Educ The Home Schooling Revolution

This book offers a comprehensive,
readable overview of the modern-

day homeschooling movement.
Isabel Lyman is a longtime homeschooling

advocate. Her columns about home education
have appeared in such publications as the Wall
Street Journal Investor's Business Daily, National
Review, the Boston Herald, the Dallas Morning
News, and the Daily Oklahoman. She has also been
published in the refereed research journal, "Home
School Researcher," and by the Cato Institute of
Washington, D.C.
She holds a master's degree in social science

from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public
Affairs at Syracuse University and a doctoral degree
in social science from the Universidad de San Jose,
Costa Rica. She taught high school for over a
decade at a small private school founded by her
husband, and she is the mother of two teenage
sons.
Izzy can be reached at ilyman7449@aol.com.

She welcomes constructive criticism, questions
about home education, and invitations to drink iced
cappuccino.
Acknowledgements
I would like to say "thank you" to the very fine folks

who helped make this book a reality: Kirik Jenness, the CEO of
Bench Press International (and my sons' former karate instruc-
tor), who eagerly agreed to publish the manuscript; David
Boaz, executive vice-president of the Cato Institute, who pub-
lished the policy analysis I wrote, "Homeschooling: Back to
the Future?" which became the impetus for this book; Rich
Jefferson of the Home School Legal Defense Association, who
faithfully answered the scores of e-mails I sent him; the vari-
ous newspaper and magazine editors who allowed me to
pester their readers when they ran my homeschooling
columns, which provided much of the material for this book;
the homeschoolers who agreed to be interviewed for this proj-
ect; my children, Dan and Wid III, who were the guinea pigs
for this educational adventure; my mother, who prayed for me
(gracias); and last, but not least, my husband Wid.
Wid may be one of the few men in the country who

earned a commercial truck driving license after receiving a
Ph.D. in civil engineering. He is also an outstanding copy edi-
tor, first-rate football coach, and dedicated homeschooling
father. I am your biggest fan, Pops, even though you told me I
had to write a straightforward book and keep the wisecracks
to a minimum.
I would be amiss not to mention that I am extremely

grateful to the good Lord for allowing me to live in a country
where homeschooling is freely practiced and where a com-
moner such as I can write a book. God bless America.
And God bless homeschoolers. They are the brave-

hearts of our age. It is to them that this work is dedicated.
The Homeschooling Revolution / 5
Preface
Homeschooling exemplifies the American dream. It

requires initiative, patience, and much hard work, but its
rewards are long-lasting. For many parents, homeschooling
has proven to be a marvelous way of educating their chil-
dren and achieving family unity.
This book evolved from the columns and articles I

have written about homeschooling over the last seven years.
During this time, I often received correspondence from par-
ents and requests for interviews from reporters who wanted
to learn more about homeschooling. The most commonly
asked questions include: Why homeschool? What type of
family homeschools? What about socialization? How do
homeschoolers fare academically? What are some of the lim-
itations of homeschooling?
These queries, my own journey as a homeschooling

mother, and my curiosity as a freelance journalist motivated
me to write The Homeschooling Revolution. I deem it a 'revolu-
tion' because in a short period of time, homeschooling par-
ents have engineered a major change in American education.
No longer do Americans think it is necessary for a creden-
tialed professional to teach a child to read and write, but
rather a loving parent can accomplish that task - more often
than not, more competently than the professional.
It is my hope that this book offers a window into the

modern day homeschooling movement. While much of the
book was written in the solitude of my office, the research
was conducted in the busy, lively homes of homeschooling
families. I have enjoyed many conversations, not with ivory
tower thinkers, but with down-to-earth people who are prac-
ticing what they preach. Writing this book was a rewarding

project, but not nearly as rewarding as my endeavors as a
homeschooling parent. Done properly, homeschooling is an
exciting way to teach-thine-own. I hope this book reveals
that many, many American families are doing the job in an
outstanding fashion.
Isabel Lyman
August 2000
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Homeschooling 101 9
Chapter 2
The Movement - Yesterday and Today 23
Chapter 3
Legal and Political Inroads 33
Chapter 4
The Socialization Question 45
Chapter 5
What About Academics? 59
Chapter 6
The Marketing of a Movement 71
Chapter 7
The Print Media and Homeschooling 81
Chapter 8
Growing Pains 93
Chapter 9
Profiling Homeschoolers 209
Chapter 10
Conclusion 123
Endnotes 129
Homeschooling 101/9
Chapter 1
Homeschooling 101
It is a wintry morning in New England. Anne Maxson,

48, sits at a long table in her federal-style home situated on
two acres in Amherst, Massachusetts. Anne, a small business
owner and single parent, is savoring a mug of coffee. Her
face becomes animated as she rattles off a laundry list of rea-
sons why she has chosen to remove Richard, her youngest
child, from the Fort River Elementary School in order to
homeschool him.
"I didn't like the whole language approach to teaching

reading and the awkward way they teach printing. The
books they assigned the children were boring, and Richard
found himself correcting the third grade teacher's math
errors," she shares with frustration.
Anne adds a complaint that would be amusing if it

weren't true. "The kids in my son's class knew more about
bead work than spelling."
The singular event that pushed Anne and Richard into

homeschooling was even more absurd. It was the controver-
sial incident that brought Richard's school a great deal of
negative publicity.
The principal of Fort River Elementary, Russ Vernon-

Jones, decided to host a "blacks only" breakfast on school
grounds for African-American staff and parents. Outraged
by what she saw as illegal discrimination, Anne alerted the
Boston Globe to the event; she was severely criticized by
teachers for speaking to the press. Although the breakfast
was eventually deemed illegal by Amherst's town counsel,
The Homeschooling Revolution /10
the principal, to Anne's chagrin and that of other local tax-
payers, did not even receive a reprimand for his role in
orchestrating the "no whites welcome" event. At that junc-
ture, Anne decided to pull Richard out of public school and
teach him herself, an idea she once deemed radical.
"I couldn't see my son going to a school where the

principal had broken a federal law, and there were no reper-
cussions," notes Anne.
Richard is enrolled in the sixth grade of the Calvert

School, a popular correspondence program. In addition to
spending an average of three hours a day with his mother as
his main teacher, he shares a U.S. postage stamp collection
hobby with his grandmother. He also earns a substantial
amount of pocket money doing yard work and plays on an
ice hockey team. Richard enjoys the tranquility of the home
classroom where he says he is not distracted by the antics of
other students and where his lively mother is more fun than
previous schoolteachers.
"Being a widow, I feel a great responsibility to my late

husband to do the right thing and give my son an education
that emphasizes straightforward academics, not social engi-
neering," explains Anne. (1)
* * * * * *
Not far from the Maxsons live the Shumways.
Alan, 52, is a roofer, and Debbie, 47, a dance instruc-

tor. They have three children - Rick, Cory, and Stephanie.
Alan's mother and stepfather live part of the year with them
in a cozy apartment attached to their house that Alan built.
Debbie currently schools her two teenage boys. Rick is 14,
Homeschooling 101/11
and Cory is 13. Stephanie, 11, attends a public elementary

school, but will begin her homeschooling when she reaches
middle school.
When they attended public school, the Shumway boys

were categorized as special education students for their lan-
guage-based disabilities. After Rick's brief and productive
stint at a private school which closed, Debbie was faced with
a decision: homeschool him or put him back in public school.
The Shumways decided to homeschool Rick, as well as
remove Cory from public school, for the 1998-99 school year.
Debbie spent three months working her way through

the chain of command at the Amherst-Pelham regional
school district to become the first parent in Amherst to home-
school a pair of students with special needs. The Amherst
schools are legendary for the generous budget that goes
toward the special education program. But the Shumways
were uncomfortable with their sons having to face the pres-
sures of being in a program that is also known to attract stu-
dents who really act up. "The behavioral problems of others
can negatively influence my sons' academics," admits
Debbie.
Nowadays, the boys spend their mornings in a well-

apportioned corner of the family room, equipped with a
computer and modem, studying English, geometry, science,
and world geography. They are active adolescents who
enjoy their extracurricular activities, including snowboard-
ing and music.
Debbie and her family have adjusted to homeschool-

ing and find their lifestyle is less stressful as a result of their
choice. "My mother always told me I should be a school
teacher. Now I am," she says contentedly. But she adds that
she does not know how long she will homeschool, preferring
to commit herself to one year at a time. (2)
* * * * * *
In the blue-collar town of Ware, about twenty miles

east of Amherst, Ken Robinson settles down to another day
of schooling his 12-year-old daughter, Whitney. The dining
room table is strewn with both Whitney's textbooks and
Ken's lesson plans. This is where the two spend several
hours a day working through a sixth grade curriculum. It's a
charming room to work in, filled with antique furniture, an
icon of Saint Patrick, and oil paintings depicting scenes from
beloved fairy tales, like The Twelve Dancing Princesses. The art
work is by the award-winning artist, Ruth Sanderson -
Whitney's mom.
Ken, who holds a law degree and master's of business

administration, practices law part-time in order to act as his
illustrator/author wife's business manager and to teach
Whitney. He briefly schooled his older daughter, Morgan,
now a college sophomore and a former National Merit
Scholarship semifinalist. The Robinsons' curriculum is an
eclectic blend of the modern and the traditional - grammar,
math, Latin, science, historical novels, recorder practice, tar-
get shooting, and religious education from a Russian
Orthodox perspective. When the lessons are done, Whitney
often heads to the family barn to ride a quarter horse named
Rocky. She also participates in Girl Scouts, takes swimming
lessons, plays soccer, trains in Tae Kwon Do and socializes
with other homeschoolers.
Ruth, 47, and Ken, 46, have chosen to homeschool

because they were disappointed with the mediocre quality of
education at the local private school their daughter attended
in kindergarten and second grade. It was, in Whitney's terse

opinion, boring. Public schooling has never been considered
by the family, and Ken is not shy about voicing his opinions
about that institution. He says, "The quality of education is
lacking, and the socialization is negative. I don't want my
daughter placed in a morally hostile environment that pre-
tends to educate someone in a value-free environment, since
government schools are anti-Christian."
Meanwhile, Ken has cheerfully resigned himself to the

task of being Mr. Schoolmarm. "I enjoy having the opportu-
nity to provide my daughter with a real education. That is
the most precious gift I can offer her," he notes.
Whitney, who upon observation seems to take her

assignments seriously, says she likes learning with her father.
She admits to occasionally wishing she could attend school
with other children for the social component. Yet, she readi-
ly agrees that the advantages of homeschooling - including
doing two years in one year and not getting ignored if she
doesn't understand the material - outweigh the disadvan-
tages. (3)
Anne Maxson, the Shumways, and the Robinsons are

educational pioneers that embody the can-do spirit that is
synonymous with the homeschooling movement. They are
also generous parents who have reinvented their lifestyles,
whether temporarily or for the long run, to accommodate
their children's educational and emotional needs. And while
they live in only one corner of the country where home-
schooling occurs, they are representative of that portion of
American families who have decided that sending one or all
of their children to school, whether public or private, is not in
their children's best interests.
* * * * * *
I, too, am a traveler on the educational road less taken.
My encounter with homeschoolers began in the

Pacific Northwest, during my first year of married life. My
husband and I were living in Bellingham, Washington. Our
apartment managers, a sweet couple named Tim and Jan,
were better at dispensing hospitality than fixing leaky
faucets. Over dinner and Uno games, we discovered that
underneath their laid-back veneers they harbored ambitious
plans. One drizzly night they told us that Matthew, their
three-year-old son, would not be attending kindergarten,
first grade, or any other grade for that matter. They planned
to educate him at home, and Jan was not even a college grad-
uate. Since we were budding individualists and were expect-
ing a baby, our curiosity was piqued.
Once I had been introduced to the teach-thine-own

concept, my investigative juices began flowing. I read all the
homeschooling literature I could find (which wasn't much 18
years ago), starting with Home-spun Schools by Raymond and
Dorothy Moore.
I discovered that homeschooling was not really that

new, but rather it was a return to the way education was
before the days of common schools and compulsory atten-
dance laws.
I also discovered that the reasons to homeschool were

as diverse as the methods employed. Some parents choose to
homeschool because they desire a tailor-made, not a factory-
made, approach to learning. Others prefer to include reli-
gious instruction - be it the Bible, Torah, or Koran - with read-
ing, writing, and arithmetic. Some utilize a back-to-nature
approach which allows children to understand their world
through experience and apprenticeship. Resourceful parents
are finding the will and the way to make homeschooling

work for their families.
We made our decision to homeschool for these rea-

sons and more. Not long after asking ourselves Why home-
school? we began wondering, Why not homeschool? We
both had bachelor's degrees, and I had briefly worked as an
elementary school teacher in south Georgia. By the time our
son was born in Miami, Florida, we were converts to the
modern-day homeschooling movement.
As I prepared for the time that school would begin, I

realized that there is more to homeschooling than teaching a
child how to write cursive, find square roots, and recite the
capitals of the fifty states. I needed to be able to answer the
following questions with a yes: Was I willing to bypass a
lucrative career to stay at home? Was I willing to be the art
teacher, physical education instructor, dean of students, cafe-
teria worker, and custodian? Was I willing to seek out
friends for my child? For some parents, especially those with
a large brood, the homeschooling lifestyle would challenge
the organizational and homemaking skills of even a Martha
Stewart.
Still, my desire to play a daily role in training my

child's mind and shaping his character was overwhelming.
It seemed like there was no better use of my or my husband's
time and energies. We began to informally teach our first-
born phonics by using Scrabble blocks, and were ecstatic
when Dan read simple stories at age five. My husband, the
math man, had similar results with numbers. We had taken
the initial step and tasted success. The homeschooling
marathon had officially begun, and we would enroll Wid III,
Dan's little brother, in our homeschool. In his case, we were
ecstatic when he read simple stories at age eight.
As the years have passed, and our curriculum has

advanced from colorful math flash cards to complex physics
problems, we have faced the typical struggles many home-
schooling families confront. Grandparents question the wis-
dom of making ends meet on one, sometimes modest, salary.
Store clerks wonder aloud why our child isn't in school on a
Tuesday morning. Friends muse that we are a tad overpro-
tective of our offspring. Sometimes our own children tire of
Mom and Dad as their teachers. Sometimes we tire of teach-
ing. I found myself confessing as much in an article I wrote
for National Review in 1996. I stated, "There are days when I
wish I could march out of my home in an Armani suit to
make piles of money on Wall Street; days when I wish I could
hand my children over to the 'professionals.' " (4)
Nevertheless, we have had much joy homeschooling

our boys. In our little schoolhouse, located in the college
town of Amherst, Massachusetts, where we lived during our
sons' formative years, we made use of traditional and non-
traditional curricula, as well as the perks of the modern cul-
ture. We borrowed oodles of library books, bought books on
tape (from Pippi Longstocking to Harry Potter), surfed the
Internet, conducted science experiments (including hatching
baby chicks and dissecting a Carolina grasshopper for a tele-
vision reporter), viewed umpteen videos about World War II,
and even took a year off from all manner of formal learning,
ad libbing whenever the need arose.
Socially we have never lacked opportunities for our

sons and have exposed them to a smorgasbord of experi-
ences. They have played on numerous sports teams, attend-
ed camps, traveled to other lands, trained in karate, sacked
groceries, watched animal surgery, and taken classes with
other homeschoolers. Memories include Dan, now a serious
ice hockey player, electing to take a sewing class as a little
boy (the only male to do so, much to the delight of his femi-
nist teacher), and Wid III receiving a first-class geography
lesson when he joined his trucker dad on the road. For sev-
eral summers, we hosted children from inner-city New York
in our home through the Fresh Air program. We've enter-
tained Nelson Mandela's grandson at a Halloween party,
chatted with Pat Buchanan in our living room and on
Lexington Green, traveled to Costa Rica to meet then-
President Rafael Calderon Fournier, dined with the residents
of a shelter for the homeless, and given one son our blessing
to try public school in Oklahoma for a semester.
During the dozen years we've been teaching our boys,

my husband and I have been schooling ourselves. By taking
turns in master's and doctoral programs, both of us earned
Ph.D.'s. We also ran a tiny school, adjacent to our
Massachusetts home, teaching other parents' teenagers. We
called our extended homeschool Harkness Road High
School, a co-ed day school which offered back-to-basics
courses and some vocational training. Our curriculum was
challenging - a grade of B was required to pass each course,
and our instruction was personal, since we limited enroll-
ment to twenty students. Our diplomas were real, 17 of our
20 graduates went on to college, and we had two National
Merit Scholarship finalists.
We believe our efforts of laboring in the vineyards of

the alternative educational movement are paying off. Our
marriage is strong, and our sons have developed a can-do
attitude that will serve them for a lifetime.
* * * * * *
What Is Homeschooling?
Homeschooling is defined simply as the education of

school-aged children at home rather than at a school. (5)
Homeschools are as varied as the individuals who choose
this educational method.
They [homeschools] range from the highly

structured to the structured to the unstructured,
from those which use the approaches of conven-
tional schools to those which are repulsed by
conventional practice, and from the homeschool
that follows homemade materials and plans to
the one that consumes hundreds of dollars
worth of commercial curriculum materials per
year. (6)
Some homeschoolers' philosophy can be boiled down

to a phrase: The world is my classroom. Or, as John Lyon,
writing for the Rockford Institute, has succinctly observed:
Schooling, rather obviously, is what goes on in

schools; education takes place wherever and
whenever the nature with which we are born is
nurtured so as to draw out of those capacities
which conduce to true humanity. The home, the
church, the neighborhood, the peer group, the
media, the shopping mall ... are all educational
institutions. (7)
Many home educators subscribe to the notion that the

student who receives his instruction simultaneously from
the home and the community will become a much more cul-
turally sophisticated child than the one whose learning expe-
rience is marginalized to an institutionalized setting.
Concurrently, homeschoolers are never limited to interacting
with same-age students, on a daily basis, as is the case with
students in a conventional school setting - a situation which
often makes them peer-dependent, instead of invigorated by

learning. The historical record offers noteworthy examples
of individuals who experienced the 'the-world-is-my-
teacher' model. Achievers like Woodrow Wilson, Thomas
Edison, Agatha Christie, Andrew Wyeth, Pearl S. Buck, and
George Washington Carver were educated at home.
Today, prominent homeschoolers include Jason

