Inspired by the many articles on the internet about what parents should be prepared for if they homeschool. Creating a little reporting balance.

Maybe you’re counting the days until your little one will finally be going to school. Maybe your 4, 5, or 6 year old is also waiting on bated breath to hear school bells telling them to go to class or to bring home homework assignments to do together as a family every night at the dinner table, with smiles and laughter, eating s’mores.

But there is a reality to school that few people talk about. There is a cultural fantasy about the beauty of public school, that once kids go to school, they shall learn, and be free, and grow up to be upstanding citizens. And every year, children all over the United States strap on their backpacks for the first time, and start their first school day in their 12 or 13 year long educational career. Yet, before taking the big leap into this long-term investment, have the parents taken the time to consider the very real challenges that school brings to a family?

Before sending a child to school, families need to do some hard thinking. Is this change really going to benefit their children? Does the fantasy of school match the reality? Do the parents know if the child’s temperament is a good match for school? And what kind of legal rights to parents have if school doesn’t work out? These questions and so much more are important to think about before signing up for a 13-year family commitment of public school.

Time considerations. Very few families understand just how much time and energy is required of not just the student, but the entire family when a child is in school. There are fundraisers, meetings, homework and project time, afterschool activities, school shopping that happens throughout the year, not to mention possible costume design, volunteering to decorate and clean up, and other special event requirements. Being a good, involved parent of a child in school takes a lot more energy and commitment than most realize. It’s not easy to be a school parent. There might be hours during the day that are free, but most school parents say that their time is very full and do not spend their free time reading books all day. It’s hard work.

Money considerations - It might be free to reserve a seat at a public school desk, but it costs a lot of money once that seat is filled. There are supplies, clothes, transportation, after school care, projects, fundraisers, and so much more. Gaining access to a teacher standing in front of a room might be free, but everything else costs money. And if you don’t have the money, your child might miss out on important opportunities. There are exceptions, and some children are able to get a good education without spending a lot of money. But statistics show that schools with more money donated by the local community have higher student success rates. If you are in a successful, good school, you will very likely be spending a lot more money than you thought you would. It’s important to remember to budget for these expenditures, and go into the situation with open eyes.

Limited and unpredictable environment - Once your child enters school, that will become her world. Most of her friends will be there, she will formulate her opinions based on the school children’s social trends, and will be raised by other children who may or may not have the best social skills. Over time, the friends from school and that social community within, will become everything. She will not be exposed to the outside world much, except on social outings with the friends she makes at school and through fieldtrips she takes with friends at school. The world will become very small. Making sure this doesn’t happen will take a lot of work. In addition to making sure she has all of her school work done and attends all of the school events, keeping her in the loop with the rest of the world will take devotion and time. Making sure to get her out into the world, to take classes with other children who don’t go to her school and make friends outside of her small circle will be hard. Many children resist this once their very comfortable social circles are created. But it’s important to remember that in the end, their social skills outside of school are just as important as having tight, default friendships.

Limited resources - It’s easy to be convinced that school will provide everything a child needs for 13 years in order to be an educated individual. But that is rarely the case. It’s important to know that it is rare that a child is working at exactly at his level. And often times, school curriculum is limited in scope, or only scratches the surface of interesting topics. Also, many schools no longer offer art, creative writing, music, or interesting electives like languages other than Spanish, psychology, computer programming, and a lot of other skills that children need to know in order to have a complete education. Many schools have reduced or totally eliminated recess. It’s important to know before sending a child to school what it is that you want your children to know and experience as they are growing and learning, because once they are at school, they will be limited in what they can learn based on what that specific school is offering. Anything that he is not learning in his school will have to be learned at home, with extra effort on the parent’s part. Then we get back to the issue of how much time it already takes just to deal with school related demands. Trying to add supplementary material to make up for what’s missed in school can be a challenge.

Shy and active children will often have problems - There is a misconception that school will bring out the extrovert in shy kids and will calm down the hyper ones. If your child is quiet and reserved or very physically active and talks a lot, they will probably have challenges in school. The schools will want your child to behave a certain way, and they will have to either force themselves to change to comply, or will get into trouble or have social and academic difficulties. If your child is not already attending all-day classes regularly, where they have to sit for long periods and focus, and do schoolwork when asked, see if there is a program nearby that allows you to try it one or two days a week, to see if it’s a good match. Many parents send their children to school with no idea how they will like it, and then if it doesn’t work out, feel obligated to finish out the year, or even several years, at that school, using a lot of emotional energy and time trying to figure out how to fix a problem that didn’t exist until the child was in school.

