Is homeschooling a new fad? Are parents doing it just because it is the stylish thing to do? Well, if
that were the case, we would have a hard time explaining how people such as Wilbur and Orville
Wright came to be homeschooled.
Indeed, homeschooling, in some form or another, has been around for many centuries. While some children were given the opportunity to study with great philosophers, most learned life skills from their parents. Just as a parent teaches a child to walk and talk, the parent from centuries ago also taught the child to cipher, build, and create the tools necessary for day-to-day living. Children learned history from listening to stories being repeated by their older relatives. Today, we call that practice “oral history.” Extended-family members may have taught the children specialized tasks,such as sewing or hunting, if that knowledge was not within the realm of one of the child’s parents.
It is only in recent history that nuclear families have been isolated from their extended-family members, and this dynamic, in part, has changed the face of American education. While public schooling existed for many years, Massachusetts became the first state to enact a compulsory attendance law in 1852. Other states followed, and it wasn’t long until most children were educated in public schools. During the Industrial Age of the United States, public schooling became the norm as more parents began to work in factories and service industries. By 1918, all of the states had laws similar to the compulsory attendance law in Massachusetts as mothers went to work outside of the home when fathers were sent to fight in the wars involving our country during the first half of the twentieth century. Children attended public schools during the day hours while their parents worked.
This arrangement seemingly worked for everyone. Adults could work knowing that their young children were supervised and cared for by trained individuals while learning. The modern homeschool movement, which began in the 1960s, is widely attributed to John Holt. A veteran of World War II who went on to become an educator, John Holt envisioned ways to reform what he saw as a crumbling educational system within the United States. Disillusioned with the conditions within public schools, Mr. Holt recommended that parents once again take control of their children’s education. Initially, John Holt suggested a new concept—unschooling. To further his claims that children’s minds are eager, unspoiled, and fertile grounds of learning, he suggested schools where children were not taught, but facilitated. Within these institutions, children would find all the tools they needed to learn without tests, quizzes, or report cards. There would be no rules, no mandatory attendance, and no structure—just uninhibited learning. While some followers of Holt’s philosophy did set up these types of unschools, they were not widely successful—running out of resources and subsequently closing their doors.
Realizing that the community unschool was not an easily accepted or viable solution to the worsening conditions within public schools, Mr. Holt encouraged his followers to unschool at home.
Parents could serve as facilitators within their home unschools. This idea intrigued his followers, and a growing number of parents began to embark on educating their children at home. Eventually the words “homeschool” and “unschool” became used within newsletters and publications interchangeably, although it is important to note that within this book they mean two different things.
Homeschooling means to educate your child at home, whereas unschooling refers to a specific, child-led methodology of learning. In a 1980 interview with The Mother Earth News, John Holt estimated that there were already 10,000 families within the United States who were homeschooling their children using a variety of methodologies. Mr. Holt died in 1985. During the same time period, Dr. Raymond Moore and Dorothy Moore, sometimes dubbed the “grandparents of the homeschooling movement,” began to collect, analyze, and distribute information about the effects of conventional schooling methods. According to the Moore Method, a child’s education should be customized or tailored to his or her particular needs and interests. Many homeschooling parents adhere to this principle, as parents are uniquely able to incorporate their child’s interest and learning style into his education where the traditional school system, for practical reasons, is not.
While John Holt’s opinions about how a child should learn are directly opposite of the conventional schooling that most government-sponsored public schools promote, many other leaders, such as the Moores, have emerged in the homeschooling society who have far less radical ideas about how to educate a child. Today, children are educated at home using a variety of approaches; some resemble miniature schools, with small in-home classrooms and schedules, while others follow the Holt unschooling approach, allowing a child to become excited about his surroundings and to learn through exploration and discovery. Most seem to fall somewhere in between, allowing children the flexibility to follow their interests while providing structure where necessary to ensure that the child is learning the basics.
Throughout the four-decade span of the modern homeschooling movement, attitudes and opinions about homeschooling have changed drastically. Once considered an option for hippies, radicals, and those who were on various political, religious, and social “fringes,” homeschooling has consistently gained respect, popularity, and momentum as a viable and desirable family education choice.
Source : Lee Wherry Brainerd, Jessika Sobanski, and Ricki Winegardner. Basic Skills for Homeschooling. 2002
