African American Homeschoolers
Joanne Jacobs points us to a story in The Village Voice about the growing number of African American homeschoolers. If you can get past the first paragraph which is as bad a display of provincial ignorance as one is likely to ever encounter, it’s an interesting, in depth story. Given the abysmal job the public school system is doing of educating African American boys in particular, more African Americans homeschooling their kids can only a be a good thing.
As a multi-racial family my experience has been that homeschooled parents and their kids are extremely tolerant of racial diversity. We’ve never had rude comments from any homeschool parent or child regarding race. Unfortunately this was not our experience during the relatively brief time that my oldest son was in school or even as we move through our community in non-school settings. For us, homeschooling has been a good way to avoid having our kids exposed to race as a negative. The one thing which I have found annoying is a pretty pervasive assumption among other homeschoolers that because they are not concerned with race, race is no longer and issue for any minority. I can see where this attitude could be off-putting to a minority parent testing out the homeschool waters, but really it’s a sadly common notion in the world at large anyways.
If you are interested in checking out some of the African American homeschooling organizations and voices out there can check out these links:
The National African American Homeschoolers Association
African American Homeschoolers Network