for their admittedly atypical child, and only after much frustration did they turn to homeschooling.  They typically saw homeschooling as a temporary fix, but frequently after giving it a try they often stayed with it for many years.

Morton found that parents in this third category frequently transitioned over time to one of the first two categories in terms of their self-understanding.

She concludes by noting that all three of these motivational types share a basic orientation that privileges the individual child over the needs of the educational system.  They all tend not to care too much about the broader social meaning of what they’re doing, nor do they spend a lot of time dwelling on how the educational system might be changed to make it more hospitable.  They care mostly about their own children and think of their choice on this narrowly individual level, not about its broader social implications.

Do we learn anything new here?  Not really.  Morton’s terms “natural” and “social” take their place alongside other venerable dichotomies like Van Galen’s “pedagogues” and “idealogues,” Mitchell Stevens’ “inclusives” and “believers”, and my own “open communion” and “closed communion” to describe basically the same thing.

That she gives equal weight to her third category is the real contribution I think, for it takes a point that’s been made by other researchers (that special education is a significant and growing aspect of homeschooling) and turns it into a category that’s just as important as the historic categories stressing romantic naturalists and religious conservatives.  For that reason if for no other I’m pleased to have this text.  In this short article we aren’t told how she went about choosing her subjects so we can’t say whether her 8 “no choice” families (which is HUGE given an overall sample of 19) is typical of U.K. homeschooling or what.  Hopefully her dissertation will deal with this sort of thing.

If I were to re-write my book today I think I’d spend more time on the history of special education and some of its satellite issues (bullying, children with severe introversion, etc.).  The fact that large numbers of children are finding schools inhospitable places deserves its own historical explanation.

Russo, a prolific scholar on legal issues in education who has had several occasions in the past to turn his attention to homeschooling, here examines the legal status of homeschooling in light of the recent In re Kurowski (2011) case (which I discussed here before it was heard by the State Supreme Court) in New Hampshire that pitted a divorced homeschooling mother against her ex-husband who disapproved of the practice.

Russo begins with a legal orientation to homeschooling.  He incorrectly claims that in 1980 homeschooling was legal in only two states.  In fact at that time well over thirty states had either explicit or implied provisions for home-based instruction in their compulsory education statutes.  The problem with most of the statutes, however, was that they were very vague.  If you want more on this see chapter seven of my book, which I wish Russo had read.

Anyway, he moves quickly to the present, saying that homeschooling is now legal nationwide for parents even without teaching certifications.  He then moves to a summary of In Re Kurowski (which he unfortunately misspells throughout Kurkowski)

In this case, the Kurowskis divorced in 1999.  In 2005 the mother began homeschooling their daughter.  The father, who had joint custody, didn’t approve, citing socialization concerns.  Lower courts rejected his complaints.  In 2007 the father requested the court to appoint a “GAL,” or guardian ad litam, who could safeguard the child’s best interest.  He believed that the homeschooling was weakening his relationship with his daughter because it was creating exclusive mother/child bonds grounded in the mother’s fundamentalist religion.  The court appointed a GAL, who recommended that the father be granted expanded visitation rights and that he have a say in the child’s educational and religious training.  The child began attending three classes in a public school in 2010.  The mother tried to get this changed, but the lower court rejected her efforts.  She appealed to the State Supreme Court.

New Hampshire’s highest court unanimously agreed with the lower court’s decision.  The State Supreme Court held that this was not a case about homeschooling or about religion, but only about what is to be done when two parents with equal constitutional rights and interests in their child’s education disagree.  And the Court basically said that in such cases homeschooling does not automatically win.  The lower court decided that public school was in the child’s best interest, and the higher court saw no reason to challenge this conclusion.

Russo next explains that such instances are likely to increase as both homeschooling and divorce rates continue to rise.  School personnel should therefore craft policy to be ready to deal with such issues before they arise.  He lays out six principles:

1. School business officials should proactively appoint someone to be a liaison with homeschooling families so that when situations come up, there is somebody ready to deal with them.

2. These liaisons should develop effective channels of communication with homeschooling families so that all are clear about state requirements and so on.

3. One requirement that especially needs to be made clear is the degree to which children can attend public school classes part-time (as they can in New Hampshire).

4. Special attention should be paid to orientation and other services schools should provide for children coming into public education after having been homeschooled.  For some children this can be a difficult transition, and school officials should work hard to provide extra support.

5. Liaisons should also work with parents to make it clear what the rules are about homeschooler participation in extracurriculars like school sports.

6. Finally, school business officials should stay current on the laws and court cases regarding homeschooling and public education so that they are not caught off guard and so that they do not act “in the heat of the moment.”

And that’s it.  If you look at Russo’s Curriculum Vitae you see that he publishes many, many articles every year on a wide range of topics related to education and law.  Such a prodigious output perhaps explains why this text seemed pretty thin.  At one point Russo cites a 2007 Alabama case (Morgan v. Morgan) and calls it “apparently the only other case involving divorced parents and homeschooling.”  (p.2)  This is mistaken.  I reviewed another one just a few months ago in fact.

