Confronting Racism in Homeschooling with Brytni McNeil
The second episode of our Fighting Racism series is out now. You won't want to miss it!
Thank you so much to my paid subscribers for helping to fund this Fighting Racism series. It allows us to get to know people like this episode’s guest, Brytni. Is today the day you join us as a paid subscriber?
The COVID-19 epidemic forced many families to facilitate in-home learning for the first time.
For some, the experience represented nothing but stress and they couldn’t wait to get their kids back in their usual classrooms. Others were hooked and kept educating their children from home even after restrictions on in-person gatherings had been lifted.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in a six-month period between March and September 2020, the percentage of adults homeschooling children doubled from 5.4% to 11%
The increase in homeschooling families was especially pronounced for Black families. Black homeschooling jumped from 3.3% in the Spring of 2020 to 16.1% in the Fall of 2020.
But what do Black families and other homeschoolers who want their children to learn about racial justice find in terms of resources?
As an industry, homeschooling seems to be dominated by politically and religiously conservative white people, especially Christians.
Consequently, many homeschooling families find the available content falls short in in terms of promoting racial awareness. Whether it is the scant attention given to topic or the warped myths they promulgate in place of facts—it can be exceedingly difficult to gather helpful materials in a homeschool setting.
Brytni McNeil and her bi-racial family are long-time home educators of their four daughters. In this episode she shares how she has been dedicated to expanding curriculum offerings and enlightening other parents about race and history.
She calls her program "At Home as It Is in Heaven: Raising Antiracist Children in Light of Eternity and the Hope of the Gospel.”
You can learn more HERE and follow Brytni on social media HERE.
She also offers us the gift of vulnerability by opening up about her personal journey toward greater awareness about racial justice and the struggles she had in confronting her community with her new perspectives.
And for the very first time, we are doing this Footnotes podcast series in partnership with another organization—the Religion News Service.
You can learn even more about Brytni’s journey and work in the RNS written article HERE.
I can’t wait for you to listen to this episode and read the article. I look forward to hearing your reactions!
As a homeschooling mom myself, I really enjoyed listening to this episode. Thank you for having this conversation! Ms. McNeil’s comment that many homeschooling groups are almost entirely White for a reason really struck me. My kids and I participated in one of these classical communities for 7 years. There were definitely some memory work pieces that I always found troubling: Ronald Reagan “strengthened the conservative movement”, “Muslim terrorists” destroyed the World Trade Center, “Lincoln’s war between the states”, to name a few. I found that I needed have conversations with my kids at a very young age about the inappropriate language the curriculum used to tell our history. And I tried to supplement the history curriculum with books that told a more complete history of the US as it relates to BIPOC. It wasn’t until 2020 that I began to see how truly toxic that environment was.
I’m glad we are no longer part of that group, but I do miss the community aspect.