Legal rights - One of the biggest misconceptions that parents often do not know about public school is that once they sign their child up for the school, they lose a lot of their rights. And what rights they don’t lose legally are often suppressed with pressure from the school and the community.  They lose their right to decide what their children are learning, they lose the right to be with their children whenever they feel like during the day, they lose their right to decide when to go on vacation or whether a child is sick enough to stay home (that has to be decided by a doctor). And the social pressure to take the standardized tests, for the children to do homework even if it’s far too hard, far too easy, or far too much, for the children to participate in every single project or class function even if they are not interested, for the children to stop what they are doing when they are engaged to stay with the group, and for the children to not stand up for themselves and maintain the authority of the teacher even if the child does not agree or is not happy - all this pressure to let go of parents’ and children’s rights starts the minute the children’s name is on the teacher’s roll call. Many parents don’t understand just how much they will be giving up until they are imbedded in the system, and it’s much harder to get out. To avoid this pitfall, understand exactly what your rights are before your child starts school, and understand from the beginning your options if it doesn’t work out. The feeling of having no other option but public school is what keeps parents and children’s rights so suppressed in the first place.

Sending children to school is a great option for some people, but not for others. There are many resources and places to get information on public schooling which you should research before doing this; every child is different, and every parent has their limitations.

7 Lies about homeschoolers video - by blimeycow

Anyone know if he really was a homeschooler? He has many other videos, most of them making humorous commentary about politics or things in the news. A Colbert/Stewart in training? Wouldn’t it be great if the next great comedian was a homeschooler?

The online secular homeschooling community was hit hard, with messages of condolences, sadness, and mourning all over Facebook and the Secular Homeschooling Yahoo group.

But, a day later, when no information was forthcoming on how to pay respects to the family, and no article showed up in any newspapers, and none of the family was giving more information, there started to be suspicions about whether he even existed at all.

Mike Feigen claimed to homeschool three boys, two of which were his twin sons with cystic fibrosis, as well as a nephew who also had CF. He had said his wife died in 2004 2003 of CF as well, and he at that point stopped working in order to be a full time dad.

He posted to Facebook, the Secular Homeschooling off-topic Yahoo group, and to a Cycstic Fibrosis support forum many times a day, updating families about his sons’ health. He also posted about anti-religion and the Yankees.

He had a lot of friends (and as I’ve learned, also a lot of people who most certainly did not consider him a friend). These friends supported him and cheered him on through all of his struggles with his children.

So when he died, it hit the secular homeschooling community hard, and many people were very upset by it.

But after a little while, people started asking questions about him.

And when people started asking questions, suddenly, his Facebook page, his CF webpage, and the two pages for his sons disappeared off the internet.

Without those points of contact, Mike Feigen with two sons with CF did not exist anywhere else. He instantly blinked out of existence.

After doing extensive research, I have come to the conclusion that  a real living Mike Feigen never existed, and that he and his entire family was fabricated.

But who would do this and why?

I have my suspicion, but let’s start with the facts about why I have concluded with 99% certainty that he never existed.

Each individual fact can be explained by other possible scenarios, but when you take them all together, there is only one conclusion to be made.

• The announcement for his death was only a few hours after he announced he went to the batting cages. In an accident that horrific, it would be highly unlikely that a family member would know enough and be able to announce about it on his FB page that quickly. Not to mention that most family members would be too busy trying to get information themselves about what happened before announcing it on the person’s FB page. Cleaning up a fatal accident takes a lot of time.
• The announcement was allegedly by his mother in law. Her page did not have any mention of the deaths of her own grandchidren. She only posted on his page. And she posted to “let people know” without any visible emotion.
• Mere hours after there was suspicion about his existence voiced on his page, the page was taken down. So were the pages of the two sons. For some reason, the page of the nephew was not taken down. I was unable to verify if the mother in law’s page was still up. (Update: the nephew’s page is now unavailable.)(Update: the mother in Law’s page, Judy Cohn, is also no longer available.)
• Nobody on FB had met him in person. He had hundreds of FB friends, and none of them came forward stating that they had met him.
• There were no pictures of him or his kids on any of the FB pages.
• There was no record of a crash of that magnitude anywhere in the US in the news.
• Nobody was quite sure where he lived, although there was speculation that he was New Jersey or New York.
• According to his posts and a few other things found about him on the internet - he did not exist on the internet until January 2009, where he posted several times to a CF group and Daily KOS. After that, his existed retreated to FB, the secular HS yahoo group, and the CF group, and posted often there. By 2010, he only existed on FB.
• There is no record of a Mike Feigen living in New Jersey or New York.
• There is an easily found Mike Feigen who lives in CO who is a social relations manager for the minor baseball league, as well as a Mike Feigin who lives in New Jersey and is a practicing attorney. The Mike Feigen who was said to have died was an avid baseball fan, and he claimed to be a lawyer.

