About Homeschooling

Note: For the purposes of this website homeschooling is considered to be privately-funded.  If a family home-educates while using public funds, I consider that style to be a subset of public schooling.  Public funding of at-home-education developed through the public-education sector apparently to relieve overcrowded schools, or to relieve the system of the necessity of building and staffing new facilities.  Public funds require public accountability-for use-of-funds; homeschooling does not.  Of course anyone can use homeschooling information, just as any homeschooler can use public  information, so this is not meant to chase away anyone, only to be clear as to meaning.

On this page:

Histories of Homeschooling
Declaration of Educational Independence
Homeschool FAQs from Home Education Magazine
How many homeschoolers are there?
What are they like?
Do homeschooled kids ever get snow days?
And overall?

---

---

 

Histories of Homeschooling

• A Brief History of American Homeschooling, by Linda Dobson
   
• Home Education Magazine, March 1996, Homeschooling Freedoms At Risk (HSFAR) series (originally published May 1991)
  The homeschool community stands at the crossroads, with a clear decision before us all: will we, as homeschooling families, maintain our individuality and our ability to make our own decisions about homeschooling matters - or will we hand those rights and responsibilities over to "experts" and their institutions which will handle homeschooling affairs for us all?
  HSFAR part I
  HSFAR part II
  HSFAR part III
  HSFAR part IV
   
• HR 6
  HR 6 and the Federalization of Homeschooling
  The Ravage of Home Education Through Exclusion by Religion
  
  Vision Forum Ministries, On the Ten Year Anniversary of H.R.6
  
  
   
• Gentle Spirit Magazine
  Who Stole Homeschooling? (click on button next to the title)
  A Homeschooler's History I
  Homeschooler's History II
  Homeschooler's History III, 1990 - 1992
  Homeschooler's History IV, H.R. 6
  Homeschooler's History V, 1994 - 1995
  Homeschooler's History VI, 1995 - 1997
• Washington Home Education Network (WHEN), Gentle Spirit Lawsuit
• Home Education Magazine
  News Watch Special Report, Seelhof v. Welch
  The Truth About Cheryl
  Interview with Cheryl Lindsay Seelhof
  The Link, Homeschool News Network, Volume 5, Issue 2, Letters to the Editor, Who Stole Homeschooling? and response from Cheryl Lindsay Seelhof
   
• "The Humanism Behind Homeschooling"
  In his book," Teach Your Own, " Holt maintained, "What is most important and valuable about the home as a base for children's growth into the world is not that it is a better school than the schools but that it isn't school at all. It is not an artificial place, set up to make `learning' happen and in which nothing except `learning' ever happens. It is a natural, organic, central, fundamental human institution; one might easily and rightly say the foundation of all other human institutions."
   
• Discovery Institute, 1 July 2000, Homeschooling Comes of Age
   
• Home Education Magazine, September/October 2001,  HSLDA's "History" Erodes the Foundations of Our Freedom
  
   
• HSLDA, The Politics of Survival: Home Schoolers and the Law (compare against the viewpoints above)
• Dave Mankins on the HSLDA
• Salon.com, 2 August 2000, Battling for the heart and soul of home-schoolers
   

 

---

March 2006

• Life Without School (blog)
  For some, Life Without School begins as a conscientious choice that is whole-heartedly embraced. For others, it begins as a quest for second chances, new opportunity or even as an internal prompting led by the desire to meet the needs of a child. No matter how we come into this lifestyle, the purpose we most commonly share is reflected best by this one question: "What is right for my child?" Life Without School is not for all families or all children, but it is a valid and valued lifestyle choice for many.
   

February 2005

• Home Schooling in the United States:  Trends and Characteristics

January 2005

• Homeschooling stereotypes
  Red and Rover is one of the comics I like to read; the series is cute.  Unfortunately, the author made a short foray into the realm of homeschooling, or rather, part of the viewpoint of a publicly-schooled child's opinion of what it is to be homeschooled, ie, that homeschooled kids get no time off for snow days.  Tsk, tsk.  Mr. Basset, 't'ain't so.  Homeschoolers enjoy 'snow days' with cocoa and cookies afterwards, just as much as anyone else (and the Red and Rover cartoons, too).