Taylor, who plays football in the the National Football
League; Amanda and Tyler Wilkinson, who, along with their
father, Steve, comprise the popular country music trio the
Wilkinsons; Michael New, an army medic who was court-
martialed for refusing to don a United Nations uniform; the
late Jessica DuBroff, the 7-year-old who aspired to be the
youngest girl to pilot a plane across the country; Zac, Ike,
and Tay Hanson, the brothers who make up the rock group
Hanson; Jedediah Purdy, the homeschooler-turned-Yale-law-
school student, who is the author of For Common Things:
Irony, Trust and Commitment in America Today; Christina
Aguilera, the pop music princess and grammy-award win-
ner; Kevin Johnson, who plays basketball for the University
of Tulsa and became the first homeschooler to play in the
March Madness tournament; and acclaimed artist Thomas
Kinkade, who has four homeschooled daughters.
Homeschooling vs. Government and Private Schooling

(Religious and Secular)
There are stark differences between homeschooling

and public schooling. Homeschooling is based on a core
American belief in freedom, the freedom which allows fami-
lies to teach whatever interests them on a schedule that suits
their lifestyles. Homeschooling parents can teach that God
created the world or they can teach evolution, without fear of
offending a special interest group. Homeschooling parents

can use materials that are boy-friendly for their sons and not
worry that they will face a challenge from The Ms.
Foundation. Homeschooling parents don't take a dime from
taxpayers, nor do they impose their educational methods on
other parents. Homeschooling parents have the luxury to
pursue more than academics with their children. They can
take the time to travel abroad, raise llamas, train for a
triathlon, or open a bakery.
Government schooling, on the other hand, is a duress-

based system. The public school is a well-organized monop-
oly funded by confiscatory taxes. Woe to the homeowner
who chooses to not pay property taxes because he has no
children. He may have a lien put on his home or face impris-
onment. To boot, public school administrators, teachers, and
union officials often act as paid mouthpieces for a failing sys-
tem. Woe to the dissident who complains property taxes are
too steep when advocates want to build another elementary
school. He will be tarred as a heartless Grinch, because edu-
cation is always blindly promoted 'for the children's sake.'
A young person attending public school has little con-

trol over time or social contacts. He must submit to a dra-
conian set of standards: state-mandated courses, attendance
requirements, and grouping by age. He is not at liberty to
escape from lazy teachers, rude classmates, or ideological
indoctrination.
Of course, home education is an alternative not only

to public education, but to private schooling, as well. Most
would argue that, for those who can afford them, private
schools (religious and/or secular) offer students a better
choice. Many private schools have superior teachers, more
rigorous standards, and a safer environment than the major-
ity of public schools. Some even include religious and char-

acter education instruction. But the framework in which
information is disseminated is basically the same.
Note the similarities between public and private

schools. One adult, typically a woman, is expected to com-
municate information to a group of unrelated, uninterested,
and intellectually-varied students. Sometimes there are
more than 25 of these charges. The information has been
selected by adults other than the students' parents or their
teachers, as have been the textbooks and instructional meth-
ods. All students in a school are subject to the same prede-
termined academic standards, grading policies, and behav-
ioral guidelines. Few, if any, parents or students consider
questioning this format. Grade levels are determined prima-
rily by age, regardless of aptitude.
Students are expected to arrive and depart at the same

time every day. Between arrival and departure, each day is
structured to implement a group of adults' perceptions of
what a typical school day should look like. Seldom is there
opportunity to vary the regimen to accommodate the stu-
dents' interests and abilities. Very often it is a loud bell or
buzzer that informs faculty that one topic of study must end
and another begin.
As in public schools, students in private school's have

little say concerning the teachers they are taught by or the
students they are expected to learn beside. And often it is
student-teacher and student-student conflicts that interfere
most with children's ability to learn.
Most academic curricula in private schools mirror

their public school counterparts, as do credit and graduation
requirements. Even the extracurricular activities are similar.
The fact is that most private schools can't even exist without
conforming to an educational paradigm established and reg-
ulated by public education bureaucrats. During the eleven
years my husband and I operated our private high school, in
accordance with Massachusetts law, we had to have the
approval of the local public school committee. They
reviewed our curriculum, teachers' credentials, and educa-
tional philosophy on a yearly basis before granting us the
authority to continue with our school.
The bottom line is this: If children are enrolled in a

school (be it public or private), almost without exception,
someone besides the people who know them best and love
them most are assuming the responsibility for their academ-
ic experiences. This one difference separates homeschooling
from all forms of institutionalized education. It is this dis-
tinction that sets homeschooling apart and invites the infor-
mation and analysis presented in the pages that follow.
The Movement - Yesterday and Today / 23
Chapter 2
The Movement - Yesterday and Today
Two Pioneers
Homeschooling, as we know it today, may not have

existed if not for a pair of Paul Reveres who alerted parents
to the pitfalls of dispatching their children off to schools.
These two men offered a solution to parents. The seeds of
what has grown into the modern-day American homeschool-
ing movement were planted by them 30 years ago.
Raymond Moore
In 1969 Raymond Moore, a former U.S. Department of

Education employee, laid the groundwork for what would
become the greatest populist educational movement of the
20th Century.
Moore, who holds an education doctorate from the

University of Southern California, and his wife Dorothy, a
reading specialist and former Los Angeles County elemen-
tary school teacher, began to inquire into previously neglect-
ed areas of educational research. Two of the questions the
Moores and a team of like-minded colleagues set out to
investigate and answer were: Is institutionalizing young
children a sound educational trend? and, What is the best age
for school entrance? (1)
The Moore team sought advice from over 100 family

development experts and researchers, including Urie
Bronfenbrenner of Cornell University, John Bowlby of the
World Health Organization, and Burton White of Harvard
University. These specialists made recommendations that

went against the status quo. They believed that there should
be "a cautious approach to subjecting [the child's] develop-
ing nervous system and mind to formal constraints." (2)
Psychologist Bronfenbrenner went a step further and
claimed that subjecting children to the daily routine of ele-
mentary school can result in excessive dependence on peers,
a trait he viewed negatively.
In the process of painstakingly analyzing thousands

of studies, 20 of which compared early school entrants with
late starters, the Moores began to conclude that developmen-
tal problems (including hyperactivity, nearsightedness, and
dyslexia) were often the result of prematurely taxing a child's
nervous system and mind with continuous academic tasks,
like reading and writing.
The bulk of this research, which overwhelmingly sup-

ported shielding young children from daily contact with
institutionalized settings, convinced the Moores that formal
schooling should be delayed until at least age 8 or 10, or even
as late as 12. Dr. Moore explained the upshot of his research,
stating, "These findings sparked our concern and convinced
us to focus our investigation on two primary areas: formal
learning and socializing. Eventually, this work led to an
unexpected interest in homeschools." (3)
The Moores went on to author a series of books about

homeschooling, including Better Late Than Early and Home
School Handbook. The books, which have sold hundreds of
thousands of copies, are written from a Christian and
research perspective, but contain a broad message for all
interested parties. They offer practical advice to parents on
how to succeed as home educators. The Moores advocate a
firm but gentle approach to home education that balances
study, chores, play, and work outside the home in a loving

atmosphere geared toward a child's particular developmen-
tal needs.
John Holt
During the 1960s and early 1970s, a second voice

emerged in the ongoing debate about the shortcomings of
public school education. The late John Holt was an articulate
advocate for decentralizing schools and returning greater
autonomy to teachers and parents, while subscribing to
unorthodox ideas about children's rights (e.g. allowing them
to use drugs, engage in promiscuous activity, and own prop-
erty). Holt, who did teaching stints at both experimental and
conventional schools, denounced the lack of liberty school-
children had, even in the most pleasant school settings,
where he viewed the practice of testing, for instance, as hav-
ing detrimental effects on learning. Holt, trumpeting a liber-
tarian note, also lamented the compulsory nature of school-
ing. He wrote ...
[Y]ou will surely agree that if the government

told you that on one hundred and eighty days of
the year, for six or more hours a day, you had to
be at a particular place, and there do whatever
people told you to do, you would feel that this
was a gross violation of your civil liberties. (4)
Holt came to view schools as places that produce obe-

dient, but dull citizens. He saw the child's daily grind of
attending school as preparation for a life of paying confisca-
tory taxes and blind subservience to authority figures.
Sounding like British author Charles Dickens, Holt com-
pared the dreariness of the school day to the experience of
having a "full-time painful job." (5) How Children Fail, the
book which he published in 1964, foisted Holt into the

national spotlight with its revolutionary tone. Holt argued
that students' attendance at schools causes them to dislike
learning because "they fail to develop more than a tiny part
of the tremendous capacity for learning, understanding, and
creating with which they were born and of which they made
full use during the first two or three years of their lives." (6)
Ultimately, Holt concluded that the humane way to educate
children was to give them the freedom to learn at home and
expose them to the larger world that surrounds them.
To disseminate his views, Holt founded Growing

Without Schooling in 1977, a bimonthly magazine for and
about individuals who were pursuing educational activities
outside the framework of school. The publication became a
tool that allowed the burgeoning number of home educators
to network with one other.
In summary, Holt espoused a philosophy that could

be described as a laissez-faire approach to home-based edu-
cation or, as he termed it, "learning by living." It is a philos-
ophy that those sympathetic to John Holt's writings have
come to describe as "unschooling."
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 easi-
ly and rightly say the foundation of all other
human institutions. (7)
* * * * * *
The constituencies attracted by Raymond Moore and

John Holt, individually, reflected the contrasting back-
grounds and lifestyles of the two researchers. Moore, a for-
mer Christian missionary to Japan, earned a sizeable (but
hardly exclusive) following among parents who chose to
homeschool primarily to impart traditional religious mores
to their children and are representative of the "Christian
right." Holt, a humanist and Ivy League graduate, has
become a popular figure with the wing of the homeschooling
movement that comprises a coalition of homesteaders, for-
mer hippies, and New Age devotees. Still, those who work
with Holt Associates, like Susannah Sheffer, caution that
Holt's books, like Moore's, have always attracted individuals
who are more complex than these stereotypes. Curious par-
ents sensed that these men were not spouting educational
jargon. Rather, they had reached their conclusions by watch-
ing scores of children be shortchanged by a system that is
based on age-oriented grouping and government-prescribed
credentialism.
Although they worked independently of each other,

these two men have earned national reputations as educa-
tional mavericks, eloquently addressing the angst felt by a
diverse body of Americans about the present-day education-
al system - a system that many suspect furthers the careers of
educational elites, rather than serves impressionable chil-
dren. By the 1970s the countercultural left, who had respond-
ed more strongly to Holt's cri de coeur, comprised the bulk of
homeschooling families. By the mid-1980s, however, those
affiliated with the religious right dominated the modern-day
homeschooling movement. This group would change the
nature of homeschooling from a crusade against the so-called
establishment" to a crusade against the secular forces in
society that denigrate the traditional core beliefs of religious
conservatives.
Buttressed by their media appearances, legislative and

courtroom testimony, prolific writings, and speeches to sym-
pathetic audiences, Holt and Moore worked tirelessly to
deliver the message that homeschooling is a good, if not
superior, way to educate American children, that it has the
potential to resurrect the positive aspects of pre-industrial
society, when American families had more opportunities to
work and learn together instead of apart.
Numbering Today's Homeschoolers
At the end of the century, the growing popularity of

homeschooling has produced a national, grass-roots move-
ment abounding with support group networks, bestselling
how-to books, pro-homeschooling legal advocates, and
scores of homeschool high school graduates. Patricia Lines,
who worked at the federal Department of Education and has
done extensive research estimating the homeschooling pop-
ulation, believes there could currently be a million home-
schoolers. (8) Brian Ray, president of the National Home
Education Research Institute, thinks the number is much
higher, perhaps as many as 1.7 million, and posits that home-
schooling is growing at the rate of 15 to 40 percent per year.
(9) The Home School Market, published in April 1995, estimat-
ed that the number of home schooled children had doubled
since 1990 to 800,000 and would double again in the next five
years. (10) No exact figures currently exist, but there seems to
be a general agreement that homeschoolers comprise at least
one percent of the school-age population. Table 1 is an esti-
mate of the current homeschooling population. I compiled
these numbers mainly by contacting state education agen-
cies.
The Movement - Yesterday and Today /'29
There are several caveats when using numbers pro-

vided by the states, since compulsory school attendance laws
(the laws which require school-aged children to attend
school on a regular basis or be considered truant) vary from
state to state. For instance, in Pennsylvania a child is not
required to enroll in school until he reaches his 8th birthday;
in Missouri the age is 7, but in Georgia it is age 6, unless the
child is under age 6 and has attended more than 20 days in a
public school. That particular five-year-old is subject to the
state of Georgia's compulsory attendance laws. (11) Parents
who begin home educating a 6-year-old in Philadelphia are
not obligated to report this undertaking to school officials
and will not figure in that particular state's count of the
homeschooling population. This would not be the case, obvi-
ously, in Atlanta.
In many states, compulsory attendance ends at 16.

Therefore, homeschooled students in those states, who are
17, do not figure in the homeschooling population data base,
unless they are participating in a public school's extracurric-
ular activities. Another problem is that some state agencies
do not keep a count of homeschoolers, like Mississippi, and
rely on state-wide homeschooling support groups with a
large membership pool to provide estimates of the number of
homeschooled children. In such instances, the estimates
come from homeschooling advocates, as denoted in the table
by an asterisk.
A handful of states had no advocates or public offi-

cials who have come forward with a number. As a last resort,
I contacted the Home School Legal Defense Association, and
Rich Jefferson, the association's director of Media Relations,
contributed numbers, but only for 1996. This is specified by a
double asterisk. All other figures are for the 1998-99 school
year.
Finally, it should be noted that there is a portion of the

homeschooling population that is "non-compliant." Non-
compliant families are either ignorant of the law, or they hold
religious or philosophical convictions to not comply with
state mandates. Consequently, these families remain invisi-
ble to researchers. So the mystery of how many students are
taught at home probably will not be resolved satisfactorily
anytime soon.
The debate about numbers is a politically-charged

issue which can be used by advocates or opponents of home-
schooling as a tool to make their arguments. However, that a
number is being debated, that state departments of educa-
tion are tracking the population, and that many state educa-
tion web sites are listing the names and numbers of non-gov-
ernment homeschool support groups as a way of assisting
parents with this choice, all show the significant impact of
the movement upon the policy-making process.
Table 1
Estimation of the Homeschooling Population
Alabama 15,000*
Alaska 2400* (private homeschoolers)
Arizona 21,271*
Arkansas 8,731
California approximately 100,000*
Colorado 8,827
Connecticut 2,000
Delaware 1,645
Florida 33,129
Georgia 21,132
Hawaii 2,532
Idaho between 4,000 and 10,000
Illinois between 67,000 and 77,000**
Indiana 12,624
Iowa between 16,000 and 18,500**
Kansas between 15,000 and 20,000*
Kentucky 9,688
Louisiana 8,868
Maine 3,811
Maryland between 28,000 and 32,000**
Massachusetts 10,000*
Michigan 2,131
Minnesota 13,638
Mississippi between 16,000 and 19,000**
Missouri between 31,000 and 35,000**
Montana 3,412
Nebraska 4,739
Nevada approximately 5,000
New Hampshire 2,977
New Jersey 24,000*
New Mexico 5,796
New York 15,000
North Carolina 21,500

