Homeschooling has once again become a very popular way to educate our children. In order to understand where homeschooling is headed and why it is such a viable and popular choice today, we must understand where it came from and why it reemerged during the last few decades. According to the National Center for Education Statistics' report, Homeschooling in the United States: 1999, in the spring of 1999, an estimated 850,000 students nationwide were being homeschooled. Other estimates put the homeschool population in the United States at nearly 2 million.

Homeschool History
When the pioneer settlers moved to the Americas in the 1600s, educating their children at home was the only option. At home, children learned how to read, write, complete math equations, and they learned the skills needed to survive pioneer life. Many of these children spent months helping their families to prepare the land, plant the crops needed to survive for the winter, cultivate the food, and prepare the food for storage. Lessons in History, Math, English, and other topics would be studied during the winter months.

George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Thomas Edison, and Joseph Pulitzer were all homeschooled. Did you know that Louis Armstrong, Alex Haley, Irving Berlin, and Ansel Adams were also homeschooled?

The first public secondary school in the United States opened its doors in Boston Massachusetts in 1635. Benjamin Franklin spent time there, as did John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and Colton Maher. In 1779, Thomas Jefferson advocated for a publicly funded education system. Although he was unsuccessful in his attempt to create a universal tax for this purpose during his lifetime, his influence laid the path for future generations.

Fifty eight years later in 1837, Horace Mann fought for, and received from the Massachusetts state Legislature, funds to be provided to towns and cities to help pay for a public school elementary education. It was he that first established a standardized educational curriculum for schools within the state of Massachusetts and within the United States. Henry Barnard of Connecticut watched Horace Mann succeed with his mission. It was in 1849 that Henry Barnard developed a similar public school system in Connecticut. By 1852, Massachusetts passed the first compulsory attendance laws for children. New York State enacted its own set of compulsory laws in 1853.

Public education was on its way to becoming the leading educational system in the country. Students who had been homeschooling were going to the public schools in search of a quality education. By 1865, with the Civil War ending, monies were freed up and most states agreed to financially support a public education system. In 1874, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that monies collected from local property taxes could be used to fund secondary schools.

265 years after the first public school opened and 63 years after Massachusetts created a public school system, approximately 1.6 million children were attending school, with many going on to complete their high school education.

The end of the 19th century brought with it many changes. The Industrial revolution was making its mark. Child Labor laws were becoming stricter, and the country was turning to mass production of many products-including education. At the forefront of this radical change was John Dewey, who developed the Progressive Educational Theory. It was upon this theory that the present American educational system was founded.

The next eighty years of public education saw a remarkable rise of attendance in the public system. More and more children were attending and completing school through to their senior year in high school. The mass production of educated children was firmly in place. In the 1960s and 1970s, many educators began to see problems in this system, and they began to call for the need to change the way the system worked. The individual child had to fit into the system that had been created, rather than the system fitting around the educational needs of the child.

At that time, John Holt was a leading proponent for the homeschooling of children. He questioned the way children were being schooled. He believed that children should have the freedom to choose what they wanted to learn, and that the adult should act as a facilitator for this learning.

In 1971, Ivan Illich published Deschooling Society. Illich discussed that education has become like a product that is sold in a store-the better the store, the better the product. He believed that children's social class and the school they went to was a major deciding factor in how successful they would be later in life. Education was looked at as something that can be thrown out when it was no longer needed, instead of looking at education as a life-long process that is being built upon everyday and every minute of one's life. Illich also felt that the public school system dehumanized every student, and through this dehumanization, students lost their creativity, their individualization, their ability to problem solve, and their ability to form proper relationships with peers and adults.

At the same time, Herbert Kohl, questioned the way students were being taught. He felt that qualified teachers could guide their students to make discoveries about a concept through the teachers' knowledge. He felt that a system that promoted the mere transferring of knowledge to students meant that the students would only discard the knowledge later on because they had not discovered it for themselves.

