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Schooling has historically often occurred both formally and informally at home. Most colonial children in the United States were homeschooled in what were called Dame schools. The children in each rural area would gather at a neighbor's kitchen table to read and reread the hornbook, a catechism, passages from the bible, The Pilgrim's Progress, and other improving material. This family-centered learning, along with apprenticeship, continued to be the primary mode of education until well into the nineteenth century.
For most of human history schools were exclusionary rather than inclusive. Latin grammar schools were only for boys from wealthy families. Harvard was founded in 1634 for the young male graduates of the grammar schools. It was nearly two hundred years later, in 1827, that the first institution of higher education for girls opened. In most southern states, it was illegal to teach African-American slaves to read. Some of those who could not go to school were occasionally schooled at home.
In the early nineteenth century, common schools were opened to educate all, but many children did not attend. The growing industrial revolution of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century saw thousands of European immigrants coming to the industrial cities of the North. By the twentieth century they were joined by a migration of blacks from the South. The children often did not attend school. They worked in the factories alongside their parents and other relatives. Together with child labor laws, compulsory attendance laws began to remove children from the factories. The state needed a safe place to warehouse children. School became a place you could go–if your family could spare you. In reality most children attended school only through the fourth to the sixth grades, after which they were needed to help support the family
Access to schooling increased steadily from the middle of the twentieth century. High school attendance burgeoned following World War I and again after World War II. In 1954, the Supreme Court decided that African-American children should be allowed to attend local public schools instead of the separate schools they had been attending since the end of the Civil War. Desegregation of public schools was finally enforced in the 1960s by Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. Thus, by the end of the 1970s the United States saw high school graduation occurring for the largest percentage of its population ever before–or since. In response to this and other issues, the decade of the 1980s ushered in the era of school reform. One of those reforms was homeschooling.
It has always been available to the privileged, some of whom were tutored at home. But when large numbers began to homeschool, district officials began to arrest parents, saying they were encouraging truancy. This led early homeschoolers to band together, to litigate, and to lobby.
In 1964, John Caldwell Holt , published a book entitled How Children Fail which criticized traditional schools of the time. The book was based on a theory he had developed as a teacher – that the academic failure of schoolchildren was caused by pressure placed on children by adults. Holt began making appearances on major TV talk shows and writing book reviews for Life magazine.[8] In his follow-up work, How Children Learn, 1967, he tried to demonstrate the learning process of children and why he believed school short-circuits this process.In these books, Holt had not suggested any alternative to institutional schooling; he had hoped to initiate a profound rethinking of education to make schools friendlier toward children. As the years passed he became convinced that the way schools were was what society wanted, and that a serious re-examination was not going to happen in his lifetime.
Working in a similar vein was Rousas John Rushdoony who focused on education in America and was an advocate of homeschooling,which he saw as a way to combat the intentionally secular nature of the U.S. public school system. He vigorously attacked progressive schoolreformers such as Horace Mann and John Dewey and argued for the dismantling of the state's influence in education in three works:Intellectual Schizophrenia (a general and concise study of education), The Messianic Character of American Education (a history and castigation of public education in the U.S.), and The Philosophy of the Christian Curriculum (a parent-oriented pedagogical statement).Rushdoony was frequently called as an expert witness by the HSLDA (Home School Legal Defense Association) in court cases. Some of the leadership of HSLDA ascribe to Rushooney's theology of Christian Reconstructionism which may have an influence on their political involvement.
During this time, the American educational professionals Raymond and Dorothy Moore began to research the academic validity of the rapidly growing Early Childhood Education movement. This research included independent studies by other researchers and a review of over 8,000 studies bearing on Early Childhood Education and the physical and mental development of children.They asserted that formal schooling before ages 8–12 not only lacked the anticipated effectiveness, but was actually harmful to children. The Moores began topublish their view that formal schooling was damaging young children academically, socially, mentally, and even physiologically. They presented evidence that childhood problems such as juvenile delinquency, nearsightedness, increased enrollment of students inspecial education classes, and behavioral problems were the result of increasingly earlier enrollment of students.[9] The Moores cited studies demonstrating that orphans who were given surrogate mothers were measurably more intelligent, with superior long term effects – even though the mothers were mentally retarded teenagers – and that illiterate tribal mothers in Africa produced children who were socially and emotionally more advanced than typical western children, by western standards of measurement.[9]Their primary assertion was that the bonds and emotional development made at home with parents during these years produced critical long term results that were cut short by enrollment in schools, and could neither be replaced nor afterward corrected in an institutional setting.[9] Recognizing a necessity for early out-of-home care for some children – particularly special needs and starkly impoverished children, and children from exceptionally inferior homes– they maintained that the vast majority of children are far better situated at home, even withmediocre parents, than with the most gifted and motivated teachers in a school setting (assuming that the child has a gifted andmotivated teacher). They described the difference as follows: "This is like saying, if you can help a child by taking him off the cold street and housing him in a warm tent, then warm tents should be provided for all children – when obviously most children already have even more secure housing."[10]
Similar to Holt, the Moores embraced homeschooling after the publication of their first work, Better Late Than Early, 1975, and went on to become important homeschool advocates and consultants with the publication of books like Home Grown Kids,1981, Homeschool Burnout, and others.[9]At the time, other authors published books questioning the premises and efficacy of compulsory schooling, including Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich, 1970 and No More Public School by Harold Bennet, 1972.[citation needed] In 1976, Holt published Instead of Education; Ways to Help People Do Things Better. In its conclusion he called for a "Children's Underground Railroad" to help children escape compulsory schooling.[8] In response, Holt was contacted by families from around the U.S. to tell him that they were educating their children at home. In 1977, after corresponding with a number of these families, Holt began producing a magazine dedicated to home education: Growing Without Schooling.[11]
In 1980, Holt said, "I want to make it clear that I don't see homeschooling as some kind of answer to badness of schools.I think that the home is the proper base for the exploration of the world which we call learning or education. Home would be the best base no matter how good the schools were."[12]Holt later wrote a book about homeschooling, Teach Your Own, in1981.[citation needed]
One common theme in the homeschool philosophies of both Holt and the Moores is that home education should not be an attempt to bring the school construct into the home, or a view of education as an academic preliminary to life. They viewed it as a natural, experiential aspect of life that occurs as the members of the family are involved with one another in daily living.[citation needed]
Homeschooled children excel academically, despite the early concerns of educators and truant officers. Research shows that their test scores are at or above the norm, and the longer children are homeschooled the wider the gap between their test scores and those of conventionally schooled youngsters. The household income of homeschoolers in 1999 was
no different from their conventionally schooled peers, but the homeschooling parents had higher levels of educational attainment.
Another early concern, the socialization of homeschoolers, eventually dissipated as well. Homeschoolers form networks.
They issue newsletters, have play groups, organize soccer teams, share resources, and interact in multiage social groups.
Sources: encyclopedia., wikipedia
Methods of homeschooling
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