Home-schooling gains ground in US

To top it off, a week earlier, home schoolers won second and third places in the National Geography Bee. "This is outstanding confirmation of the academic excellence of home schooling," said Michael Farris, President of the Home School Legal Defense Association. The political implications of that success were not lost on anyone. As campaigning politicians decried the decay of public schools, here was an educational movement that seemed to offer answers rather than more questions. "I can’t wait until home schoolers are winning Oscars and the presidency," said Farris.

The number of home-educated children in the United States grows at the rate of seven per cent to 15 per cent a year and has now reached between 1.3 million and 1.7 million, according to the National Home Education Research Institute.

A survey conducted by the institute showed that home-schoolers on average scored in reading, writing and mathematics above the 80th percentile whereas the national average is in the 50th percentile. "I would explain the growth in home-schooling by the fact that it is seen now as an accepted alternative to public education," said Jay Shotel, a professor of education at George Washington University here.

The obvious rejection of the public school system, increasingly seen by many as a hotbed of drugs, violence and early promiscuity, goes to the heart of one of the central questions in this year’s presidential campaign: What to do with public schools, which appear to be faltering in fulfilling their primary mission?

"We’ve graduated 15 million kids from high school in the last 15 years who can’t read at basic level," argued Republican vice presidential nominee Richard Cheney during a recent televised debate. "They are permanently sentenced to a lifetime of failure." Because of its implicit political message, the home-school movement has powerful detractors.

For over a decade, the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union known for its close ties to the Democratic Party, has severely criticised home-schooling. "Instruction should be by persons who are licensed by the appropriate state education licensure agency, and a curriculum approved by the state department of education should be used," the document states.

Advocates of home education also find themselves at the centre of a heated debate about the place of religion in public life. The constant tug-of-war over public prayer in schools, or whether the Bible’s creationism should be taught alongside Charles Darwin’s evolution of species, fuels the growth of the home school-movement, according to experts.

"There is no question in my mind that their primary motivation is the ability to, perhaps, insulate the child from beliefs that are not consistent with the beliefs of the family," Shotel told AFP. In his view, parents have every right to turn their backs on the public education system if they believe it is failing their child. "What I worry about is that sometimes that choice is made based on the parents’ religious beliefs rather than a child’s educational needs," Shotel added.