Dorothy and Dr. Raymond Moore had major concerns regarding the public school system as well. Dr. Moore, a former US Department of Education employee, helped to lay the groundwork for legitimizing homeschooling. Between 1960 and 1970, they both researched education and developed the "Moore Formula". The Moores believed in individual education, especially for children between the ages of 5 and 10. They believed in a no stress approach that emphasizes social studies, science, arts and crafts, and music appreciation. Reading and writing were completed, but were not the main focus. They felt that it was imperative to follow the needs and interests of the child, that a child should be given the time to mature at their own rate, and that every child should provide a service both in the home and in the community at large. The Moores believed that children from an early age should be paid for work that was completed (not chores), and that time spent on learning should equal the time spent on non-academic pursuits.

These educators knew that there was a need for reform. So did many parents. At this time, many children were taken out of the public school system and being placed in private school settings , which include (but are not limited to) the Waldorf, Montessori, and Carden philosophies.

Many parents also chose to homeschool their children. Why homeschool? The grass roots homeschoolers of the 1960s and 70s did not like the depersonalization found in the modern school system. Parents felt that schools were not looking out for their children's interests. The school systems were changing methods, and it was evident that many students were being overlooked.

This grassroots movement grew through the 1970s, and in the 1980s a large Christian group of homeschoolers began to emerge. Christian schools were loosing funding due to changes in tax legislation, and they were closing. These parents already knew that they wanted a quality Christian education for their children, so a public school was out of the question.

By the mid 1990s yet another group of homeschoolers emerged. They come from every race, socioeconomic, and educational background. These parents were also disillusioned with the education their children were receiving either in a public or private school setting. Problems with unqualified teachers, poor curriculum, crowded classrooms, school violence and drugs have been the major factors in why parents choose homeschooling as the only viable answer to educating their child.

Homeschooling Today
Homeschool students are often acknowledged for exemplary character and high achievement rates. According to a study conducted by Lawrence M Rudner PHd,

On average a homeschooler in grades 1-4 perform one grade higher than those students in public school and that this gap widens as the children get older with many students in the 8th grade performing up to 4 grade levels above the national norm. (Click here for more information.) A 1997 study conducted by Dr. Brian Ray of the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI) indicated that homeschoolers outperformed their public school peers by 30 to 37 percentile points across all subject areas on nationally normed standardized tests (Home Schooling Achievement figure 1.0, pg 1)

In their book Homeschooling for Success: How Parents Can Create A Superior Education for Their Child, Homeschool.com founders Rebecca Kochenderfer and Elizabeth Kanna indicate that homeschoolers had higher scores on the ACT and the SAT than students in either the public or private school sectors (pg 115). Many teenage homeschool students will go to local colleges and universities and take advanced courses. It is reported that colleges look forward to receiving applications from homeschool students and are impressed with their academic and social abilities.

In the last decade, parents concerned with the quality of public education have called for publicly funded charter schools, voucher systems, and homeschooling as alternative ways to educate their children. In 1996, due to the poor conditions of the public run schools in Cleveland, the Federal court allowed for a voucher system to be put into place for poor inner city students to help provide another means of education. On Thursday June 27, 2002, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of school vouchers-this means that taxpayer money could be used to send children to private and religious schools. Hopefully this will cause American educators to begin to look for, identify, and change the patterns that are not working in the U.S. educational system.

For now, homeschooling is one of the best alternatives for providing your child with a quality education. It CAN be done, and it does not require huge amounts of money. It does require structure, understanding, a quest for knowledge and adventure, and time for both planning and learning. Homeschooling is growing and will continue to grow. So when someone asks you where your child goes to school, hold your head up high and say "Why, he is homeschooled of course!"

