Homeschooling

Growth of Homeschooling

Widespread dissatisfaction with the quality of public schooling has fueled the growth of home-schooling since the 1960s. Two groups with strikingly different ideologies and curricular visions have been instrumental to its growth: members of the counterculture and religious fundamentalists. Although these categories do not represent the full diversity of homeschoolers' philosophies, they provide a general guide for understanding significant arguments shaping the movement. The first group of homeschooling advocates was critical of the bureaucratic and authoritarian character of public schools. John Holt, a humanist educator, argued that such environments damaged children's natural love of learning. Holt drew from the spirit of educational and social reform prominent in the 1960s and 1970s to advocate for more humane ways of educating children. He envisioned an unschooling approach with unstructured curriculum in which children followed their own interests and learned at their own pace. Some scholars today refer to this group of homeschoolers as pedagogues.

The second group of homeschooling advocates was similarly critical of public schools' educational methods and of their secular content. Pioneer Christian homeschoolers Raymond and Dorothy Moore considered young children too fragile to attend school. They recommended delaying children's entry into formal schools until they were physically and developmentally ready (between ages 8 and 12). The Moores believed parents were children's natural authorities and thus superior teachers to any the public schools could provide. In this view, parents' instinctual knowledge of their own children and the intimate and protective character of the family unit provide ideal learning conditions. Scholars sometimes refer to home-schoolers in this group as ideologues today.

Many homeschoolers share a common conviction that the homogenizing curriculum of contemporary public schools simply cannot accommodate each child's profound individuality and unique gifts. Whereas public school teachers must negotiate 20 or 30 students at a time, home educators teach only a few children in a comforting family environment. To homeschoolers, such individual attention is a foundational strength of their unconventional educational choice. Some prefer the term home education to differentiate their learning activities from conventional bureaucratic schooling.

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