Thanks again to Elinor Bowles of Educating While Black for asking me to do a brief series on Homeschooling. In a few weeks Patricia Patton of Black Boomer Bloggers will be hosting a tweet chat on my homeschooling book, Morning by Morning: How We Home-Schooled Our African-American Sons to the Ivy League. So whatever Elinor and I don’t cover here on Facebook I’ll try and address with Patricia.
Elinor wanted to know 1) Why we homeschooled; 2) How we homeschooled; 3) What we learned from homeschooling; and 4) The end results of homeschooling. A few weeks earlier I posted a two-part a preamble “Black Homeschooling: Disclaimers, Mythology and that Pesky Socialization Question…a short set of disclaimers and the debunking of some mythology and analysis of the Socialization Question. For a quick review, here are the links to Part 1, http://bit.ly/1mIT16C and Part 2, http://bit.ly/WFC87L
Now, as promised, here’s my response to Query #1) Why We Homeschooled.
I wish I could say we began homeschooling Charles, Damon and Evan as the result of a detailed,longitudinal study of the educational outcomes of black, male children in the United States. I wish I could say we began homeschooling as the result of visions seen after months of asceticism, prayer and meditation. I wish I could say we began after casual and informal discussions over the years with other parents and elders. I wish I could say some or all of those things, but if I did I’d be lying. And too many people know the truth so it would be the proverbial wasted lie. The short answer to why we homeschooled is we couldn’t afford the alternatives, specifically:
1) Financially, we couldn’t afford private school;
2) Academically, we couldn’t afford public school;
3) Spiritually, we couldn’t afford parochial schools;
4) Holistically, we couldn’t afford the collective impact of institutionalized education on our black sons.
I’m sorry to say it took their expulsion due to tardy tuition payments for us to see that we couldn’t afford NOT to homeschool.
In October 1991, Charles and Damon were 11 year old 4th graders while Evan was 9 and in the 2nd grade. They were well-liked and doing well at a well-established, single-sex, country day school with an excellent academic reputation and state-of-the-art facilities. But money was an issue from the outset. Our family business, PN&A, Inc. (www.nabrit.com/pna) was launched in 1986 so we weren’t exactly a “start-up” but we weren’t Bill Gates or Oprah either and the $20K+ annual tuition bill added another level of challenge to entrepreneurship. The school offered financial aid, but CMadison refused. He felt strongly that (a) financial aid should be reserved exclusively for those families for whom attendance without it was literally impossible. He, a firm and relentless proponent of belt-tightening, did not feel we met that criteria. And (b) financial aid, either literally or psychologically, complicates the process of giving and receiving constructive criticism. CMadison was clear about his dominant role in the holistic development of our sons and wanted the freedom and flexibility to monitor, and when necessary critique every element impacting their lives. Although CMadison grew up in Memphis he wasn’t really a “blues man” but B.B. King’s “Paying the Cost to be the Boss” ( http://bit.ly/1jNswCi) definitely provided a lyrical backdrop to his view about his sons and his role in determining the way other folks engaged them. So rather than the typical 60%-40%, August and December payment schedule, we offered and the school agreed to an incremental, all year long payment process, and that seemed fine…until the picnic.
We hosted a picnic at a public park late in September and invited all the black families. Having attended the girls’ version of our sons’ country day school, I knew how isolating and somewhat confusing private schools can be for “non-traditional students”, i.e. any body not wealthy and WASP. Many of the “traditional” students were legacies, they lived in the same communities, belonged to the same country clubs, attended the same summer camps and where Sabbaths were observed, worshipped in many of the same churches or synagogues. Along with school traditions those multiple points of intersection outside of school made the country day experience easier to navigate. The point of the picnic was to try and create more points of intersection for black students who were not legacies, did not live in the same communities, did not belong to the same country clubs, attend the same summer camps or worship in the same churches or synagogues. I thought it was a marvelous idea but alas, the picnic was a problem….the Headmaster (yes, that was the official title of one working in the role of principal) was outraged I’d held such an event without clearing it first and some of the black parents were insulted they’d been invited. Within the week Charles, Damon and Evan were expelled. We were “warned” that if we allowed them to return before the tuition bill was current “we will embarrass them.”
After a few days of praying, fasting and “fund-raising” we realized we could not afford to send them back-ever. Once someone tells you they’ll embarrass your kids, and over money no less, can you, in good conscience, ever send them back?
Of course the fact that we weren’t sending them back to the country day school didn’t mean we had to homeschool, but we’d already done the public school thing and we were just tired of institutionalized education. We were fatigued by the never-ending series of “isolated incidents’ that were too consistent and too frequent to be isolated; the insane mantra “we’d love to hire some black faculty-if we could just find some qualified”; the sincere, yet also exhaustive “thank you so much for bringing this to our attention…that’s why we’re all here-to learn from one another”, coupled with the teary-eyed “how do you think this makes me feel?” reverse guilt trip. Bottom line, we were tired of providing constructive criticism. We came to the admittedly slow recognition that we were looking for something these institutions were not designed to provide and that if a customized approach that nurtured and validated our sons holistically was what we wanted, we would have to design it ourselves. We’d been distracted by surface differences in the schools our sons attended and missed the fact that they were all essentially designed around variations of the same theme. It’s like going to various Disney locales when you really don’t like giant rodents-and then complaining about it. Whether it’s Disney Land, Disney World or EuroDisney guess what? Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse will always be there. Whether in California, Florida or France these theme parks hold to the theme. The same is true of institutionalized education…there is a theme. We determined that theme was not healthy for our sons; that is why we homeschooled.
Watch for Question #2: How We Homeschooled…