The answer has got to be yes, particularly with the increase in homeschooling once COVID hit. But when I think of every adult I know who was homeschooled as a child, and every parent I know who homeschools their children, they’re all right of center (except for occasional cases where I don’t know their political views at all).
I just wanted to see if there are any anecdotes out there about Liberal parents homeschooling. Exactly how rare is it?
About 15 years ago we knew a homeschooling family that was very environmentalist/anti-war. Very anti Big Food, pesticides, industrial farming, etc. They were also antivax, which is primarily why they were homeschooling.
At least the mother I thought was Green Party and Mother Jones material.
But now I see (from their Facebook page) that they’ve taken their paranoia over to the white supremacist, gun rights, isolationist side.
They’ve moved from a suburban purplish area to an exurban town that is Trump country.
This is New England and especially among the part time small farmer types, politics can be VERY complicated.
The Atlantic reports: “African American parents are increasingly taking their kids’ education into their own hands – and in many cases, it’s to protect them from institutional racism and stereotyping.” According to the 2012 NCES data, black families are estimated to represent about eight percent of the homeschooling population, a figure that doubled between 2007 and 2011. Hispanics represent 15 percent of the homeschooling population, and Muslim Americans are reported to be the fastest-growing homeschooling segment. Sixteen percent of families reported that having a child with a “physical or mental health problem” was an important reason for homeschooling, and 15 percent said having a child with “other special needs” was a top reason to make this education choice.
There are homeschooling parents who follow Waldorf-style practices, and Waldorf schooling seems to appeal most to a subset (subsect?) of progressives who go for the karmically aware, reincarnation-based approach.
According to one survey, just 4 in 10 homeschooling parents self-identified as conservative, though 58% voted for Trump in 2020.
Hispanics and Muslims aren’t always liberal.
Some of the most politically conservative people I know are Muslims and Hispanics. Particularly when it comes to LGBT and women’s rights.
To be honest, I’d find that a lot more interesting if the parents who didn’t self-identify as conservative were liberal, but the statistic of who self-identified as liberal was left out of that article. In my experience, many (perhaps even most) people with right-of-center politics like to consider themselves “independent” rather than conservative. I would imagine that nearly all of the other 6 out of 10 parents would fall into the “independent-but-conservative-leaning” category.
The only homeschool family I know are liberal. I think it’s more about wanting to select tailored topics & methods and spend bonding time with her children than mistrust in the Great Liberal Brainwashing Conspiracy or anything. But her Facebook feed is all either liberal postings or pro-homeschool postings
I wonder what percentage of progressive homeschooling parents vote for right-wing candidates in order to forestall regulatory reforms pertaining to homeschooling.
Here, I’d say more than the opposite. Conservative kids usually end up going to some sort of private church school, but hippies who don’t live near a Waldorf school tend to homeschool. They also tend to be more in the “My precious Indigo Child” space. One of the parents will be SAH but uni-educated.
I know of one liberal family where the father stayed home and homeschooled the daughter. I’ve heard of a few others. In my experience, though, it was usually religious conservatives.
I did a few service calls where the kids were being homeschooled. It ranged from mediocre to horrifyingly bad–“English Class” at one consisted of memorizing passages from the Bible, and it sounded like the RSV or even the King James version. When I was done one of the kids said he had something for me, holding something in his hand. I thought was a tip, so I said it wasn’t necessary. He handed me a Chick Tract.
I was almost homeschooled, by my mother who takes “hippie” as a compliment. In my case, it was because the Catholic high school I was at in 9th grade kicked me out, and every private school we looked at wouldn’t take me (Mom didn’t consider the Cleveland public schools to be an acceptable option). Finally, though, the last one on our list said yes, and fortunately for me, it turned out to be an excellent school, not just free of but actively opposed to all of the problems that plagued me at my previous school.
Had it not been for that school, the next recourse would have been for her to home-school me. Though she knew that she wouldn’t be able to give me the math I needed, so she was planning on trying for some sort of arrangement with one of the local colleges for that (a routine matter nowadays, but not nearly so common back then).
Yes, my VERY liberal sister and her fairly liberal husband home-schooled their daughter, my niece.
It turned out fine: Both parents are well educated (she has a Ph,D. in biology; he is a high school science teacher). She has grown up to be the most well-adjusted person I know, totally comfortable in every social situation. She’s now in graduate school in math at a prestigious university.
I know of two militantly anti-Christian families (one atheist, the other pagan) who HSed their children because they didn’t want them exposed to Christianity. Neither lives in my area.
My nieces were both HSed by their fairly liberal parents, although not because of political or social issues. Both of them had ongoing health problems that caused them to miss a lot of school, so they did this for a while. Before they had their kids, my brother and his wife lived for a while in the Kansas City area, and later Houston, TX, and they knew they didn’t want to raise their future children in either city because they met TEACHERS who homeschooled; the public schools really were that bad.
