The time is coming, and for many is here, when homeschoolers realize they have and are seen by others as having the paradigmatic initiative for the reform of our entire system of education -- especially the K-12 sector.

There are many signs in many areas. I am sure each of you who is reading this has seen and recognized some.

What is coming de jure and also de facto is already here conceptually within the leadership ranks of the homeschool, public school, private school, business and legislative communities. In Washington State, folks are calling it shared schooling. It is driven by two coincidental forces.

First, parents do not have -- and so cannot teach -- all of the capacities and skills their children need to satisfy their interests and to earn a living in the manner they wish. Our elder son wants to work as a heavy equipment mechanic. Can I hoist rigs -- not to mention know what I am doing -- in our garage? Also, he is a graduate level chemist, at age 17. He's been on his own -- with $4K software from a local district's foundation -- with that one for years! Our younger son loves higher math and drafting. A natural genius at both enterprises, he intends to make a career of them. I remember the Theorem of Pythagoras ... but can I teach him descriptive geometry and orthographic projection ... by hand or on Auto CAD?! My degree is in Theology .... You see the point.

Second, districts and associations have so much lost parent support and are so threatened by privatization that many recognize they are in a market economy and are looking for ways to push their own centers of inertia into the modern non-site-based, electronic milieux. Cincinnati, for example ....

As a senior researcher at the U.S. Department of Education remarked to me recently, homeschoolers employ the paradigm that is systemically informing the restructuring of our system of education. The facts themselves drive the situation that way. The operational window is: regular (FTE) funding for alternative programs K-12.

I submit that the districts belong to the homeschoolers as much as they do to anyone else. Homeschoolers should be assisting districts to gain legislative support for this operational window and also assisting to construct alternative programs which serve homeschooling children. Times have changed. The war is over. It's time to construct the peace.

July 1994
David R. Graham
Maywood Homeschool Leadership Team