Defending home-style ABCs
Madison Browning, 8, spent a recent school day coloring, playing on swings at a park and whirling to Japanese string music at a cozy dance studio. Caedyn Curto, 13, studied biblical scripture at his family’s kitchen table before tackling decimals, completing a biology test and revising a journalism essay.
The Browning and Curto families, both of whom live in the South Bay, have embraced very different styles of education. But they now find themselves on the same side of a battle to continue teaching their children at home in the face of an appellate court ruling that home schooling in California must be conducted by credentialed instructors.
The February court decision is not being enforced pending appeals. The 2nd District Court of Appeal agreed last week to rehear the case in June, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pledged to support new legislation allowing home schooling if the decision is not reversed. Meanwhile, the ruling has forged a rare alliance of religious and secular home schoolers.
Religious families like the Curtos remain a significant bloc, but other motives have grown increasingly visible. The state’s estimated 166,000 home schoolers include students from affluent suburban families who can live on one income, children who hope to hone an athletic talent or artistic passion and those who, like the Brownings, shun traditional education for a more child-centric approach.
Before she had children, Michelle Browning of Torrance, who has a bachelor’s degree in early childhood education, taught at elementary schools for four years. But she didn’t like the insistence on conformity that she saw.
After meeting home schooling parents, Browning began to think about educating her children herself.
The 41-year-old, mother of Madison and Makenzie, 6, broached the idea with her husband, Brandon, who was skeptical. He had fond memories of his school days in New Jersey and wanted a similar experience for his daughters.
“I’m traditional . . . especially when it comes to things that worked for me in the past,” the 37-year-old law enforcement official said of his initial reluctance.
Browning persisted, ultimately persuading her skeptical husband to let her try home schooling on a month-by-month basis.
Browning had first heard of “unschooling,” which shuns regimented lessons, when her first daughter was born. She questioned how children could learn the basics without instruction. But by the time Madison was 2, she knew her letters and numbers because of her own inquisitiveness.
“I decided to let it unfold and take a back seat and let her take the lead,” Browning said.
On a recent morning at the family’s tidy Torrance home, the girls arose late. By the time they were eating breakfast, their peers in traditional schools had already been in class for more than an hour. During the meal, Madison led visitors to the backyard to meet her pet rabbit, Holly. Makenzie, sleepy from a late night of ballet practice, cuddled on her mother’s lap.
Shortly before 10 a.m., they set off for a Redondo Beach community center for a twice-a-month geography lesson with other home schoolers. Children participated if they were interested in the day’s topic, Mexico and Central America. Some were not and instead listened to iPods or text-messaged their friends.
The children gathered in a semicircle to hear about their peers’ vacations to the region. Lily Diaz-Brown, 9, described touring a cathedral in bustling Mexico City.
“What’s it like inside?” Madison asked.
Lily replied, “It looked a little dusty because it’s really old.”
The co-op class was started by fellow “unschooler” Loren Mavromati of Redondo Beach because of her son’s interest in geography. Eighteen families take part. But this organization does not conflict with unschooling because the girls were given the option to participate, Browning said.
After the lesson, the girls took part in a dance class at a friend’s home.
Though Browning doesn’t follow a curriculum, she is familiar with state standards. In a traditional school, Madison would be learning about California missions, so the family plans to visit a mission.
“I know what the state standards are, but they don’t govern our lives,” she said.
Just as a child doesn’t need to be taught to walk, she said, the girls’ natural curiosity has led them to read and write.
They “just had a desire to communicate and it unfolded,” she said.
The freewheeling nature of the Brownings’ day is a sharp contrast with a day at the Curtos’ home.
A thick blue plastic binder contains detailed lesson plans in Bible study, math, grammar, spelling, history, reading, science and art that mother Kym Curto creates every two weeks for Caedyn and his sister Chamberlain, 9.
Curto has two other children, 3-year-old McKeayn and 20-month-old McConaughey, whom she tends as she teaches her older children.
“It has its rough days. It’s not all peaches and cream,” said the slim 41-year-old. “Then there are days where you think, ‘Wow, it was a good day! It worked!’ ”
Despite the distractions, the older children’s schooling has an orderly, comfortable routine. They begin each morning with Bible study.
On a recent morning, Curto curled up with Chamberlain on the couch and read a children’s Bible while Caedyn sat at the kitchen table reading a book with scriptural answers to questions about abortion, heaven and other topics.
The family’s Christian faith was the primary reason they decided to home school.
“I felt it was something God called me to do for my children,” Curto said.
She worries that in a public school, her children would be exposed to topics such as same-sex marriage or that holidays like Christmas would be marginalized.
But Curto insists that she has no interest in sheltering her children -- she said she taught Caedyn about Darwinism alongside creationism.
Math comes next on the morning’s agenda, with Chamberlain practicing subtraction while Caedyn does word problems.
Curto has designed most of the lessons, but the children are also in classes at Hope Chapel in Hermosa Beach: Chamberlain is taking knitting and volleyball; Caedyn is studying grammar and composition.
As they get older, the children will probably take academic classes such as high-level science through their church or a community college.
The Curtos plan to allow their children to decide whether to attend high school. Caedyn, a floppy-haired competitive skateboarder, is torn.
A traditional teenage experience would be fun, but the flexibility of home schooling allows him to practice each day at skate parks -- and travel to competitions.
He doesn’t have hours of homework like his best friend, who attends public school.
“He always has homework. Even on weekends, he can’t really do anything because he has so much homework,” Caedyn said.
“I’m so used to being able to do my work whenever I want. I’ll probably keep doing this. There’s a lot of freedom,” he said.
That freedom is now at stake in the recent court ruling.
The appellate court ruling stemmed from a child welfare case involving two children who enrolled in a parochial school that facilitated home schooling and were educated at home by their mother.
A lawyer appointed to represent the children requested that the court require them to physically attend school so adults could monitor their well-being.
The appellate court ruled that the parochial school’s occasional monitoring of the children was insufficient and that because the mother does not hold a teaching credential, the family was breaking state law.
Curto and Browning are confident that the decision will be overturned, but both mothers said if it is enforced, they would contemplate moving out of California.
“I’m so committed to home schooling, I would be willing to consider that,” Browning said.
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Few rules
Home schooling is largely unregulated in California. Parents who teach do not need a college degree or a high school diploma; students need not be tested or assessed.
The state does require parents either to file an affidavit with the state establishing their home as a small private school or to enroll the children in independent study programs at private, public or charter schools.
No one enforces this mandate, and home schoolers and state education officials acknowledge that many parents home school their children without registering with any entity, a murky arrangement that is technically illegal but has not been systemically challenged.
Source: Times research
