{"id":13,"date":"2012-08-27T13:37:16","date_gmt":"2012-08-27T13:37:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/?p=13"},"modified":"2017-06-19T17:11:36","modified_gmt":"2017-06-19T17:11:36","slug":"gary-wyatts-family-ties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/?p=13","title":{"rendered":"FAMILY TIES: Inside Homeschooling with a Sociologist"},"content":{"rendered":"

Record<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Gary Wyatt, Family Ties: Relationships, Socialization, and Homeschooling<\/em> (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2007).<\/p>\n

Summary<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Wyatt offers here a short book summarizing the results of twelve years as a participant observer in the homeschooling world.\u00a0 He makes several generalizations from extensive “field notes” he took while participating in the movement.<\/p>\n

Wyatt’s main argument is that survey data has failed to capture some of the central motivations of many homeschooling parents.\u00a0 In his view, many parents are searching for an alternative understanding of family to that common in mainstream American culture.\u00a0 They want stronger parent\/child bonds.\u00a0 And they want these bonds to serve largely as a resource to their children to help them resist perceived destructive social forces common in school culture (things like cruelty, anti-intellectualism, moral permissiveness, ironic detachment, and indecorous behavior).<\/p>\n

Wyatt makes several other generalizations as well.\u00a0 He notes that in his experience, a large number of homeschooling parents had bad experiences in school themselves.\u00a0 Many homeschooling parents he cites recall in vivid detail merciless teasing and other horrors endured in school.\u00a0 He concludes, “home schooling is a defensive strategy initiated to ensure that their children are not subjected to the torment that defined their childhoods.” (p. 17)<\/p>\n

Wyatt’s chapter on socialization makes the characteristic homeschooler move of turning the question back at public schools, using a wide range of academic work done on the culture of public schooling to argue that schools are often characterized by cliquishness, petty meanspiritedness, obsession with appearances, anti-intellectualism, racial segregation, and bullying.\u00a0 He concludes that homeschooling can provide children with the solitude some scholars say is necessary for acquiring personal depth and insight.<\/p>\n

Appraisal<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Wyatt’s book is a welcome departure from the typical insider’s memoir.\u00a0 He is clearly an advocate for homeschooling, but his sociologist’s training enables him to look at the phenomenon with an empiricist’s eye.\u00a0 His generalizations are based entirely on his own admittedly rich experience, so they cannot be called scientific.\u00a0 They are, however, very thoughtful and could serve as inspirations for further research.\u00a0 Is it true, for example, that decision to homeschool correlates very strongly with negative schooling experience when the parent was a child (see also on this Arai, 2000 and various articles by Gary Knowles)?\u00a0 Do parents who choose homeschooling to strengthen family bonds find their decision to have been successful?\u00a0 Do their children?<\/p>\n

Milton Gaither, Messiah College<\/p>\n

Disclaimer<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The views expressed in reviews are not the official views of ICHER or of its members.\u00a0 For more information about ICHER\u2019s herpes pictures<\/a> Reviews, please see the \u00ab\u00a0About these Reviews \u00bb Section.<\/p>\n


\n<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Record Gary Wyatt, Family Ties: Relationships, Socialization, and Homeschooling (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2007). Summary Wyatt offers here a short book summarizing the results of twelve years as a participant observer in the homeschooling world.\u00a0 He makes several … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[19,16],"tags":[21,20],"class_list":["post-13","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-parental-motivation","category-socialization","tag-family-ties","tag-gary-wyatt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3742,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions\/3742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}