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Learning for learning's sake - monetary devaluation of college degrees - Editorial

American Demographics - January 1, 1997

Home schooling is perhaps the fastest growing trend in education in this country. According to the Department of Education, about 500,000 students, or about 1% of the total school age population, were taught at home in 1996. Home schooling organizations put the estimate much higher, at close to 1.2 million. The Department of Education's figures jumped 30% over five years, and some researchers say the number of home-schooled children is growing at about 25% annually. Home schooling is now legal in every state, though requirements vary. Some states require parents who teach their children at home to have teacher's certificates or college degrees; some require extensive monitoring by public school officials. Some states have specific curriculum and testing requirements, while others only ask that parents notify the school district that they plan to teach their children at home.

Before the mid-19th century, home schooling was common. Public schools became widespread in the United States in the 1830s, though many rural families found it inconvenient for their children to travel long distances to school. The first compulsory education law was passed in 1852 and by the turn of the century, children in most communities were required to attend school, usually through eighth grade. Home schooling became, for the most part, obsolete. But dissatisfaction with public education led some parents and educators back to the home school option in the 1970s. The writings of Raymond Moore, a former U.S. Department of Education official, and John Holt, author of several books on education, gave credence and national presence to a growing home school movement. The number of families schooling at home grew tremendously in the 1980s with the majority composed of fundamentalist Christians. The rise in home schooling led to numerous legal confrontations, but through changes in state laws and precedent-setting legal cases, many barriers to home schooling dropped by the early 1990s. Simultaneously, many studies of home-schooled children demonstrated that they scored consistently better or equal to their peers in traditional schools.

Some legal obstacles still remain for parents who home school. For instance, some parents who teach their children at home have sued school districts for denying access to school equipment or extra-curricular activities. While some public and private schools have accommodated home-schooled children with access to science labs and participation in sports teams, others have resisted. Many parents who have opted to home school vilify public schools, while educators often stress that home-schooled children are not fully socialized because they are not exposed to children of different backgrounds and abilities. Though there is a negative stigma attached to children who've been home schooled, a recent University of Michigan study of home-schooled children found them to be well-adjusted socially.

Reasons for schooling children at home differ from family to family. The majority of families choose home schooling for religious reasons. About 80% of families who home school identify themselves as Christian, with many coming from fundamentalist or evangelical sects. Many Christian families prefer to home school because they fear public schools foster a moral environment at odds with their own. Furthermore, they may disagree with the curriculum, or fear the influence of non-Christian students on their children. Interestingly, the growth of home schooling in the 1970s and 1980s coincided with a surge of fundamentalism in the political arena. Yet a growing number of families home school for non-religious reasons. Some parents believe that children should be allowed to learn at their own pace. Raymond Moore claims that children are not ready for formal academic learning until age eight or ten, or even older. Home-schooled children need not follow a regular school curriculum, which teaches reading in first grade, for example, and multiplication in the third grade. The home school parent and child might determine together when the child is ready to read or multiply. Other parents choose to home school because their children are bored in school. Home schooling is most popular in the primary grades, and about one-third of all home-schooled students eventually return to conventional schools, usually for high school.

Home schooling involves a tremendous commitment from the parents. At least one parent must be willing to work closely with the child, plan lessons, keep abreast of requirements, and perhaps negotiate issues with the school district. The most common home school arrangement is for the mother to teach while the father works out of the home. There are a variety of educational materials geared for the home school, published by dozens of suppliers. Some are correspondence courses, which grade students' work, some are full curricula, and some are single topic workbooks or drill materials in areas such as math or phonics. Many of the curriculum providers are indentifiably Christian, including several major home school publishers such as Bob Jones University Press, Alpha Omega Publications, and Home Study International. A major non-religious provider of home school materials is the Calvert School in Baltimore. Figures vary as to how many home schools use published curricula or correspondence courses, but the Department of Education estimates that it is from 25 to 50%; the rest use a curriculum the parents and/or child have devised. Education writer John Holt, a champion of home schooling, suggested that no particular area of study was essential. He advised parents to use real life activities such as work in a family business, writing letters, bookkeeping, observing nature, and talking with old people as meaningful academic lessons. Home schools might fall anywhere on this spectrum, between the tightly planned study of a formal curriculum to Holt's free-form, experiential learning.

Parents interested in teaching their children at home need to find out what laws apply to their state and school district. Many resources are available through the organizations listed below.

Further Reading

For Your Information

Books

• Guterson, David. Family Matters: Why Homeschooling Makes Sense. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992.
• Moore, Raymond, and Dorothy Moore. The Successful Homeschool Family Handbook. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1994.
• Pedersen, Anne, and Peggy McNamara, eds. Schooling at Home: Parents, Kids, and Learning. Santa Fe: John Muir Publications, 1990.

Gale Encyclopedia of Childhood & Adolescence. Gale Research, 1998.

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