North Dakota 1,037
Ohio between 63,000 and 71,000**
Oklahoma between 20,000 and 22,500**
Oregon 13,000*
Pennsylvania 20,000*
Rhode Island 588
South Carolina 7,052
South Dakota 2,691
Tennessee 2,487
Texas between 150,000 and 200,000*
Utah between 14,700 and 16,700**
Vermont over 1,600
Virginia 14,826
Washington 19,353
West Virginia 3,324
Wisconsin 19,808
Wyoming between 3,000 and 3,500**
Total between 893,217 and 990,817
Legal and Political Inroads / 33
Chapter 3
Legal and Political Inroads
On the Legal Front
One barrier to the practice of homeschooling is com-

pulsory school attendance laws. As education author Samuel
L. Blumenfeld has argued, "Today the law is not being used
to force delinquents and truants into the schools, but to
harass and regulate home schoolers and fundamentalist
Christian schools." Blumenfeld also believes such laws vio-
late the Thirteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution
which prohibits "involuntary servitude." (1)
Blumenfeld has observed that there has been no con-

certed effort to repeal compulsory attendance laws or have
them declared unconstitutional. (2) But in the late 1970s,
throughout the 1980s, and even into the 1990s, as the home-
schooling movement gained more converts, compulsory
attendance laws were successfully challenged in court.
For example, one landmark case with a positive out-

come for homeschoolers was decided in Massachusetts. In
Perchemlides v. Frizzle (1978), a Massachusetts state court
established the right of the Perchemlides family to home-
school their son. The court concluded that "the
Massachusetts compulsory attendance statute might well be
constitutionally infirm if it did not exempt students whose
parents prefer alternative forms of education." (3)
A milestone case for religious homeschoolers was

Michigan v. Dejonge (1993), brought by a homeschooling fam-
ily with two school-aged children. The Dejonges were con-
victed of violating a Michigan compulsory education law,
since they failed to have their children taught by certified

teachers. The DeJonges countered that the conviction was a
violation of their right to freely exercise their religion, since
they homeschooled for reasons of faith. The Michigan State
Supreme Court ruled in favor of the parents. The court stat-
ed, ".... the Dejonges believe that the Word of God com-
mands them to educate their children without state certifica-
tion. Any regulation interfering with that commandment is
state regulation of religion." (4) The court's conclusion? "We
hold that the teacher certification requirement is an uncon-
stitutional violation of the Free Exercise Clause of the First
Amendment as applied to families whose religious convic-
tions prohibit the use of certified instructors. Such families,
therefore, were exempted from the dictates of the teacher
certification requirements." (5)
In reality, some of the legal battles homeschoolers

have won have been resolved only at tremendous emotional
and financial costs to families. Parents who homeschool can
encounter the most extreme penalties possible. Their chil-
dren can be removed from their homes or sent to live in fos-
ter homes, and the parents can find themselves jailed for
their choice.
In such a crucible landed a clan of farmers in south-

western Idaho. The Shippys, a family of land levelers,
resided in the picturesque community of New Plymouth,
Idaho. By many accounts, the Shippy brothers, devout
Christians and pacifists, were respected laborers with model
families.
In November of 1984, Sam and Marquita Shippy,

Floyd and Roxy Shippy, and Robert and Cecilia Shippy were
jailed for failing to submit to the state of Idaho regarding the
education of their school-aged children (totaling sixteen chil-
dren). At the time of the sentencing, all three wives were

breastfeeding babies.
The Shippys' problems with educational bureaucrats

began in 1982. It was then that this close-knit family created
a homeschool - Black Canyon School. The Shippys believed
they had to "register" their homeschool with school authori-
ties, and their nightmare began when they inquired about
the particulars of the process. The Board of Trustees of the
New Plymouth School District, headed by school superin-
tendent Michael Jacobsen, had a long list of mandates for
homeschoolers - the type of requirements that would be
appropriate for those operating a conventional, private
school. For example, the parents were told to post "Exit"
signs over the doors of their homes, since their homeschool
was required to "meet the local and national standards for
health and safety of the children." The Shippys were also
expected to provide "methods by which normal social
growth and peer interaction will be provided," as well as the
"qualifications of the teacher (s)." (6)
The Shippys did not see the need to comply with

these intrusive requirements, and when they refused to have
their homes inspected, they were hauled into court. Along
with a fourth brother, Terry Shippy, and his wife, Connie, the
couples were charged with a misdemeanor for failing to
enroll their children in school. Although a six-month jail sen-
tence was suspended, the four couples were placed on two
years' probation with the stipulation that they enroll their
children in public schools or an approved private program
and that the children accrue no unexcused absences.
The children went back to public school. Not long

after, in the autumn of 1984, school officials noted that the
Shippy children were frequently absent from school and
The Homeschooling Revolution 136
complained that they were not being provided an adequate

education. On November 8, 1984, Payette County 3rd District
Magistrate Byrne E. Behrman, reimposed the jail sentence on
three of the Shippy couples for failing to follow the court
order to provide regular schooling for the children. This, in
spite of the fact that Sam Shippy told the Idaho Statesman that
the children spent their days reading, writing, and working
around the house when they were not attending school. (7)
The Shippy children were placed under the guardianship of
relatives who agreed to send them to public school. After
three weeks in jail, the parents were released, and the chil-
dren were allowed to return home for a Christmas visit.
When the holidays ended, Sam and Marquita decided

they had endured enough persecution and did not return the
children to their relatives. That decision set the scene for a
horrific show-down. On January 10, 1985, county sheriff's
officers arrived at Sam and Marquita Shippy's home and
forcibly carried their six children to state vehicles, loaded
them in, and drove them away.
The Shippy children spent several months in foster

care before they returned home for good. During their time
in the care of the State, some of the Shippy children's deeply-
held religious beliefs, which influenced their recreation and
dress habits, were violated. For example, Sheri Shippy, then
14, attended a graduation dance against her wishes. She also
had to wear jeans to school instead of the customary long
dress she regularly donned.
The Shippy situation ended on a sour note. Sam and

Marquita Shippy moved from Payette County to Gem
County (Idaho) to avoid further confrontations with school
officials in New Plymouth. And, in 1987, Robert Shippy was
again jailed for failing to comply with court-mandated home-
schooling procedures. During his prison term, Cecilia, his

wife and the mother of their 11 children, passed away.
But almost two decades after the Shippy tragedy,

homeschool regulation in Idaho is a lax affair. Bob Fontaine,
the state's coordinator of elementary education, can only
vaguely estimate how many homeschoolers there are
because "it is impossible to have any kind of count of home-
schoolers in Idaho, since it is not necessary for homeschool-
ers to register with local school districts or even participate in
statewide standardized testing." (8) Thanks to the courage of
the Shippys and legislators like Bob Forrey of Nampa, Idaho
(who advocated on behalf of this persecuted family and who
began the process of shepherding a bill through the legisla-
ture to soften the state's compulsory school attendance laws),
homeschooling is today a viable choice in Idaho.
And the good news continued to sweep through other

states. By 1995, in response to homeschoolers' numerous
court victories at the state level, 33 states had enacted home-
schooling legislation. Today, homeschooling is legal in all
states. According to the literature of the National
Homeschool Association of Webster, New York,
"Homeschooling is legally permitted in all fifty states, but
laws and regulations are much more favorable in some states
than in others." (9)
States such as Texas are considered friendly to home-

schoolers in that there is no requirement for parents to initi-
ate contact with the state. On the other hand, homeschooling
families in states like Massachusetts are heavily regulated.
(Curriculum is subject to the approval of the local superin-
tendents, and submission of standardized test scores can be
required, as can periodic reports on the students' progress.)
Until last year, homeschooling families in Lynn,
Massachusetts were required to have their homes evaluated

by school officials. Two Lynn families, the Brunelles and the
Pustells, went to court over the issue of home visits, and the
Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled in their favor.
Oklahoma has a constitutional provision guaranteeing

what could be interpreted as the right to homeschool. Article
13, Section 4 reads that the legislature shall provide for the
"compulsory attendance at some public or other school,
unless other means of education are provided, of all children
in the State who are sound in mind and body, between the
ages of eight and sixteen, for at least three months each year."
(10)
In spite of the magnitude of legal gains, homeschool-

ers can still be thrown curve balls, now and then, by school
officials. Indeed, no family can be 100% sure that there will be
no action taken by statists who are determined to hamper the
homeschooling efforts of committed parents, whom they per-
ceive as the 'competition,' while boosting the public school
education monopoly, even if their tactics infringe upon the
right of innocent children to learn at home in peace.
In the fall of 1999 another Shippy-like homeschooling

brouhaha erupted around a 36-year-old mother from
Burlington, Vermont named Karen Maple. Ms. Maple was
held at Chittenden Regional Correctional Center for tangling
with public school officials who did not approve of the home-
school she set up for Trevor, her 15-year-old son. Trevor
thrived in the home atmosphere, based on the outstanding
scores of his Stanford Achievement Test. But Ms. Maple was
deemed a criminal and was prosecuted by the Department of
Social and Rehabilitative Services for truancy. Her crime? She
refused state officials' demands to take her son to a child pro-
tection agency, so his educational needs could be evaluated.
Ms. Maple's time in jail separated her not only from Trevor,
but from a two-year-old daughter she was breastfeeding.
This travesty of justice caused the Wall Street Journal to jump
into the fray. An editorial in the Journal noted, "Such cases are
but the latest battles in a war that today extends beyond the
issue of home schooling to the fundamental rights of families
to raise their children the way they see fit." (11) In the end,
Judge Michael Kupersmith released Karen Maple after she
had spent nearly two weeks behind bars.
The lawyers on staff at the Home School Legal

Defense Association are called upon regularly to assist some
of the organization's 60,000 members with legal assistance.
Christopher Klicka, an attorney for HSLDA, notes that dur-
ing the 1990-91 school year, nearly 2,000 homeschoolers with
problems sought assistance from his organization. Those
problems "involved various degrees of harassment, ranging
from actual or threatened prosecution to the attempted
imposition of restrictions in excess of the law." (12) In 1999,
the Home School Court Report (also affiliated with HSLDA)
reported on the following two cases:
1) In New Jersey, Eduardo and Pamela Morales of

Mahwah found themselves confronting the inconsistencies
of that state's law. At the start of the school year, they
informed their local superintendent of their intent to home-
school and what textbooks their children would be using.
Since New Jersey state law does not require this type of noti-
fication, it was a shock to the Morales family when the vice-
principal of Mahwah Township insisted on examining the
textbooks. Mr. and Mrs. Morales declined, and they were
criminally prosecuted for being in violation of the compulso-
ry attendance law. (13)
2) In Kansas, a 10-year-old child known as "Donnie C"

was labeled as a special education student when he attended
public school. His parents, Jeff and Tina Cipolla, decided to
remove him from school to teach him in their home. But
bureaucrats in Crawford County were not eager to let him
go. The county attorney and the court-appointed guardian ad
litem scrutinized both the competence of his parents and the
number of hours of instruction in the Cipolla's homeschool,
simply because public school authorities have deemed
Donnie a "child in need of care." (14)
These situations seem to lack logic, are troubling and

costly, and detract from the effort that might be expended by
the 'authorities' in providing public school students with a
better education and safer schools. In general, however, most
homeschoolers have few complaints about the current legal
climate and eagerly make use of the legal resources available
to them if they do encounter a roadblock.
On the Political Front
One focus of the homeschooling movement over the

past couple decades has been to support legislation favorable
to home education and prevent unfavorable legislation from
being enacted. It is one aspect of the movement which can
bind various groups of homeschoolers together and reminds
them of their common belief that children learn better at
home.
Homeschoolers have shown they exercise political

clout and have a track record to prove it. In 1994, for exam-
ple, homeschoolers overwhelmed Capitol Hill switchboards
for several days in their efforts to get Congress to drop a
drive that would have forced parents to get teaching certifi-
cates before they could homeschool. Of this intense lobbying

effort, the Congressional Quarterly noted that House members
were besieged by homeschoolers with "calls, letters, and
faxes for over a week ..." Their efforts paid off. The House
voted with home educators, 424 to 1, on that issue. (15)
In 1999, the U.S. Senate proclaimed the week of

September 19-25 as National Home Education Week. On that
weekend, the Home School Legal Defense Association spon-
sored a rally in Washington, D.C., which drew five of the
nine presidential candidates - Gary Bauer, Steve Forbes, Pat
Buchanan, Alan Keyes, and George W. Bush. All were appar-
ently eager to court the vote of homeschooling parents and to
speak on behalf of the rights of parents to educate their chil-
dren however they choose. Candidate Forbes said the fol-
lowing: "You've shamed the regular school systems with
what you've achieved. For those who have carped and criti-
cized and said, 'What about socialization?' ... you look at
some of our schools, you call that socialization?" (16)
Many homeschoolers have also won struggles to be

allowed to have access to the local public school's extracur-
ricular activities. It's not uncommon to hear stories like that
of Stephen Moitozo II of Maine (who is the owner of
Homeschool Associates and BookmobileOnline.com, which
offers parents curriculum support). As a teenaged home-
schooler, he played on the football team of Lewiston High
School, Maine's largest public school. During his senior year,
he started on offense and defense, served as captain, and was
selected the Most Valuable Player. He believes he is the only
homeschooler on the East Coast with this sports resume. (17)
While some homeschoolers have opted to be a tan-

gential part of the educational mainstream, the movement as
a whole has been lauded by some for their commitment to
being separated from it. Paul Weyrich, head of the Free

Congress Foundation, a Washington, D.C. think tank, wrote
a widely-publicized letter to supporters about the status of
the conservative movement. In the letter, he shared his frus-
tration with how little the conservative social agenda (e.g.
banning partial birth abortions) has been implemented,
despite the number of supposed conservative activists who
hold elected office.
He blames the political culture's corruption for the

decline of particular moral standards in society, and puts in a
positive word about homeschooling. Weyrich writes,
"Therefore, what seems to me a legitimate strategy for us to
follow is to look at ways to separate ourselves from the insti-
tutions that have been captured by the ideology of Political
Correctness, or by other enemies of our traditional culture."
He continues, "What I mean by separation is, for example,
what the homeschoolers have done. Faced with public school
systems that no longer educate, but instead 'condition' stu-
dents with the attitudes demanded by Political Correctness,
they have seceded. They have separated themselves from
public schools and have created new institutions, new
schools, in their homes." (18)
At the other end of the political spectrum is Judy

Mann, a liberal writer for the Washington Post, who wrote a
column entitled, "Home Schooling's Progressive Wing." In
her column she applauds left-of-center homeschoolers for
discovering a positive alternative to the "culture of death"
into which many teenagers have immersed themselves. As
Mann observes, "These home-schooling parents may have
much to teach professional educators about how to develop
safe and effective learning environments - where all children
feel appreciated - so that we can stop the bloodshed at our
schools." She ends her piece sounding like a gung-ho
reformer: "Public schools are institutions for educating the

masses, which means kids who don't conform are often
bored or cast out. The secular movement toward home
schooling is itself creating environments in which children
can soar." (19)
Dr. Laura Schlessinger, host of one of the most popu-

lar radio talk shows in the 1990s, is not unfamiliar with
homeschoolers. Dr. Laura, as fans address her, averages
30,000 to 50,000 attempted calls a day from folks clamoring
for her blunt advice on relationships. Dr. Laura is famously
known for advocating stay-at-home parenting vs. daycare.
But in the September 1998 issue of her publication, Dr. Laura
Perspective, subscribers learned she is also sympathetic
toward homeschooling. Perspective included a two-page
excerpt from The Homeschooling Book of Answers by Linda
Dobson. Also featured in the issue were several website post-
ings from individuals writing to www.drlaura.com which
enthusiastically debated the subject of home education. (20)
While some political and cultural pundits are energiz-

ing the homeschooling debate, leaders of education reform
organizations are also taking a serious look at this choice. In
1994, Marshall Fritz formed the Separation of School and
State Alliance to get government entirely out of the business
of schooling, and out of the business of compelled attendance,
financing, curriculum, testing, and credentialing. Fritz sees
growing public support for his idea, and has courted influen-
tial homeschooling leaders - Mary Pride, Gregg Harris, and
Cathy Duffy - to sign on to his proclamation. Recalls Fritz, "In
July, 1990,1 sat in the front row at my first homeschool con-
ference. Cathy Duffy gave the keynote address. Within twen-
ty minutes, tears were welling - no, streaming - and I nudged
my friend who came with me and said, 'This is the beginning
of the parent re-responsibilization movement.' " (21)
The Children's Scholarship Fund, a nonprofit organi-

zation started in 1998, gives vouchers to low-income parents
to help them gain access to the private schools of their choice.
Bankrolled by the likes of philanthropists Ted Forstmann and
John Walton, the organization has also earmarked scholar-
ships for those who choose to homeschool. Some inner-city
families are indeed using the vouchers for this purpose.
There has also been a smattering of high-profile polit-

ical candidates who are homeschooling parents. One candi-
date, Gex Williams of Kentucky, a homeschooling father of
six, came close to becoming the congressman for the fourth
district in 1998. Michael Farris, Home School Legal Defense
Association founder, garnered 46% of the vote for lieutenant
governor of Virginia in 1993. Christina Jeffrey of Georgia is
both a college professor and a homeschooling parent. She ran
in the Republican primary for Newt Gingrich's vacated con-
gressional seat when he resigned as Speaker of the House in
1998. Homeschooling parents also serve in state legislatures,
on city councils, and on school boards throughout the United
States. For example, State Rep. Kevin Calvey of Del City,
Oklahoma has two children who are homeschooled.
In addition to the progress homeschooling families

make academically, they are finding that as individuals and
as a movement they are able to bring about change and find
success in the legal and political realms. Such has been the
case for some 25 years, and there are no indications that the
progress will be impeded,
Homeschoolers have come a long way, and, unlike

comedian Rodney Dangerfield, they are getting respect these
days.
The Socialization Question /'45
Chapter 4
The Socialization Question
Barnaby Marsh's parents, John and Cheryl Marsh,

raised him in the Alaskan wilderness near Talkeetna. They
gave him the equivalent of a fifth grade education, and then
allowed him to do his own learning. During Barnaby's ado-
lescent years, he lived with his family in what he describes as
"an extended exercise in wilderness survival," highlighted
by sojourns to Anchorage.
To his credit, Barnaby made the most of his unusual

circumstances. He continued his education by reading the
classics and observing his natural surroundings, which
included a study of the red-necked grebe, a waterfowl.
Today Barnaby is in his twenties. Did he grow up to be

like a Boo Radley misfit - the recluse in To Kill A Mockingbird?
Is he now a misanthrope, having been deprived of the privi-
lege of 'hanging out' with other high schoolers? Not even
close. Barnaby's bona fides are enough to make the parents of
a suburban slacker weep.
He spent his maiden semester of college, which was

his first time in any school, at Harvard University, where he
completed several part-time courses to determine how he
would perform in a formal academic setting. He then elected
to enroll at Cornell University, because he admired their
ornithology department. At Cornell, he founded the
Ecological Conservation Society; participated in non-compet-
itive crew, golf, basketball, and swimming; was a reviewer
for The Ibis (a respected ornithological journal); and served on
the Undergraduate Research Board. In 1996, during his sen-
oor year at Cornell, he became one of the 32 American recipi-
ents of a Rhodes Scholarship. He is completing his doctoral

dissertation, finishing up his third year at Oxford University
in England, and has been elected to a very competitive
research fellowship at Oxford. (1)
* * * * * *
Alexandra Swann was raised in the desolate desert of

