AMANDA SKAPNIT

KeepHomesCool is a hypothetical awareness campaign about the laws surrounding homeschooling in Michigan. I designed this campaign for my thesis at Western Michigan University. The name is meant to be a bit of a pun, and it's about keeping homeschool as a cool alternative to public schooling. I wanted something positive yet strong. 

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My personal connection to homeschool is that I was homeschooled from the time I was eight until I was 18. Luckily for me, I had a wonderful experience. My 'K-12' was organic, unstructured, grade-less and it resulted in an adult who has two college degrees, I am so happy that I was homeschooled because it allowed me to grow up without peer pressure. I learned for the joy of learning and had a lot of time to focus on art and 4-H. However, I recognize that not everyone has a good homeschool education.

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 Some parents use homeschool as a way to hide the effects of abuse on their children. This makes homeschooled children vulnerable to a severe form of abuse: child torture. Child torture is prolonged abuse that could not be hidden in a school setting. Examples of child torture include starving a child to death, letting broken bones heal without casts, and injuring a child in a way that a teacher or other adult in a school setting would notice.

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One study of victims of child torture found that 47% of school-age victims had been withdrawn from school for homeschooling and an additional 29% had never been enrolled in school at all. That means that 76% of child torture victims, in this nation, were homeschooled. 

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KeepHomesCool lobbies for a reevaluation of homeschool laws in Michigan. They believe that current Michigan homeschool laws do not protect children. I chose to focus on just Michigan to try to narrow the universe of my campaign. 

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For Michigan homeschoolers there is no mandatory annual testing, no annual doctor's visit, no counseling, and if a child is being abused at home, no way to get help. A parent can completely isolate their homeschooled child.

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My biggest challenge throughout this project was to balance the fact that homeschooled kids can grow up to be successful adults with the idea that maybe there should be laws that protect homeschoolers. 

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I chose to use hand-drawn, homemade-looking imagery and a maze theme for the houses. Current legislation leaves no opening to see how the kids are doing, so I made the mazes unsolvable by giving them no opening. 

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The kids in the houses are also hand-drawn, I wanted them to be racially and sexually ambiguous. I chose to make them the brightest color in the compositions because the focus of homeschooling should be on the kids and their rights. 

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I hand-lettered the messages on the posters and the page titles on the website using ink and a bamboo brush. 

 

I chose the colors that I used to be an alternative to the primary colors generally associated with kids and early education. This is a complex problem, so I used a palette of slightly desaturated colors.

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Overall my goal was to make something thought-provoking that started a conversation. Most former and current homeschoolers whom I have spoken to about my thesis appreciate my project because unless someone has been homeschooled, or has homeschooled their kids, most people do not understand what homeschool is or entails. 

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I think that my thesis was successful. After showing it to other people, I have had many meaningful conversations about homeschooled people that they knew, or their own homeschool experiences. 

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