These are the main facts that he did not exist. The three most important ones are that nobody has met him in person, he does not exist anywhere else on the internet, and no news article about a horrendous crash killing 4 people including three boys with CF was in the news.

(Update: I have been told that in one of his posts at posts on the Secular Homeschooler site, he said his sons’ doctor was Dorothy Bisberg, M.D. in New Jersey. I am not sure if there is a way to confirm that.)

Unless there is new information about this, there is no evidence anywhere that Mike Feigen and his children ever existed.

Which, is good, in that 4 people didn’t die in a terrible car crash. But bad in that someone has been writing as Mike Feigen in 3 different forums, and created at least 4 different FB pages to support it, since January 2009. And duping us all in the process.

Who would do this and why?

(Update: We now know who did it and why. The theories below were my original suspicions based on the evidence I had, but as more information came in, these theories were all debunked. Read the comments to find out who it was and maybe you can deduce why on your own.)

This is where the facts are a little blurry, because nobody can know for sure why people do things. But I speculate the following based on additional findings I’ve discovered in the past couple of days.

I believe that Mrs. White did it in the Hall with the Lead Pipe.

Ok, seriously. After all the given evidence, the most likely story is that Mike Feigen was actually a woman. She is a writer. I’m 95% sure of both of those things.

And I also believe that she did it because she was promoting a book she was writing, as well as her general anti-religious platform.  I have about 50% certainty about this.

The next likely scenario, which I have at about 40%, is that it was someone who wants to be a writer, perhaps writing a book, or creating characters for a book, who was doing character research, and in the process, also got her kicks from the support/debate it created.

These are the bits that caused me to go down this line of thinking:

Evidence that it was a woman:
If you read the posts and comments and take away from the “Mike Feigen” persona, the writing style and choice of topics has a feminine “feel” to it. Although, it’s nearly impossible to know for sure if someone is a man or a woman, there are common differences between how men and women write. I’ll leave it up to you to decide, but the more I read his posts, especially the long ones, the more it makes sense that a woman wrote it.

The whole story is also very romantic. His wife moved in across the street from him when he was six. His nephew is like a son. His in-laws love him dearly. He struggles from day to day, and his struggles are always so much harder than anyone else’s. He’s able to stay home because both his father and her father are rich. He used to be a lawyer. It’s got all of the markings of a “perfect family who has to deal with something hard, overcome it, and ends with tragedy anyway.”

(Update, Linda Nielson took several samples of Mike’s writing and ran it through the Gender Genie - 4 out of 5 samples came up as being written by a woman.)

Evidence that it was a writer and he’s a writer’s character.

• If you look closely, especially to the longer posts, the grammar, punctuation, formatting, are all very well written.
• It’s written like a story. You could take some of his longer posts, especially the self-describing posts, and put them in a novel, and it would read very nicely.
• He rarely, if ever, veered off the character topics. (There is only one example of this that I could find, where he asks about building a pool.) The story was tight, and there was very little human variance. The first posts in 2009, were like character introductions, rather than human stories, with a tightly wrapped story about how he got to where he was and his approach to life. On his FB feed, his posts were consistent with the same topics over and over, with no variance that I could see or that I’ve been able to gather from outside sources. The character was well-defined to the point of being annoying to some, even. While it is not unusual for individuals to be obsessed with one topic, when someone posts the number of posts he had (meaning he was on the internet a lot), there would be some variance and personal injection somewhere. If it was a writer, it makes sense that he would only post on very focused topics and keep within the character’s outline.

Now, the reason I think it might have been a particular writer who’s coming out with a book (who I won’t mention by name until I have solid evidence that it’s her), is that just coincidentally, I was able to find out information about some of Mike’s “likes” on his FB page in Dec. 2011, and Jan. 2012. His likes, again, where exactly what his character would like - CF foundation, Richard Dawkins, Atheism (but not homeschooling, interestingly). But there were no oddballs like a tv show or a favorite restaurant or anything personal that we normally add along with our political or pet passions. Also, almost exactly one month before he suddenly died, he added one more like - to a writer’s page, who happened to be writing a book about secularism, and who was going to end her stint as a newspaper columnist - on the topic of atheism. He added her when she announced she was very soon going to retire as a columnist, and was going to write a book.  Also, the writing style of this person’s few updates, and Mike’s writing style are eerily similar.