As you begin or continue your homeschooling adventure, consider adopting the following Homeschooling Mission Statement, provided in Homeschooling For Success by Homeschool.com founders Rebecca Kochenderfer and Elizabeth Kanna:

Homeschooling Mission Statement

• Each child's learning style will be identified and all material will be presented in a format that honors that style.
• Each child's "readiness" will be considered before he or she begins an area of learning.
• Each child will be encouraged to follow his or her interests.
• Each child will learn by doing.
• Each child will be honored as an individual.
• Each child will have downtime to play and just be a kid.
• Each child will be encouraged to pursue their passions in life.
• Each child's special genius will be discovered, nurtured, and preserved.

Learn More!
General Resources about Homeschooling

Online Resources

• Homeschool Resources
  The Homeschool Learning Network's Homeschool Resources page is a public link resource to help you learn about homeschool approaches, articles, research, vendors, and more.
• Homeschool.com
  Homeschool.com is the most popular homeschool destination on the Web for finding resources, articles, programs and information to aide you in your homeschooling.
• Homeschooling Information
  This site provides a wealth of information and links to issues concerning homeschooling.
• Homeschooling in the United States: 1999
  A National Center for Educational Study report on Homeschooling in America.
• Good Schools Pennsylvania
  A timeline of public education in America
• Homeschooling 101: Why We Do It
  A three part NPR article (you can order a transcript and tape) on homeschooling.
• Home Schooling in the United States: Trends and Characteristics
  A report by the U.S Census Bureau that provides information on a survey conducted from 1996-1999 on children who were homeschooled.
• Eclectic Homeschool Online State & US Territories Legal & Support Resources
  Resource center for all legal requirements for all states and territories of the U.S., brought to you by a popular and useful site, Homeschool Online

Books

• Kochenderfer, Rebecca, Kanna, Elzabeth. Homeschooling for Success: How Parents Can Create a Superior Education for Their Child. Warner Books. ISBN: 0446678856
• Griffith, Mary. The Unschooling Handbook : How to Use the Whole World As Your Child's Classroom, Prima Publishing. ISBN: 0761512764.
• Holt, John. How Children Learn. Perseus Publishing. ISBN: 0201484048
• Rupp, Rebecca. Home Learning Year by Year: How to Design a Homeschool Curriculum from Preschool Through High School. Three Rivers Press. ISBN: 0609805851
• Leppert, Mary, Leppert, Michael, Miller, Jamie (Editor). Homeschooling Almanac, 2002-2003: How to Start, What to Do, Where to Go, Who to Call, Web Sites, Products, Catalogs, Teaching Supplies, Support Groups, Conferences, and More!. Prima Publishing. ISBN: 0761528563
• Dobson, Linda. The First Year of Homeschooling Your Child: Your Complete Guide to Getting Off to the Right Start. Prima Publishing. ISBN: 0761527885
• Cohen, Cafi. Homeschooling: The Teen Years: Your Complete Guide to Successfully Homeschooling the 13- To 18-Year Old (Prima Home Learning Library). Prima Publishing. ISBN: 0761520937
• Cohen, Cafi, Dobson, Linda (Editor). Homeschoolers' College Admissions Handbook: Preparing Your 12- to 18-Year-Old for a Smooth Transition. Prima Publishing. ISBN: 0761527540
• Henry, Shari. Homeschooling: The Middle Years: Your Complete Guide to Successfully Homeschooling the 8- To 12-Year Old Child (Prima Home Learning Library). Prima Publishing. ISBN: 0761520929
• Maery Gold, Laura, Zielinski, Joan M. Homeschool Your Child for Free: More Than 1,200 Smart, Effective, and Practical Resources for Home Education on the Internet and Beyond. Prima Publishing. ISBN: 0761525130

LESSON 1:
Why Am I Being Homeschooled?

Concepts:
You will learn about their feelings about homeschooling.

Lesson:
For some of you it may be your first year being homeschooled. For others you may have been homeschooled for as long as you can remember. What does the word homeschooling mean to you?

• Write a poem about your feelings about being homeschooled.
• If you went to public/private school write a poem about how you felt there.
• Complete a venn diagram comparing homeschooling to public or private schooling
• If you attended public/private school before being homeschooled describe how you felt about learning, how did you feel each day that you went to school, compare it to how you feel now.