New Mexico. Her parents, John and Joyce Swann, were more
sympathetic to middle-class amenities than the Marshes.
Consequently, her free time didn't center around gazing at
desert wildlife. Instead, Mrs. Swann, armed with only a high
school education, assumed full responsibility for her then-
five-year-old daughter's education. Never attending school
meant Alexandra spent her days at home with her nine sib-
lings, helping her mother manage the household, and learn-
ing from the Calvert School's correspondence course pro-
gram. For Alexandra, the lifestyle excluded her from cheer-
leading try-outs, proms, and gossiping with classmates in the
halls.
Did Alexandra cry herself to sleep for leading such a

family-oriented, insulated existence? Again, not even close.
By age 16, Alexandra had earned her diploma - a mas-

ter's degree in history from California State University's
external degree program. At age 18, she was hired by El Paso
Community College to teach western civilization and U.S.
history to students her own age. She says that all her stu-
dents were products of the public education system. "I was
horrified because there were so many of them who couldn't
read and write," recalls Alexandra.
Like Barnaby, Alexandra is currently in her late twen-

ties. She manages a mortgage and loan business with her
The Socialization Question / 47
father. She has self-published a book about her educational

experiences and has been written about in national publica-
tions like National Review and Investor's Business Daily. Very
active in her church, Alexandra didn't grow up to be a bitter
Miss Havisham, the woeful Dickens' character in Great
Expectations, rueing her past.
That the feats of Barnaby Marsh and Alexandra

Swann were accomplished when the homeschooling move-
ment was barely a blip on the educational-reform screen
makes their stories all the more remarkable. "Twenty years
ago we didn't know anyone who homeschooled. There was
a concern we would become vegetables, unable to function in
society," says Alexandra. (2)
And therein lies the heart of the matter.
Socialization
Spend time, even briefly, chatting with homeschool-

ers, and they will inevitably indicate that the most frequent-
ly asked question they encounter is about socialization, not
academics. Neighbors, extended family, critics, and clerics
have always been curious about how homeschoolers acquire
social skills. The questions run something like this: How
does a homeschooled child make and keep friends? How
does he get exposed to young people from all walks of life?
Isn't a homeschooled child isolated? These are apparently the
same concerns of the National Education Association, which
adopted an anti-homeschooling resolution at the associa-
tion's annual convention in the summer of 1999. Resolution
B-67 states that "home schooling programs cannot provide
the student with a comprehensive education experience." In

the same breath, the NEA also demands that "home-
schooled students should not participate in any extracurric-
ular activities in the public schools." (3)
As Kathleen Lyons, a spokesperson for the National

Education Association, puts it...
Too often missing from the debate on home

schooling are the benefits that public schools
provide children, advantages that most com-
mon measures of education success overlook.
Educating children to live and work in a global
society where they will have to interact with
people from different races, economic status,
backgrounds, and ethnic groups is best taught
by experience. Public schools provide such
experiences. Further, public schools offer stu-
dents the opportunity to sharpen essential skills
that are required in the job market today, such as
problem solving in cooperative groups. (4)
That sentiment is echoed by Lyons' colleague, Bob

Chase, National Education Association president. Notes
Chase in a letter to the Wall Street Journal:
Education is more than forcing facts into a

child's head. It is learning to work with others
and interacting with people from different races,
backgrounds, and ethnic groups. Public educa-
tion represents a slice of reality that goes beyond
participation in 4-H activities, ballet classes, and
church socials. It is a preparation for the real
world that students will have to face whether
they are leaving the security of a school or their
parents' home. (5)
Giving the benefit of the doubt to Lyons and Chase, let

us assume that the advocates for a powerful teachers' union
are committed to producing well-rounded, intelligent stu-
dents. This begs the question: What concern is it of the State?
That schools can deliver what NEA proponents assert

is a dubious, perhaps dangerous claim. With alarming fre-
quency, school administrators are discovering that browbeat-
ing churlish adolescents to remain in school, especially bored
males, can cause chaos. After the Columbine tragedy, for
example, WorldNetDaily, an Internet news site, reported a
huge surge in interest in homeschooling across the United
States. WorldNetDaily reporter Paul Chesser quotes a source
from the Christian Home Educators of Colorado explaining,
"Calls have increased fivefold, from about 60 a month to over
300." (6)
Another serious issue in public schools is the growing

problem of sexual harassment. The issue came to the fore-
front when a fifth-grader named LaShonda Davis of Forsyth,
Georgia complained that she was repeatedly sexually taunt-
ed by a young male classmate. When school officials at
Hubbard Elementary School, LaShonda's school, failed to do
anything about her plight, Aurelia Davis, the girl's mother,
sued the Monroe County Board of Education, claiming it vio-
lated Title IX. The case of Davis v. Monroe County School Board
was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. In May, the Supreme
Court justices ruled that public schools can be sued and
forced to pay damages for failing to stop sexual harassment
by students. (7)
The case is revealing on many counts. That school offi-

cials did nothing about criminal behavior is sobering. That a
child as young as LaShonda would have to endure such tor-
ment indicates that the oversexualization of children in soci-
ety, combined with a lack of moral training, creates awful

mischief. Finally, that the federal government would have to
step in to bring a stop to crude actions, which in another era
would have gotten a student promptly expelled, seems dras-
tic. If school officials can't discipline conduct gross and unbe-
coming, then it is unrealistic to assume children will control
their impulses to misbehave.
Consequently, the notion that attending school teach-

es a young person stellar socialization skills is a debatable
proposition. Schools enjoy a notorious reputation as non-
democratic communities where a pecking order of cliques
always emerges and bullies dominate the weak. And it is
hardly a modern problem. Consider a scene from school life
in the late 1800s in a quaint, one-room schoolhouse as depict-
ed in Farmer Boy, the story by Laura Ingalls Wilder about her
husband's (Almanzo Wilder) childhood in upstate New
York. Laura writes, "These big boys were sixteen or seven-
teen years old and they came to school only in the middle of
the winter term. They came to thrash the teacher and break
up the school." She goes on to say that the teacher took care
of the bullies by thrashing them with a 15-foot long black-
snake ox-whip given to the teacher by Almanzo's father. (8)
Parents have long complained about the unacceptable

clothing, manners, friends, and entertainment that their chil-
dren often copy from school-aged peers. Besides that is the
narrowness of spending time with throngs of people one's
own age, year after year. Raymond Moore, a founding father
of the homeschooling movement, makes the point:
The average owner of a fine dog is more careful

in obedience training than most parents are of
their young children. The owner would laugh
you to scorn or answer angrily if you suggested
that he send his young dog down to the kennel
or pound daily in a yellow group cage to receive

some socializing by his peers. He knows that a
dog's manners and normal restraint go out the
window the moment he moves in with the pack.
Yet that is precisely the exercise most American
early schoolers go through each school morning
beginning in the school bus. (9)
Critics who leap on the socialization bandwagon have

forgotten their own nation's colorful past as one which lauds
the principled individualist - the Daniel Boones, the Davy
Crocketts, the Nathan Hales, and the Harriet Tubmans. These
were individuals who went against the grain and whose
heroic tales have inspired legions of Americans. Many chil-
dren delight in reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. It is a
wonderful story of how American families, often living in the
wilderness as jack-of-all-trade trailblazers, tamed the land.
They also had a quality of life which seems far more interest-
ing than our own homogenized, one-size-fits-all, we-are-the-
world, mass media culture.
If anything, homeschoolers should be lauded for

offering a less-jaded perspective on society because of their
experiences. As Joshua Harris, a twenty-something ex-home-
schooler, who once edited a magazine for homeschooled
teens, points out, "Homeschoolers of my generation have a
unique perspective, in general, just because they have not
seen life in the same perspective that everyone else has. So,
we have a real opportunity to inject fresh ideas, whether
about relationships or education, into the mainstream." (10)
Defining socialization is an arbitrary exercise. If by

'socialization,' one means the ability to control obnoxious
behavior, knowing how to carry on a conversation, being
responsible enough to hold a job or support a family, con-
tributing to the community, and so forth, then there is no evi-
dence that homeschooling parents have failed their children.

To that end, two ground-breaking research studies debunk
the myth that homeschoolers grow up to be social misfits.
In 1992, Larry Shyers, then a doctoral student at the

University of Florida, wrote a dissertation in which he suc-
cessfully challenged the notion that youngsters taught at
home "lag" in social development. In his study, 8-to-10-year-
old children were videotaped at play. Their behavior was
observed by trained counselors who did not know which
children went to regular schools and which were home-
schooled.
The study found no real difference between the two

groups of children in self-concept or assertiveness, which
was measured by social development tests. But the video-
tapes did reveal that youngsters who were taught at home by
their parents had consistently fewer behavior problems.
The results of this study draw into question the

conclusion made by many educators that tradi-
tionally educated children are more socially well
adjusted than are those who are home schooled.
Although the traditionally educated children
participating in this study achieved high mean
self-concept and acceptable assertiveness scores,
their mean problem behavior scores were well
above the normal range of 0 to 6 suggested by
the authors of the DOF [Direct Observation
Form], indicating a lack of appropriate social
behaviors. This finding supports many parents',
educators' and researchers' suggestions that tra-
ditionally schooled children may not be socially
well adjusted. (11)
In contrast, the home schooled children in this
study received mean problem behavior scores
well within the normal range on the DOF. This
finding supports the belief held by home school
proponents that home schooled children are

socially well adjusted. If children have fewer
problem behaviors due to imitating adult behav-
iors, as suggested by this study, less emphasis
may need to be placed on social interactions
between children. (12)
In other words, homeschooled students appeared to

be better behaved and have higher self-esteem than their
public school counterparts - a character strength which has
been cultivated because of the amount of time they spend in
the company of mature adults, as opposed to immature
peers.
The second piece of research was compiled by J. Gary

Knowles and James A. Muchmore of the University of
Michigan. In a study entitled "Yep! We're Grown-up, Home-
schooled Kids - and We're Doing Just Fine, Thank You!"
these researchers tracked 46 adults who agreed to be ques-
tioned for life history interviews and who had been home
educated as children. From this pool, ten individuals were
selected for the interviews with care given to forming a
diverse group with regard to "age, sex, family background,
formal school attendance, present and past residential loca-
tions, and vocation." (13) Three of Knowles and Muchmore's
conclusions are revealing. First, "The characteristics of the
home-educated adults in this study suggest that they grew
up with specific advantages that contributed to their inde-
pendent views of society and their roles in it." Second, "Even
in a time of growing unemployment, these people were gain-
fully employed and productive members of their communi-
ties." Third, "The adults reflected positively on their home
education and their present occupations. Spirituality and a
sense of moral purpose were values shared by many of the
adults." (14)
Homeschoolers, according to Knowles and

Muchmore's findings, appear to grow up to be content, hard-
working adults with a strong sense of right and wrong.
Hardly the social zeroes many critics claim they become.
It might be useful to also include the observations of

A. Bruce Arai, of Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada.
Professor Arai wrote a peer-reviewed scholarly analysis
titled "Homeschooling and the Redefinition of Citizenship."
In his paper he argues that compulsory schooling cannot be
the primary agent for citizenship education. Arai finds tha:
homeschooled kids are good citizens by noting the high par-
ticipation levels of homeschoolers in volunteer work and in
activities outside the home. Arai writes, "This suggests that
homeschooled kids and their parents are keen to integrate
into the wider society rather than pulling back from it, as is
commonly presumed." (15)
Homeschooling pioneers, like Barnaby Marsh and

Alexandra Swann, have been the backbone of the movement.
But those who write about more mainstream homeschoolers
find that as a group they are very socially inclined. After con-
ducting numerous interviews with homeschoolers of all
stripes, I have found, like Professor Arai, that they are busy
people - joining sports teams, attending scout meetings,
enrolling in college courses, volunteering for internships,
working part-time jobs, running youth groups, pursuing
political activism, managing small businesses, and attending
houses of worship. One phenomenon of the modern home-
school movement, which has proven to be a solution to the
socialization dilemma, is the emergence of a plethora of
homeschool support groups. Every major city and most
other areas, in all 50 states, have at least one support group
where parents can combine their efforts and provide educa-
tional and social opportunities for their children.
Richard G. Medlin, writing in the Home School

Researcher, detailed the results of a survey of 1,500 home-
schoolers. Almost all agreed that they wanted access to a
local homeschool support group, and 85% of the families
surveyed belonged to such a group or intended to join one.
(16)
Homeschool support groups range from the simple to

the complex. For example, the Richmond Regional Home
Educators of Richmond, Virginia has volunteers who organ-
ize a staggering number of activities, including a band, gym-
nastics and karate classes, a yearbook, and a graduation cer-
emony for high school seniors. (17) In Homer, Alaska, Carol
Simpson discusses the field trips the homeschoolers in her
support group might go on - dog sled rides or an overnight
trip to the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward, where visitors
can sleep among the seals and sea lions. (18) In the
Oklahoma City area, OCHEC magazine, a publication for
area home educators, lists twenty-eight such groups. (19)
Many of these groups' leaders perform a yeoman's work,
from offering information about state homeschooling laws to
organizing conferences.
National groups have also formed for persons of var-

ious religious beliefs. Jews, Muslims, Eastern Orthodox,
Catholics, Mormons, and Unitarians have groups and web
sites, and often communicate with fellow homeschoolers via
newsletters. Pursuing their respective faiths and their educa-
tional choices often becomes a collective exercise. The 3rd
Islamic Education and Muslim Homeschooling Convention,
for instance, was held in New England in the summer of
2000. Writing in The Catholic World Report, John Mallon
describes a Catholic support group in Steubenville, Ohio,
comprised of 53 families. According to Mallon, "The parents
support one another spiritually by praying with and for each
other, and on the first Saturday of the month the parents and
children attend Mass as a group." (20) Lisa Hodge Kander
and Joan Horowitz distribute a newsletter, Jewish Home
Educator's Network. The newsletter offers a schedule of Torah
readings and activity ideas for the Jewish holidays. (21)
Homeschoolers with learning disabilities, Down