Russo also could have given us much more authoritative treatment of topics he mentions off-handedly like homeschooler acess to extracurriculars and state regulation of homeschooling.  All in all what we have here it seems is a very hastily composed brief on the Kurowski decision by a scholar who I know could do better if he had just taken a bit more time.  Even so, his advice to school personnel is surely useful and if taken would further the trend in recent years toward a more collaborative rather than combative climate between homeschoolers and public school officials.

Hampel, a professor at the University of Delaware and respected colleague, here provides a fascinating look at a once popular but now largely forgotten form of education that was based in the home.  In the early 20th century millions of Americans enrolled in all sorts of programs by correspondence.  Most of them enrolled in classes with for-profit companies who often promised the moon, used aggressive recruitment strategies, and played hardball if you failed to make payments.  But several thousands of Americans also took study-at-home courses from the nation’s universities.  In earlier work Hampel has given us fine history of the for-profit companies.  Here he looks at the universities.

Specifically, Hampel examines the home study programs at Columbia University and the University of Wisconsin.  In both cases he compares the university’s programs with those of the for-profit companies with which they were in competition.  For profit outfits used “brazen” and frequently misleading advertising, spent a considerable share of their budget on recruiters who used every trick in the book to drum up business (and received commissions for doing so), and used every legal means available to make customers who had signed up on an installment plan keep paying even if they dropped out of the program (which the vast majority did).  It all seems remarkably timely, as many of the for-profit online universities that have been so much in the news of late are doing much the same thing.

Were the universities of the early 20th century so brash?  Hampel digs into the archives to find out.  And the answer, in general, is no.  But beyond the simple truth that university home study offerings were not overhyped, were not marketed to the sort of student who would likely not be able to finish or pay, and were actually quite affordable compared to the for-profit companies’ products, there were other factors that contributed to either the success or failure of university efforts.

Columbia University’s home study program, for example, was ultimately a failure.  Partly this was precisely because the university did not resort to strong-arm tactics.  Only about 19% of students who signed up for Columbia’s home study courses actually finished the programs.  That meant that the great majority who signed up never paid up.  But Columbia did not refer these students to collection agencies or file lawsuits to recover their balance due.  After seven straight years of net losses Columbia University’s President Nicholas Murray Butler decided, in 1937, to pull the plug.  Columbia’s commitment not to use the sorts of tactics that were giving home study a bad name was honorable, but it kept the program in the red during the Great Depression.

Could it have been otherwise?  Was the only choice financial success through misleading advertising, predatory recruitment, and draconian collection practices, or financial ruin through modesty and forgiveness of debts?  For a third way Hampel points to the University of Wisconsin, which was able to craft a more successful home study program.  How?

First of all, Wisconsin followed the lead of the for-profits and used recruiters called field agents.  But these were not your typical slick salesmen.  They worked on salary rather than commission, and most of them were educators as well as publicists.  Secondly, Wisconsin’s courses were very cheap compared to the competition but required payment in full at the beginning.  Finally, and most importantly, Wisconsin’s approach was to avoid recruitment from the general population.  Instead, they worked mostly with Wisconsin high schools, explaining their programs to local administrators, who would frequently give the field agents time with graduating seniors.  Wisconsin’s program allowed students to count home study courses to their college degrees at the University of Wisconsin provided that they passed an equal number of courses on campus.  This was a very attractive option and it made home study a true extension of the university system rather than a stand-alone country cousin.  Hampel summarizes, “From the start, [Wisconsin home study] intertwined with public education in the state, positioning itself as one node in a larger system created to serve the people more altruistically than the private sector.” (p. 2511)

Atypically for a historical piece, Hampel concludes by reflecting on the meaning of these historic models of university-sponsored home study for our own time.  His first point is that the gradual expansion of University systems to include branch campuses and community colleges made home study largely unnecessary, as landed tertiary public education was increasingly available close to home.  But why satellite campuses rather than a robust statewide home study program?  Hampel thinks it turned out that way largely because universities did not get their faculty behind the home study option and did not create high-level curricula for it.  If they had, and if home study courses had been offered for the same credit one could get at a landed campus, it’s quite possible that what now seems so novel–online college classes–wouldn’t have been novel at all.

Hampel ends on a somewhat sanguine note about current distance education.  He thinks this time ’round colleges are doing a better job trying to understand the needs of online learners and are working out curricula that takes advantage of the unique opportunities for learning the online experience makes possible.  He thinks this time we may get it right and that students who sign up for the programs will actually finish them.  I hope so, but some of the for-profits currently driving the online learning spike seem to me to have a lot in common, and not in a good way, with the more predatory firms of the past–aggressive recruitment by agents working on commission, horrible retention rates, and a very questionable product.  Hopefully the scrutiny such companies have recently come under by Congress and other bodies will lead to some housecleaning, and programs with more integrity will win the day and fulfill Hampel’s predictions.

All in all I thoroughly enjoyed Dr. Hampel’s presentation, especially the refreshing and unapologetic connection of his historical material with current educational policy.  Among historians of education it is controversial to do this, for it smacks of “functionalism,” the tendency to make history just prolegomena to public policy and in the process do violence to the past by anachronistically forcing our own assumptions and categories backward.  Hampel I think avoids that here.  His history is sensitive to its own time and place, but the lessons he derives from it are nevertheless relevant to our own.  Both historians of higher education and current policymakers would find this a rewarding text to ponder.