In African-American Communities, Growing Interest in Homeschooling (NPR)

[umsami]

http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/03/30/468144241/in-african-american-communities-growing-interest-in-home-schooling?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20160330

 

"It was a mostly black school with mostly white teachers, which didn't really bother me until I saw the difference in how they treated certain kids — especially boys," she says. "They seemed to be very harsh, kinda barking at them, ordering them around."

 

Brandon says his teacher "didn't really treat anybody nicely."

 

That matched a pattern Kirksey says she's seen elsewhere: black children who aren't given the kindness she thinks kids need.

Kirksey was trying to figure out what to do about the situation when she saw a post on Facebook. It profiled an African-American home-schooling family. Before long, she'd convinced her husband, quit her job of 10 years and started teaching."

[Amira]

Interesting article. Thanks for posting.

[Carrie12345]

I'd love to see our homeschooling community become more reflective of our local demographics.  While we have a few POC here and there, I think it's weird that my kids' homeschool friends are almost all white, while their neighborhood friends are almost all not.

[plansrme]

The first book that I ever read about homeschooling was about a black couple who homeschooled their three boys for, if I remember correctly (it's been nearly15 years--2003, according to the Amazon link), did so for reasons similar to this family's.  Despite the fact that I am the whitest person I know and was, at the time, a mother to girls only, I found their story tremendously inspiring and encouraging.  I enjoy hearing about other families' homeschooling experiences, especially when they're not made out by the media to be a bunch of crazy people! 

[oneangelwaiting]

Four of our children are black. We know zero other black people. I am seeking them out but in our area there just aren't many.

 

Possibly a bit of a tangent but here goes. When my son was in public school for kindergarten there was one other black child in his grade (but none in his class). We homeschool partly because I do want to make sure that they know about all of the awesome black people in history, not just Martin Luther King Jr. It really irritated me when his class did nothing for MLK day, no stories read, just nothing at all and I thought hmmm, I wonder if they would have acknowledged it if there were more black kids in the school? I wonder if black parents would have thrown a fit about the lack of celebrating the day? It's just one man but he's almost the only black man I remember learning about in school, if they aren't going to teach about him then who will they teach about? One of many reasons we chose to homeschool.

 

Anyway I'm always super excited to read about black families who homeschool, thank you for sharing.

 

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[Bluegoat]

There are very few black homeschooling families here, though we have a significant black population. 

 

My guess is there are a few reasons - one is possibly related to how common it is to have a SAHP. 

 

However, I think there may be some philosophical issues as well - a friend of mine who has young kids and is very involved in black education seems to think its not a good thing for black families to opt out, for systematic reasons. 

 

 

[Rosie_0801]

And no mention of grocery shopping teaching financial literacy! Good on her.