The story fits easily - Mike Feigen was a research character for her book, and also a way for her to come up with ideas for her column.

(Update: After receiving more information about this person, it seems unlikely it’s her. It might be someone in a similar situation, but I don’t think it’s the original person I was suspecting. Unless I get more info, I will not pursue this particular possibility further.)

And, on the side, what the heck, it also felt good to debate and be a fundamentalist atheist and nobody would attach it to her real name.

The details, we will probably never know - about who and why she did it. But this story makes sense to me.

The second possibility, is that it was actually a writer who is not successful, yet, who is a very good writer, doing research for a character or a book, and who also has personal experience with CF. So, everyone, keep an eye out for a character in a book in the future who has this character profile - single homeschooling dad, CF kids, and is a staunch atheist. n any case, as soon as she saw that people were looking into who she was, she freaked, and deleted the accounts.

Both of these stories make sense to me, and until there is more evidence to show otherwise, this is what I suspect. It explains why the person was able to keep it up for so long, why they were interested in it, why it was believable, and why they left so abruptly.

Some have speculated that it was a crazy person looking for attention. This is always a possibility when something like this happens. But usually, attention seeking people aren’t that good at keeping their stories straight. It’s still a possibility, but I put it at 10%.

Although, I must add, that no matter what the reason, even if it was to do a character study, there has to have been a bit of a sociopathic tendency with the person who did it, to be callous and detached enough as to pull so many people in, and then just turn them off with an abrupt “he’s dead” and not even a wave goodbye.

And that, is the story of Mike Feigen. The fake person who infiltrated the homeschooling and CF community, who made friends and enemies, and who pulled at our heartstrings both when he was “alive” and when he died.

TWO GLASSES OF WINE

When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the 2 glasses of wine.

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls.

He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous ‘yes.’

The professor then produced two glasses of wine from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

‘Now’, said the professor, as the laughter subsided, ‘I want you to recognise that this jar represents your life….. The golf balls are the important things; your family, your children, your health, your friends, and your favourite passions; things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.

‘The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, and your car.

The sand is everything else: the small stuff.

If you put the sand into the jar first, he continued, there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls.

The same goes for life: If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you.

Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical check-ups. Take your partner out to dinner. Play another 18. Do one more run down the ski slope. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the shelves.

Take care of the golf balls first; the things that really matter. Set your priorities.

The rest is just sand.’

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the wine represented.

The professor smiled. ‘I’m glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of glasses of wine with a friend.’

1. Are there instances where unschooling doesn’t work? Do some children do better with a structure and routine and more academic focus?

I would argue that it’s totally possible to be an unschooler and have structure, routine, and an academic focus. Most unschoolers don’t have these things, because most kids, when given freedom to pursue education in their own way, don’t gravitate towards these things. Most kids don’t need it like our society thinks they do. But there are cases where children do prefer structured days and lots of academics. An unschooling family would then work with the child to make it happen. Most often, in the cases when unschooling doesn’t work, what actually was going on was neglect. The family was calling it unschooling, but that doesn’t mean they were. Unschooling is an educational model. If parents aren’t educating their children, they aren’t unschooling.

2. How would a parent know if it’s working?

We live in a society where we are taught that the only way to know something is working is if we have a number or statistic to tell us. But, that’s not always the case. How do you know if someone is in love with you? How do you know if you are becoming a better artist? How do you know if you should take one job over another? Many times, we make decisions and we know things without having to provide a number or proof. And that’s how unschoolers know if their children are learning - because they know their kids.

Traditionally, we measure educational success with tests. We complain that standardized tests aren’t good for our schools and kids, yet we have no idea of how else to measure success.

I think a better way to measure success, for any educational approach would be these things:

• Do the parents know who their children are, and how they learn best?
• Do the kids know who they are and how they learn best?
• Are the kids enthusiastic about their world? Do they have interests and passions?
• Do the kids ask questions and feel comfortable having discussions with others about the things they are interested in?
• Do the kids feel comfortable saying, “No, this doesn’t work for me?” and then willing to have a conversation about alternatives?
• Do the kids have confidence that even if they aren’t doing well in something now, that they are still capable and competent?
• Do the kids have a solid sense of self, and genuinely like who they are, despite what faults they have?
• Do the kids continue to seek out new experiences, growth opportunities, and shared experiences, as well as enjoy spending time alone?