Additional Resources:

• Sites for Parents, Caregivers, Teachers and Others Who Care About Kids
• Ratner, Susan, Miller, Bryan (Illustrator). Kandoo Kangaroo Hops Into Homeschool. Master Books. ISBN: 0890512906
• Lurie, Jon, Dallinger, Rebecca (Photographer). Allison's Story: A Book About Homeschooling (Meeting the Challenge). Lerner Publications Company. ISBN: 0822525798

LESSON 2:
The Movers and the Shakers of Homeschooling

Concepts:
You will learn about the people who are most notable for the modern day homeschool movement.

Lesson:
Read the Homeschooling History text above. Listed below are some famous homeschool advocates. Learn about who they are and where they came from. Then you can:

• Write a bibliography on your advocate/reformer
• Present a recognition award to 3 of the reformers for their work in promoting homeschooling (list something special that they did) using our recognition award document.
• Make a poster about a famous education advocate. Include the name of your advocate and what he believed in, or be creative and announce a fictitious speaking engagement, highlighting what the person will discuss.
• Make a pro and con poster for each person's belief about how children should be educated.
• Present a speech as if you are one of the leaders. Be sure to point out every aspect of how you believe children should be taught and why you feel the other way of teaching does not work.
• Find out if the person is still alive and what they are currently doing.

Or, compare and contrast one leader for homeschooling and one leader who is famous for our modern day education system. Learning about these men and women is very fascinating! These include:

 

Traditional Schooling John Dewey Horace Mann Henry Bernard

Homeschool Movement John Holt S. Neill Herbert Kohlv Dorothy and Raymond Moore Ivan Illich

Additional Resources:

• History and Current Status of Homeschooling: John Holt
• Downs, Robert Bingham, Henry Barnard, Twayne Pub; ISBN: 0805777105
• MacMullen, Edith Nye, In the Cause of True Education: Henry Barnard and Nineteenth-Century School Reform, Yale Univ Pr; ISBN: 0300048092
• Dewey, John, How We Think, Dover Pubns; ISBN: 0486298957
• Dewey, John, Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education, Simon & Schuster Short Discount; ISBN: 0684836319; Reprint edition (February 1997)
• Holt, John, How Children Learn (Classics in Child Development), Perseus Publishing; ISBN: 0201484048; Revised edition (September 1995)
• Illich, Ivan, Imprisoned in the Global Classroom, Writers & Readers; ISBN: 0904613305

LESSON 3:
Famous People Who Were Homeschooled!

Concepts:
You will learn about famous people who were homeschooled.

Lesson:
Go to the library or use the Internet to find more information about the homeschooled people below. If you like history, you can choose to find more information about any of the people below. If you like music, find out about Louis Armstrong. Into electronics? Research Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Edison. Find out more about the names you hear so often.

Find out if they ever attended school, and if they did, how they felt about it. Or find out how old they were when they first went to school.

Find a list of famous homeschooled personalities below. You can make a book of homeschooled people according to their profession, or choose one person from each heading below. Younger children can use our book report format.

 

Presidents Grover Cleveland James Garfield Andrew Jackson Thomas Jefferson Franklin Delano Roosevelt Theodore Roosevelt George Washington Woodrow Wilson Abraham Lincoln John Adams Inventors Thomas Edison Alexander Graham Bell Eli Whitney Michael Faraday William Lear John James Audubon Wilbur and Orville Wright John Moses Peter Cooper Oliver Heaviside Elias Howe Cyrus McCormick Guglielmo Marconi Sir Frank Whittle Benjamin Franklin George Washington Carver

Writers Robert Frost Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) Willa Cather Agatha Christie William Buckley Jr Margaret Atwood Noel Coward Alex Haley Sean O'Casey Carl Sandburg Walt Whitman Laura Ingalls Wilder Performing Artists Louis Armstrong Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Yehudi Menuhin Irving Berlin Whoppi Goldberg Jennifer Love Hewitt Visual Artists William Blake Leonardo Da Vinci Claude Monet Andrew Wyeth Ansel Adams Frank Loyd Wright

