Wednesday, August 04, 2004

Homeschooling on the Rise

"Home schooling is just getting started. We've gotten through the barriers of questioning the academic ability of home schools, now that we have a sizable number of graduates who are not socially isolated or awkward — they are good, high-quality citizens. We're getting that mainstream recognition and challenging the way education has been done." Ian Slater, National Center for Home Education
The latest news on Yahoo! News reports a 29% growth in the number of students taught at home in the U.S since 1999. In Malaysia, fears about legality of homeschool (now that primary education in an approved institution is compulsory) has dampened interest somewhat, but once in awhile there's good news. Star carried a favourable writeup on homeschooling Sunday featuring Dr Benjamin George (Read it here) whose family is part of our Ampang Support Group. I was hesitant to talk to the reporter for the article and in retrospect it's probably a good thing. At least it puts another face to homeschool in the country instead of mine! But the article also carried a picture of Ethan and Elliot taken maybe 4 or 5 years ago, uncredited and unnamed.

For the full U.S Education Department report on home schooling, click here:
http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2004/2004115.pdf

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