Thoughts and Policy for Building a Better Pennsylvania

Homeschool Families in China

Chinese flag
Chinese flag

Last year, Milton Gaither wrote a review of a study entitled “A Qualitative Study of Educational Needs of Homeschooling Families in China.” The study includes law case studies involving five home educating families in China. These families chose homeschooling for a variety of reasons including disillusionment with “the drill-and-kill pedagogy of Chinese schools” and frustration with “the lack of freedom and individual initiative in Chinese schools.”

While homeschooling is still officially illegal in China “home education is growing, especially among the urban middle classes.” The study goes on to mention a website – China Homeschooling Association – that helps to organize 200 or so spontaneous groups that have formed around the country. The study also mentions that “since 2010 the 21st Century Education Research Institute in Yunnan Province has hosted a National Homeschooling Conference.  In 2013 it was joined by the International Homeschooling Symposium in Beijing.”

The study cites an estimate that there might be as many as 18,000 children being educated at home in China and reasons that these numbers reflect a value-change “from the utilitarian instrumental rationality of examination-oriented education to the ultimate value rationality of the child’s free comprehensive development.”

From Gaither’s review of the study:

A large percentage of Chinese home educators tend to create more cooperative, even fully communal arrangements rather than the single-family homeschooling common in the United States (though this exists in China as well).

To read all of Gaither’s review and appraisal of the study, click here.

Canada Homeschool Study

Canadian flag
Canadian flag

Fraser Institute published a report on homeschooling in Canada entitled Home Schooling in Canada: The Current Picture–2015 Edition by Deani Neven Van Pelt. This report was an update of an earlier report published in 2007.

According to the report, “in the five-year period immediately following the last edition of this paper (2006/07–2011/12), official enrollment in home schools has grown by 29% in Canada.” Homeschooling is on the rise. The report mentions that the research shows that homeschooling is demonstrated with higher academic achievement. In addition, “it was found to have a dampening effect on characteristics sometimes associated with lower academic performance (lower income, lower parental education, gender, race, and special needs).”

The report also comments on studies regarding education achievement of homeschool students showing that:

“Home-educated students were more likely than their peers to have secondary school as their highest level of education, yet in Canada they were also more likely to complete a doctorate or professional degree and to hold a professional or managerial occupation.”
Milton Gaither, writing for the International Center for Home Education Research, has a review and appraisal of Fraser’s report. He begins his appraisal by acknowledging that ” Van Pelt has done us a great service by clearly reproducing, organizing, and graphing the data on enrollment and the legal situation in the various Canadian provinces.” He does, however, express concern over the partisan nature of the report. To read Milton Gaither’s full review of the report, click here.