 

November 2004

• from 1987:  The Home Schooling Movement by Clint Bolick
• Massachusetts:  Summary of data from Massachusetts town homeschool policy and practice database
  For a year and a half, AHEM has been collecting information from homeschoolers about official town policy (including the policies themselves), and about how homeschooling actually works in towns in Massachusetts, according to homeschoolers.

March to August 2004

• NHEN articles clearinghouse

• Organic Learning

• NHEN Newsletters

• Selected Current Citations to Inform Research on the Subject of Homeschooling

• Funny Moms presents the videos:  It's My Home School And I'll Cry If I Want To" and "It's My Homeschool . . . Too!"

• Homeschooling on a Shoestring

• Homeschool Q&A from Home Education Magazine's Laura Weldon shares answers from the magazine's readers.
  Unschooling and Friendships
  Unschooling and Field Trip Behavior
  Unschooling and Portfolios, Back to School?
  Reading and Finding a Balance
  Family Difficulties and Doubting Husband
  What About My Dreams? and Alternatives to College?    

• March Burnout
  The end of winter is nearing and you may feel tired from being inside, from lack of sunshine, or just because you need a break, especially if you have a houseful of 'Tiggers.'  Try using Ann Zeise's Care for the Primary Care Giver to see if you can give yourself a boost.  Another strategy if you follow a curriculum might be to take a break from bookwork and do a 'unit study' on PE by going bowling or by hiking around the neighborhood in a different direction every day.  Outdoor science could be birdwatching or, on the practical side, home ec/independent living could be your focus with the benefit of combining physical exercise with getting a clean(er) house.  Know that, concerning less-than-spotless-homes, you're not alone. Open your windows (weather permitting) and let Spring in.

• Cheapschooling
  A to Z's Budget Shop, Used Materials and Weblinks
  Home Education Magazine
  The Value of Virtual Expeditions
  NHEN articles
  Living the Single-Income Lifestyle
  Financial Considerations
  Homeschooling on a Budget
  Homeschooling on a Shoestring
  About.com's list of freebies

• Once a topic comes up you see it everywhere . . .
  Can a Feminist Homeschool Her Child
  "In short, many educated women are turning their backs on careers and returning to the traditional domestic value of putting children and family first. They are reversing the social revolution sparked by Betty Friedan’s pivotal 1963 book, The Feminine Mystique, which prompted women to flood out of kitchens and into schools or the workplace. Homeschooling constitutes one of the most significant trends for women and families in the last decade or so.
  "Yet the leading voices within feminism are either silent or ambivalent about homeschooling."

• A related topic is that of homeschooled adolescent girls.  Susannah Sheffer, one of Growing Without Schooling's editors wrote A Sense of Self published in 1997.
  

• Lampoon (note date) about government oversight of families
  Home Eating a Threat to Public Kitchens?  State Allows Growing Trend of Eating At Home

• Classic from the late John Holt (1923 - 1985), The Constitutional Basis for Home Education  (a discussion of this thesis is halfway down the page at the NHEN message boards)

• About Homeschool-ers:  Where do homeschoolers stand politically?  A January 2004 survey on the Homeschooling & Other Education Stuff blog shows that the respondents to the survey are . . . centrist with a request for details because, "on average, a seven-foot tall man and a 3-foot tall woman are five feet tall."

February 2004

• Movement to Instruct Kids at Home Becoming More Diverse

• Home Educator's Family Times: Ten Good Reasons to Homeschool

• E-schools:  The Virtual Reality

• Against School, by John Taylor Gatto: an article from Harper's Magazine, September 2001
  "If David Farragut could take command of a captured British warship as a pre-teen, if Thomas Edison could publish a broadsheet at the age of twelve, if Ben Franklin could apprentice himself to a printer at the same age (then put himself through a course of study that would choke a Yale senior today), there's no telling what your own kids could do. After a long life, and thirty years in the public school trenches, I've concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress our genius only because we haven't yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves."
   
• Elijah Company:  Homeschool Burnout by Ellyn Davis
  "Here are some common ways this feeling expresses itself physically: (1) a tightness in the throat, chest or between the shoulder blades, (2) pain in the lower back, (3) headaches or dizziness, (4) chronic fatigue, (5) numbness of certain parts of the body, (6) anxiety and tenseness, (7) difficulty swallowing, (8) nausea, (9) upset stomach or irritable bowel, (10) ringing in the ears."