Diversity of Homeschoolers

A recent discussion on a email list I subscribe to concerned the documentary Jesus Camp. At the beginning of the movie a statement is made that “75% of homeschoolers are evangelical Christians”. [See Jesus Camp Take 2, written by a columnist at Home Education Magazine.] This statement is not only false, it dangerously reinforces the misconceptions the general public has about homeschoolers. It is quite misleading to label the majority of homeschoolers as religious fanatics or to imply that most have very conservative worldviews.

In fact, the “community” of homeschoolers includes many politically progressive and liberal families who have a very diverse range of religious views, including those who reject religion altogether. Yes, there are atheist homeschoolers. There are also secular, agnostic, humanist, Pagan, Unitarian, Hindu, and Buddhist homeschoolers (among others). If one counted up all the non-evangelical homeschoolers the total would greatly outnumber the fundamentalists.

After I posted a short reply correcting the statement made in the film, a member of the list wrote:

My only experience of homeschooling parents has been along the lines of fundamentalists, so I assumed that religion was the driving force behind it. If you don’t mind me asking, why do you homeschool your child(ren)?

In my response I wanted to provide a few insights into the history of homeschooling and why a certain stereotype is commonly depicted in the media. Here is an excerpts from my reply.

You’ve posed a simple question with a fairly complex answer, which I’ll tackle in a moment. First, let me give you a bit of history on homeschooling in our country.

Schools, as we think of them today, were not the norm many years ago. There were community schools, technical schools, and church schools, but these were locally based and intended for a specific demographic. Additionally, many children did not attend any of these schools and were simply educated at home or through small groups, similar to what we call co-ops today. When the public school system started, the government basically took over the responsibilities and duties of these locally based schools. In the beginning, most children were still taught at home and so enrollment of students in a school setting did not increase much. It wasn’t until compulsory attendance laws were passed that children began attending in great numbers.

While we (as a society) tend to view this event as an “improvement” that allowed all children a free education. However, not everybody was happy about the change and many families resisted enrolling their children and some were dragged to school kicking and screaming, and many were served with court papers to enforce the new laws. Kids had been doing just fine for years without being required to attend school. Many historical figures whom have contributed to our society though leadership, invention, scientific discovery, etc, either never went to school a day in their lives or attended only briefly. The lineage of homeschoolers include several notable inventors, scientists, authors, philosophers, and composers, as well as ten presidents. A partial list of historic homeschoolers can be found here.

There are often several reasons given for the purpose of having compulsory schooling, Many free-thinkers throughout the last century have put forth very strong arguments questioning the validity of these reasons. An interesting essay you might be interested in reading on this topic is Against School by John Taylor Gatto.

In the 60s and 70s many families began homeschooling, although it was often “underground” because it was illegal at the time (state laws did not offer options other than private or public school). They did not like the government intrusion into the family life, felt that they could provide their child with a better education, and/or believed public schools did not correspond with the way they wanted to live and raise children. This has been referred to as the “hippie” homeschooling movement. Although several thousand families homeschooled during this era, they did not have formal networks. Most went about it privately, without calling attention to it, because of fear that they would be brought up on truancy charges or be investigated by Social Services.

In the early 80s there was a shift as religious conservatives began to homeschool. Evangelical politicians and church leaders called for families to pull their children from school in order to raise them up “as God intended”. Some have tried to claim ownership of homeschooling by saying that Christians began the movement, but this is untrue (just as when they proclaim that this country was founded as a Christian nation). Generally speaking, religious conservatives are highly organized, strongly networked, and create powerful political engines to protect their interests. These new evangelical homeschoolers were no exception. They were/are by far the loudest, most visible segment of homeschoolers and they have formed well funded organizations to represent them (such as HSLDA). They were/are eager to defend their religious “practices” in both local and national courts which of course includes the “God-given right” to homeschool.

In the late 80s and early 90s state education laws changed across the nation and homeschooling became legal in all 50 states. This ushered in a new era of homeschooling because the atmosphere began to change – have legal validity made it feel like a safe option. As such, more families who were not religiously motivated began to homeschool. Parents concerned about academics, school safety, or having quality time together as a family started looking to homeschooling as a viable alternative to public school and as a more feasible choice than expensive private schools.

Today there are a wide variety of homeschoolers – from every social-economic level and all religious and philosophical persuasions imaginable. There is no “typical” homeschooling family. We are a diverse bunch of folks! The evangelical homeschoolers still get most of the media attention because the rest of us aren’t as well networked and we aren’t interested in structured organization – we are happy doing our own thing and feel that no one person or organization could (or should) speak for us. Many of us are involved in local and/or state groups and we do advocate for homeschooling, but not nearly at the same level.

An important thing to understand is that evangelical homeschoolers have a powerful common thread (religion) while inclusive homeschoolers are very diverse in belief and lifestyle. It’s been said that trying to get homeschoolers to agree on something is a bit like herding cats. The one thing we can all agree on is that we have a deep interest in our children’s well being. Most of us are content to leave it at that rather than trying to develop blanket statements that define us a group. As I mentioned before, the media tends to lump us all together as religious conservatives, which is unfortunate and quite frustrating, especially for those of us who are quite the opposite. This is due to many reasons, but mainly because when reporters and writers go searching for information about homeschooling, the organizations representing religious homeschoolers are the easiest to locate because they are organized and well funded (they are paid to be vocal and visible).

For example, about 90% of articles concerning homeschoolers contain statistics provided by HSLDA and frequently contain quotes from representatives of this organization. HSLDA is a legal firm which not only advocates on behalf of evangelical homeschoolers, but also tries to advance a very conservative political agenda in areas unrelated to homeschooling (but consistent with fundamentalist world views). They only represent a small fraction of homeschoolers, but appear larger than life and claim to speak for everyone, which is another source of irritation for those of us who are not members (and would never care to be).

While there are many Christian homeschoolers, not all of them are evangelical or conservative and most of them start homeschooling because of some other factor – for example, to give one-on-one attention to a special needs child or to provide their children more freedom in their academic pursuits. In fact, surveys of the homeschooling community have repeatedly shown that families motivated primarily for religious reasons account for only 33% of all homeschoolers.

It might surprise you to learn that there are increasing numbers of families who are homeschooling because they feel the academic programs in public schools are not challenging enough and/or that standards in teaching science and other subjects in school have been weakened by the efforts of the fundamentalist agenda, such as trying to place intelligent design and other creationist ideals into classrooms. (Have you looked at a middle school science textbook lately? Considering the technology and information available today, the material is quite simplistic and watered down.)

Our family homeschools for many reasons, which are far too numerous to cover in detail here. I can say that our reasons for initially deciding to homeschool are not the same as why we continue to homeschool. We’ve learned a lot on this journey and truly, homeschooling has been freeing in many ways, both intellectually and physically. Our goals are to raise free-thinking, independent, smart, creative kids who are not afraid to be themselves, who love learning and grow up with appreciation of diversity and respect for all living things.

We have other reasons which are more of a progressive political/social nature, but overall we feel homeschooling gives us more time together as a family and it fits our lifestyle and parenting philosophy. Our kids learn about evolution, are fascinated by dinosaurs, love Harry Potter, and are exposed to people from all walks of life – just like thousands of other kids in homeschooling families across the country.