At the beginning of the summer of 2003, I was contacted by the Korean Broadcasting System about their US bureau doing a documentary on African-American homeschoolers. They wanted to film homeschooling families from varying socioeconomic backgrounds, family structure and teaching style to get a full scope of African-American families who have undertaken to homeschool their children. I put out a call to parents to see if anyone was interested in being a part of the documentary. The only family that responded was a nontraditional one. They were grandparents who were homeschooling their two grandsons.
I spoke with the grandmother at great length and she relayed to me that she and her husband had both religious and educational reasons for pulling their grandchildren out of public school. Like many families, they noticed a gradual decline of their grandsons' academic performances as well as the overall waning educational atmosphere in their classrooms and with their teachers. I admired them instantly because in talking with her she had the wisdom of a grandmother, but also the fortitude to understand the advantages of homeschooling; something virtually unheard of from other African-Americans from her generation. After all, she and her husband lived through the inception of Brown versus the Board of Education and yet they felt no guilt from rescuing their grandsons from public school despite the historical implications of them having the right to be there. This family can serve as an inspiration to all grandparents who find themselves raising children again and are thinking about the best way to educate their grandchildren. This family taught me early on that traditional families are not the only ones homeschooling their children.
While most journalists report on the homogeneous African-American homeschooling community, they miss out on the true diversity of families that homeschool African-American children. Since forming NAAHA, I have met several Caucasian families who homeschool their adopted African-American children. One such family lives near us and since their son is around the same age as our daughters we have a lot in common and thus we keep in touch. They have invited us to their farm where their son feeds their chickens and where they grow organic vegetables and live in a solar powered home and conversely they visit us at our home.
News reports typically overlook these families although a sizeable number of them do exist. Unfortunately, statistics and news reports only report a fragmented view of the education of African-American children at home. I never would have had the opportunity to meet such a wonderful family and families like theirs had I viewed homeschooling African-American children solely from statistics.
