Resources for African American Home Schoolers Rise to Meet the Growing Demand
African Americans are the fastest growing demographic group of home schoolers in the United States. Because this is a new development in home schooling, there is a great deal of interest in the world of epidemiological research concerning the details of the African American home schooling experience.
The focus, specifically, is on African American experience when newly home schooling, as well as the experience of African American parents of home school graduates.
Resources for African American home schoolers are becoming more and more available. A group focused solely on African American families who home school is called African American Unschooling. It is a network with members throughout the country, all of whom are black families who home school.
A magazine is also available for those who would like to know more about the experience of African American home schoolers and perhaps pick up a few tips. The magazine is called FUNgasa: Free Oneself! The Magazine for African-American Home Educators.
Another resource in the making combines the efforts of African American Unschooling and FUNgasa. African American Unschooling steadily works to gather data from various African American home schooling families in the form of surveys. With the data they collect, the editors of FUNgasa will create a new series of guidebooks aimed specifically at African American home schooling parents.
By finding out the issues of black home schoolers and their parents, these guidebooks will attempt to help families better handle the pitfalls with the information they need to make their experience run smoother. What will make these guidebooks different from the other home schooling guides currently on the shelves is their Afro-centric focus.
African American culture is often one of the fundamental reasons that African American families choose to home school. By incorporating black culture into home school curricula, African American families have the opportunity to impart a rich history and proud tradition that gets lost in the predominantly white-favored public and private school systems.
The opportunity to network with other black home schooling families and learn from articles written from an African American perspective, with the black American experience in mind, is a major victory in the world of home schooling. What heretofore has been a predominantly white movement is now opening up to embrace the cultural experience of all races and ethnicities, making the home schooling a truly inclusive one.
.About the Author:
Mimi Rothschild is a homeschooling mother, writer, children’s rights advocate, and Founder and C.E.O. of home education company Learning by Grace, Inc. She and her husband of 28 years reside with their 8 children right outside Philadelphia, PA.
Rothschild launched Learning By Grace, Inc. because she believed that our nation’s public school system has failed parents and students. Learning By Grace, Inc. offers online education through a multimedia-rich curriculum to PreK-12 children across the country and throughout the world.
An accomplished author, Rothschild has written books regarding education published by McGraw Hill and others. Her Daily Education News Feed consists of articles and essays dealing with alternative learning methods.
