HOMESCHOOL.net

Homeschooling

Home education, also called homeschooling or home school, is an educational alternative in which children are educated at home by their parents, in contrast to the compulsory attendance which takes place in an institution with a campus such as a public school or private school. Home education methods are similar to those widely used before the popularization of compulsory attendance requirements in the 19th century. Before this time, the majority of education worldwide was provided at home by family and community members, with only the privileged attending privately-run schools or employing tutors, the only available alternatives at the time.

In modern times, although there were American families living overseas who were already homeschooling their children, the first parents known to homeschool within the United States were Tom and Mary Bergman of Utah, 1971. Unknown to each other at the time, the second known family was Charles and Virginia Birt Baker of Texas, 1972. Homeschooling was sometimes erroneously called unschooling, but the latter was a curriculum-free philosophy coined in 1977 by American educator John Holt in his alternative education magazine Growing Without Schooling. The terms homeschooling and home education also include instruction in the home by parents choosing to be under the supervision of correspondence schools, which are referred to as "umbrella schools" [example: Christian Liberty Academy].

In the United States, homeschooling is the focus of a substantial movement among parents who wish to provide their children with a custom or more complete education, which they feel is unattainable in most private schools or the government's public schools. While many families in the U.S. are educating their children at home, the vast majority still utilize the institutional setting for their children. Despite its popularity some people have concerns about the recent renaissance of this traditional method of educating children.