This post reviews Susette Brynard, “Home Schooling as an Open-Learning Educational Challenge in South Africa” in South African Journal of Education 27, no. 1 (2007): 83-100.
Brynard, a lecturer in the Department of Comparative Education and Educational Management at the University of the Free State in South Africa, here provides an overview of the issue of homeschooling in the South African context, interpreting it as a viable form of “Open Learning.”
Brynard describes Open Learning as a pedagogy characterized by a “flexible learner-centered approach” that helps learners with various needs who aren’t well served by traditional classroom instruction. Her article here is intended to introduce home schooling as one Open Learning option. Before getting into her own study, she provides by way of orientation an introduction to home schooling in South Africa.
The 1996 South African Schools Act made homeschooling clearly legal, but many South African home schoolers still fear the state and do not register. Nevertheless, Brynard estimates that as of 2003 there were between 30,000 and 50,000 home schoolers in South Africa. The trend is toward greater cooperation between home schoolers and the Department of Education (thanks especially to technologically-mediated distance learning), as both increasingly see the benefits of collaboration.
This background in place, Brynard poses two questions: 1. How can home schooling best realize itself as an Open Learning option? 2. How can collaborations between home schooling and the public school system benefit South Africa? To answer these questions, she conducted a comprehensive literature review and interviewed eleven people well-informed about South African home schooling: parents, teachers, academics, school officials.
The literature review revealed a number of similarities between South African home schooling and home schooling in the United States. The history is quite similar, with home-based learning predominating until the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when compulsory school laws were passed in both countries. Out of frustration with the shortfallings of State systems, some parents in both nations began teaching their own children at home. As in the United States, South African researchers have found religious motives to predominate, as many morally conservative parents objected to the teaching of evolution, sex education, and moral relativism in schools. Researchers have found South African homeschoolers to perform above national norms on standardized tests (and, like their American counterparts, these South African studies don’t seem to control for race, class, and family educational attainment variables).
Brynard’s interviewees seemed to place more stress on the flexibility and academic power of home education than on religion. Home schooling has created its share of academic prodigies and is widely used by families with children in intensive athletic programs. Interviewees also seemed to be motivated by a desire to keep family bonds strong and by fiscal frugality–home schooling was an affordable alternative to private schools. Special education was another theme to emerge from her interviews.
Brynard’s interviews with school officials and teachers revealed a very different picture. To these people, home schooling can isolate children from many of the important social situations schools provide to help them develop autonomy, deal with the pressures of status hierarchy, and learn healthy peer relations. Brynard’s homeschooling interviewees, on the other hand, usually saw such disadvantages as advantages.
After summarizing some of the collaborative ventures that have been implemented in the United States between home schoolers and public schools (cybercharters, school-run resource centers, etc.) Brynard concludes with some policy recommendations for South Africa. Basically, she wants to see more collaboration between public schools and home schooled children: public curriculum offered to parents, homeschooled kids in extracurricular school activities, schools offering enrichment classes that home schoolers would take for a fee [public education is not completely free in South Africa]. She exhorts South Africans to “learn from home schoolers in the USA” and increase collaboration efforts.
I have a couple of observations about this study. First, it shares with much of the American literature on which it relies a bit of the advocacy bug. Reading this article is a little like reading an editorial arguing for homeschooling’s greatness. I don’t know anything about Dr. Brynard, but I can tell from her 1998 dissertation title (written in Afrikaans, as I learned from the helpful comments below) that she studied something pertaining to the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) curriculum in South Africa. From the data she reports here it seems to me that she is trying to preach up homeschooling’s virtues to a largely unsympathetic public school audience. To that end she plays the USA card, showing how the American public schools and home schools have shown such remarkable collaborative progress. Those of us over on this side of the pond, however, know that these collaborations, while extant and growing, are bitterly opposed both by many independent homeschoolers who fear government regulation and by public school people who resent the redirection of funds away from traditional public schools and the loss of authority over curriculum content and teaching jobs. South Africans need to know that American home schoolers and government agencies are not one big happy family.
