The
author of a recent report wanted to investigate the life experiences of Christian homeschool alumni. He also stated one of his main purposes:
“The data collected will be used to advocate for the interests of current and future homeschooled children." [note 1]
However, the writer never defines
“advocate.” He never clearly defines these children’s “interests.” He never explains his conceptual framework or worldview behind the collection of data and development of the study. The reader is left guessing about a lot.
In A Complex Picture: Results of a 2014 Survey of Adult Alumni of the Modern Christian Homeschool Movement: Installment 1: Descriptive Summary, Stollar wisely explained several limitations and challenges of the study early in the report. For example, he does not have
a random sample of homeschool graduates in general, “the sample of respondents is also not representative in terms of the general homeschool population” (p. 4), and there were some technical difficulties during data collection.
He gave this caution to the reader:
Because of these issues, this survey should not be used to make any generalized
statements about homeschoolers as a whole; the only people it can be used to make claims about are the 3,702 people who took the survey. [emphasis in the original] (p. 4)
Survey respondents affirmed “… that they were 18 years old or older, had been homeschooled for at least 7 years, were
homeschooled in an environment which was classifiable as Christian (including Christian‐influenced new religious movements), and were taking the survey through completion for the first time” (p. 3). Three times as many women as men took the survey.
This survey collected many common demographic data. It also has an obvious and significant focus on matters of gender, sexual orientation, attitude toward
things sexual, mental health, and abuse.
Various Findings
Multiple findings were presented, and a few are given here. Participants were asked what is their preferred method for educating children that they have or plan to have. Some 47% plan to only homeschool their
children; 19% will only public school them; 10% will only private school their children. The author did not report the percent who do or would use different combinations of schooling.
When responding to the item, “My homeschool experience prepared me for the future,” 64% reported “strongly agree” or “agree” on a 5-point scale.
These adults were asked to rate their instruction in various subjects during their Kindergarten through 5th-grade years. “In elementary education, participants rated all the subjects surveyed as better than neutral. The highest‐ranked subject was reading, followed by other language arts topics. The lowest‐ranked subject was science, which still ranked better than neutral at 3.68 …” on a 5-point scale (p. 16). “In secondary education,
participants rated [instruction in] all the subjects as better than neutral except for sex education” (p. 16).
They also ranked their experiences in non-academic subjects or areas. “Respondents scored all non‐academic subjects [e.g., driver’s education, home economics, diversity in religious studies) at or above average ...” (p. 18).
Only 2% “… reported that socialization was not offered during their educations” (p. 19). However, the report does not explain what is meant by socialization being offered.
About 62% reported that they played sports. A little over half (54%) reported they were allowed to listen to contemporary
music.
Fundamentalism and Troubles
The section on “Christian fundamentalism” is one area where the report got particularly complicated, if not muddy. Stollar defined “Christian Fundamentalism” (CF) according to a well-known scholar, but then added a long list of
“ideologies” that Stollar claims are included in CF. However, the writer does not make it clear whether participants in the survey were supposed to consider their upbringing to have been CF if their parents believed or practiced any of these ideologies. With that confusion, he reports that 58% considered themselves to have been primarily “… with … a form of Christian fundamentalism …” With that, some 60% strongly agreed or agreed that the “[t]he religious environment of my upbringing had a
positive influence on my life” (p. 22).
About 25% of respondents reported having been diagnosed with a mental illness by a mental health professional. Stollar did not provide any contextual information to help understand this statistic. Therefore, one might note that the National Alliance on Mental Illness reports the following: “One in four young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 [in the
United States] have a diagnosable mental illness. More than 25 percent of college students have been diagnosed or treated by a professional for a mental health condition within the past year." [note 3] Further, the National Institutes of Health reports that “… 26 percent of the general population reported that they had symptoms sufficient for diagnosing a mental disorder during the past 12 months." [note 4] Finally, it is possible that parents of some of these adults decided to
homeschool them to help them with mental illness problems they had while in public or private schools.