I did. You’d have to beat the bushes to flush out someone more liberal than me. Earlier posters are correct, there is a large subset of homeschooling parents who are unhappy with public schools from the other end of the political spectrum – too much teaching to the test, uniformity, rote dullness, not enough creativity, open-ended exploration, adaptation to individual needs, spirituality (as opposed to religion), things like that. In my local public school there was a homeschooling section, with an accredited teacher monitoring your materials, progress, answering questions. A weekly parents’ meeting was required, and the kids had an ‘enrichment’ time during this which was mainly playing with other homeschool kids. She wrote up a report so you could move to the next grade within the public system. It was loose but it mainly worked. There was a mix of religious (Catholic and evangelical) and hippie parents, but we all pretty much got along. Probably because we didn’t spend much time together.
My daughter and I turned out to be a terrible match as a homeschool team. She subsequently went to Waldorf school for a few years and then to a very good college prep school where she thrived.
I came within about an inch, inch and a half of being home-schooled. When I was nearing elementary age, my parents moved from MASS to southern NM. They were NOT happy with the level of public education, and there was only one private school, which was Catholic based, which did not please my Jewish parents.
My parents have Masters Degrees and being (at the time) active University professors, it would not have been much of an effort, but a large investment of time for them to home school me. (and they are/were pretty damn liberal, although they have their individual quirks). During the 6 months or so prior to a decision needing to be made, some of their local friends convinced them that while the general education was indeed subpar by their standards, the Honors and Advanced options generally made up for it.
So various gifted programs and other socializing reasons kept me from getting homeschooled, and by the time I was in 2nd grade there was plenty of assistance from the school system to allow for a wider range of options. With more formal ‘gifted’ options kicking in around 5th/6th grade.
In high school (9-12), I knew a pair of homeschooled children who were probably from a household more Libertarian than liberal (and this is before Libertarian was fully co-opted by the conservatives) who would today probably be very socially liberal, but very small government/fiscal conservative moderates.
The parents in this case had a similar lack of faith in the local schools, and had the resources to do SAH parenting. The students were brilliant, especially in Math and other ‘hard’ subjects, but struggled with softer subjects and debate/argumentative instruction (My AP History classes roxxored). The parents had felt they needed to have some socialization and that HS was safe enough with the AP program, but they both struggled in adapting to a much less structured system from their POV.
The young lady of the pair also had issues with dealing with sexuality and romance/advances, but I believe that had a lot more to do with social isolation and the default assumptions of mid/late 80s open-but-shameful sexuality for teens rather than the politics of their parents.
Parallellines, by what do you mean by “issues”? Did she not pick up cues and ended up with the wrong boys, or nobody at all, or was she promiscuous? I’m curious.
My nieces also had, at least at the elementary level, a socialization time with other HSed kids at the beginning of the day, because it was through the public school, when the parents would drop off yesterday’s assignments and pick up today’s.
The ones I know typically took a year off to travel the world or go stay in various countries for months at a time, and homeschooled as part of the deal.
Never come across anyone that wasn’t a religious conservative that homeschooled for years on end.
To be honest, all of the above, although, not at the same time of course. I guess trying to be chivalrous from a near-stranger from 30 years ago is unneeded though.
At first, she was very standoffish with everyone, but especially boys. Since she was attractive, she drew a lot of attention, but didn’t seem to know what to do with it. A few months later, she ended bouncing back and forth between several of the more aggressive and confident guys (who were pushy) but (the guys) had a very bad reputation in the school. And that did not make her popular with many of the girls.
By the end of the year, she was a lot more confident, and a lot more worldly, and seemed to have embraced the 80s “slutty is cool” ethos that was big on MTV and the like. Apparently (from her brother, who I was closer with as a fellow nerdy, book carrying semi-outcast) she was in a state of constant tension with her folks, who wanted her to be ‘free’ but also not to ruin her chances at a good school and future.
And for all my concerns, she stayed in the top 5% of the school the whole time, so for all I know it was a part of a surface rebellion.
I think that would to some extent describe my co-worker’s experience. They would probably call themselves centrist, but I would label them as moderately liberal. The kind of people who despise CA governor Gavin Newsom for his perceived moral lapses, but can’t bring themselves to vote for his Republican opponents because they suck too hard and who regard Trumpism in general with loathing and disgust. They were on the more liberal end of the spectrum of their local homeschoolers, in a high-achieving homeschool network that leaned towards the very conservative, but was mixed. One of their kids has graduated college, a second is starting and a third is now in a public HS by choice for the fuller team athletics experience.
We are super liberal, and would homeschool if our son were willing. It’s not politics, at all: I just think K-8 moves really slow, and J know he’s capable of going much faster. We homeschooled for 2020-2021 and he totally blossomed, both academically but also in terms of self-agency and attitide toward learning. This year, we put him in a hybrid program which allowed us to at least keep some of those elements. At the end of the year, they suggested we skip 5th and send him to 6th next year (we declined, because he has good friends and we would rather continue to enrich). He was NOT that kid before the homeschool year.
I’m a public school teacher. I know we do a great job. But no one can teach a class as effectively as a private tutor (in our case, dad) can teach one kid. A class becomes transactional. One on one, we never have to.