Syndrome, or cerebral palsy also have large support net-
works. Tom and Sherry Bushnell direct one such organiza-
tion, National Challenged Homeschoolers Associated
Network, which has over 12,000 families on the group's mail-
ing list. (22) In a Washington Post column, Judy Mann
described what she dubbed homeschool's "progressive
wing." One group, the Montgomery Home Learning
Network of Maryland, is made up of some 150 secular home-
schoolers. (23) Another association is geared toward Native
American homeschoolers who want another option besides
government reservation schools. (24) The Home Education
Radio Network, a call-in talk show hosted by Vicky Brady, a
homeschooling mother, offers information via the air waves.
(25) From the evidence, it appears that homeschoolers eager-
ly network with others.
Like everything else they have done, homeschoolers

are redefining the debate about socialization. They question
whether school-based socialization is preferable to family-
based socialization, whether the teacher-supervised brand is
preferable to the parent-supervised version.
Since my husband and I have opted for the parent-

supervised approach, we have played the key role in organ-
izing our sons' social endeavors, which have been many and
eclectic. We have tried to offset their peer-oriented activities
with significant interaction with adults. Not encouraging
mindless, waste-of-time recreation, we have aimed to pro-
vide creative, fun learning experiences, like raising our
pygmy goat, Mr. Tumnus. Living in a university town helped

us introduce our children to people from all over the world,
like the Chinese family which regularly fed us dumplings
while debating the merits of socialism. And we have taken
advantage of the availability of playmates and activities
within the homeschooling community.
Homeschooling parents are at liberty to decide what

types of socialization opportunities are best for their chil-
dren, and how much they want to facilitate. They choose to
make the decisions of where, when, and with whom. To
them, the question isn't whether to socialize or not, it's
whose socialization plan to implement. They have opted for
their own, and the research results are on their side.
What About Academics? / 59
Chapter 5
What About Academics?
Besides growing up to be extremely productive mem-

bers of society, it's hard to ignore that Barnaby Marsh and
Alexandra Swann were both excellent students. The data sur-
rounding homeschoolers who elect to take standardized tests
indicates that this is the norm, not the exception to the rule.
Patricia Lines, researcher with the federal Department

of Education, concludes that "virtually all the available data
show that the group of homeschooled children who are test-
ed resembles that of children in private schools." (1) Brian
Ray of the National Home Education Research Institute,
notes that, regardless of income, race, gender, or parents'
level of education, homeschooled children consistently score
between the 82nd and 92nd percentiles on achievement tests.
(2) The data from the Washington Homeschool Research
Project, which has analyzed the SAT scores of homeschooled
children in Washington state since 1985, demonstrated that
the scores of those children were above average. Jon Wartes,
writing on behalf of the project: "Fears that homeschooled
children in Washington are at an academic disadvantage are
not confirmed." (3)
In 1999, the Home School Legal Defense Association

(HSLDA) published what some have deemed the most com-
prehensive study to date of the scholastic achievements of
homeschoolers. Lawrence Rudner, a statistician at the
University of Maryland, analyzed the standardized test
scores of more than 20,000 homeschooled students across the
country. Students in kindergarten through 8th grade took the
Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS), and students in grades 9
through 12 took the Test of Achievement and Proficiency
(TAP). The results of the Rudner study reveal that a large

majority of homeschooled students score well above the
national average. Most of the scores were in the 75th to 85th
percentile, which means that these homeschoolers scored
higher than 75% to 85% of their conventionally-schooled
peers. (4)
"Young home school students test one grade level

ahead of their counterparts in public and private schools. As
they progress, the study shows that home schoolers pull fur-
ther away from the pack, typically testing four grade levels
above the national average by eighth grade," says Michael P.
Farris, president of HSLDA, who commissioned the Rudner
study. (5)
While Rudner himself agrees that there are demo-

graphic limitations to the study, in that the families who par-
ticipated are overwhelmingly white and Christian, his
research affirmatively answers the question: Does home-
schooling tend to work for those who choose to make such a
commitment?
Other significant pieces of evidence about the educa-

tional progress of homeschooled children are plentiful and
colorful. The National Merit Scholarship Corporation select-
ed more than 70 homeschooled high schoolers as semifinal-
ists in its 1998 competition. There were 137 homeschooled
semifinalists chosen in 1999, and 150 in 2000. (6)
Homeschooler Charles Foster of Norman, Oklahoma, one
National Merit Scholar, was courted by several Ivy League
institutions. He opted for Rose State College in Midwest City
and became the state's first homeschooled student to receive
a full athletic scholarship to an Oklahoma college. (7) As
another indication of high achievement, Susan Richman, of
the Pennsylvania Homeschoolers Accreditation Agency,
reports that a hundred homeschoolers participated in the

agency's online Advanced Placement courses in 1998. (8)
The 1997 Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee was

won by Rebecca Sealfon, a thirteen year old from Brooklyn,
New York, who became the first homeschooled student to do
so. Rebecca explained that her secret for success was study-
ing word lists for up to three hours a day. This discipline
enabled her to easily spell the winning word - euonym - cor-
rectly. (9) The 1999 National Geography Bee was won by
David Beihl, 13, of Saluda, South Carolina. "I've had lots of
time to study," said David, who has been taught at home
since kindergarten. He correctly gave the winning response,
"La Nina," the Spanish nickname for the weather condition
that produces unusually cold ocean temperatures. (10) The
2000 National Spelling Bee was won by George Thampy, a
12-year-old homeschooler from Maryland Heights, Missouri,
who also finished second in the National Geography Bee.
Indeed, the top three finishers at the 2000 spelling bee were
homeschoolers, as were four of the 10 finalists in the geogra-
phy bee. (11)
Another important component to the academic suc-

cess of homeschoolers is the sizeable number of students that
have been admitted into U.S. colleges and universities. The
Chronicle of Higher Education reported a boom in home-
schooled students winning admission to selective colleges.
For example, in 1995, Houghton College in upstate New York
had 11 homeschoolers in its freshman class of 340. (12) Dr.
Brian Ray's 1997 book, Strengths of Their Own - Home Schoolers
Across America, surveyed the post-graduation endeavors of
232 high school homeschoolers. Writes Ray, "Immediately
after high school graduation from home education, 25.4%
went to a four-year college on a full-time basis, 12.1% went
Part-time, and 8.2% went to community college." (13)
Christian Liberty Academy, based in Arlington

Heights, Illinois, is a satellite school program which was
begun by Dr. Paul D. Lindstrom. Since 1967, the school's cor-
respondence curriculum has helped thousands of home-
schooling families. Dozens of colleges, including Yale
University, the U.S. Air Force Academy, and the Citadel,
have accepted graduates of this program. (14)
Taking college or professional courses while still of

high school age seems to be a natural extension of the edu-
cation of many homeschoolers. For instance, teenagers who
participate in the Pathfinder Learning Center, a drop-in cen-
ter for homeschoolers in Amherst, Massachusetts, regularly
take classes at Greenfield Community College as part of their
curriculum. (15) Aaron Davidson, who eventually graduated
from Taylor University (Upland, Indiana), preceded his uni-
versity enrollment with classes at the College of Siskiyous in
California and the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music. (16) A
watershed moment from the early days of homeschooling
was when Harvard University admitted the homeschooled
son of Californians David and Micki Colfax. Later, two other
Colfax boys were also admitted to Harvard. (17)
Now homeschoolers are starting their own college.

Michael P. Farris, president of HSLDA, is the mastermind
behind Patrick Henry College, a two-year college set in rural
Virginia. It will cater largely to students who have been
homeschooled and will open in the fall of 2000. (18)
It is not difficult to understand how homeschooled

students can do well academically. Many of them receive
their instruction in a one-on-one setting, especially at an
early age. Their teachers/parents have a clear idea where
their interests lie and the style of learning most suited to
them. Also, parents have a wide variety of resources at their
disposal. If one textbook does not fit, it can be discarded and

another obtained.
Homeschoolers are free to progress more rapidly at

home, if they have special aptitudes in particular subject
areas, than if they are required to conform to the learning
paces of others, say, in a classroom setting. Some parents
even venture outside the home to contract the services of
tutors who have expertise in subject matters in which the
parents may be weak, such as music, foreign languages, or
advanced math. In many areas of the country, where home-
school cooperatives exist, parents can share their expertise
and offer classes for one another's children on a part-time
basis.
It is this freedom that parents have to direct their chil-

dren's progress through various subjects that helps to make
their home education successful and manageable. Most par-
ents can discern when their children have mastered the mate-
rial and are ready to move on.
In my little homeschool, I have tried to make the

learning as natural and spontaneous as possible.
Consequently, our family has held formal instruction to a
minimum and integrated book-based learning into the fiber
of family life. A typical day usually includes two hours of sit-
down-at-the-desk academics. And that happens only after
the boys have been alert for a good part of the morning. This
has been our one-on-one time, when pencil and paper are
necessary, and the desk-setting is most appropriate for the
work we are doing.
Besides this formal hour or two, the day is laced with

question and answer sessions (say, in the car), educational
video viewing, quiet reading, and games (like Scrabble).
Learning is an all day, every day, all year experience for us.
Occasionally, our sons have studied with other children and
under other adults.
Although we in our family have selected a very eclec-

tic approach to homeschooling (i.e. not adhering to one par-
ticular curriculum, teaching style, or evaluation criterion),
many parents opt for someone else's marketed formula for
homeschooling. Perhaps a friend recommends a set of text-
books; maybe a magazine advertisement catches a parent's
eye; or it might be that a group of parents review several cur-
ricula and choose one for their group of children (as in a
learning cooperative). Whatever the means, whatever the
tools - with committed, diligent parents, homeschooled stu-
dents can come out on top.
Many programs are available to parents. Sometimes

one curriculum can meet a family's needs; other times the
'teachers' will need to mix and match to best serve their chil-
dren. Here are four examples that exist in the marketplace of
homeschooling ideas. These are merely the tip of the prover-
bial educational iceberg.
Escondido Tutorial Service
For parents who desire a classical education for their

children, Fritz Hinrichs founded the Escondido Tutorial
Service (ETS). Using online-video conferencing software,
tutors work directly with students interested in studying the
classics.
What is a classical education?
The core of Classical Education is the trivium,

which ... emphasizes concrete thinking and
memorization ... in grade school; analytical
thinking and understanding ... in middle school,
and abstract thinking and articulation ... in high
school. (19)
The unique subjects of grammar, logic, and rhetoric

supplement a study of "the history, art, and culture of
Western Civilization, including its languages (Latin and
Greek), its philosophy and literature,... and the development
of a Biblical worldview." (20)
The primary goal of classical education is "to give

children the tools to think for themselves and to be inde-
pendent, lifelong learners. Children taught by this method
routinely exhibit academic proficiency." (21)
So, parents who have not had a classical education

themselves can provide one for their children via the
Internet. Geometry, the Great Books (e.g. Homer's Iliad and
Plato's Republic), apologetics, Shakespeare's plays, New
Testament survey ... it's all available. Click on, and begin to
learn.
The Robinson Self-Teaching Curriculum
One package, one price ($195), one stop shopping for

a homeschooling curriculum. This 12-year pre-packaged
education plan was developed by Dr. Arthur Robinson, wid-
ower and homeschooling father of six children. "The cur-
riculum offers self-taught preparation of children for the
modern world. This includes education in math, physical sci-
ences, history, literature, economics, and general studies."

(22)
Dr. Robinson and his children live out their home-

schooling on a family farm, where the kids study and work,
mostly independently. Dr. Robinson claims to spend "less
than 15 minutes per day (on average) engaged in working as
the children's teacher. They are teaching themselves." (23)
Even at that, all of them are excelling academically. Zachary,
the oldest child, scored a combined 1480 on the Preliminary
Scholastic Aptitude Test (PSAT) on his first try.
According to Dr. Robinson, a parent's function is to

"provide excellent books, a good study environment, and a
daily schedule conducive to good study habits - and then get
out of the way!" And because children learn primarily by
example, parents should model the behaviors, habits, and
thinking they want their children to exhibit. He says, "If your
children learn to self-learn, they will continue to do so
throughout their lives and, in so doing, will be able to
improve their own lives and the lives of those around them."
(24)
The curriculum includes 12 years of education, with

22 CD-ROMs, printable books, a 120,000 page library
resource, exams, math flash cards, and much more. And no
matter how many children are in the homeschool, only one
curriculum is necessary.
Calvert School
At Calvert, our proven approach to teaching is

our hallmark: Train a child early and well, teach
the basics when it fits the child's development
(at a time in their lives when they are eager to be
trained), and then add content and analysis to
the highest standards. (25)
Ranging from pre-kindergarten through 8th grade,

each year of the Calvert curriculum contains textbooks,
workbooks, and lesson manuals. Both standard and enrich-
ment courses are offered. Education Counselors are also
available by phone or e-mail.
Calvert's goal is to make homeschooling easier for

parents and children. So far, more than 400,000 students have
participated in the Calvert program, which is approved by
the Maryland State Department of Education.
An added benefit of the Calvert School is its Advisory

Teaching Service (ATS). For a 'reasonable fee,' students can
have their unit tests evaluated by an advisory teacher who
grades the work and issues a report containing helpful sug-
gestions and comments, either through regular mail or
online. Students enrolled in ATS can earn completion certifi-
cates and have transcripts of grades furnished to other
schools. (26)
A Beka Video School
In the 1998-99 school year, more than 23,000 students,

grades kindergarten through 12th, were enrolled in the A
Beka Video Home School and A Beka Correspondence
School. (27) Actual classes at Pensacola (Florida) Christian
Academy, taught by the school's master teachers, are video-

taped and made available to homeschoolers. Although
instruction is initially delivered in a traditional, Christian-
oriented classroom setting, homeschooled students can learn
in the comfort and quiet of their own homes. Parents facili-
tate, schedule, and oversee these lessons, and can supple-
ment them if they choose.
Included with the teaching videos are the Teacher Kit

and the Student Kit, containing workbooks, solution keys,
test booklets, test keys, and various teacher (parent) guides.
A typical year's curriculum looks like this: 6th grade

... reading (character-building, patriotic stories), spelling and
vocabulary (35 words and definitions per week), English
grammar and usage, creative writing, Geography: History of
the Western Hemisphere, science (creation, chemistry,
physics), arithmetic, Bible stories, poetry and art.
* * * * * *
Quite a broad array of homeschooling learning aids

exist. Some are geared toward parents who want to teach;
others are especially for those parents who want only to facil-
itate their children's learning. While one curriculum may be
appropriate one year, an entirely different approach may be
best in a subsequent year. Or, as is sometimes the case, one
child may excel using one method and a sibling benefit more
from another. Only those closest to the children, the parents,
will know what works best at any given stage of develop-
ment, in regard to both the materials presented and the
teaching method employed.
One thing has become certain: Just about any curricu-

lum that covers all the basics can be used by parents to pre-
pare their children for successful test-taking. Because most

standardized tests focus on the topics covered in a tradition-
al, liberal arts academic program, children who study these
topics from an early age can score well, usually better than
most public school students, who more and more have less
and less taught to them about the basics.
And indications are that homeschoolers will continue

to fare well when measured against their institutionally-edu-
cated counterparts. If standardized test scores can be used as
a gauge of learning, home education appears to be very effec-
tive. A growing number of support groups and a broad selec-
tion of curricula will make jumping on the home education
bandwagon increasingly doable for more families. And as a
growing number of homeschoolers move up through the
ranks and go on to college, the movement's success stories
will draw others in.
The Marketing of a Movement / 71
Chapter 6
The Marketing of a Movement
In Texas, where the natives are supposed to like every-

thing big - from big hair to big steaks - even the homeschool-
ing conferences are good-sized affairs. When the North Texas
Home Educators' Network held their annual conference at
the Piano Centre in the summer of 1999, over a thousand par-
ticipants came, saw, and conquered the fundamentals of
home education.
Homeschooling conferences are well-attended by par-

ent educators because they serve several purposes. Parents
get the opportunity to listen to nationally-respected speak-
ers; they can browse long lines of curriculum tables; they can
receive legal information about the laws in their particular
state; and they have fun hobnobbing with like-minded mav-
ericks. Year-round, homeschooling organizations host large
state-wide conferences which feature homeschool advocates
(like Christopher Klicka, Mary Pride, Raymond Moore,
Patrick Farenga, or Linda Dobson), as well as scores of work-
shops. A 1993 conference in Massachusetts keynoted Martin
Luther King III.
At the two-day conference in Piano, a suburb of

Dallas, an airy exhibit hall of vendors' tables included repre-
sentatives from Texas Tech's Extended Learning Program,
the National Writing Institute, Geography Matters, and Rod
and Staff Publishers, a publishing company run by
Mennonites. There was also science equipment, such as
microscopes and plastic cages containing tarantulas. For the
technologically -minded there was plenty of computer soft-
ware, teaching videos, and online class programs.
Complimentary copies of glossy homeschooling publica-
tions, like The Teaching Home and the Texas Home School
Review, were distributed to conference participants.
Thirty-two workshops were offered. Parents could

unravel "The truth about dinosaurs" or sigh with relief after
attending "No more fear in fractions!" One speaker dealt
with the topic of the Internet, and another offered informa-
tion for teaching driver's education. As part of the program,
five homeschooled teenagers comprised a panel who fielded
questions from the audience about their lives. Lawrence
Burges, 16, an African-American lad from Baton Rouge,
Louisiana shared how his homeschooled brother, Eric, was
the evidence manager for politician Woody Jenkins. (Jenkins,
a Republican, charged Mary Landrieu, a Democrat, with
voter fraud when the two vied for a U.S. Senate seat in 1996.)
This being Texas, a state with a booming Hispanic

population, a seminar in Spanish entitled, "LA Mejor Razon:
For que Educar en Nuestro Hogar" ("The Best Reason: Why
Educate in Your Home") was offered. The speaker was a
Mexican-American homeschooling father of three named
Jorge Gomez. Gomez' goal is an ambitious one. He wants to
inform Mexican immigrants that their adopted country has
laws which give parents the freedom to homeschool. He is
enthusiastic about homeschooling, because he observes that
assimilating into public schools is negatively impacting
Mexican youth. Gomez finds that young Mexicans are
adopting more liberal values than the conservative ones his-
torically embraced by Hispanics. (1)
At this conference one of the "big-gun" speakers was

