History of Black Homeschooling with Dr Cheryl Fields-Smith

This week on Homeschool Highschool Podcast: History of Black Homeschooling with Dr Cheryl Fields-Smith.

History of Black Homeschooling with Dr Cheryl Fields-Smith

It’s Black History Month! This is the perfect time to talk about the history of Black homeschooling! Vicki was excited connect with the subject matter expert on this important topic: Dr. Cheryl Fields-Smith.

Dr. Fields-Smith is a colleague of Vicki’s at National Homeschool Advocacy, where they both serve on the organization’s panel of experts. She teaches at the University of Georgia and serves at scholar in residence at University of Pittsburg.

Dr. Cheryl Fields-Smith’s story

Cheryl was originally from Connecticut and attended Emory University in Atlanta for her doctorate degree. As part of her dissertation process, she was studying Black parents’ engagement in their children’s education. She had found that there were some perceptions that Black people did not care about their children’s education, that they were not involved. Cheryl’s research found that this is not true.

When Dr. Fields-Smith became a professor at University of Georgia, she wanted to replicate the study, this time with younger parents. (The original study looked at middle-aged parents.) As she looked for these younger families, someone suggested that she connect with Black homeschoolers.

Cheryl thought, “Wait a minute. I didn’t know that black people homeschool!”

So she got connected with a local Black homeschooling family. They had a four-hour initial interview. (That was the longest interview she had ever done.) She was so grateful to that person for the generosity of time. At the end of the interview, she asked if the mother knew any other Black home educators?

Next, Dr. Fields-Smith obtained a Spencer Foundation grant for a two year study. She studied 46 Black homeschooling families, most of whom were in the metro Atlanta area. In 2009, she published the first empirically-based article on that focused exclusively on Black homeschooling.

Part-time Home Educator

Cheryl is not a home educator. (She has two grown children.) However, due to her work in researching the Black homeschool she has been given the title of part time home educator.

Not only that, Cheryl’s educational philosophy guided her to never totally rely on the school system to educate my own kids. The family had mommy school, especially in the summertime.

Black home educators

Dr. Fields-Smith found that Black home educators have a constructive criticism to offer the public schools. Many of them initially chose public schools, but it was not working for one or all of their children. So, they made the decision to homeschool.

She found that the Black home educators they have empathy for the school system. They want the public school system to work. These parents did not feel obligated to be against other educational systems, they simply found that homeschooling works best for their family.

For most of the twenty-first century, about eight percent of the American population was Black and homeschooling. Then, as of 2020, the number jumped to fifteen percent. This number is proportionally what the black population is in the United States.

So in other words, a lot of Black families are homeschooling!

Education has always been important to Black parents

Their children’s education has always been critical to Black families. Education equated to freedom. When African were brought to America as slaves, they were denied the privilege of learning to read.

The enslavers tried to deny them, we should say.

The ancestors knew that learning to read and write was critical for gaining freedom. So they risked their lives, even when the law said they could be killed for learning to read. They did what they could in secret to learn to read.

When one enslaved person learned to read, they did not just keep it to themselves. Rather, they shared it with everyone that they could. It  was a self taught community. We use the terms: communal self-thought or collaborative self-talk.

Learning is done in community, which was really important. They each one reach one, even back then.

After the abolition of slaver came the segregated schools. Prominent Black authors such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Carter G. Woodson you wrote about the educational disparities almost one-hundred years ago in books like The Miseducation of the Negro.

These authors were giving us sort of a blueprint, if you will, of what the African American person needed. Self-education was espoused by them back then. Black families need to learn about their ancestors. They need to learn about the strengths of their culture, the talents of their culture, and the contributions of their culture.

These are not things that Black children can depend on in integrated school systems. So Black parents teach these things to their children.

Today’s Black home educators

Black families are homeschooling in meaningful ways that kind of harken back to their ancestors. It can be very much communal: teaching it together and not just alone at the kitchen table. This often looks like homeschool co-ops, umbrella schools or educational group activities (such as the work of EFMEducation.com).

Child-directed learning

Homeschooling gives Black families space to allow child directed learning in ways that schools cannot. Children take on special interest projects, which is a great way to apply  reading, writing, and thinking abilities to learning in a meaningful way. (Anita Gibson calls that helping children find their star.)

Dr. Fields-Smith worked with one homeschooling mom whose only daughter did not want to go to college. Instead, she was more interested in becoming a barrel racer. So, part of her homeschool experience was volunteering shoveling stalls and helping to groom the horses in exchange for riding lessons. It helped open doors for the training she dreamed of.

Cheryl also knows homeschool high schoolers who love the digital world. During high school, some of them have earned certificates on Google and other platforms.

Split schooling

There is also a phenomenon called “split schooling“, where Black families only homeschool one of the children. The other children go to a traditional school, usually a public school. This phenomena shows the responsiveness to each child’s unique needs- even for educational setting.

Next generation

Often homeschooling moms who homeschooled their kids all the way through high school, remain critical members of Black homeschool organizations. These veteran homeschooling parents are still giving back to that community in powerful ways- a Sister Circle methodology

Dr. Fields-Smith’s next research projects

Dr. Fields-Smith recently finished a book for Harvard Educational Press, tentatively titled Creating Educational Justice Lessons Learned from Black Home Educators. In that book, she takes all of the data that I have and boils it down to main lessons that are important to educating children. Dr. Fields-Smith talk about the importance that education plays in healing.

Healing as part of education

This healing is what we see when we look at what black home educators do. Many times children have experienced, tracism, discrimination, prejudice in some kind of way. One of the first things they have to do in their homeschooling is to work through that. Children learn: It’s nothing wrong with us. It’s the world.

Homeschooling is an opportunity for Black families to talk about their faith. How does God see you? God created you.

They also look at the strengths of being an African American, because the world will tell children that they are “less than”, that they “don’t belong”. In homeschooling children learn to know otherwise. They can also learn in ways that are meaningful. (Take, for instance, the powerful teaching of the Lyrical Math team.) So this healing is part of educational justice.

There is also healing in small ways. When homeschooling, children can take a break when they need it, not just when it is scheduled. Children learn to listen to, and respect their needs.

In moments of big trauma, there can be healing spaces at home. During pandemics or other crises, homeschooling families can include nurture and support as part of education.

Cheryl is sharing information like this in that latest book.

Connecting with Dr. Cheryl Fields-Smith

Everybody, you can find Cheryl at National Homeschool Advocacy.

• Dr. Fields-Smith’s book is available: Exploring Single Black Mothers’ Resistance through Homeschooling.
• You can see Dr. Cheryl Fields-Smith being interviewed on this ABC video about Black Homeschooling.
• Here’s Dr. Fields-Smith’s seminar on Nontraditional Education and Children with Disabilities.

Thank you to Seth Tillman for editing the podcast!

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