Secondly, nowhere in this article does the issue of race appear at all. I have talked in a previous post about the degree to which race may or may not have been a factor in the history of homeschooling in the United States. In the United States the heyday of the Civil Rights movement and of the homeschooling movement were separated by about 20 years. In South Africa, the homeschool movement and the climax of the Anti-Apartheid struggle happened at exactly the same time. The period between 1985-1990 was one of incredible tension and violence between blacks and whites. The beseiged Apartheid government was also a very moralistic one–opposed to gambling, Sabbath-breaking, adultery, television, abortion, and so on. Given this history it seems impossible to me that one could address the issue of homeschooling, especially homeschooling by conservative white South Africans, without talking about race. But in this article race does not exist. Now that Brynard has brought what literature there is on South African homeschooling together, I hope that future research will probe more deeply into the phenomenon in all its richness, and, I suspect, political complexity.
Another excellent post, Milton!
It seems as if you have grasped the essence of Brynard’s article. You refer to her Ph.D as being written in Dutch. It is actually “Afrikaans”. Most Dutchmen would find it difficult to read Afrikaans, although there are similarities.
I agree with you that the matter of race and racial prejudices should be factored into the equation, especially in South Africa. The large majority of conservative white people are disappointed with what is happening in the public education system over the past 10-15 years. Schools where white children are in the majority have disappeared and many white people have not yet made peace with that. This makes home-schooling definitely a more attractive option for many families.
Having said this, I would not be surprised if more and more black families also start to homeschool. The general consensus is that the performance of the public schools are so dismally weak that just about anything would be an improvement. This would especially be true for the upper middle class black family.
Like you, I am also somewhat concerned about the tendency to ‘glorify’ homeschooling as the ultimate answer to good education that we find in most homeschooling blogs and sites.
I am a homeschooling webmaster myself and thus I address the last comment to myself as well.
Finally, I have been in touch with Brynard to get access to her original article. But, believe it or not, her computer and memory stick with the article and digital copy of the Ph.D was stolen. Somehow I also cannot get a copy from the South African Journal of Education unless I purchase it!
I am looking forward to studying your previous posts and hope that you will be able to keep adding more in spite of your increased work load.
Grandpapa
http://www.homeschoo-portal.com
Thanks. I wasn’t sure whether to say Dutch or Afrikaans. I can’t tell the difference myself, and I think the two terms carry significant political baggage in S. Africa. Perhaps it’s not like this any more, but I think I remember learning that “Afrikaans” used to be a term of derision among white South Africans that referred to the creolized, “impure” version of the language spoken by native Africans. But maybe I’m wrong about all of that…
If you have access to an academic library or know someone who does you might be able to get a copy of the article that way. That’s how I get all of my stuff…
Milton
I am a white South African with Afrikaans as my home language although I now live in Thailand.
Dutch is not really a factor in South Africa and most Afrikaans speaking South Africans would find it difficult to communicate effectively with Dutch speaking persons.
Afrikaans has been one of two official languages since 1925 (English being the second official language). Afrikaans has a well developed literature and is also used at a number of universities for academic research. My own M.Ed and PhD in Fundamental Pedagogics are written in Afrikaans.
Afrikaans has never really been a “language of derision” amongst white South Africans, but is is considered a ‘language of oppression’ by many black South Africans.
Because of recent political developments in SA the use of Afrikaans is declining in the public sector, and many people are moving towards adopting English as the main language of communication.
All of this just for interest sake!
I am associated with a high school in Thailand, and our school library would not be considered an academic library, but my efforts to get hold of the article have just started and I am sure I will get hold of it somehow.
I am reading your posts with interest and enjoy and appreciate your style and your ‘academic’ approach.
Grandpapa
http://www.homeschool-portal.com
Thanks for this! So great to have someone who knows the terrain clarify. I’ll edit the post given your helpful background information.