A Brief History: The Modern Homeschooling Movement
There are many reasons why parents choose to homeschool their children. Some parents choose home education for religious reasons while others wish to give their children a unique and personalized learning path in a secular manner. Beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, the modern homeschooling movement was motivated by secular reasons. John Holt and Raymond Moore were two major leaders of the modern homeschool movement that accused public schools of damaging children. This specific period in American history is marked for its counterculture, rebellion, and anti-establishment philosophies popular among the hippies and liberal thinkers. The idea that parents should regain control of their children’s education and revoke this power from the “establishment” had a major influence on the creation of the modern homeschool movement. Holt began what is known as the “unschooling” movement. Holt argued that public classroom environments were stifling children and molding them into compliant employees for the future (Coalition for Responsible Home Education, n.d.). Holt wrote several influential books including How Children Fail and How Children Learn, while also publishing the first homeschooling magazine in 1977 titled Growing Without Schooling. Although no longer in publication, the magazine is widely available in public libraries (Patterson & Martin, 2009).
In 1972, another modern homeschooling pioneer Raymond Moore wrote an influential article titled “The Dangers of Early Schooling” in Harper’s Magazine (Stollar, 2015). The article used research to challenge the practice of early institutional schooling of children under the age of 8 and proposed home education (Moore, 1973). The article was also published in Reader’s Digest and reached millions of readers (Stollar, 2015). Throughout the 1970s, Moore and his wife Dorothy were fierce homeschooling advocates and published several books and articles that put the movement on the national stage (Patterson & Martin, 2009). While Holt was known for his progressive ideas as a former educator and appealed to an unconventional audience, Moore appealed to a more conservative Protestant base and fundamentalist Christians. As Stevens (2003) highlights, “Progressive educators and conservative Protestant Christians made for strange movement bedfellows during the early years, and the philosophical cleavage between these two wings was expressed in an organisational divide in the US homeschool community that endures into the present… it is important to remember this dual history when making sense of US home education today” (pg. 92). It is the influence of these two early homeschool pioneers that propelled the modern homeschooling movement forward into the tumultuous 1980s.
The 1980s was a decade ripe with legal challenges for homeschooling families. The resurgence of bible-based Christianity in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s prompted many parents to withdraw their children from public schools deemed dangerous to the moral upbringing of their children (Patterson & Martin, 2009). This new wave of religious homeschoolers coupled with the outlook of public education as harmful, nurtured an antagonistic relationship between educators and homeschoolers (Coalition for Responsible Home Education, n.d.). As increasing numbers of children were being homeschooled, some families experienced social and legal backlash in their communities.
In 1983, Michael Farris and Michael Smith, two attorneys and homeschooling fathers, founded the Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). Along with a variety of resources and advocacy tools, this organization provides legal representation to homeschooling families across the United States for a membership fee. According to Stevens (2003), “HSLDA has been instrumental in the maintenance of a generally favourable legal climate for home education throughout the USA. By the mid-1990s, HSLDA was the preponderant policy advocate for home education in Washington, and could claim a long string of judicial and legislative victories on behalf of home-schoolers” (pg. 93). It was during this period that homeschoolers turned from the local to the state level to change laws to accommodate home education. As a result, homeschool statutes differ widely from state to state. However, by the dawn of the 1990s most states had developed a working relationship with the homeschool community; the final push to legalize homeschooling and develop fair statutes was achieved by HSLDA (Coalition for Responsible Home Education, n.d.).
Since the mid-1990s, homeschoolers continue to advocate for fair policies and ensure this alternative to public education thrives. Today, homeschooling is now a socially and legally acceptable alternative thanks to its early pioneers, parents, advocates, and other organizations. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (2012), the number of children being homeschooled in the United States continues to grow. The homeschooling rate for students K-12 increased from an estimated 1.7 percent in 1999 to 3.4 percent in 2012 (NCES, 2012). Additionally, there are nearly two million homeschooled students in the United States (NCES, 2012). Unlike the early stages of the movement, reasons for home education include pragmatic reasons, such as social issues and quality of education at the local school level. This increasingly diverse group of homeschoolers, coupled with the advent of the Internet and other pervasive technologies, has the potential to change the face of the movement once again (Coalition for Responsible Home Education, n.d.).