We think of homeschoolers as evangelicals or...

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

“We think of homeschoolers as evangelicals or off-the-gridders who spend a lot of time at kitchen tables in the countryside. And it’s true that most homeschooling parents do so for moral or religious reasons. But education observers believe that is changing. You only have to go to a downtown Starbucks or art museum in the middle of a weekday to see that a once-unconventional choice “has become newly fashionable,” says Mitchell Stevens, a Stanford professor who wrote Kingdom of Children, a history of homeschooling. There are an estimated 300,000 homeschooled children in America’s cities, many of them children of secular, highly educated professionals who always figured they’d send their kids to school—until they came to think, Hey, maybe we could do better. When Laurie Block Spigel, a homeschooling consultant, pulled her kids out of school in New York in the mid-1990s, “I had some of my closest friends and relatives telling me I was ruining my children’s lives.” Now, she says, “the parents that I meet aren’t afraid to talk about it. They’re doing this proudly.” Why Urban, Educated Parents Are Turning to DIY Education - The Daily Beast