I have written about the strategy of teaching homeschool students how to monitor local civil governments: the school board, the city council, and the county commission.
The following program should be a division of labor project in every local homeschool support group for high schoolers. It should be part of a senior year civics course. At least two students attend each meeting of each unit of government. One of them shoots a video. The student uses a boom microphone. The other student takes notes. They collect any handouts. They participate in a website devoted to local units of government. The videos are posted on the site from YouTube. The handouts are posted as PDF's. The notes are published. Toward their final year, they take on two or more apprentices who will begin their civics course soon. I don't know of any homeschool support group that does this. The details of such a project are here: https://www.garynorth.com/public/14180.cfm.
There is another contribution to the community that homeschoolers ignore. That is local history. Almost nobody is involved in local history. Nobody goes through old newspapers. Nobody consults the local museum. There may not be a local museum. But as a joint project, local history is a terrific way to teach the basics of good historical research.
Any website run by the local homeschool co-op would attract visitors who are interested in local history. There are not many of these people, but civic groups might be interested. Church groups might be interested. Maybe a local church group or civic group would let high school students into their archives. Everybody wants to get his story told to the general public, but hardly anybody wants to do the grunt work of researching the story and then telling it online.
This would be a long-term project. It would go on literally for decades. Year by year, month by month, summaries would be posted on key events or human interest events. There could also be PDF's of newspaper headlines. If the local newspaper agrees, there could be reprints of articles. This can be done through inexpensive scanning tools and OCR software for the conversion of digital images into text.
Students would get experience in how to do historical research. This research would be noncontroversial. Participating students would also get experience in editing a website.
One of my correspondents sent me a link to something that almost nobody knows about. In Orange County, California, young German POWs were turned into workers in the local orange fields. Of course, there are no more orange fields in Orange County anymore. The value of the land is simply too high. But in World War II, oranges were a major source of income in Orange County. The correspondent sent me this link.
It turns out that there is a collection of documents on this POW camp that is housed at California State University, Fullerton. The collection is 40 years old. There are interviews with people who had been POWs. By that time, their memories were 30 years old. I am sure they are all dead and gone. I doubt that current members of the history department at Cal State Fullerton are even aware of the existence of this collection. My daughter-in-law works in administration at the university, so I sent her a copy of the link. I told her that this would make a Ph.D. dissertation. There is a term paper on the topic. It was written in 2005. It is posted here.
In every community, there are long-forgotten stories of interest comparable to this one. Only rarely does an investigator stumble onto one of these stories. Maybe a student writes a term paper. Maybe a local newspaper reporter writes an article. But these reports are like bubbles. A few people may see them as they float by, but these bubbles pop shortly after they float by.
GOOD PUBLICITY
A good way for a local homeschool co-op to get attention, and maybe even get parents to sign up their children with the co-op, is through a local history website. Once it has been up and running for a couple of years, students can volunteer to give a 15-minute presentation about the site at the local Rotary club, Kiwanis club, or any other service organization. This gives the opportunity for students to get experience in public speaking. This is an ideal topic for a service club. Nobody ever makes a presentation on local history. There is probably no other local history site. The topic is not controversial. A presentation by a student would be welcomed if the student is a competent speaker. The talk would get good publicity for the homeschool co-op. I don't see any negatives.
Obviously, it would be a lot of work for the students, but it surely would not be busy work. Such a website would be unique. This would be highly productive work. The results would be visible permanently.
My guess is that it would be possible for a participating student to create what is known as a portfolio course. A portfolio course is like a merit badge. It requires a specific program. It requires specific performance. If a student can show that the work involved was the equivalent of a three-semester-hour college-level course, the student can get college credit. This way, the student gets a double benefit. He fulfills a state requirement for a high school civics course, and he also escapes three semester hours of required coursework in college.
I don't think public schools would get involved in something like this. They could, but they won't. I think the same is true of classroom-based education generally. Such education is too structured. Something like this would be considered experimental, and classroom-based education is rarely experimental.
If you know of somebody involved in homeschooling, I would appreciate it if you would forward a link to this article. If you know somebody involved in a homeschool co-op, all the better.
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