What I Saw at the Homeschool Convention
Day One: Pluralities and Contradictions
A Brief Narrative: How We Came to Homeschool
To many of you, this starts by the way of a confession: we have homeschooled the last three years. We began, as many, in the early days of COVID, as a concession to a global pandemic, and then discovered that not only could we do it but that we enjoyed it.
By “we”, I initially mean “we”: for the first two years, I would work from home one day a week job carving out minutes each day for my ordinary job. Upon returning to work five days a week, I missed the regular rhythms and the noise of the kids. Yes: I got more writing done and more reading in quiet of an office. But that labor of exigency had become a world-shaping act in those two years.
I’ve hesitated to speak to often of it, because I know what everyone thinks when they hear that we homeschool. And let me assure you, those things do exist. But most often, I think that it is done from a place of love, and not fear, of the desire to be with our kids, and not to shield them from insanity.
And so: this is how three years later, I found myself in the midst of a homeschool convention on a July day, spending part of our summer vacation.
What You See Is What You Think
There are many, many floor length skirts. There is a booth in the exhibit hall for Texans for vaccine choice. There are lots of strollers, jean shorts, tshirts with nebulous Bible verses.
The first session we went to was by a well-known writing educator, who chose this year to give a talk on homeopathic approaches to education, talking about the need to get the kids outside first thing in the morning to be in the sunlight. In his talk, they were good elements of nutrition and exercise, alongside questionable and anecdotal pieces of advice regarding cooking oils.
The participants are overwhelmingly, white. This tracks with the framework of homeschooling, which typically requires that there is one parent who develops them selves to education while the other parent provides income for family. In America, this single income possibility is overwhelmingly a white possibility, and so the conference reflects that reality.
Homeschooling springs out of a desire to make the best educational choices for your children, and this ethos of personal choice and freedom as tendrils that extend in various directions. Medi-Share, a Christian healthcare sharing company, underwrites this particular conference, and other booths have undercurrents of liberty, self government, and personal choice, an ethos which puts it squarely at odds with another value of homeschooling: the value of community.
What You See Is Not What You Thought
I name all this at front to say that there are reasons why homeschooling gets caricatures that it does. It gets it because those elements are here. Part of homeschooling is being willing to do it despite the fringes that are very real.
But though the very structure of homeschool typically requires that one parent be primarily at home instead of working, the hundreds of parents here do not appear to be wealthy. There are hand-me-down clothes and offbrand apparel galore. Many families pack their lunches for themselves and their kids. As I have seen from most of the folks I know within this world, the choice to homeschool is not always made possible by financial luxury, but one of sacrifice. They do it despite the financial logic.
When you walk into the expansive display table area downstairs, you will find resources for educational exams, Latin, math and reading comprehension, online options for children with special needs. You will find book collections for teaching American history through literature, which include volumes from Frederick Douglass, Du Bois, Melville, and many others, critics of the American project. One of the talks yesterday was a soft revision of American history on slavery, but it’s not the only narrative available here.
Last night, I sat in a full room, while hundreds of children happily sang along to tunes written by a children’s author, about a warren of rabbits that fight back against the tyranny of the birds of prey and the wolves. It’s a great series that we’ve read with our kids, and to see the children’s author happily extolling the virtues of courage, patience, and love, while children sang about the heroes of the book was a nerd fest that made my heart swell three sizes. The kids were not indoctrinated but happy.
The conference itself is being held at a fairly lavish, swim park and hotel, but only costs participants $50 for three days, full to the brim with support, resources, and companionship, for other families, trying to educate their children. I have no doubt that this is due to significant subsidies by the organizing body, which makes no effort to sell products within a session or to foist services upon participants. The ethos of the conference: do what works and don’t be overwhelmed by it.
A World Contains Worlds
As an ethicist, I’m always aware of the way in which surface both reveals, and discloses certain dynamics which makes that world possible. Homeschooling, like anything in American life, is both made possible by inequalities that are broadly within society and also cuts across those grains as well.
What draws everyone here together? Ultimately, it is not a desire to have freedom in the abstract so much as a desire to do well by the children running wild everywhere here. As we know too we’ll by experience, the decision to homeschool is not an easy one nor is it one that is easy to explain. We found ourselves here first by necessity, and then by desire, and it puts us in a weird space with many of our friends who are public school advocates and teachers.
I have reflected frequently in these issues about relationships between coalitions and communities, and that is alive and well in the space in particular. Sometimes, this world feels more like a tactical alliance of people who consider themselves allies for a cause. Other times, you can sit down in a session and see that someone else from your hometown is there, fellow traveler in this weirdness that you had no idea existed.
Politics surrounding public education are so toxic that anything dissident to either full negation or full affirmation seems to have a limited space in the world. But coming to something like this, reminds me that, while polarization exists, there is far more subterranean goodwill and desire for good and love that we suspect. There is great darkness, but it has not overcome.
I remember you mentioned your family was newish to homeschool in a chat you had with Dr. Hooten Wilson (about the book Deschooling Society). So this was interesting to read! And I have gathered some of the same observations, not so much from a convention but just in general observing in person and online.
Thanks Myles. We have homeschooled our kids (now in a university model private school two days a week with three days at home) and this echoes much of what we have experienced as well. The fringes are real, but there is also a beautiful and deep community to be found.