“I’m keeping my son home.” African Americans
Homeschooling
Hello, , from NHERI and Dr. Ray.
The Context
Scholars Garvey Lundy and Ama Mazama first take their readers through a fascinating account of various facets of African American males in the American educational system.[1] They write the following:
The struggle on the part of African Americans for a quality and
equitable education in America is well documented …. This struggle was prompted by the educational inequities that continue to color the lives of young African American males …. The following sections of this manuscript highlight four sources of inequity experienced by African American males: (1) low teacher expectations; (2) the over-referral to special education programs; (3) school safety and aggression; and (4) the growing alliance between schools and the criminal justice system [the school
to prison pipeline]. These factors, we argue, have preoccupied homeschooling parents and contributed to their decision to homeschool. (p. 55)
The authors then flesh out the research on each of the preceding four points.
Garvey and Mazama move on to situate their overview of black male education in the current history of homeschooling. They explain
the following:
Numerous attempts have been made to explore the motivations for homeschooling among American parents …. What clearly transpires from a review of this literature is that American homeschoolers do not lend themselves to easy and neat classifications. At best, we arrive at categories that must be broad enough to encompass the multitude of experiences that they claim to capture. Yet, their very
broadness undermines their usefulness …. At the heart of this difficulty lies the fact that the homeschooling population’s heterogeneity has considerably increased over the past decades. Thus, the “pedagogical” and “ideological” categories which were once proposed by Van Galen …, and managed to capture the two main groups of homeschoolers in the 1980s – namely, the libertarian political left and the religious right – must be considerably enlarged to include parents who homeschool because
of … [other reasons]. (p. 54)
These two researchers decided, about 30 years into the modern homeschool movement, “… to capture the African American homeschooling experience …” (p. 58).
Methods
Garvey and Mazama conducted 74 interviews across a wide geographical area, stretching along
the Mid- and South-Atlantic, and the Midwest. In addition to the interviews, they “… also relied upon surveys, focus groups, and participant observations of African American homeschooling parents in order to provide a comprehensive view of the African American homeschooling experience” (p. 58). The majority of their subjects were urban, and the largest pool of subjects came from Chicago and its surrounding areas (29.7%), followed by the metropolitan areas of Philadelphia (25.7%), Washington,
D.C. (17.6%), New York (10.8%), and Atlanta (8.1%).
The researchers “… used the constant comparative method to explore emerging themes, common categories, and subcategories. In other words, we sought connections among the various emergent categories, which in turn became the basis for the emergent theory …” (p. 58). “In producing the emergent themes, steps were taken to triangulate the data. The authors kept extensive journals of the
research process, making observational notes of interviews, setting, and interaction, which on several occasions placed us as participant observers of homeschooling events” (p. 59). They also conducted informal focus groups with homeschooling parents and kept notes thereon.
They studied a largely homogeneous group. The majority of their “… respondents self-identified as native-born African Americans, with only a few self-identifying as
foreign born or racially mixed. In terms of family description, the average family consists of 3.2 children and most were raised in a two-parent households (91%)” (p. 59). Regarding educational attainment, over 80 percent of the mothers and over 60 percent of the fathers had an undergraduate college degree or more. These figures are significantly higher than the national statistic of only 19.4 percent of African Americans having a Bachelor’s degree or
more.
Findings
As is true with the majority of other homeschooling parents, these researchers found that “… most parents offered a series of motives, and were rarely motivated by a single factor …” (p. 61). Many reasons were given. The most-often stated reasons was “… a concern with the quality of education provided in brick-and-mortar schools
…,”with 25 percent mentioning this. This finding is consistent with previous research but, “… unlike other research on homeschooling, and unique to the African American experience in homeschooling, the second most mentioned motivating factor for homeschooling was a concern with racism (23.9%). In previous articles we dealt specifically with the issue of quality of education and racism as motivators ….” (p. 61).
Lundy and Mazama’s
presented the following findings:
Reasons for Homeschooling |
(Percentage) |
Quality of Education | 25.0 |
Racism | 23.9 |
Family Bonds | 14.8 |
Religious | 9.5 |
Concern for Sons | 9.5 |
Financial Constraints | 4.2 |
Moral - nonreligious | 4.2 |
Special Needs | 3.4 |
Other | 5.5 |
The interviews provided deeper and more revealing information. During the interviews, reported the scholars,
… a much larger portion of our subjects spoke about the negative experiences of their sons in
brick-and-mortar schools, or their general concerns about relinquishing their sons to the traditional school system. It became clear that preoccupation for sons was an emergent theme that deserved analysis. Indeed, based on our interviews, African American parents’ concern for their sons can be thematically grouped as a preoccupation with (1) the link between schools and the criminal justice system, (2) their son’s self-esteem or confidence, (3) the constant battle against teacher bias, and (4)
the fear of their son being assigned to special education classes or labeled cognitively disabled. (p. 62)
The authors then provide enlightening commentary on “the unique challenges faced by African American males” and “low expectations and special education” for black males in the U.S. educational system.
Researchers Garvey and Mazama then give the following fascinating
finding from their study:
Unquestionably, the most recurring theme to appear in our discussion with African American homeschoolers regarding the education of their sons, centered on the fear of being trapped in the criminal justice system. The parents interviewed were keenly aware of the connection between failing schools and the growing African American male prison population. This knowledge is expressed in
several ways. To many of our parents the word “school” was synonymous with jail or prison, implying that one leads to the other, or that they both serve the same function of punishment and control …. These sentiments are expressed by Tara, the mother of a young boy, in Philadelphia and Jason, father of two boys, who lives in the Chicago metropolitan area:
Tara: Schools are institutions, just like
prisons are institutions. Just like insane asylums are institutions. They are there to keep our kids locked up.
Jason: So, if we’re going to let our children go to these schools, we’re going to be training them … training them to be future convicts … because I believe schools are so very related to prisons.
Conclusions
Scholars Garvey and Mazama conclude that the “African American homeschooling of males is more than a passive counter measure against a much gendered form of White supremacy, [sic] it is also a way to assert agency and assume leadership in shaping the character of a Black male. Indeed, these African American parents assumed a protectionist posture … as they engage in proactive measures
to bring to the fore the type of men they would like their sons to become” (p. 64). They also discovered that African American homeschooling parents are engaged “… in the delicate task of building a healthy Black masculinity that challenges the narrow and often negative identity of Black males. African American parents often find themselves challenging institutional practices and norms, as well as images and racial myths perpetuated by the media, in order to orient their sons toward a more
positive ideal of what it means to be a Black man” (p. 64).
Thirty years of research shows that one of investigators Garvey and Mazama’s concluding remarks could easily apply to homeschooling parents of any racial/ethnic background:
More recently in the face of a hostile environment that particularly targets African American males, African American
parents have turned to homeschooling to ensure a safe and nurturing space for the future fathers and husbands of the African American community. (p. 66)
--Brian D. Ray, Ph.D.
National Home Education Research Institute
P.S. I apologize for accidentally sending out to this list in early March an opinion-piece message that
was not related to homeschool research.
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Endnotes:
[1] Lundy, Garvey, & Mazama, Ama. (2014) “I’m keeping my son home”: African