These are the kinds of things that unschoolers will use as measures of success, and not test scores.

3. Should homeschooling parents hold their children to the same standards as what happens within a school classroom?

No. This is bigger than unschooling. This is a question of freedom of how we live our lives. When we require that everyone live to the same standards, whether it be what we eat, how we take care of ourselves, or where we choose to live, we take away our freedom to choose. What happens in the classroom is a standard that we have adopted as the “norm” in our society, but I do not believe that all people in our society should be required to perform to that standard simply because it’s what we’re used to.

The reason why many people decide to homeschool, is specifically because they do no agree to the required standards that are in school. There are so many, that it’s impossible to live up to them all. (Ask a public school teacher about that.) Most of the time, homeschoolers choose the standards of school that they think will work and that they like, then adopt alternative standards for the aspects of school they do not feel are beneficial for their children.

Now, perhaps, the next question you might ask is this - are there at least minimum standards that homeschoolers should hold their children to?

Yes, but the minimum standards are already in place. Neglect, abuse, and other forms of child endangerment are illegal. And all of the minimum standards are equally prosecutable and punishable by law - both for parents and adults in schools.

As for educational standards, minimum educational standards are not even settled in public schools, let alone homeschooling. It’s a big issue, not just a homeschooling one. Perhaps, before we start asking homeschoolers to adhere to a minimum standard, we need to figure out what a universally accepted and realistically enforceable minimum standard is for everyone, not just homeschoolers. We haven’t done that yet, so any standard we set for homeschoolers will be arbitrary.

4. Should there sometimes be a tiger mom in the distance for unschoolers?

This idea that there should be someone in the distance checking up on unschoolers, or some kind of voice of dissent to keep them in check - is based on fear that other people aren’t living the way we think they should be. Of course, if there is a family who is neglecting their kids (not feeding them, leaving them alone in the house for far too long for their ages, not allowing them outside of the house) or physically abusing them, we must speak up. But people who are really abusing their kids, they come in so many flavors, how they educate their kids is not a reliable red flag - there is no indication that unschoolers, homeschoolers, public schoolers, or private schoolers are any more or less abusive than any other, and that they are any less likely to come out with educated children. Placing “checks” on unschoolers to make sure they are not neglecting their children, when people who educate in other ways are not required to have the same checks, is discrimination.

We don’t check on vegetarians to make sure their children get enough calories.
We don’t check on Muslims to make sure they aren’t teaching their kids how to make bombs.

These are crazy and inflammatory, of course we wouldn’t do that! But we think it’s OK to monitor unschoolers because we are afraid they are doing something wrong? Checking in on unschoolers is just as assuming and discriminatory. If there is an indication of something wrong, just as with any other parent, that’s when the law kicks in. Unschooling is different, and confusing, and not at all what we are used to. But there’s no indication that it’s inherently dangerous or that unschooling families have any more problems than the average American. So no, I don’t think that a tiger mom needs to be around the corner for unschoolers any more than a Vegan needs a carnivore around the corner.

If a child’s love of learning is alive, their feeling of self-worth and competence is intact, and their willingness to seek out new experiences and be responsible for their own learning is still there, they will be successful in their lives, and a positive addition to the fabric of our socio-political society. That’s something that unschoolers and homeschoolers want just as much as tiger moms do. They are just taking a different path to try to achieve it. Until there is proof that alternative paths don’t work (and unschooling has been around a while now, and all indications show that it works just as well, if not better than, pushing academic performance), we have no reason to try and keep unschoolers from living and educating in their own way.

So now, 6 years later, is the future bright for independently educated teens?

Money

It’s certainly clear how much money has affected public education. What’s not talked about as much is how hard higher education has been hit - that includes state schools and community colleges.

Community colleges are particularly tightening their belts.

Traditional students pay full price for classes at community colleges, but non traditional students, such as concurrently enrolled high school students and non-credit students, have either been able to get their classes for free, or pay a much lower price. In the past, the non-traditional students would have to wait until the traditional students enrolled, and they could fill in the leftover spaces. But with the slashed budgets, the number of classes and number of sessions offered for each class has decreased - leaving very few leftover spaces.

Some colleges have gone so far as to discontinue their concurrent enrollment programs. Some only allow concurrent enrollment from other public schools. Each college is dealing with the financial strain in their own way, but no matter how they deal with it, high school students who rely on community college for their classes are becoming more and more limited in their choices.

