Every movement goes through phases. The fact is that mass movements are different from fringe movements, and when a movement progresses from the fringe to the mainstream, many things change. Each era has its own problems and challenges, and recognizing how the new challenges differ from the old ones is vital to keeping a movement going.
Homeschool Past (1972-1993)
In the era of mass public education, homeschooling started as a fringe movement. The pioneers of this movement had to fight tooth and nail against a system that desperately wanted them to conform, and they had no institutions, templates for action, or even public support to draw from. They home educated out of a pure sense of conviction. There were no studies to let them know they were doing the right thing or headed in the right direction. There was no map to follow—they had to draw it up from scratch.
In those days, the homeschooling community was united by the trials they faced together. They had to face everything from being ostracized by their community to openly fighting child protective services to even keeping their basic parental rights. A knock on the door in the middle of the day could be the police wondering what they are up to. Many families had the Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) phone number written in a prominent place so that anyone could get immediate legal advice or representation when the authorities showed up.
In those days, there were almost no curricula geared towards homeschooling families. If you were homeschooling, every part of your curriculum was homespun. As homeschooling grew, some of the burden of curriculum planning was taken by community co-ops, but even then the co-ops were just groups of families helping each other out and growing in community.
The growth of these communities led to the era of homeschool conventions. These conventions allowed homeschoolers to realize that there were other families just as dedicated as they were to the cause of family-centered education. Older moms could share advice with the younger moms. Publishers recognized this growing group and started building teaching resources for them. And, slowly, a whole homeschool market developed.
Homeschool Present (1993-present)
As homeschooling spread, it started to seem less “weird” to outsiders. The dedication of research organizations such as National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI) showed that the intuitions of the homeschooling pioneers were correct—homeschooling did in fact produce better outcomes, not just in grades but in social development as well. Homeschoolers are family-focused, community-minded, and well-educated. Homeschooling was no longer just an odd alternative for antisocial misfits, homeschooling was fast becoming a mainstream choice.
Nothing speaks more highly about homeschooling’s success in becoming mainstream than the fact that even its strongest detractors now assume its legitimacy. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a member of the U.S. Supreme Court known for her progressive judicial philosophy, while arguing against parental religious rights in the public schools, said that if the parent disagrees with what is happening in the school, “you can homeschool them.” This at least implies that Justice Jackson is assuming the full legitimacy of homeschooling as a valid option for anyone who dissents to public school policy.
Our family joined the homeschool movement in the blip of time that was subsequent to community hostility but before it was recognized as a mainstream choice. Most people, including many friends and family, thought we were weird but not so weird that they would call the police on us. Our circle of like-minded families started small but was ever-growing.
I believe the past decade has been a golden age for homeschooling. It gained mainstream acceptance, faced few significant legal or cultural barriers, and offered families an abundance of resources and options. Just as importantly, everyone involved had made a deliberate, often difficult decision to homeschool because they truly believed it was the best choice for their family. The path had been cleared of most external obstacles, but those who walked it did so with conviction and a pioneering spirit.
Homeschool Future
Every generation of homeschooling families has had unique challenges and opportunities. While our previous challenges were brought about by our novelty, the challenges facing our future are being brought about by our popularity. Don’t get me wrong—I love where we are and where we are going. But if we do not acknowledge and account for the difficulties ahead we may lose what we fought for, or worse, we could make homeschooling into the very same institution that we left behind. If salt loses its saltiness, it is no longer good for anything, but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot (Matthew 5:13).
Our future challenges will come from our success. Many movements throughout history have lost their distinctiveness when they became prevalent. The reason is simple—early adopters have different motivations, beliefs, and attitudes than the population at large. That’s why they were willing to try something new in the first place. Therefore, as any movement gains outside appeal, care must be taken to both incorporate the needs and perspectives of the wider public and also maintain the differentiators that made the movement worthwhile in the first place.
Over the past century, homeschooling has never been a “default” option for anyone. Everyone who homeschooled did so after careful contemplation and examination of the costs and alternatives. Now, however, this is changing. People are recognizing the many benefits of homeschooling, and there are many people in the community telling new parents, “why not just homeschool?” Thus, rather than being a carefully thought out countercultural move, homeschooling is truly becoming a mainstream conventional option—one that people may take without much thought at all.
On the one hand, this is fantastic. I love the fact that people are recognizing that teaching your own kids is good and normal. My concern is that just like a lot of people turn their kids over to public schools for education without a second thought, we will start having a lot of parents say they are going to “homeschool” without actually reflecting on what that requires. Instead of having communities full of actively engaged parents, the actively engaged parents may soon find themselves a minority in the homeschool co-ops, with many families who are just homeschooling by default because everybody says it is the better option.
This is already having an effect in homeschool co-op settings. We are seeing reports from many co-op communities that younger families are much more passive in their participation. This is a combination of people not being aware of the community involvement required to keep such a group going as well as them not recognizing the fact that ordinary people can and do take leadership positions in these groups. Coming from a public school mindset, many people do not understand that they have both the ability and the responsibility to uphold and upkeep their communities.
The Great Hand-Off
Today’s homeschooling communities were built by parents who started them because they wanted that resource for their families. Sports groups, theater groups, the whole gamut was built by parents who knew they needed to pitch in and help if they wanted these things to exist. This has created a great ecosystem, but many of the newer generation who didn’t see the ecosystem as it was built don’t know what it takes to keep it going. For them, it’s just “there,” and they assume it has always been there and will continue indefinitely. Many groups are having success in the number of students participating but are having difficulties finding the next generation of leaders who will take the torch moving forward.
The key, then, for the next generation of homeschooling, is that we need to engage in an active effort to educate the incoming homeschooling parents on what homeschooling looks like and what it requires of them. This is not to scare them or to keep them from homeschooling, but to establish and normalize what is necessary to maintain a family-directed community life as a wider and wider group of people join in.
If the homeschooling movement is to be successful, we will have to learn to better coach families as they come in. This is not merely providing information—it is a process of intentional formation and shaping of hearts and perspectives, helping parents to understand home education as an active process of family discipleship. While there are indeed permanent, structural problems with the public school system that make homeschooling necessary for many people, the reason the problems have gotten out of hand is because the mass of parents have not taken an active role to assert their God-given authority over their children’s upbringing. If these parents bring the same attitudes to homeschooling, the future of homeschooling won’t be much different than the public schools.
For those of us who have been homeschooling a long time, if our previous task was to disciple our children, our next task will be discipling the new generation of homeschoolers, many of whom don’t even know that they need it. History will view homeschooling either as a passing fad or as a transformative institution, and this will be decided largely on whether we can successfully accomplish this great hand-off of ideals from the early adopters to the mainstream.
Editor’s Note: The demarcation boundaries for “homeschool past” in this article are 1972 based on the Wisconsin v. Yoder Supreme Court case giving Amish families the right to homeschool and 1993 when homeschooling was legally recognized in all 50 states.