Tim Lambert, president of the Texas Home School Coalition
and father of four. Lambert gave an introductory presenta-
tion about homeschooling covering legal and socialization
issues. There is still much misinformation about home-
schooling, and new generations of interested parents keep

coming along, thus 'taking that first step' seminars are
always in demand.
In the comfortable atmosphere of Piano, the novice

and the veteran gained valuable knowledge which helped
many to achieve their academic goals, as is the experience of
most participants at homeschooling conferences.
That these conferences attract hundreds, even thou-

sands, of parents seems to demonstrate how eager families
are to solicit advice to make their homeschools both manage-
able and enjoyable. Indeed, homeschooling is a philosophy
that radically affects the convenience-driven American
lifestyle. It requires that parents plan the best way to teach,
semester after semester, a variety of subjects. Conferences
motivate parents to talk to numerous professionals to deter-
mine the best way to teach their children. Whatever the chal-
lenge a particular family faces, homeschooling is usually
done in addition to managing a household and carrying out
more traditional parenting duties. Reinventing oneself as a
homeschooler is an ambitious goal, and gleaning knowledge
from those who have gone before is very beneficial.
Janice Quitmeyer, public relations coordinator for the

Christian Home Educators of Colorado, agrees that "home
schooling is a way of life. It's a huge commitment. Your rea-
sons for homeschooling have to go further than safety." (2)
She might add that the reasons also go beyond mere dis-
couragement with a lax superintendent, an inappropriate sex
education class, a police officer who roams the school halls
prowling for miscreants, or students smoking in the bath-
rooms. Even very good reasons to homeschool a child can
dissolve on that fall day when a parent, who hasn't cracked
open a high school text in years, is faced with the task of
teaching an energetic 15-year-old how to balance chemical

equations or conjugate verbs in Latin.
Increasingly, homeschoolers, in addition to confer-

ence-shopping, have many affordable resources at their dis-
posal. They can participate in homeschooling cooperatives,
where volunteer parents pool their talents to teach each
other's children. They can frequent businesses, like gymnas-
tic studios or health clubs, which are courting homeschoolers
by offering classes during school hours. Thanks to the mar-
ket, homeschoolers need never feel alone in their endeavors.
Here are other ways the free market is working to

serve home educators:
*Books. Many families begin their entry into home-

schooling by reading a book. Sounds simple? Indeed.
Popular homeschooling books are plentiful and authored by
folks with interesting bona fides: How to Tutor by Samuel L.
Blumenfeld, a bachelor; The Original Homeschooling Series by
Charlotte Mason, a turn-of-the-century British educator; You
Can Teach Your Child Successfully by Ruth Beechik, a grand-
mother of four with an Ed.D. in curriculum and instruction;
Homeschooling for Excellence by David and Micki Colfax, the
California homesteaders who sent several homeschooled
sons to Harvard; and The Big Book of Home Learning by Mary
Pride, a homeschooling mother of nine. Home Education
Press, operated by a second-generation homeschooling fam-
ily - Mark and Helen Hegener - publishes philosophical and
practical books about homeschooling, including the critically
acclaimed, The Art of Education, by Linda Dobson. A shrewd
consumer need only log on to any online bookseller and
choose from scores of titles available about homeschooling.
*Magazines. There are several respected homeschool-

ing publications which have circulations of 15,000 to 25,000.
Homeschooling author Mary Pride publishes Practical
Homeschooling, a colorful magazine which, among other
items, contains product reviews and first-person vignettes
from homeschoolers. The magazine is a family venture. Ted
Pride, 19, Mary's eldest child, manages the web site for the
publication. (3) Homeschooling Today, one of the newer maga-
zines, is published by a former vice-president of the
Conservative Book Club, Maureen McCaffrey. It is a glossy
publication and features a popular section called
"Understanding the Arts," which displays color reproduc-
tions of art masters. The Teaching Home, begun in 1980 and a
staple among Christian homeschoolers, contains an insert
which alerts families to news about homeschooling in their
particular state. Growing Without Schooling looks like a
lengthy newsletter and is popular with unschoolers, those
who prefer to learn through a wide variety of life experi-
ences. The online magazine HomeSchool Dad is filling a spe-
cialized niche for busy fathers who desire information about
educational activities that can be accomplished without too
much preparation. The aforementioned Hegeners also dis-
tribute Home Education Magazine, which features articles that
are hardly run-of-the-mill, like "Homeschooling in the
Fifties," "The Chronically Ill or Disabled Parent," "Conflict
Amongst Homeschoolers," and "Homeschooling in Tunisia."
*Curricula. An amazing number of suppliers offer

textbooks, CD-ROM software, science kits, and educational
games. The Education Industry Report notes that "Over 50 cor-
respondence schools and curriculum providers compete in
this market ..." (4) Saxon Publishers, founded by a retired
U.S. Air Force test pilot named John Saxon, offers math and
phonics for preschool through grade 12. Frank Wang, the
President of Saxon Publishers, says that homeschoolers cur-
rently account for 10 to 15 % of total sales, which translates

into 19,150 homeschool customers. (5) A Beka textbook pub-
lishers, which offers materials for preschool through grade
12, had more than 250,000 homeschoolers purchase their
books last year. Affiliated with the Christian fundamentalist
school of the same name, Bob Jones University Press pro-
vides art, drama, math, literature, church history, and science
textbooks for homeschoolers.
Another established religious company which offers a

cornucopia of materials to homeschoolers is Christian Book
Distributors. Their catalog, Homelearning and Homeschooling
Resources, offers such items as art supplies, family games,
and popular books, such as The Home School Organizer, by
Gregg Harris. The Drinking Gourd Book Company carries an
eclectic selection of multicultural materials. Parents can order
books about Native Americans, African-American short sto-
ries, Chicano history, or accounts of the Holocaust. Jane
Williams, publisher of the Home School Market Guide, says her
publication recognizes the existence of 165 such catalogs. (6)
*Correspondence Programs. Many homeschooling

families rely on correspondence school programs, rather than
crafting their own game plan, for books, tests, teacher sup-
port, student records, and supplies. The Calvert School home
instruction program of Baltimore, established in 1906, offers
courses for kindergarten through grade 8 and is approved by
the Maryland State Department of Education. Beverly
Vickers of Calvert says that the program currently has over
17,000 students worldwide. (7) A Beka video and correspon-
dence school had more than 24,000 homeschooled children
enrolled in these programs in 1999. Clonlara School, head-
quartered in Michigan, offers a Home Based Education
Program, which was begun in 1979 and has had 4200 gradu-
ates. Clonlara School Compuhigh, another program for
homeschoolers, offers high school over the Internet. Clonlara

founder, Dr. Pat Montgomery, believes that until age twelve,
a child should not be subjected to formal schooling, bells, or
tests. (8)
*Newspapers. Homeschooling newspapers are also

available. The Link, which has a circulation of 50,000, is pub-
lished by Mary and Michael Leppert of California. (The issue
I perused was nearly fifty pages long!) It has many ads for an
interesting assortment of products and services which range
from inviting homeschoolers on board a marine floating lab
to playing ElementO, a board game about chemistry. The
Moore Report International, a newspaper distributed by home-
school heavyweights and Washington state residents
Raymond and Dorothy Moore, has 2000 subscribers. It offers
the latest research from the Moore Foundation, as well as tes-
timonials and advice on everything from how homeschool-
ing families can subsist on one income to why more boys
than girls are enrolled in special education programs.
*Professional Educators. There are non-homeschool-

ers who are eager to pitch their educational wares to home-
schoolers. The University of Missouri Center for
Independent Study, established in 1911, is one of the largest
independent study programs in the nation. The center offers
college and high-school level courses, but has developed an
elementary school program, catering exclusively to home-
schoolers. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics,
a professional association, distributes a brochure aimed at
inviting home educators to join their ranks. The Teaching
Company Superstar Series offers high school courses, such as
chemistry, geometry, and world history, to homeschooled
high schoolers via videotapes of the college teachers they
consider to be the best in the United States. As the catalog
notes about the courses: "For students taught at home, the
teachers on these tapes may be an answered prayer." (9)

Oxford Tutorials offers high school homeschoolers another
choice - the opportunity to study the Classics online.
*Think tanks. Advocates, researchers, policy makers,

and journalists can bone up on state-of-the-art research
through the National Home Education Research Institute
based in Salem, Oregon and headed by Dr. Brian Ray. The
institute publishes a quarterly journal, The Home School
Researcher, which features the work of respected academics.
This "home school think tank" has thrust Dr. Ray into the
national spotlight. He is often called upon as an expert wit-
ness for courtroom and legislative testimony and is frequent-
ly interviewed by national and international media outlets.
Established multi-issue think tanks, such as the Wisconsin
Policy Research Institute and the Cato Institute of
Washington, D.C., have published widely-distributed mono-
graphs on homeschooling.
*Web sites. Families may want to hold membership in

a homeschooling organization, like the National Homeschool
Association. Or, they may desire to purchase used textbooks
or familiarize themselves with the Federation of New
Zealand Homeschoolers. Perhaps they want support from
parents who are homeschooling twins. Assuredly a web site
exists to fit the interest. Sites like www.homeschoolzone.com
and www.unschooling.org offer a bonanza of information.
Chat rooms and bulletin boards are also utilized by home-
schoolers as a way of exchanging homeschooling tips or in
order to post legislative alerts. The Internet has played an
invaluable role in helping homeschoolers in remote areas feel
connected to the outside world. Home Education Magazine
offers a section for those requesting cyber pen pals. No
doubt, the personal computer and the Internet will help facil-
itate navigation through the 21st Century for homeschoolers.
Borrowing a page from homeschoolers, some education

reformers are proclaiming that cyber schools are the schools
of the future.
*Paraphernalia. Families who want to announce to

the world that they are homeschoolers can buy bumper stick-
ers, tote bags, baseball caps, or t-shirts from independent
suppliers. Popular messages include: "We learn best in the
nest," "Homeschoolers have class," and "My child is an hon-
ored student at home." These goodies can be ordered online
or purchased at conferences.
This is hardly an exhaustive list of the information

and resources available to homeschoolers. But it suggests
that the world of homeschooling is rapidly growing broader
and deeper. Marketers of the movement see the vast pool of
home educators as a source of income, and they use their
products to raise revenue and awareness. Very often, the
suppliers are homeschoolers themselves and merely want to
share methods and materials which have worked for them.
An increase in the number of products and services

available to the homeschooling community has allowed
more parents to take the initial steps toward teaching at
home and has made their task simpler and more successful.
As more parents discover innovative tools and gain experi-
ence in their home schools, the marketing of the movement
should broaden even more.
The Print Media and Homeschooling / 81
Chapter 7
The Print Media and Homeschooling
The names "Zac" and "Tay" are painted on many

young faces. "I love Ike" posters and glow-in-the-dark neck-
laces abound. Roses are thrown on the stage. And there is no
shortage of shrieking 8, 9, and 10-year-old girls.
Welcome to a Hanson concert in Hartford, Connecticut.
The Hansons are a pop music sensation - perhaps the

hottest homeschooling music group in the country, if not the
world. They figured in an October 5th, 1998 Newsweek cover
story on homeschooling. The group consists of three teenage
brothers - Isaac, Taylor, and Zachary Hanson - who hail from
Tulsa, Oklahoma. They wear their signature blond hair long.
The Hansons became household words when their catchy
single "MMMBop" became a recording hit. To date, the close-
ly-chaperoned teen idols have garnered several Grammy
nominations and a place in the 1999 Guinness Book of Records
as the "youngest group to earn a platinum single in the
United Kingdom." They also earned a spot on the National
League of Junior Cotillions' "Best Mannered People" poll. (1)
The fact that the photogenic Hansons are home-

schooled has been the subject of many entertainment indus-
try articles, from US to USA Weekend. This is a long cry from
the days when a black-and-white photo of Idaho home-
schooler Solomon Shippy, being carried away from home by
grim-faced sheriff's deputies, graced the cover of Samuel L.
Blumenfeld's book, Is Public Education Necessary?
Much has changed in the last five to ten years in the

way the media reports the news about homeschooling. In
fact, homeschoolers have little to fear in the way of media

scrutiny, because American public education is facing so
many negative challenges that homeschooling appears to be
just one more option for parents. Homeschooling is legal in
all fifty states, and homeschoolers have graduated from such
institutions as Harvard University and the U.S. Naval
Academy. Concurrently, public education is in such disarray
that former critics now pay attention when the subject of
homeschooling comes up. Frankly, the toughest question that
reporters pose to a home educator concerns socialization,
and most parents can hit that softball out of the ballpark. Erik
Van Guten, a graduate student who wrote a critique of
homeschooling, grudgingly admitted that the media often
spurs on the decision to homeschool. (2)
Homeschoolers, whether as individuals or as a group,

make for an intriguing human interest story to many in the
media. Eric Goldscheider, a Boston Globe correspondent, says
that homeschooling is an appealing topic to write about
because "it offers a slightly contrarian view of education, and
journalists like the contrarian point of view." Goldscheider
also admires the aspect of personal courage required for both
parent and child to undertake this adventure in alternative
education. (3)
Goldscheider's perspective, both sympathetic and

curious, is not uncommon among the media. Families who
homeschool are in demand for interviews. It is because they
swim against the mainstream, as researcher Patricia Lines
has noted, that they have received considerably more media
attention than their numbers might warrant.
Upbeat stories about homeschoolers have been fea-

tured in such media powerhouses as the Wall Street journal
and the New York Times. Here are a few ...
*From the Union News-Sunday Republican of

Massachusetts - an article about homeschool graduates who
are attending college. The story describes how Diana
Calderazzo, a native of Florida, was homeschooled on a 33-
foot-long sailboat throughout her high school years. Being
educated on the high seas didn't limit her from getting
admitted into prestigious Smith College in Northampton,
Massachusetts. Reporter Ronni Gordon writes that while
Calderazzo's homeschooling experience equipped her with
the maturity to develop top-notch independent learning
skills and excellent rapport with her professors, she still
experienced a difficult freshman year. The Smith co-ed con-
fides her struggles to the newspaper reporter: "There were
deadlines and time limits" and "the pressure of public
humiliation if I did something wrong." Diana persevered
and graduated from Smith with a major in theater. (4)
*From USA Weekend ~ a snappy article accompanied

by color pictures of Josh Harris. Harris, 23, is a homeschool
graduate and the author of a book entitled I Kissed Dating
Goodbye. The article, by Cesar G. Soriano, carries this sub-
headline: "At 17, Joshua Harris abandoned casual dating as
selfish and premature. Today, his message fuels a popular
book and sold-out seminars across the country." (5)
*From the Washington Post - an article in the arts sec-

tion entitled "Wilkinsons: A Brother, Sister & Pop Sensation."
Writer Bill Friskics-Warren describes a trio of musicians -
father, son, and daughter - who topped the charts in
Nashville with the debut single, "26 Cents." The son and
daughter, Amanda and Tyler, are both in their teens and
homeschooled by their parents. (6)
*From Truckers News - a feature article about an eight-

year-old boy named Gregory Rossiter with the headline
"Home-Schooling - On the Road." Gregory is homeschooled

in the cab of his mother's (Edie Rossiter) Peterbilt truck. In
addition to his hands-on geography lesson, Edie gives her
son boxing and Spanish lessons. Writer Donna G. Pierce
notes that Rossiter's job with Smokey Point Distributing of
Arlington, Washington has a family-friendly policy toward
homeschooling parents. As Pierce puts it, "Because it under-
stands the family is important, the company agrees to let
drivers home-school their children and take them on the
road." (7)
*From People magazine - a two-page story about Lisa