Four Year College

Private universities have historically had supportive policies for non-traditional students. Some universities seek out homeschooled, unschooled, or other kinds of out-of-the box students, because they often have something traditional students lack - a drive to learn and strong sense of self. That seems to be consistent in the past 5 years, and the only change has been the increase in tuition at many universities, and the decrease in scholarships.

Public four year universities, however, have not been as friendly to homeschoolers or to students from small private schools. With the financial crunch, the encouraging openness that UC Riverside showed back in 2005 has not flourished.

There were other ways to get into a public four year university without having to go through a public high school. One of the more common paths was to gain credits at a community college first, and then enter the university as a sophomore or junior. That is still a viable option, but might take a little longer due to the budget difficulties at the community college level.

Cal State and the UC system still give priority to community college transfers over freshman applications in order to maintain a balance of lower and upper division students. So, this still seems like one of the more common options for homeschoolers who want to get into a state four year university.

The future of college for independent educators?

I used to think that strong cultural bias against non-public students was the main road block for these teens to get into public four year colleges. I was convinced that colleges and universities maintained that non-public school kids were not as good as students go, and that all that was required was to break through that misconception.

To some extent, this may still be true, but cultural bias against non-public school students has lessened a significant amount, yet we’re not seeing significantly fewer challenges for our emerging young adults. Unless the whole public school system, from K - PhD, is revamped, non-traditional students will have the hardest time of everyone to get into college. Less cultural bias may soften the blow, but without a systemic change, it will never become easy for students non-public students to merge onto the public school highway.

What will be the future trends for getting into college?

Because of the increasing difficulty for students to be concurrently enrolled as high school and community college students here in California, I think in the next few years, we’re going to see an increasing trend of high school students taking one of the following routes to make it easier to get into a four-year college:

- signing up for regular public high school

- signing up for a college-bound home-based charter school

- graduating early, entering community college as a high school graduate

I also see an upward swinging trend for non-college such as work experience, traveling, taking piecemeal online courses, and self-study. As the push for everyone to go to college is reaching its peak, this trend will emerge not just for independent educators, but for all teens who will not be willing to spend money on a degree that may not be valuable. Indie educators will be more likely to see alternate solutions as options, however, and perhaps will pave the way to show how to go about getting an advanced education from non-college sources.

Where are we now?

So all in all, is it easier for homeschoolers to get into college in California? I’d say generally, yes, but not as easy as I had hoped it would be. I guess, that’s something we may benefit from accepting - moving from a non-traditional path to a traditional one will never be easy, and we might as well keep working on finding alternative paths to success. But perhaps, it’s a good thing that it’s so difficult to get into a public university. Because if it was easy, maybe that would take away the benefit of having taken the non-traditional path in the first place.

• California has the most homeschoolers, with approximately 173,000
• Texas has the second highest homeschooling population, with approximately 124, 000
• Washington D.C has the least with just under 2,000. And after that, Wyoming, Vermont, and North Dakota, Wyoming, and Vermont have the fewest, with around 2, 400 each.
• In 2005, there were fewer school-aged children in the United States, so school enrollment decreased
• Homeschooling increased during this time
• Generally, there was a downward trend in the number of homeschoolers that parallels the decreasing birthrate. However, during the down turned economy, homeschooling number increased.

Ann welcomes you to analyze the numbers yourself, as well, with an explanation of how she created the graphs.

Well, today, I made the bold gesture to do just that.

My husband asked me to join a new website called Quora. This is a question and answer site like Yahoo! Answers, but it’s touting itself as a better version, with better questions and better answers. After some browsing, it looks like it might be a cross between Wikipedia with its community-based editing and Yahoo! Answers with its Q&A format.

Being that I work in the homeschooling community and I am a homeschooler, of course the first topic I looked at was homeschooling.

There were some questions. But, the area where the description was supposed to go was blank.

I looked around the room, and nobody else raised their hand to fill in that definition. Being the completionist, I felt compelled to make sure that blank didn’t stay empty very long. So, I created a definition. After several attempts, here is what I came up with:

Homeschooling: Homeschooling is the practice of primary or secondary education managed by a parent, child, or combination of the two, outside of brick and mortar full-time schools.

I think that covers all the options, all the philosophies, and all of the practices, while defining that circle on the Venn diagram that is homeschooling.

What do you think of the definition?

And, if you using quora, or have thought about it, what do you think of Quora?

Listen to the live stream at the NPR website.

Also, they will be archiving the podcast, as well as adding 30 minutes of extra web-only content.

It was a great experience and overall a balanced interview. Enjoy!