Black Homeschooling as Remedy to Black Miseducation: An Autoethnography

• In Event: More Than a Bandaid: How Black Mothers Remedy and Repair in Homeschool Communities

Abstract

With the increase of homeschooling pods, communities, and organizations — Black families provided their children with an educational alternative during the COVID19 pandemic. Although the number of Black homeschooling families has made a recent increase in 2020 from 3.3% to 16% (U.S. Census Bureau, 2021), communal and home education of Black children is not a new concept. Givens (2021) highlights the legacy of Carter G. Woodson. He details how Woodson credits his educational success to many Black educators, two of whom were Woodson’s own formerly enslaved uncles. As Woodson grew in his educational pursuits, he inspired other Black people to educate within their homes, communities, and schools to provide Black children with the education they deserved. As the only child within my familial generation to obtain four higher education degrees, homeschooling was a remedy for my education. There is a significant amount of literature pertaining to Black homeschooling (Fields-Smith, 2022; Richards, 2020; Mazama et al., 2015; Taylor et al., 2019), but research has yet to highlight the lived experience of a previously homeschooled Black scholar. Employing autoethnography, I reflect on my own homeschooling and educational journey.
Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory states that an individual’s development is influenced by a series of interconnected systems from the immediate (microsystem) to the broadest societal structures (macrosystem) (Tong et al., 2023). Being Black, low-income, with a deceased father, and single mother I wanted to analyze how homeschooling impacted my educational trajectory compared to those in my family, my broader community, and my racial and ethnic group.
Autoethnography was the chosen methodology utilizing journaling, self-reflection, self-observation, and narrative analysis. Autoethnography “... seeks to describe and systematically analyze personal experience…to understand cultural experience” (Ellis et al., 2010). Autoethnography allows me to reflect on my own homeschooling journey in context of the overall Black homeschooling phenomenon and give insider contributions related to the broader Black homeschooling experience (Adams et al., 2017). Journaling, self-reflection, self-observation, and narrative analysis were the chosen data collection and analysis methods. Journaling allows you to reflect on your own lived experience and improve your point of view (Padney, 2013). Autoethnography aligns with “...many forms of narrative research” (Emerald et al., 2017) thus narrative analysis was utilized for this study.
Many Black families view homeschooling as a remedy to a school system that continues to fail their children (Fields-Smith, 2022; Richards, 2020). My own homeschooling experience was a remedy against failing schools in my low-income community in Chicago. Chicago’s history includes the great migration of Black people from the south and segregating neighborhoods after their arrival (Leibbrand et al., 2020). Predominantly Black schools within Chicago continue to underperform (Schmid, 2023). Despite this being my childhood context, homeschooling provided the tools I needed to persist in my educational journey. It was a separate educational alternative from the failing schools in my low-income area. There’s insufficient research centered around Black children’s homeschooling experience. This work is significant to address gaps in literature and inform scholars of the impact homeschooling has on Black children’s educational trajectory.

Author

• Ariel Sylvester, DePaul University