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More Black families choosing to educate children at home

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Home schooling used to be something only done by White Christian fundamentalist parents concerned about the secular influence of public schools. But an increasing number of Black families are making the decision to educate their children at home. According to the National Home Education Research Institute, there are more than 200,000 Black home schoolers. They even have their own organization, the National Black Home Educators, which serves 5,000 customers.

Vanessa Oden, a Northern California resident, has made the decision to educate all three of her children at home. She said Black families are choosing to home school their children for a variety of reasons. Oden, who has a master’s degree in education, worked as a teacher at private schools for several years and was often impressed by home-schooled children.

“I noticed in my classes that some kids could already read and write,” Oden said. “Those kids were home schooled.”

According to an article by Brian D. Ray in the Journal of School Choice, home-schooled Black children have significantly higher test scores in reading, language and math.

Oden said there are several reasons why Black parents decide to educate their children at home. Some parents are concerned about Black boys being overly disciplined at public schools. Oden said African American and Latino boys are often very active and can be deemed “unruly.”

She also discussed the “fourth-grade syndrome,” where Black boys start developing physically at that age and can be perceived as threatening by White female educators.

However, Oden said deciding to educate children at home can simply be a personal choice for families. She doesn’t believe in a “one size fits all” approach to education.

“Education should be a choice for the family, whatever works best for the family,” she said, noting that children often have different learning styles. Not all children, she said, do well in the traditional classroom setting.

Oden teaches her children at home, but they are not confined to one learning room. She teaches at different places such as the library, field trips and even the backyard.

“School doesn’t have to take place in once place,” Oden said.

Her children are also involved in several extracurricular activities such as church and martial arts.

Although Oden has a background in education, she said parents don’t need to have a college education to teach their children. They just need to be able to access resources and there are a host of them out there. Oden said there is the California Homeschool Network, online forums, Facebook groups and even YouTube pages for homeschoolers. She added that many Black families use an African-centered curriculum designed by Samori Camara, Ph.D., author of “Education for Liberation: The Top 20 Questions and Answers for Black Homeschoolers,” who is very critical of the public school system. He calls it the “public fool system.”

San Diego resident Atiba Coldita, a former outreach coordinator for the University of California, Berkeley, is homeschooling two of her four children. Her children have never been to public school, even though she lives in Poway, near San Diego which has a stellar public school system. Coldita and her husband chose to home school their children so they could teach them Christian values, which she feels are largely absent from public schools.

Coldita feels the one-on-one attention her children get at home enables them to thrive academically. Her children often play trivia games with their friends, who attend public school, and finds their knowledge exceeds that of their friends. Coldita’s son is also writing at two grades above his level.

According to Coldita, many boys struggle in the American school system because they feel confined by the traditional class structure, which emphasizes order and discipline and may be geared towards female students.

“Boys act out,” she said. “They are stopping boys from being boys.”

Home schooled children may also benefit from going to school year round, although classes are somewhat relaxed during the summer. Although Coldita’s children are educated at home, they have a structured life. They have a classroom and go to school until 2 p.m. (They don’t have homework.) They are also not allowed to watch TV during the week, cannot play video games and can only use the Internet to conduct research. Coldita encourages them to play outside.

However, Coldita’s children are socially active and play a lot of sports. She said her son has expressed an interest in football and she may allow him to enroll in a private school, during the ninth-grade, so he can plays sports. She is not worried by the alleged lack of socialization.

“You don’t send your kids to school to socialize, you send to them to school for education,” Coldita said.

Coldita is also not worried about how her children are going to handle the freedom and temptations of college life. She believes she has imparted enough life lessons and values to enable them to make smart decisions.

“We were commissioned to guide our children,” she said. “It is my job and duty to show them the way to go.”

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