Word: schooling
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...where the throng thins. We nod to a woman, and she jogs forward and gets in. Dayami is about 30, lipsticked, in tight black jeans with a black mesh shirt over a sports bra. She's a doctor, on her way to pick up her daughter at school. We ask if it's hard to get medicine. After all, on the way from Havana, a billboard had read: YANKEE EMBARGO: GENOCIDE AGAINST CUBA. She says no, not really...
That home schoolers have begun a debate about the nature of a school community is a little strange. For years they simply withdrew kids from the broader community often because they felt its schools had become antireligious. They fought bitter battles for the right to change old compulsory-education laws, which have now been rewritten or reinterpreted in every state to allow home schooling. Many Americans still have an image of home schoolers as conservative ideologues at best--and weird hermits at worst...
...such images, always a stretch, are now totally outmoded. Those who study the issue say there are probably 1 million to 1.7 million home schoolers in the U.S. (more than 1% of school-age children). Whatever the precise figure, it has jumped since Columbine (North Carolina found this fall that its number of registered home schools had shot up 22% to 16,022 since April...
...home-school movement has reached beyond the odd coalition of religious conservatives and countercultural libertarians who started it. Now the top reason parents give for home schooling is dissatisfaction with public schools, where guns, drugs, and peer pressure leave them feeling vulnerable. This new generation of home-schooling families doesn't necessarily believe that public schools are unholy. And many want their children's character toughened by swim meets and coaches' whistles and Friday-night football games...
...political arena earlier this year. Some Republicans, including popular Governor John Engler, supported them. Engler called for home-schooler access to public teams in his state of the state address. But proponents of a bill forcing the change were no match for John Roberts, head of the Michigan High School Athletic Association, the nonprofit that writes the rules for athletic eligibility, rules adopted by almost every school. Now in his 14th year as executive director, Roberts wields enormous influence over high school sports in a state that takes them seriously. He warned that home schoolers could dislodge public school students...