Thinking of Homeschooling? You are not alone.
Today, the homeschool community has 3.1 million school-aged children in the U.S.This is up from 2.9 million in 2019. This has been a steady incline even prior to 2020 with more parents considering the move every day.
So, what is homeschooling all about? According to the old stereotypes, it’s just a bunch of awkward isolated religious zealots, right? Well no, actually homeschooling has been a part of human history, a lot longer than public school, by 1000s of years. So, the bigger question is, when and why did we begin instituting compulsory education? There is historical evidence of public-school systems dating back to the Middle Ages; however, it was in 1763 when the King of Prussia created a system for his own political gain, comparable to the one we recognize today.
A short commentary on school Indoctrination (above)
But rather than going into all that, I’ll just tell you our family’s story. (If you’d like to learn more of the history, see the citations provided , as well as recommended resources below).
Growing up, I never knew anyone who was homeschooled, and I had only heard about it through my dad. He told me that my uncle was homeschooled due to his disability. My dad was rather condemning of it, stating my uncle had been isolated, and never allowed to have friends. That may have had more to do with being a disabled person in the early 1960s, at a time when the US regularly used eugenics sterilization laws, rather than being homeschooled but that’s just a guess.
I never gave it a second thought until as a new mom with sons aged 1 and 3, I was sitting on the couch one afternoon, folding clothes and watching Dr. Phil (yeah, I was that stay-at-home mom back then). The show focused on resolving a dispute between a husband and wife, where the wife wanted to homeschool their children, and the husband was vehemently opposed. This is quite common in the community, where one spouse is against it, and the other must do some convincing, this was the case in my house too (more on that later). The father’s opposition was a typical one, “But how will they be socialized.” Dr. Phil provided statistics, illustrating that homeschooled children were not only just as social as their peers, but overwhelmingly had higher IQs. That night my husband came home from work, I told him I wanted to homeschool, and to my chagrin his response was something like, “What? Are you crazy?” I didn’t fight it then, and my boys ended up in public school.
Fast-forward 8 years, my sons are 11 and 9 with my oldest just about to enter middle school. California is not surprisingly one of the states instituting the Common Core curriculum as well as an ever-increasingly aggressive mandatory vaccine schedule. My oldest son who was considered gifted, was bored, and disenchanted with school. He felt being gifted provided no additional perk, other than “getting to use the computer room, during lunch”. To my surprise he asked me if he could be homeschooled and when I asked him, “Why he answered, “So I can learn what I want to learn rather than what they force me to learn.”
The elementary school he attended was considered a Blue-Ribbon school, or something along those lines, which when examined closely, added up to mean “better test scores.” I found out why their scores were so high when my other son who was in special education was denied access to the ‘Blue Ribbon’ and bused to a special class over 20 miles away. It’s easy to have high test scores when you ship the low scorers to another district.
My eldest and I agreed to make the argument for homeschooling, and though it took a considerable amount of convincing, my husband finally agreed to “just one year”, provided I didn’t spend ANY money, and I still had time for my other duties. This was easier said than done, as I had just given birth to my daughter, within the first month of our adventure and had no idea what I was doing. The challenge was before me, but I took it in stride. We spent that first year doing a lot of “winging it”, going to free museum days, frequent library trips, shopping in Japan Town and documentary Thursdays. I purchased a 25-cent book from a thrift store called Science Experiments You Can Eat and I’ll never forget my son’s reaction after he learned to make whip cream. He skipped along with a grin then turned to me stating, “Though that was really simple, I feel so accomplished.” Another highlight was taking the ancient mythology we were studying, and turning it into a 5-course meal cooking challenge, using only recipes of ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt. We had a budget to buy the ingredients (all GAP diet friendly), created fancy restaurant style menus, and handed them to the family before presenting our masterpieces. It was quite an undertaking and a delicious success!
That first year accumulated some of the best memories I had with my son, (Though he might think differently). Whatever the case, I certainly acquired a lot of knowledge from budget schooling without a Charter (in other words funding), utilizing library resources, locating Community Service opportunities, building curriculum, writing transcripts, unit studies, unschooling approach, legalities and so-on.
While my husband remained reluctant in the Middle School years, ultimately, he embraced, the field trips, campouts, and the undisputable advantage of additional family time. So, Year after year, we decided to keep going all the way to his high school graduation in 2021. Yes, I graduated him, complete with diploma and all. Throughout, the high school years, I continued to teach health, cooking, and English (a favorite being classic American Literature) while he attended a local community college achieving dual credit in the other subjects. Today at 19, he has about one more semester to go before completing two Associates Degrees, in Japanese and Game Design.
And by the way, I never taught religion though my son turned out to be an amateur Theologian on his own accord, don’t ask me how.
Yes, there were mishaps and missteps along the way, that my son reminds me of at times usually when giving advice for how to handle his younger siblings in their homeschool journeys. And yes, if I had to do it over, I would do quite a few things differently, but I would never change the fact we did it and neither would my son.
If you enjoyed this article, please share and keep an eye out for my next post which will focus on homeschooling special needs, a whole other story in its own right, though still not as hard as you might think.
Please feel free to share your comments, questions and homeschool stories. There are as many ways and reasons to homeschool as there are homeschoolers and it’s always great to learn from one another.
John Holt on the Phill Donahue Show
If you’re interested in Homeschool Coaching, it is included for no additional charge in the Health package or if you prefer to do a Homeschool Consult a la carte, please message me and/or schedule a 15-minute free consultation.
Citations and recommended resources:
A History of Public Schools (publicschoolreview.com)
Compulsory Education in The United States: A Brief History (theravive.com)
100 Famous Homeschoolers – AOP Homeschooling
Homeschooling: A History (learn.org)
Homeschooling in the United States – Wikipedia
Eugenic Sterilization: History of Laws in the U.S. (hli.org)
April Boden is a wife and homeschooling mom of 3 who one day decided to wake at 6am, go to a coffee shop, and start writing books. She eventually gave up the 6am wake up calls, and instead swapped T.V. watching for writing. In between educating, shuttling, and feeding her kids, she occasionally does housework, and goes out to dinner with her husband. She lives with her family in Southern California.
