Black Homeschooling: Reclaiming Education for Black Families

• In Event: For Us, By Us: Black Education, Self-Determination, and Freedom

Abstract

Historically in the U.S. Black people have created avenues for learning; through self-education from slavery to the present, documenting a long tradition of Black peoples’ pursuit for education and liberation (Shujaa, 1994; Walker, 2000; Williams, 2009). This quest continues today as Black families are taking control over their children’s education and homeschooling. Within the modern homeschooling movement, Black homeschooling has continued an upward trend since the 1990s (Rachid, 2005) due to racism in schools (Anderson, 2018; Fields-Smith & Kisura, 2013; Fields-Smith & Williams, 2009; Mazama & Lundy, 2012; Mazama & Musumunu, 2014). The Covid-19 pandemic, subsequent school closures, and virtual learning has also led to more Black families deciding to homeschool, with a dramatic increase during the 2019-2020 school year that today has continued to exceed the rate of homeschooling prior to the pandemic (U.S. Census Bureau, 2021). While many sources cite the Covid-19 pandemic as motivating Black families to homeschool, others note how the pandemic was also the catalyst that pushed Black families to homeschool due to racism in schools. Understanding Black families’ motivations and practices homeschooling is especially important to examine as the pandemic pushes a reconsideration of education particularly in the era of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Drawing on BlackCrit to better interrogate the specificity of (anti)Blackness mattering in the lives of Black families in education and possibilities for Black liberatory fantasy (Dumas & ross, 2016), this paper explores the motivations, visions, and practices of Black families who homeschool in the Midwest – most prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. I utilize a subset of data from a larger critical qualitative study on Black homeschooling. Data include semi-structured interviews and focus groups with Black parents, interviews with Black homeschooled youth and artifacts (e.g. curriculum, lesson plans, drawings, journals, photos) from focal Black homeschool families. This paper examines the experiences of Black parents who were motivated to homeschool due in part to antiblackness in schools and society. In this paper, I examine the detailed ways that antiblackness shapes their decisions to homeschool and draw connections between parents’ motivations and visions for homeschooling their children and how this underscores their pedagogical approaches. Further, this paper explores how Black parents understand their homeschooling within a broader context of Black historical educational efforts and the Black Lives Matter movement.

This paper highlights what Black parents aim to escape from in traditional schooling systems and what they desire to create through homeschooling their children. Centering the experiences of Black homeschooling families encourages educators across spaces to reconsider what learning looks like and how to work to cultivate more liberatory learning experiences that affirm Black children. This paper offers important insight into not only Black parents experiences with antiblackness in schools, but also what they are re-imagining as they reclaim education for themselves through homeschooling.

Author

• Rachel A. Johnson, School Mental Health Collaborative