Joseph Murphy Reviews Gaither and Kunzman’s “Comprehensive Survey of the Research”

A few months ago I reviewed Joseph Murphy’s excellent book that synthesizes nearly all of the literature on homeschooling into a convenient, coherent, and literate volume titled Homeschooling in America: Capturing and Assessing the Movement.  A couple of years before Dr. Murphy’s book came out Rob Kunzman and I decided that we wanted to do the same thing.  I’ve been reviewing homeschooling literature since 2008 on this blog, and Dr. Kunzman has compiled an exhaustive bibliography, which can be accessed here.  Our article summarizing and synthesizing all of this literature came out a few weeks ago and I asked Dr. Murphy if he would review it for me.  He graciously agreed to do so, and here are his comments:

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My New Article that Reviews ALL the Homeschooling Research

The journal Other Education has just published an article Rob Kunzman and I wrote together titled, “Homeschooling: A Comprehensive Survey of the Research.”  It is the culmination of years of work by both of us compiling every piece of research on homeschooling ever written, culling through them all to select the best material, organizing them into coherent categories, and writing up the results.

Several months ago I reviewed Joseph Murphy’s excellent book Homeschooling in America: Capturing and Assessing the Movement, which is a very thorough review of the scholarly literature.  Our article is not nearly so long as Dr. Murphy’s book and thus it lacks some of the detail he provides.  Anyone interested in homeschooling research should read his book cover to cover and keep it on the shelf for frequent reference.  But despite its length and depth of coverage, there are some topics and a few key studies Dr. Murphy leaves out, and he sometimes fails to differentiate between high and low quality studies or between studies published recently and those published decades ago.  I think our article provides even more breadth and does a better job discriminating between sources.  Plus you can download it for free!  Do so here.

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A Philosophical Argument against Homeschooling, Part 2

This is the second of a two-part review of Randall Curren and J. C. Blokhuis, “The Prima Facie Case Against Homeschooling” in Public Affairs Quarterly, 25, no. 1 (January 2011): 1-19.

In my previous post I argued against the historic backstory Curren and Blokhuis provide as the underpinning of their argument.  Today I will look at the argument itself.  In general they make two basic claims.  First, they claim that all children are entitled to equal public protection of their educational interests, which means that all forms of education, including private schooling and homeschooling, must provide equal educative opportunities.  Second, they claim that the nature of knowledge is such that, especially at the secondary level, parents (or any other citizen) can be presumed to lack competence to teach, and that anybody who wants to teach must overcome this presumption of incompetence by proving their merit.

Curren and Blokhuis elaborate on these claims through a three-part argument.  I will first summarize their argument and then offer some critiques.

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How Homeschooling Disrupts the Legal Definition of Public Education and What that Means for Government Regulation

This post reviews Robert Kunzman, “Education, Schooling, and Children’s Rights: the Complexity of Homeschooling” in Educational Theory 62, no. 1 (February 2012): 75-89.

Kunzman, as readers of this blog know very well, is one of the leading scholars currently working on homeschooling.  He is author of the important book Write These Laws on Your Children: Inside the World of Conservative Christian Homeschooling; he’s written many articles on homeschooling; and he maintains a helpful site that catalogs homeschooling research here.

A couple of years ago I reviewed an earlier piece by Kunzman on government regulation of homeschooling that dealt with some of the same themes he addresses here.  Back then Kunzman argued against various kinds of government regulations, concluding that only tests evaluating a homeschooler’s grasp of basic literacy and numeracy should be mandated.

This current article is a bit more theoretical.  It aims not so much to set out an explicit policy proposal as to argue for why certain domains should be considered legal rights (and thus be scrutinized by the government) while other, perhaps equally important domains, should not.

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Why are so many Homeschoolers Fundamentalists?

This post reviews Robert Kunzman, “Homeschooling and Religious Fundamentalism” in International Journal of Elementary Education 3, no. 1 (October 2010): 17-28. [Available here]

Kunzman, author of Write These Laws on Your Children: Inside the World of Conservative Christian Homeschooling and many articles on American homeschooling, here tries to explain why so many religious fundamentalists have found homeschooling an attractive educational option.

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Who’s in Charge of Kids? Parents? Kids? The State?

This post reviews Courtenay E. Moran, “How to Regulate Homeschooling: Why History Supports the Theory of Parental Choice” in University of illinois Law Review, 2011, no. 3 (2011): 1061-1094. [Available Here]

Moran, a J. D. candidate at the University of Illinois College of Law and former homeschooler himself, here offers an ambitious, historically-grounded legal argument for the viability of limited goverment regulation of homeschooling.

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Coleman on Homeschoolers in Middletown

This post reviews Rachel E. Coleman, “Ideologues: Pedagogues, Pragmatics: A Case Study of the Homeschool Community in Delaware County, Indiana” (M.A. Thesis: Ball State University, 2010).

Rachel Coleman, a reader of this blog, graciously sent me a copy of her Master’s Thesis she just defended this month at Ball State University.  It’s wonderful.  In this post I’ll summarize it and stress its main contributions to our knowledge about homeschooling.

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Laura Brodie on Short-Term Homeschooling

This post reviews Laura Brodie, Love in a Time of Homeschooling: A Mother and Daughter’s Uncommon Year
(New York: HarperCollins, 2010).

Brodie, mother of three, part-time English professor at Washington and Lee, and author of other works of fiction and nonfiction, here offers a memoir of her one-year experiment in homeschooling with her eldest daughter Julia.  Brodie also has a blog on short-term homeschooling that has dealt a lot with school bullying as motivator for homeschooling.

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West on the Harms of Homeschooling

This post reviews Robin L. West, “The Harms of Homeschooling” in Philosophy and Public Policy Quarterly 29, no. 3/4 (Summer/Fall 2009): 7-11 [Available here]

West, a professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center, here provides perhaps the most blistering attack on homeschooling to be published in a reputable source in many years.

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Rob Kunzman’s Homeschooling Research Site

Some readers may have noticed that I recently added a new link to my blogroll.  Rob Kunzman, Associate Professor of Education at Indiana University in Bloomington, has a really great resource for anyone interested in homeschooling research.  Kunzman is the real deal.  His extensive research has long focused on religion and morality in public schools, and his recent interest in homeschooling, especially religiously-motivated homeschooling, furthers those interests.  In the summer of 2009 his book Write These Laws on Your Children: Inside the World of Conservative Christian Homeschooling will be released.  I have already pre-ordered my copy and can’t wait to get it. 

On his homeschooling web page you’ll find:

1. Brief but incisive explanations of why we don’t have any comprehensive national data on homeschooling, why claims that homeschoolers outperform day schooled children are not true, and why there is no such thing as a typical homeschooler.
2. Comprehensive bibliographies of research on various homeschooling topics, listed topically, alphabetically, by date, and by format.
3. An FAQ page that again provides succinct, accurate answers to such questions as “Do homeschoolers lack opportunities for socialization?” and “Do colleges accept homeschooled students?”

Kunzman’s site is a wonderful resource for anyone interested in homeschooling research.  He asked me if I had any suggestions for it, and I replied that some sort of annotation system to his bibliographies would be nice, for they currently make no distinction between high caliber studies and those of lesser merit.  He agreed and hopes to work on that in the future.  I also note that sometimes studies appear under one heading (say, author) but not under another (say, publication date).  But who’s complaining?  Kunzman has made available for free one of the best, most up-to-date bibliographies of homeschooling research ever compiled.

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