Whelchel, a homeschooling mother and the actress who
played Blair in the sitcom, The Facts of Life. The article focus-
es on the contented lifestyle Whelchel enjoys as a minister's
wife and mother of three young children whom she teaches
at home. Whelchel makes her decision to homeschool and to
give up Hollywood sound like an easy one. She says, "Kids
now come into contact with things at a much earlier age,
before they are ready to handle them. I want them to have a
fighting chance in the real world, but they need to get strong
first in who they are, the love of their parents, the love of
God." (8)
*From Newsweek - a story about Teresa Williams and

her partner, Jo Deutsch. This gay couple is homeschooling
their two young sons in Maryland for the academic freedom
it allows them. According to the article, "... home schooling
does give them more control over their kids' contacts. The
kids have lots of interaction with youngsters from straight
families in their home-schooling group." (9)
Largely because of this type of coverage, the print

media has played a major role in publicizing this countercul-
tural trend to mainstream America. Without such reporting,
the story of such a private endeavor might not be as widely

disclosed to the public. Journalists also perform a yeoman's
service when they make readers, many of whom are parents
frustrated with the educational status quo, aware that home-
schooling is legal, doable, and chosen by a wide swath of
Americans from coast to coast.
My Study of the Print Media
What follows is my attempt to determine the impact

of the print media upon the national conscience. The body of
homeschool research is small, but growing. As a rule, schol-
arly studies do not filter down to the masses. Therefore,
many of the myths and realities about home educators are
likely to come from the homeschooling families in the neigh-
borhood or from reporters. In an information age in which
news travels so rapidly, citizens often form their opinions
about the culture via the narrow Tens' of the media camera.
With that in mind, it is crucial to the future of homeschooling
to determine how its past has been chronicled and how its
present is being portrayed.
Method/Scope of the Study
I examined 340 articles from all over the United States,

as well as some international material, written between 1985
and 1997, from local newspapers, regional newspapers,
national newspapers, regional magazines and national mag-
azines. None of the articles were from publications with a
built-in bias toward homeschooling (i.e. no homeschooling
Publications).
Of the 340 pieces I collected, 95 (or 29%) were nation-

al in scope, and 245 (71%) were regional or local in local in
scope. Sixty-seven articles were opinion pieces about home-
schooling, with 53 (79%) by writers who were partial toward
homeschoolers and 14 (or 21%) by those who seemed unfa-
vorable toward homeschooling.
The articles about homeschooling were catalogued

into six divisions: general information, homeschooler of dis-
tinction, legal/legislative victories or losses, the grassroots
movement of homeschooling, first person accounts, and edi-
torials. More specialized articles focused on such topics as
homeschooling and computers, controversial homeschool-
ers, or homeschoolers trying to gain access to public school
programs, especially sports teams.
After I catalogued the newspapers and magazines, the

next stage of the research involved a content and qualitative
analysis of the articles. The goal of the analysis was to iden-
tify the topics, themes, and individuals that comprised the
substance of the news stories. This process allowed me to
develop analytic categories based on the examination of the
material and draw conclusions concerning the overall print
media treatment of homeschoolers. This, in order to answer
two simple questions: Has homeschooling been depicted by
the print media in a positive fashion? and, Has the print
media played an important role in influencing public opin-
ion as to the validity of homeschooling as an educational
option?
To help determine the answers to those queries, I ana-

lyzed the written media accounts, focusing on the following:
article themes, motivating factors in choosing homeschool-
ing, organizations cited, authorities quoted, frequently
debated points, headlines, photographs, students' com-
ments, and sidebars. Analyzing these aspects of this sam-

pling, it was possible to determine the perspective and pos-
sible impact of the stories.
Results of the Study
It's a cliche but a truism: Journalists don't tell people

what to think, but they do tell people what to think about. As
the Center for Media and Public Affairs has stated,
"Journalism is notoriously susceptible to fads and fashions,
as it beams its narrow searchlight over the vast expanse of
the social and natural world, pausing to highlight first one
problem and then another." (10)
From that vantage point, homeschooling fits into the

category of the unusual news story. It is the type of story
reporters, with their appetite for the controversial and the
offbeat, as Eric Goldscheider pointed out, delight in cover-
ing. No surprise then, that homeschooling coverage includes
elements of conflict between homeschoolers and education
officials and underscores harsh critiques of public education.
Less controversial, it also showcases especially high levels of
parental involvement in their children's lives and the growth
of homeschooling as an organized movement.
But the media story has been fundamentally a story

about academic success - the story of committed mothers
who are daily teaching their sons and daughters how to read
and write at kitchen tables - teaching them without the pub-
lic school's social and political distractions, which hamper
real learning.
The stories were heavily dependent on quotes from

homeschooling families and authorities, such as Home
School Legal Defense Association staff attorneys. Home-

schooling proponents were cited 31% of the time, compared
with homeschooling opponents, such as a public school
superintendent, who were quoted only 5% of the time. The
positive theme of "a day in the life of a homeschooling fami-
ly" was the number one article theme (26% of the articles).
The most frequently debated issues were how well

homeschooled children performed academically and socially,
as compared to their conventionally-schooled peers. The
message that "homeschooling is good" dominated (60% of
the articles). The message that "homeschooling is not a good
choice" figured in only 6% of the articles. Statistics of home-
schoolers' high test scores, numerous homeschool success
stories, and references to how ubiquitous the movement has
become provided favorable tones in the stories.
The message that "homeschooling is good" was rein-

forced by a high percentage of positive headlines (57%), stir-
ring photographs (94%), positive comments from home-
schooled students about their lifestyle (53%), and opinion
pieces that were pro-homeschooling (73%). Based on the
results of this representative article sampling, it is not a stretch
to conclude that homeschooling has been depicted by the mass
print media in a positive light. Therefore, the answer to my
first question, Has homeschooling been depicted by the print
media in a positive light? is "Yes."
Although the media leaves little doubt that home-

schooling is growing in popularity with American families, the
future of American public schools is usually discussed in
vague terms. This is ironic, given that the most dominant rea-
son to homeschool, cited in over 200 articles, was dissatisfac-
tion with public education. Public school bureaucrats, when
they were quoted in the stories, often criticized homeschooling
as an unworthy choice. No administrator dared acknowledge

that the glaring short-comings of their schools might have
been the impetus for steering worried parents toward home
education for their children.
Writing about homeschooling has given the media a

vehicle to broadcast the concerns of Americans about the pub-
lic schools. Conservatives often criticize the media as being the
handmaiden of school unions. But some media outlets have
not ignored their task to report that public schools are falling
short, and, as a result, some families have rearranged their
lives to homeschool. I did not spot an article about a teenager
who disliked being homeschooled or parents who breathed a
sigh of relief upon returning their children to public schools,
although, perhaps, such stories exist. Consequently, the jour-
nalistic body of work surveyed strongly suggests a "Yes"
answer to the second question of whether the media has
played a role in validating homeschooling as an educational
option for willing parents.
Limitations of Media Coverage
In 79% of the articles analyzed, the mother was depict-

ed as the primary teacher. In no story did the media venture to
question whether this phenomenon could be construed as a
backlash against the forces of hard-line feminism that say a
woman's place is in the workplace, not the home. Indeed, the
media story that remains to be written is the one about hun-
dreds of thousands of women who are leading happy lives
based on their accomplishments at the hearth, as opposed to in
the marketplace. These women's homeschools are enabling
their daughters and sons to become successes in the "real
world." This theme of a renaissance of time-honored female
roles in post-feminist America is one that merits examination.
Continuing with the familial theme, there were few

articles noting that most homeschoolers live in two-parent
homes. The majority of pro-homeschooling experts that were
quoted are homeschooling fathers. Surely in an age when
rearing children in single-parent homes sounds fashionable,
and when sagas about deadbeat dads are frequent, the story
of these involved fathers deserves more attention.
Also, largely absent in the reporting is the mention of

ethnic and racial minorities or the economically less privi-
leged who choose to homeschool. In fact, only 6% of the arti-
cles had members of minority groups photographed or quot-
ed. In light of the melting pot of cultures and races that is a
hallmark of the United States, more effort could be expend-
ed to interview more ethnic groups of homeschoolers. For
instance, Donna Nichols-White, an African-American, pro-
vides multicultural homeschooling resources through a cat-
alog called "The Drinking Gourd."
In only 2% of the articles were graduates of home-

schooling a story theme. Given that the modern home-
schooling movement is more than two decades old, there
could be more coverage about homeschool graduates who
are now ensconced in careers, raising children, or obtaining
graduate degrees. Also, given the public obsession with how
homeschoolers socialize, the attitudes of these young people
toward the popular culture, the institution of schooling, and
the role of the family merit some in-depth attention, in order
to learn what they think.
In general, the homeschooling community has not

been subjected to the type of investigative reporting
reserved for, say, political candidates. Consequently, there
were no negative pieces focusing in on the ideological and
academic differences that have flared up between conserva-
tive homeschoolers and liberal unschoolers. Nor were there

any articles featuring families who have had to change their
strategy when their once-compliant charges became feisty
teenagers.
Of course, the media's lack of scrutiny is to the advan-

tage of homeschoolers. The homeschooling community can
be assured that they have received plentiful and constructive
media coverage, particularly now that articles are widely
disseminated via the Internet. It is clear that the Fourth Estate
has played a crucial role in positively manipulating public
attitudes toward home education and establishing its place
in the mainstream.
Conclusion
Whether the era of good feelings between home-

schoolers and the media will continue is hard to predict.
Homeschoolers themselves have an opportunity to control
the message of their cause by several means: creating web
pages, continuing to publish magazines and newspapers,
making themselves accessible for media interviews, sending
out press releases about their labors, appearing at school
board meetings, or even running for public office as school
reform champions. As the late John Holt prophetically wrote,
"The press and other media have been virtually without
exception friendly to home schooling and home schoolers; I
cannot recall a single interview or report that was hostile. But
it will be important during the coming years for home
schoolers to keep the media well-informed of what we are
doing, to answer any questions they have about our work
and progress, and to make as many allies among them as we
can." (11)
It seems appropriate to conclude with a brief observa-

tion from the newsletter of the National Home Education
Research Institute of Salem, Oregon. Dr. Brian Ray's (the
institute's president) experiences with the broadcast media
are revealing. He writes:
And the NBC Today Show aired a story on home

schooling on July 27th (1999) that included clips
of an interview with me. It was fascinating to
contrast this Today Show story with the one in
which I was the live in-studio guest in 1988.
Eleven years ago the producers tried to incite a
debate between the president of the National
Education Association and me. This summer,
however, the show ended up being an eight-
minute nationwide promotion of home school-
ing with only a couple of obligatory 'concerns'
voiced by the current NEA president. The shift in
approach was positively amazing. (12)
No doubt, the print media has helped.

Growing Pains / 93
Chapter 8
Growing Pains
The most successful grassroots educational movement

of the century is not without its growing pains. While this
statement may hearten critics and alarm supporters, the news
of difficulties needs to be put into perspective. Such problems
are to be expected in a flourishing movement, trying to earn
its niche in the American mainstream, and which now
includes parents with varied motivations and educational
methods.
There are at least three stumbling blocks which home-

schoolers have encountered. The first focuses on the philo-
sophical clashes that have arisen between unschoolers and
homeschoolers; the second reveals what headaches can occur
when parents offhandedly delegate their homeschooling
responsibilities to others; and the last involves the problems
of homeschooling adolescents.
Statements of Faith
In one corner are the "unschoolers" - those who prefer

a relaxed, child-directed approach to learning. In the other
corner are the traditional homeschoolers, who favor a "school
at home" approach that sticks to a daily program of academ-
ics and electives in a structured environment.
Unschoolers tend to shun standardized tests, group-

ing by grades, rote learning, and many of the practices asso-
ciated with school. Conversely, a traditional homeschooling
household is more preoccupied with grades, standardized
test score results, diplomas, and college admission require-
merits. The differences in educational philosophies also carry

over into how the two formulate support group goals, sup-
port group participation being a staple of the homeschooling
movement.
One disagreement between the factions focuses on

heavenly matters. Evangelical Christians, who are partial to
the "school at home" method, often form support groups
which require participants or board members to subscribe to
a set of religious doctrines. Or, in the lingo of homeschool
support groups, they adhere to a "statement of faith." Many
of the faith-based support groups are quite large, which is to
be expected, given the sizeable number of conservative, evan-
gelical Christians who homeschool. (Indeed, religious fami-
lies have much clout in the movement and have produced
many stellar graduates.)
Christian Home Educators of Colorado is a support

group with 12,000 families. The group posts a statement of
faith on its website which declares that the Bible is the
"inspired and infallible word of God" and "salvation is
offered as a free gift to the sinner." (1) In contrast, the
Colorado Springs Homeschool Support Group, which has
600 member families, asks only that constituents have a "gen-
uine and active interest in homeschooling" and "make a pay-
ment of dues." (2) The Colorado Springs group advises ...
There is no membership restriction of race, reli-

gion, or personal homeschooling option, but it is
understood that many of the members do hold
specific religious or educational convictions.
Because of this diversity, each member agrees to
show tolerance and understanding when others'
convictions may differ from their own personal
views so that the unified purpose for the support
group may be maintained. (3)
Growing Pains / 95
Massachusetts Homeschool Organization of Parent

Educators, a statewide homeschool support group, also sub-
scribes to articles of faith. They echo those of the Colorado
group. The Massachusetts organization believes the "Bible to
be the inspired, divinely preserved Word of God, the
supreme and final authority for all faith and life." (4) These
creeds, which seem more appropriate for church membership
than for a group preoccupied with academic issues, is the
Achilles' heel of some homeschooling leaders and parents.
Lori Challinor penned an essay in Home Education Magazine
recounting her experiences with the religious enthusiasts.
To join my local homeschooling group, I was

asked to sign a full page 'doctrinal' statement,
which assured the group leaders that I believed
in the inerrancy of the Bible, and other funda-
mentalist tenets of Christianity. As I've men-
tioned, I am a Christian, but I didn't make the
grade by their standards. I wanted a home-
schooling support group to provide homeschool-
ing support - I didn't expect the Spanish
Inquisition. (5)
Challinor persevered with the group, and her story had

a happy ending. "I joined the group without signing the state-
ment (must've slipped through the paperwork maze), and
despite the ominous start, I did find homeschooling support,
and many genuinely nice and (surprise!) tolerant people." (6)
Patrick Farenga, publisher of the journal Growing

Without Schooling, does not favor mixing homeschooling
know-how with matters of faith. "We believe religion and pol-
itics are your business, not ours," says Farenga. (7) Alexandra
Swann, a self-described fundamentalist Christian and home-
school graduate agrees: "We should be working with all peo-
ple, sharing our experiences, whether their faith agrees with
ours or not." (8)
Scott Somerville, a staff attorney with the Home

School Legal Defense Association, has frequent contact with
evangelical Christian support group leaders. He says, "These
(statements of faith) intentionally exclude people who do not
share religious beliefs. Obviously, the people who are exclud-
ed are going to be pretty unhappy about a written statement
of faith." Somerville, however, defends them.
Why do local support groups tend to come up

with statements of faith? The answer comes
from the nature of voluntary associations; a vol-
untary association exists only as long as there is
a shared vision that is strong enough to motivate
unpaid volunteers to sacrifice their immediate
and personal interests for the common good.
Local support groups with Christian leadership
routinely gravitate toward the model of a church
and church leadership to try to articulate and
fulfill the shared vision. (9)
No doubt homeschoolers will probably be happier

mingling with like-minded homeschoolers, so forming a
group with a particular focus makes perfect sense. It is no dif-
ferent than choosing to be in the company of Republicans
instead of Democrats, and vice-versa. And no doubt those
not in the homeschooling loop will view this particular rift
between secular unschoolers and religious homeschoolers as
risible. But it is a serious issue that has polarized pockets of
the homeschooling community.
Parents who organize homeschool support groups are

at liberty to gather under whatever religious or philosophical
umbrella they choose. Yet, some of the non-religious, who are
new to homeschooling and eager for assistance from veter-
ans, shy away from seeking counsel from those who appear
more eager to proselytize than to share homeschooling
expertise. The question to ponder for those on both sides of
Growing Pains / 97
the aisle is: How to maintain unity while respecting the dif-
ferences of others?
Lori Challinor encourages fellow homeschoolers to

remember two powerful truths they have in common. "All of
us believe that children learn better at home than in institu-
tions. All of us believe that we have a constitutional right to
homeschool with a minimum of state interference." (10) It
remains to be seen if homeschoolers can overcome these dis-
tractions and remind themselves that the privilege to home-
school was not attained without the heroic parents, of diverse
ideologies, who fought lengthy battles in legal courts and in
the court of public opinion. May their gains not be sacrificed
on the altar of petty differences.
AWOL Parents
By definition, homeschooling is done primarily by

parents, under the same roof that the family eats, plays,
sleeps, and sometimes works. Some families, however, suc-
cessfully rely on tutors to teach their children at home. Fred
Foote, a homeschooling father of six from Haslett, Michigan,
has a hands-on involvement while employing a tutor for his
homeschool. He regularly reviews three folders of paperwork
per child, which have been prepared by the tutor. One folder
is the children's academic work; another contains their daily
journals; and the third is a progress report which shows how
the Foote children are faring in each of their eight areas of
learning. The family's goal is to have all the children at col-
lege level in all major subjects by the age of 13.
Says Foote, "What may be surprising to some is that

homeschooling with a tutor is pretty affordable when the
number of children gets to three or four. It's more than afford-
able (it's cheap!) if the next best alternative is a fancy private

school or boarding school. Also, using a tutor allows us to
homeschool in a situation where my wife is very supportive
but just not academically inclined." (11)
The growth of the movement has motivated many

enterprising entrepreneurs to offer both inside and outside-
the-home services to help parents at their task. But what hap-
pens when parents casually opt for a hands-off approach and
turn over their children to those service providers? What are
the consequences for the children? the families? the reputa-
tion of homeschooling?
The Pathfinder Learning Center
Pathfinder Learning Center in Amherst,

