When was homeschooling started

As time passed and institutions starting providing education, these institutions tended be religiously based and were largely independent of any large organization. This was mostly the situation in the earliest American communities; most colleges that were started in that period were actually founded for religious purposes.

In the s through the s, schools were often established by and for local communities. These schools were funded and controlled by the local communities and usually consisted of a single teacher and a single schoolroom. The amount of time children spent in school was fairly limited in both the number of days they attended and the hours of instruction per day that they received.

Because these schools were based in and controlled by people in the local community, they answered directly to the people whose children were being taught. In the times when children weren't attending school, parents often taught them at home or they learned independently.

Eventually, the system of locally operated and controlled schools evolved into larger and larger networks of schools forming school districts and corporations. Remember: No Interwebs yet. Harris views homeschooling in the early years and beyond as an opportunity for Christians to pass their faith on to their children, and his work helps expand the Christian homeschool movement. Unlike earlier proponents of homeschooling who advocated leaving schools due to pedagogical concerns, members of the Christian homeschool movement advocate schooling at home for religious reasons.

A new branch of homeschool ideas begins to blossom. Farris and J. It's an organization open to any homeschooler—regardless of religious affiliation or lack thereof. In case you couldn't tell, he was kind of a big deal. Not to point the finger. It places the number at , students, which was at that point 1. Sounds small, but it's not too shabby when you think about it. The college has a distinct religious affiliation and describes itself as "centered on Christ.

Slow but steady. NCES reports that 1. Teaching Encyclopedia. Introduction Why Homeschool? The History of Homeschooling in the U. Secular homeschool groups and organizations still existed, but they were overshadowed by the political power and organizational strength of HSLDA, which was aided by its commitment to hierarchical structure. While early homeschool leaders had focused on liberating children from the constraints of formal schooling and freeing them to follow their interests, these new leaders had a different goal and vision.

These new leaders created a radical social and religious vision in which children would be homeschooled with the explicit purpose of being launched into government, education, and the entertainment industries in order to transform the United States into a nation based in Christian beliefs. While their beliefs and practices varied, some of these leaders have embraced a more extreme ideology that held that women should not attend college or endorsed a full return to Old Testament law.

In contrast to the earlier focus on liberating children, these leaders have generally focused on properly training children, and in many cases have placed more emphasis on religious ideology than on education. Meanwhile, homeschooling has continued to grow by leaps and bounds , especially as it has increasingly come to be seen as an acceptable educational alternative.

A growing number of families have begun homeschooling for neither pedagogical nor religious reasons but rather for individual pragmatic reasons, including concerns about bullying or the poor quality of local schools. This increasing diversity, combined with the advent of the internet, has opened up information networks once controlled almost solely by Christian homeschooling groups and has the potential to change the face of the movement.

For more on the varying groups of homeschoolers, including those homeschooled for pedagogical, religious, or pragmatic reasons, see How Have Scholars Divided Homeschoolers into Groups? For individual state histories, see Histories of Homeschooling. Note: The information in this overview is drawn from J.