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Students find their niche at home
With the Culpeper County School Board having just named a new superintendent after several months of turmoil, it's easy to forget that there's a segment of the Culpeper County population largely unaffected by the news.
The homeschoolers.
Homeschooling in Virginia has grown by leaps and bounds in this decade. The Department of Education gives a 2006-07 figure of approximately 25,000 homeschoolers in the state, indicating a 22 percent increase in the previous five years.
Since 1982, 34 states have enacted specific laws regarding homeschooling, and it is legal in all states.
Yet Rixeyville homeschool Spanish and music teacher Rita Grace has her doubts that the latter fact will always remain the same, drawing on her first-hand knowledge of the subject homeschooling her children in Virginia back in the 1980s.
"We had social workers and the sheriff's office come to our home twice and try to place our kids in other homes, so I know that it could potentially revert back to that situation," said Grace who teaches about 30 students.
"We don't want to lose our voice — we don't want to lose our chance to homeschool."
It would be more difficult, however, as a support structure has been built up over the last two decades,
both statewide and here in Culpeper. Homeschoolers have a legal leg to stand on, thanks to the Home School Legal Defense Association, which is based in Purcellville, and they can also pool their educational resources through organizations like P.A.C.E., aka the Piedmont Area Christian Educators, which consists of at least 60 families, is based in Culpeper and also serves the adjacent counties.
Given that Christianity and homeschooling are often intertwined with one another, the connection has come up for some ridicule. For instance, Saturday Night Live recently aired a sketch about a quiz bowl between high school students and homeschooled students, in which the homeschoolers were portrayed as religious zealots who believe, for example, that tiny gremlins, not hemoglobin, is the name for the blood particles that carry oxygen through the body.
It's these sorts of preconceptions that don't sit well with Rixeyville resident Donald Rakes, the parent of two homeschooled children, Dylan, 16, and Kaitlyn, 10. "You hear all sorts of things about homeschooling, but I've yet to meet anyone whose done it and has regretted the experience," said Rakes. "It creates a better kind of citizen."
Rakes had his children in the Culpeper County Public School system up until about three years ago. "There was a lot of activity going on that was not beneficial to educating the children," he said. "The typical nonsense that goes on today in public schools is ten times worse than people think it is, with the drugs, the violence, the bullying on top of the curriculum going off-course from what we as Christians believe it should be."
And so after discussing it for years with his stay-at-home wife Michelle, their pastor, and others in the
homeschooling community, the ex-Marine decided to become one of the few, the proud, the homeschooling parents. Dylan and Kaitlyn do book-learning Monday through Thursday each week from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., year-round.
Rakes describes his method of homeschooling as "interactive learning." "They go through several subjects during the day, and we go to my wife's grandmother's for lunch or her mother's for lunch," he said. "We have a good family network up here, which is part of the learning experience as well, when you see the generations and what they've gone through, and they help enlighten our children on history, especially local history."
"There is no such thing as a typical day for a homeschooler," said Vanessa Short, the president of
P.A.C.E. "Some families are very low-key and casual, while others are very strict and have schedules similar to the public school system." Short opts for the middle ground for her three boys and has three adult children who were also homeschooled.
Short also belongs to a co-op (or cooperative) of seven families that meet on Fridays and teach history and literature and do crafts. "That's been a lot of fun for our family this year," she said. Grace, for her part, gives Kaitlyn music lessons as a sidebar to her regular Spanish teaching duties.
The potential for flexibility, both on the part of parent and child, allows Rakes an opportunity to take his children on regular field trips to help cement their knowledge of the subject matter immediately after they learn it. "You can relate any classroom subject to real life," said Rakes. "You go to the zoos, you go the museums, you can go to anything that shows them physically what they're reading."
Rakes also pointed out that with Dylan considering taking classes at Germanna Community College this summer as a rising senior, this flexibility allowed the two of them to tailor this past year's curriculum to accommodate that possibility.
As for the Christian aspects of his children's education, Rakes said his curriculum is somewhat similar to that of the public schools (at this point in the year, for instance, Dylan is studying chemistry and literature, having also studied vocabulary, spelling, business, American government, and a sex education-oriented class called Love and Romance), but with more emphasis on morals and ethics.
"It gives kids the meat of the matter, but also how it applies to Christians," Rakes said. "I wouldn't say it's overly religious."
Perhaps surprisingly, Rakes views homeschooling as a way to save money, rather than as a financial burden. "With all the fees the schools charge for activities, we're probably making money," he said. Rakes purchases about two-thirds of his textbooks through the Homeschool Shop in Culpeper, and saves enough money purchasing them secondhand that his total "tuition" costs are about $400 per year between his two kids.
But it's about more than just saving money for Rakes. "I would definitely recommend that anyone even remotely considering homeschooling should do it," said Rakes. "It builds better children."
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