The homeschool survey asked about these adults’ experience of various forms of abuse. Some 4.8% reported having experienced sexual abuse, but the report does not say whether it was when they were minors or when older. For some context, that the author does not provide, the National Center for
Victims of Crime states the following: “Self-report studies show that 20% of adult females and 5-10% of adult males recall a childhood sexual assault or sexual abuse incident.” [note 5] A recent review of research reports that “… child sexual abuse (CSA) affects approximately 16% of men and 25–27% of women …” in the United States. [note 6]
Physical abuse had been experienced by 16.2%, but
the reader should keep in mind that 23% of respondents considered spanking a child to be inherently abusive. Therefore, it is possible that a significant portion of those who reported having been physically abused simply mean they were spanked.
Thorny Ending
In
conclusion, Stollar reported that the survey of home-educated adults “… reached mostly white women born in the late 80s and early 90s. ….. Most are positive towards homeschooling and would homeschool their kids” (p. 29). He also writes that “… there are suffering children in the homeschool community whose needs need to be addressed” but provides no context regarding whether they “suffer” from anything at the same, a lower, or a higher rate than those adults who have been public schooled or
private institutionally schooled.
Further, the author uses phrases such as “unusually high rates” and “much bigger problems” but gives no comparative or relative context to situate these notions. He claims that “… science and math education and sexual education seem to be at a lower level than desirable …” (p. 29) but never defines desirable or posits what is a good
level.
Along these lines, it is reasonable to hypothesize that the survey reached homeschool alumni who were disproportionately troubled about having been homeschooled or who had disproportionately experienced unpleasant things during their years as a child and teen. This is because, as the author explained, the survey “… was first promoted through the homeschool abuse survivor community “ (p.
3).
Finally, the writer states that it “… is HARO’s mission to address these issues and help these children; we believe the homeschool movement can be revitalized from within” (p. 29). This is, however, problematic and unclear. The “issues” are not defined and the reader is left wondering from what and to what the homeschool movement is to be made healthy (again). One might wonder: If the mission
of HARO is to help children and the author had found (or, does find) that the rate of sexual abuse was half the rate of that amongst public school graduates, would he then advocate (in a future “installment 2”) for more children being moved from public schooling to homeschooling?
Stollar did well to explain the limitations of this study at the beginning of the report. He should have, however,
re-emphasized them at the end. He has presented many intriguing descriptive statistics about his sample but has offered essentially no context to help the reader understand the findings or know what might be done with them. The report tells the public very little about adults in general who were home educated.
--Brian D. Ray, Ph.D.
National Home Education Research
Institute
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Notes:
1. Stollar, R. L. (2014,
December 2). A complex picture: Results of a 2014 survey of adult alumni of the modern Christian homeschool movement: Installment 1: Descriptive summary. Canton, MA: Coalition for Responsible Home Education. Retrieved December 10, 2014 from https://hareachingout.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/survey1.pdf.
2. Every person, whether a researcher, journalist, academic, policymaker, judge, carpenter, or nurse, has a worldview or weltanschauung. Examples of worldviews are atheism, Buddhism,
Christianity/scripturalism, communitarianism, critical theory, Islam, metaphysical naturalism, Mormonism, queer theory, Roman Catholicism, scientism, socialism, and statism.
3. Retrieved December 10, 2014 from http://www.nami.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Find_Support/NAMI_on_Campus1/Learn_About_The_Issue/Learn_About_The_Issue.htm.
4. Retrieved December 10, 2014 from
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/news/science-news/2005/mental-illness-exacts-heavy-toll-beginning-in-youth.shtml.
5. Child sexual abuse statistics. Retrieved December 11, 2014 from http://www.victimsofcrime.org/media/reporting-on-child-sexual-abuse/child-sexual-abuse-statistics.
6. Prevalence and correlates of child sexual abuse: A National study. Retrieved December 11, 2014 from
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3518746/.
