Homeschooling Marketing Professionals – The Old Schoolhouse Magazine
community of homeschooling families – North America
and around the world…
I must say their blogging community – homeschoolblogger.com – is very interesting. They seem to have more than 3,000 blogs and many of them are quite active. What an interesting way to draw your market together. I like this.
Their community and magazine seem to be Christian based/focused. This is yet another example of religious communities harnessing the power of CMS / blogs to accomplish building a national, international – even global – community. Visit The Magazine and the blog community.
(PRLEAP.COM) Dandridge, TN – As the homeschool market continues to grow, companies need to market themselves effectively to the very diverse homeschooling audience. Companies want to know the most successful methods for reaching homeschool parents around the world, so The Old Schoolhouse Magazine is launching a free monthly Homeschool Marketers e-Newsletter to teach them how. Scheduled to debut in late November 2005, this e-Newsletter will feature online marketing and public relation resources, suggested titles for further learning and quarterly case studies of successful marketing efforts in the homeschooling community. Based on the “PRMama: Marketing to Go!” blog hosted by Melonie Murray, Director of Public Relations for TOS, each newsletter will provide dozens of suggestions for companies who want to make the grade with homeschoolers.
And, get this … I created a blog in their community. In one day, I received two comments from members – including the Director of Public Relations – welcoming me. They seem to have some of the “cultivating the community” ideas down pat. 
I think a homeschooled blogging community is a fantastic idea! The benefits from this, I think, will do wonders for kids not only scholastically, but also socially.
With the deteriorating support for education and the climbing violence rate on school grounds, homeschooling becomes looking like a much better option than public school. Parents, through blogging, could learn and work together in education.
But what I see a greater benefit for other reasons. Of my friends who were homeschooled, I found they didn’t miss out on much from the educational standpoint. They always seemed to have retained more information than I ever had and I was always envious of that. However, what they did miss out on was the social skills that all of the public school students had. I went to a public school and being thrown in that mix of people and personalities helped me develop the skills to relate to almost anyone. My experiences working with all of the people I have met in my life, and been forced to work with, have made me learn so much more about my self and even fine tune my skills.
Not to say that all homeschooled people have that problem, but I think it is obvious that they are more susceptible to that deficiency. By having a blog and communicating with others online would help kids learn to put themselves out there.
As a member of the HSB blogging community, I have found such an atmosphere of caring and sharing about our day-to-day lives that really help bind us together as a group. It gives me an outlet to talk about whatever is going on in our lives. I know that most homeschool moms do not have many opportunities for social outlets, and this works with my lifestyle. I can get on-line when it suits my schedule, usually when my children are sleeping, and I can connect with hundreds of homeschool moms and dads.
Tami
Like so many of our critics, ashley touts the many-splendoured social benefits of public school over homeschooling. Being a public school grad myself of decades past, I also remember the wonderful “socialization” opportunities available in the public school — the torment of “oddball” kids, pressure towards “sex and drugs and roll-n-roll,” and the strict conformity in dress, fashion and behavior imposed by the peer group. Add to this the joyous wonders of today’s generation, like Columbine. Though the social darwinism of the schools is not our primary reason for homeschooling our children, we’re certainly willing to take our chances with the alternatives.
Ashley, Jay and Tami:
Thanks for the comments.
At the risk of being controversial – which I don’t want to be – I am wondering about how (if in any way) the recent shootings and kidnapping in Pennsylvania will eventually be played out in the press re: homeschooling.
Will those perceptions / misperceptions that Jay refers to be somehow folded into the discussion of the case?
I don’t know.
I can imagine people projecting thoughts that the form of schooling might have somehow contributed to the incident. I don’t think that is necessarily fair, but I can see it possibly happening in the press – on cable TV psuedo-news shows – and elsewhere.
So, how can the homeschooling movement counter that, if it happens?
Hi Robert, Well, in all candor, I suppose it wouldn’t be any more reasonable to broad-brush homeschooling based on this PA incident than it would be to broad-brush all public schools based on Columbine. If anything, if something like this can happen in Amish country PA, it can happen anywhere, indicating the steep decline of our culture in general.
However, the critics of homeschooling are always bringing up this “socialization” issue as it were some sort of new revelation to us homeschool parents, as though we are obliviously keeping our kids in some insulated “Jesus bubble” where the “real world” can’t get in. Perhaps we just have chips on our shoulders from answering this wearsome argument over and over. But I seem to recall back in public school, our teachers screaming at us, “YOU’RE NOT HERE TO SOCIALIZE!!!” So other than missing recess, our kids quietly work in our dining room instead of quietly working in a classroom like the school kids are *supposed* to be doing, sans the spitballs, paper airplanes and talking out of turn in class. And like the school kids, our kids find most of their social time after school playing with neighbor kids and other friends. Our kids are in scouts and otherwise spend time with other children. Most of the homeschoolers we know are in music, soccer, gymnastics etc outside the home. And our kids are popular in their circles, surely a sign of good social development. So this “socialization” argument is a total red herring, and we homeschool parents get sick of hearing it all the time from the kids’ uninformed grandparents, aunts and uncles and total strangers, as though we are simpletons who cannot possibly know what’s best for our own children.
So anyway, I believe the reason that homeschoolers get singled out is because the very-powerful teachers’ union resents that we are producing well-educated, well-balanced students without their involvement and for a fraction of the cost. We make the NEA look bad, and their “fellow travellers” in the press are very willing to cast a bad light on us whenever possible. The best way to counter that is to keep doing what we’re doing — raising our children in the way they should go and producing hard-working citizens of the future.
Robert, thanks for your positive coverage of HSB and our movement. -jay
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