Military George Patton John Paul Jones General Douglas MacArthur John Barry Matthew Perry John Pershing David Dixon Politicians, Jurists, Statesman Patrick Henry John Marshall Benjamin Franklin David Crockett Thomas Paine William Jennings Henry Clay Alexander Hamilton Sam Houston Charles Evan Hughes Women Susan B. Anthony Florence Nightingale Dr. Mary Wallker Mary D. Leakey Abigail Adams Elizabeth Blackwell Jill Ker Conway Gloria Steinem Frances E. C. Willard Sandra Day O'conner

Homeschoolers' Success Stories Use this site to read about some of these famous artists, scientists, inventors, politicians, presidents, and women who were all homeschooled.

Choose one of the people above. Research who they were, when they lived, what they did, and how what they did made an impact on our world today. Who did they influence or what changes did their work cause during and after their life? Write a report about your findings.

• Write a biography about the person
• Write a journal
• Conduct a timeline for events that happened during their lifetime
• If they were an inventor, what did they invent, and how did their invention help others invent?
• Using a video camera, the computer, paper and pencil, or a PowerPoint presentation, make an advertisement selling this person and his/her trade.

LESSON 4:
Virtual Field Trips

Concepts:
You will learn how to use the internet to find research, organizations, lesson plans, and go on a virtual field trip.

Lesson:
Using a computer to find out information about a topic is a quick and easy way to find out as much as you want about almost any given topic. Yet in order to use a computer for these reasons you need to know where to look for a good search engine. In order to use a search engine you must be able to type in the words you are looking for. In order to do that you must know how to read and spell. Sometimes you have to look up information using different words (critical thinking). Before you even get to the information you are looking for, you have had a great mental warm up!

Use the links below to help you find information.

• Google Search Engine
  This is one of the best search engines around
• Yahoo
  Another good, browseable search engine.

Homeschool.com used the following criteria to rate web sites.

• Is the site educational?
• Is the site well organized?
• Does the site make good use of modern Internet Technology?
• Is the site interesting and informative?

Use these questions yourself in deciding what site is appropriate or not.

Want to visit a zoo, or visit another country without ever leaving your home? If so, then you may want to take a virtual field trip. Use the links below to expand your adventures!

 

• Amazon Interactive
• A Virtual Journey into the Earth's History
• A Multimedia of Glacier Bay, Alaska
• Galapagos Geology on the Web
• Virtual Tour of the Cleveland's Metroparks Zoo
• Colonial Williamsburg: Electronic field trips
• National Geographic
• Volcano World Virtual Field Trips
• Virtual field trips by Core Area
• Virtual Field Trips: from the Louvre Museum to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to Carnegie Hall across the country to the Monterey Bay Aquarium If you use this site you will never have to leave the comforts of your home to visit the world. Keep a map and indicate all the places you have visited. Calculate the distances (real) from one place to another. Keep a journal of the miles you have visited!

Additional Resources:

• Planning a Virtual Field Trip
• Discover and Create Your Own Field Trip
• Cooper, Gary. More Virtual Field Trips. Libraries Unlimited. ISBN: 1563087707
• Kelly, Deirdre. Web Hunts and Virtual Field Trips. Teacher Created Materials. ISBN: 1576901599
• Foley, Kim. The Big Pocket Guide to Using & Creating Virtual Field Trips. Persistent VISION. ISBN: 0971615403

LESSON 5:
How Do I Learn?

Concepts:
You will learn how you learn best!

Lesson:
The joys of homeschooling include the ability to learn using your own learning style. No two people learn in exactly the same way. Come and learn what your strengths are and how you can use them to open up doors to endless years of learning!

