The History of Home Education
Teri Olsen
Author/Publisher, "Learning for Life: Educational Words
of Wisdom"
Homeschooling is the earliest form of education. In fact, it
is as old as
civilization itself. For thousands of years, education was centered
around
the family. Children learned everything they needed to know
from their
mothers and fathers.
Many famous people throughout history were homeschooled as
children. They include: Hans Christian Anderson, Leonardo
da Vinci, Wolfgang Mozart, Felix Mendelssohn, Claude Monet,
William Penn, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Albert
Einstein, Orville and Wilbur Wright, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore
Roosevelt, Robert E. Lee, Douglas MacArthur, George Patton,
Winston Churchill, C.S. Lewis, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain,
and others.
In Colonial American days there were no public schools. It
was perfectly
normal for children to be taught by their parents. Many of
America's
founding fathers - Ben Franklin, George Washington, James
Madison, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Patrick Henry, and
John Paul Jones - were educated at home.
The first schools in New England were called "dame"
schools. These were run by older women, often widows, out
of their homes. These women would do their sewing, knitting,
and weaving while the children recited their lessons. Children
who lived on southern plantations were often instructed by
private tutors. Some boys would learn a trade by becoming
an apprentice to a master craftsman. Quakers and other religious
groups had their own church schools.
The push for government-controlled public education came
about in the
1830's-40's. Massachusetts began forced schooling in 1852.
Mandatory
schooling gradually spread outward from there. However, home
education
persisted throughout the 19th century, particularly on the
vast western
frontier where school buildings were few and far between.
During the first half of the 20th century, government schools
became a means of insuring that all children would become
good American citizens. By the 1950's - 1960's, the public
education system had become powerfully
entrenched with a strong union of teachers and administrators.
Schooling
one's own children at home almost completely died out until
the modern home education movement was born in the 1970's.
However, at this time
homeschooling was mainly a leftwing movement, and homeschool
advocates such as John Holt were shrugged off as being radical
hippies.
Because of the "separation of church and state,"
all references to religion
were gradually being removed from public schools. In the early
1980's,
parents who wanted to make sure their children received biblically-based
instruction started taking them out of the public schools.
Some put their
children in Christian schools and others began homeschooling
them.
Michael P. Farris and J. Michael Smith founded the Home School
Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) in 1983, and it only took
them a decade to make home education legal in all of the fifty
states. By the 1990's, homeschooling had grown in popularity
so much that there are now over 1.5 million homeschoolers
in the United States. This means that more kids learn at home
than attend all the public schools in Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii,
Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South
Dakota, Vermont, and Rhode Island combined!
Education has changed a lot over the course of history, and
homeschooling
has come a long way. Modern public education is still a big
business, yet at
the same time a national trend toward home schools is taking
us back to our
educational roots.
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