Creative Class: Homeschooling and Affluent Kids
BevK February 28th, 2006
http://blogcritics.org/ar…2/27/171819.php
I wasn’t sure of the author’s point in starting out as he does….
Once considered the domain of only deeply religious families who didn’t want to send their kids to secular schools, homeschooling has been gaining popularity among not-particularly-religious families. In “Meet My Teachers: Mom and Dad,” Business Week covers the growth of homeschooling specifically within the “creative class.”
According to Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class and The Flight of the Creative Class, the creative class consists of educated, affluent people who, um, “create for a living”:
Eventually he gets to this point, which seems to be coming true in some states, but not in others.
But I’m not holding my breath. In fact, I think the Kafkaesque opposite is more likely: homeschooling will so successfully challenge public schools that it will threaten teachers, administrators, and bureaucrats. Unwilling to allow another *free* educational option to compete with theirs, they’ll lobby to pass laws that heavily regulate, standardize, and test homeschooling until individual families can do little more than replicate the public school model at home. Parents who don’t comply will be prosecuted for daring to raise and educate their kids without government intrusion.
Some states are still bent on way more oversight than most homeschoolers would like. While others are working to make public school more enticing and creating programs that bring homeschoolers back in to the public school fold at least partially. And that partial assistance usually comes with more oversight. The carrot or the stick.