Multiple Intelligence (MI) theory states that there are at least seven different ways of learning anything, and therefore there are "seven intelligences": body/kinesthetic, interpersonal, intra-personal, logical/mathematical, musical/rhythmic, verbal/linguistic and visual/spatial. In addition most all people have the ability to develop skills in each of the intelligences, and to learn through them. However, in education we have tended to emphasize two of "the ways of learning": logical/mathematical and verbal/linguistic.

• The Learning-Style Inventory
• How Do I Learn Best: An Online Learning Inventory for College Bound Students (The VARK Questionnaire)
• How Do I Learn Best: The VARK for high school students
• Take the PLSI. (Paragon Learning Style Inventory)
• Perceptual Process in Reading
• PROJECTS- Multiple Intelligence Inventory
• Learning Style Inventories
• Learning Style Survey for College

Additional Resources:

• Learning Style Index
• Campbell, Linda, Campbell, Bruce, Dickinson, Dee. Teaching and Learning Through Multiple Intelligences (2nd Edition). Allyn & Bacon. ISBN: 0205293484; 2 edition
• Dun, Rita Stafford. How to Implement and Supervise a Learning Style Program. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. ISBN: 087120259X
• Willis, Mariaemma. Kindle-Hodson, Victoria, Discover Your Child's Learning Style: Children Learn in Unique Ways--Here's the Key to Every Child's Learning Success. Prima Publishing. ISBN: 0761520139

LESSON 6:
Homeschooling in the United States

Concepts:
You will learn about the laws pertaining to homeschooling in your state. You will examine how many children are homeschooled in your state. You will compare the statistics for their state with other states.

Lesson:
Every state in our country has different regulations regarding homeschooling laws. Learn about what your state laws are. Then fill out our state law form!

Use our webquest page to find answers to some statistical questions regarding homeschooling in Oregon and North Carolina.

Investigate about your state regulations for home schooling. Look at the statistical data available for your area. Compare it to nationwide statistics and at least 3 other states statistics on home schooling.

You can compare:

• The difference in age populations
• What age has the highest homeschool enrollment? How do they compare to other states?
• How many 16-18 year olds are homeschooled in your state? Is it more or less than younger students?

   

• Make a chart comparing 3 other states with homeschoolers your age.

Listed below are some statistics on homeschooling. Some information is unavailable online, but you can try to find out information regarding your state's homeschooling population by calling your local or state Board of Education.

 

• Homeschooling in Virginia

  Minnesota

• Homeschooling Demographics
• Washington
• Pennsylvania (some information on Oregon, Delaware and North Carolina)
• Oregon

Additional Resources:

• Home Schooling Works
• Home Schooling Achievement
• Home Education Across the United States
• Deckard, Steve, Homeschooling Laws: And Resource Guide for All Fifty States, Unknown; ISBN: 1931178992

LESSON 7:
Homeschooling Vocabulary

Concepts:
You will learn vocabulary associated with home schooling.

Lesson:

John Holt Educational movements Portfolios Methods Learning styles Multiple Intelligence Structure Plan Modalities

Compulsory Vouchers Internet Research Virtual Raymond and Dorothy Moore Ivan Illich Mandated laws

Activities:
Make a dictionary of homeschooling words and terms. Include a sentence describing the word, an illustration if possible, and what part of speech it is. You can use either a computer or you can hand write and illustrate the book! Use a dictionary at home or use a dictionary on the internet to look up the words.

Using our Alphabetizing sheet, list the words in alphabetical order.

Older students Grades 9-12 can choose one of the vocabulary words above and complete research on the topic. Then present the information in:

1. Write a narrative report, compare and contrast paper, discuss the importance of the chosen topic, or write about the topic in a poem.
2. Complete an art activity, poster presentation, and illustration of the topic.

Additional Resources

• Cambridge Dictionaries
• Merriam Webster Dictionary

Article by Virginia Hertz, HLN Curriculum Development
Article © 2002 Homeschool Learning Network, All Rights Reserved.