Homeschooling in Manitoba continues to grow

At a group of picnic tables outside Brandon’s Discovery Centre, a dozen homeschooled girls are holding a book on a Tuesday afternoon. The book is about being a girl, and they are declaring what they want to be when they grow up.

One girl wants do ballet, but on horseback.

The girls are not all the same age. Some are toddlers, others are about to be teenagers. But they’re studying together, and it’s something they do every two weeks.

Today’s book is called “Lies Girls Believe.” and one of the mothers, Raquel Driedger, leads the class. She points out to the girls: unlike what the world may soon tell them, there’s nothing wrong with being just a mother and a wife. Girls bring the new generation, she says, and bringing it up well is a very important job.

“We all have similar values,” Laura Flikweert says over the phone earlier that day. “We choose our books that we are reading and exploring together based on those values.”

Passing on values to children is one of the many reasons Manitobans are choosing to homeschool. And while the list of reasons is not yet known by officials, the number of students homeschooling in Manitoba has quintupled since the turn of the century.

Roughly 5,100 homeschool students were registered in Manitoba last year. It was 479 more than the year before. For comparison, there were 1,048 homeschooling in the year 2000.

Growth has been consistent over a two-decade-long trendline upwards, which is attracting attention in some communities.

In Winkler, the Garden Valley school district created a new liaison role to get involved. A staff member this year will be tasked with studying nearby homeschoolers and learning why the practice has gained popularity.

“We truly don’t know the reasons,” Manitoba Education Minister Nello Altomare told the Sun. “This is why we’re excited about the project, so we can actually add real hard data here that can really inform us moving forward.”

It may be difficult to put a finger on the reasons.

According to local advocate and homeschooler Larissa MacDonald, there’s a unique explanation for every family. She hears from parents because of her role as administrator for the Facebook group Westman Homeschool Connection.

“Even just yesterday, I had another mom whose son is hoping to homeschool come out to my home, and we just had a chat,” said MacDonald. “As she was driving up, I was messaging on Facebook Messenger with someone asking how they grade for high school.”

The Minnedosa mother says she hears a variety of reasons why people are interested in homeschooling.

“People want to spend more time with their kids; some have kids with special needs that aren’t being addressed in the schools, or they have issues like bullying, that kind of thing. Others don’t agree with some of the changes that they’ve seen in the school system recently, whether that be classroom numbers or ideologies or that kind of thing.”

Retired teacher Bill Wynn is concerned about that last reason. He retired in 2015 from a career as a public school educator, including in Westman. Today, he says he still hears from old colleagues and parents concerned about content in public schools.

“The volume of political education,” he says. “It’s causing a lot of division, and I can certainly see it as a factor with people pulling out. If we don’t start talking about this rationally, I can see a lot more people leaving the public school system for alternative ways to educate their kids.”

But he says it’s not the only reason. Barriers to homeschooling are becoming easier to overcome. In the past two decades, parents have gained better access with online guides, resources and community groups that make homeschooling easier.

“It’s definitely more available,” says MacDonald. “It’s easier to find out information online.”

After homeschooling eight children across two decades, she says its quicker to plan today. And pathways out of homeschooling are improving, with universities having better protocols to accept homeschooled children. Her eldest has completed two years of university, another became a barber, and the other graduate enrolled this fall in agribusiness at Assiniboine College. Five are still at home.

It may have been more difficult for Manitoban homeschoolers to find answers twenty years ago, but online platforms make it easier today. Especially through community groups, which are taking foot in western Manitoba.

Brandon homeschooler Laura Flikweert says she’s received a lot of help from the community, especially from MacDonald.

“She has been the woman who has mentored all of us newbies, on everything,” Flikweert said. “Just figuring out our curriculum, figuring out what way we can homeschool… She organized people to do, like video chats together… . She shared her experience, she shared her knowledge. … . The amount of time she gave to me was significant, and I cannot imagine how much time she gave to other people as well.”

MacDonald says it’s too much time.

“I respond to almost all the posts on the Westman Homeschool Connection, but I’m on a group for every level of the curriculum we use, plus a chat group of those people,” she says. “And I’m on the Manitoba Association of Christian Home Schools. I’m on a provincial Charlotte Mason group, which is a style of homeschooling, a philosophy of how to teach. And then I’m on a couple of national groups as well. So I spend way too much time on Facebook.”

The community in Manitoba may be benefitting from network effects — the idea that as more people join, the system improves. Possibilities grow for social groups and peer-to-peer support.

Flikweert has seen this in practice. She didn’t have trouble filling a choir group she started with friends.

“We had 36 kids enrolled, and we didn’t even advertise it,” said Flikweert. “We shared it in Christian homeschooling group, and that was it. … This year, we’re thinking we’ll open it up to a few more. … Because there’s a lot of people that start homeschooling and they haven’t found their community yet. We want to help people find their community.”

Use of such networks also provides a way to get out of the house. Parents are using groups to address one of the most common concerns about homeschooling — the concern that the student becomes isolated.

MacDonald tells of having to drive an hour for a gym class in her early homeschooling years. On the other hand, today, Flikweert’s local gym group is full. “We’ve made many many many friends within the homeschool community,” she says.

For Flikweert, values and lifestyle are the big reasons behind her decision to homeschool. It’s not about bubble-wrapping children, she says at the sidelines of her children’s book club.

It’s about preserving the time in a child’s life where a concrete foundation can be built before the world starts coming in.

» cmcdowell@brandonsun.com