Massachusetts opened its doors in 1996. It has been described
by its founders, Josh Hornick and Ken Danford, former pub-
lic school teachers, as an "academic YMCA." Pathfinder acts
as a drop-in center for unschooled teenagers who pay a year-
ly fee of $1500. In return, students receive support services,
the opportunity to network with other unschoolers, and
access to educational resources. The center is an attractive
alternative for teenagers with working parents or for those
who have become ill-served by traditional schooling, like 14-
year-old Mishy Leiblum. "School is, like, an unnecessary has-
sle. I didn't get much out of it, and it was taking a lot out of
me," Leiblum told the Boston Globe. (12) Steve Theberge, then
16, was encouraged by Pathfinder's founder to pursue his
interest in political activism. This homeschooler worked with
such groups as Food Not Bombs and the American Friends
Service Committee. (13)
Growing Pains / 99
But with some parents assigning the academic burden

to their children, Pathfinder's teenagers became the focal
point of an academic misunderstanding involving one
Massachusetts school official. In August of 1997, Gus Sayer,
the local superintendent of the Amherst-Pelham Regional
Schools, made a startling announcement at a school commit-
tee meeting. The superintendent said he was dismayed at the
quality and quantity of school work submitted by a number
of secondary-level homeschooled students. Said Sayer, "I
approved many of these plans with reluctance, as the com-
mitment of families to assume responsibility for home educa-
tion programs was not always certain, and the ability of fam-
ilies to provide a comprehensive instructional program was
often in doubt." (14) Coincidentally, many of the families
under fire were affiliated with the Pathfinder Learning
Center.
Traditional homeschooling parents, who had had no

ties to Pathfinder and had expended much effort working
through lessons with their children and dispatching detailed
progress reports to the superintendent, were chagrined at the
complaint and the negative media publicity it generated.
Some of these parents later converged upon a school com-
mittee meeting and aired their opinions. One homeschooling
mother, Carol Soules, was quoted in the Amherst Bulletin,
pointing out that attending Pathfinder was not the same as
being homeschooled. "The very definition of home education
is that education will take place in the home. It requires par-
ent involvement and requires a huge parent commitment."
(15) Another parent, Greg Handel, explained how his wife
does not take an outside job, so she can teach their youngest
child. "My wife is a home schooler. That's her occupation."
(16)
To their credit, Pathfinder's founders responded

quickly and well to the criticism. In a personal column to the
local newspaper, Ken Danford wrote . . .
The superintendent expressed concerns regard-

ing non-reporting families, parents who he
believes take home-schooling lightly, working
parents supervising home-schoolers, and stu-
dents with any failing grades being allowed to
begin homeschooling. We encourage our mem-
bers to comply with state law on homeschooling
and to file plans and progress reports to the
superintendent. He has the responsibility of
monitoring these families, and is understandably
concerned if many homeschoolers fail to submit
reports. We suggest he work to ensure that his
communication with home-schooling families is
clear and then hold these non-reporting families
accountable for their choices. (17)
In 1999, the Boston Globe ran a feature story about the

Pathfinder Learning Center and showcased its success in
earning a niche in the alternative education mainstream. But
writer Eric Goldscheider mentioned that the center had taken
a tougher stance with the teenagers - video game playing had
been halted and twice-a-year meetings with parents had
become a requirement. Danford notes that since the events of
1997 none of the families affiliated with Pathfinder have had
any problems complying with the superintendent's office,
now that they understand what is required of them.
Edmond Homeschool Co-op
In the buckle of the Bible belt, homeschoolers who

organized a teaching cooperative faced a similar set of prob-
lems as the Amherst unschoolers. The cooperative, or co-op,
as it is nicknamed, has approximately two hundred home-
Growing Pains /101
schooled students, from kindergarten through high school.

Twice weekly they take classes - from biology to algebra to
quilt-making - at a local church. The classes are taught by vol-
unteer parents with expertise or interest in their subject areas.
The co-op's organizers adhere to a September to June school
year schedule, and the cost to families is a nominal $10 to $15
per month.
Part of the purpose of the co-op, according to Susan

Good, the director, is to allow middle and high school stu-
dents a taste of traditional school. Included in this 'taste' are
opportunities to mingle with others, accountability to test
taking, and exposure to teachers who are not their parents.
(18)
Students who attend the co-op, like those affiliated

with the Pathfinder Learning Center, are grateful for the
opportunity. Jeremy Waller, 14, says, "It is better than being
isolated at home. I like noise." Megan Good, 14, and the
daughter of Susan Good, believes that the negative aspects of
school socialization do not surface in this parent-run setting.
"There's not enough kids to have well-established cliques."
Brook Welch, 15, says she prefers the co-op's small-sized
classes and drug-free environment, as opposed to the larger
ones and the drug culture she would encounter in the public
school she would have to attend. (19)
But during the co-op's second year, its academic goals

almost got shipwrecked. Some of the teenagers Good was try-
ing to assist were causing strife. By November, teachers were
grumbling about students who missed assignments and sat
in their classes like bumps on logs or disrupted their studious
classmates with incessant chatter. They wondered if the co-op
was being used as a babysitting service for undisciplined
homeschooled students and their uncooperative parents.
Good and her fellow teachers held a long meeting to

discuss their predicament. They decided to re-affirm the
main purpose of the co-op: To help parents with the academ-
ic component of homeschooling, not replace them as teach-
ers. A serious course of action was agreed upon. Probation
notices were sent to the parents of recalcitrant students, and
they were required to sit in on classes for two weeks and
monitor their children's progress. If the grades and behavior
of the students did not improve after this probation, they
would face disciplinary action (i.e. be asked to leave the co-
op). (20)
The wake-up call worked. Some of the non-productive

students lightened their class load, and others became serious
about their school lessons. By December, the academic atmos-
phere had improved.
* * * * * *
Unquestionably, many free market endeavors that

facilitate the homeschooling process have been a boon to
families, especially those who want to teach teenagers - a
group with a high attrition rate. Currently, adolescents, ages
14 and up, are not a majority in the ranks of the homeschool-
ing movement. Research indicates that 70% of home-
schooled students are 7 tol3 years old. (21)
The dilemmas, however, encountered by the

Pathfinder Learning Center and the Edmond Co-op raise
serious questions about what occurs when parents abdicate
the grind of teaching and the accountability that accompanies
that responsibility and only offer a "safe house" from dan-
gerous schools. Teenagers, not known as an intellectual
Growing Pains /103
group, can fast become underachievers when they are

unchaperoned. This is especially true of older students who
have been removed from an academically inferior school and
whose poor study habits are ingrained.
Ben Boychuk, the director of publications for the

Claremont Institute, a California-based think tank, had an
editorial experience that tempered his enthusiasm for home-
schooling. While working as a managing editor for activists
David Horowitz and Peter Collier's publication, The Report
Card, Boychuk commissioned a pair of 16-year-old home-
schooled girls to write an article about school violence. The
teenagers were to share their ordeal, as former public school
students, of putting up with fights, an increased security
presence, and closed off bathrooms to prevent drug dealing.
Recounts Boychuk, "To make a long story short, the

copy was a disaster. It wasn't even spell-checked. This raised
a number of questions in my mind. Didn't Mom review this?
If not, why not? How is homeschooling, in this instance, bet-
ter than a public school English class?" Boychuk later learned
that the girls were even receiving some of their English les-
sons from a public school teacher. "It's hard to undo that kind
of (academic) damage," says Boychuk. (22)
Certainly rescuing a vulnerable child from a danger-

ous school is a commendable action of any caring adult. But
if parents play a distant role in supervising their children's
work, are they competently managing the homeschool? And
how fair is such an arrangement to the young people if their
parents aren't modeling a disciplined lifestyle - a character
trait that allows individuals to flourish at jobs, college, and
relationships? Rookie homeschooling students will always
require much supervision from the people who know them
best and love them most - their parents.
These concerns about parental responsibility merit
scrutiny and debate by homeschooling advocates, since
American families are required to comply with compulsory
attendance laws. If not, zealous school officials will be
delighted to step into the gap to impose tougher home-
schooling regulations. Busybody neighbors might be tempt-
ed to report the parents to child protection services if they
perceive the children to be truant. Homeschooling parents,
who delegate the academic responsibilities to others, need to
exercise discretion.
Back to School
What do homeschooling parents do with a 14-year-old

son who has lost interest in science and history and literature
and wants to 'hang out' with other boys his age? What do
these parents do with a 15-year-old daughter who can't imag-
ine not going to a prom or having her picture appear in a
yearbook? Most parents who have attempted to homeschool
their children through the teen years have faced problems of
this sort. Really, what to do?
One option is to fight (sometimes, literally) through

these 'phases' and hold rigidly to the game plan that worked
so well during those early years. At the other end of the spec-
trum is to throw in the towel and opt for the traditional, insti-
tutionalized approach of public or private schooling. Some
homeschoolers have created middle grounds between these
extremes, seeking resolutions to their struggles. Consider my
own situation.
Dan, my 16-year-old son, is a barbarian. He loves col-

lision sports. He played on our local public high school's
football, ice hockey, and lacrosse teams in Massachusetts - the
Growing Pains /105
only homeschooler in our town to play public school sports.

My husband and I were happy that he wasn't reluctant to be
a pioneer. I was also pleased that my family was receiving
something in return for payment of our property taxes - taxes
that are largely used to subsidize public education, after all.
Critics of our decision were surprised to learn that mixing
homeschooling and state did not change how our home-
school was regulated. Scott Goldman, the principal of the
Amherst-Pelham Regional High School, merely requested
that we submit Dan's grades and keep attendance. It was less
work, in fact, than the years we previously spent providing
curriculum plans and schedules for the superintendent,
which had produced a relationship of trust with him.
Dan might have never had this opportunity if several

Bay State families had not challenged the Massachusetts
Interscholastic Athletic Association's policy that prevented
homeschoolers from participating on interscholastic teams.
In four separate lawsuits, court injunctions against the asso-
ciation's eligibility rules (which denied homeschoolers equal
access to sports teams) forced schools in the Commonwealth
to let the homeschoolers 'play ball.' (23)
When we left for a sabbatical to the Sooner State in

May of 1999, we learned that homeschoolers are back to
being separate and unequal. The Oklahoma Secondary
School Activities Association has crafted rules which require
a student to be legally enrolled in a government school before
he can play on its sports team. Never mind that my son, who
scored in the 90th percentile of the PSAT, is both bright and
athletic. Never mind that the resolution that was offered by
an Oklahoma legislator to change this policy was thwarted
by homeschooling activists who felt that "families should be
willing to sacrifice the privilege of access to public school
activities rather than risk losing their own freedoms." (24)
Regardless of the policies and ideologies of others, my hus-

band and I concluded that our son should not have to
renounce his sports-centered dreams.
Consequently, Dan elected to attend public school for

the fall semester. We lived in the district of what is considered
by some to be the best public high school in Oklahoma. It is
small and relatively strict, and graduates many academic
high achievers. But to my husband and me, a public school is
a public school is a public school. It was with many misgiv-
ings that we watched him plunge into factory-style learning.
Fortunately, a semester of school was plenty for Dan, and he
quickly tired of the regimented schedule. He complained
about an English teacher who mispronounced vocabulary
words and how his classmates ridiculed an inexperienced
student teacher. He mocked the Abercrombie and Fitch
clothes and Camaros that were de rigeur among the Stepford-
like student body. Used to playing on sports teams with
Latinos and African-Americans in multicultural Amherst,
Massachusetts, our son thought it odd that he never met the
Oklahoma counterpart of a "Miguel Jimenez" or "James
Ihedigbo." That experiment concluded, we moved on to new
homeschooling challenges.
Some homeschooling parents have decided to waste

no time agonizing over how to educate their teenagers them-
selves and have decided to send their children to school -
sometimes public, sometimes private.
For the aforementioned Ken Robinson (see Chapter 1),

the decision to send his elder daughter, Morgan, at age 14, to
a private high school seemed a logical one. Dubbed by her
father as "shy and reserved," the Robinsons felt that Morgan
needed to leave her homeschooling comfort zone. Says Ken,
"The primary reason that we sent Morgan to school was that
Growing Pains /107
we believed that she would benefit from being taught by

other teachers in an environment that bore some similarity to
what she would encounter in college - classroom interaction
with peers." Robinson also wanted Morgan to have a more
competent adult than himself teach her higher math and sci-
ence. (25)
The decision was a good one. Morgan's math prowess

rose considerably, and she was selected as a National Merit
Scholarship finalist. She was awarded a scholarship to the
University of Massachusetts where she studies computer sci-
ence and animation.
Barb, 41, and Rob, 43, Schulze are Dartmouth College

graduates and the homeschooling parents of four children.
They run two home-based businesses - a travel agency and a
mail order furniture company. This family-centered lifestyle
has allowed the Schulzes the freedom to pursue fun, offbeat
activities. (Like the time the Schulze children played extras in
a low-budget Hollywood movie which starred Jerry Stiller,
George's father on the television show "Seinfeld.")
The Schulzes have slowly begun deviating from their

school-at-home model. Only the two youngest children,
Emily, 13, and Will, 9, are full-time homeschoolers. Rachel, 16,
takes two courses at the University of Massachusetts and
attends a physics class with other homeschoolers, which is
taught by a former physics professor and homeschooling
father. Barb teaches Rachel math and history.
Chris, 14, is a ninth grader at the venerable Northfield

Mount Hermon School in Northfield, Massachusetts. Barb
explains that the decision to send her energetic son to a pri-
vate school was not a casual one. "The main reason we sent
Chris to a conventional school was because the friction we
were having at home was making homeschooling a negative.

At the high school level, a lot is demanded of students, and
we knew his resistance would only increase," she says. (26)
How has the Schulze family fared after enrolling their

son in school? "Having outside authorities telling Chris what
he has to do has proved to be a very good move. Now when
he is home we can enjoy him more," she says. Chris also
made the honor roll in his maiden semester at the private
school, and Rachel's PSAT scores placed her in the 97th per-
centile. Certainly the Schulzes' accomplishments, as well as
those of Morgan Robinson, could not have been achieved
without the solid, academic foundation that their home-
schooling parents labored to give them, but attending private
schools has also been an advantage.
* * * * * *
If there is anything to be learned by analyzing these

growing pains, it is that parents who choose this educational
route are opting for a tremendous amount of responsibility
and must be ready to face challenges along the way. There are
some who appear to be outstanding homeschooling parents,
some who seem inadequate, some who are practical, some
who are driven by ideology, and some who have very inde-
pendently-minded students of their own. How American! No
doubt the movement will continue to struggle with these
issues. Growing pains, however, are a natural part of matur-
ing.
Profiling Homeschoolers /109
Chapter 9
Profiling Homeschoolers
Three decades have passed since one of the founding

fathers of the modern-day homeschooling movement -
Raymond Moore - began the research in which he concluded
that institutionalizing young children is a mistake. Twenty
years have elapsed since Joyce Swann took the step to home-
school her first-born child, Alexandra. Fifteen years have
gone by since homeschoolers Sam and Marquita Shippy
were sentenced to jail for keeping their school-aged children
at home. Much has transpired, and much positive education-
al reform has been effected.
The rise of homeschooling has paralleled the disillu-

sionment of American families with public schools. To many
homeschoolers, public education is a massive experiment in
failure. Some policy makers have come to agree that it is a
crisis of government that can only be rehabilitated with pri-
vate-sector solutions. But to remove a bored or bullied child
from a public school to begin a homeschool is still a strain for
many parents. Even more radical is the decision to never
have one's child board a yellow school bus or learn his mul-
tiplication tables at a blackboard.
Journalists, as previously noted, have done a compe-

tent job of giving homeschoolers a face. An intriguing article
in the San Jose Mercury News by Dana Hull reports that the
latest wave of homeschoolers are "tech-savvy, upper-income
families who span a broad political spectrum." (1) This new
guard of homeschoolers expresses the same worries about
unsafe and cash-strapped schools as did the old guard. And
when these parents express their dissatisfaction with the sta-
tus quo, they manage to sound both concerned and hip.
Carol Rast, a parent who was featured in the Mercury

News article, explains why she is sold on homeschooling
"For us, it was knowing that girls lose their souls when they
hit junior high. They start to dumb themselves down and
express themselves in ways that girls shouldn't. Our daugh-
ter Tamiko was ready to join a girl gang so she wouldn't get
picked on. We had to pull her away from that." (2)
But the homeschooling movement attracts many tra-

ditional, equally articulate women, like former nurse Nancy
Mansour. The homeschooling mother of four, whose children
successfully compete on academic homeschool teams, finds
greater satisfaction being a full-time mother than being in the
work force. "The job of homeschooling is emotionally satis-
fying, intellectually stimulating, and spiritually challenging.
The rewards are not monetary and are rarely immediate,"
says Mansour. (3)
All of which makes the curious wonder: Has there

emerged a prototype American family who is daring enough
to embark on this educational voyage? A homeschooling ver-
sion of the Swiss Family Robinson? What, if any, generalities
can be drawn about families that homeschool? Are there
common threads? Do philosophies, techniques, motivations
overlap?
Jane Van Galen has categorized the two primary types

of families who choose homeschooling as ideologues and
pedagogues. She notes that ideologues want "their children
to learn fundamentalist religious doctrine and a conservative
political and social perspective," and they establish home-
schools to communicate to their offspring "that the family is
the most important institution in society." (4)
Van Galen defines the pedagogues as those who teach

their children themselves, primarily because they dislike the
professionalization and bureaucratization of modern educa-
tion. They are parents who "come to their decision to home
school with a broader interest in learning - they have profes-
sional training in education, they have close friends or rela-
tives who are educators, they have read about education or
child development, or they are involved with organizations
that speak to the issue of childrearing." (5)
Both types of families share a common characteristic -

they have enormous confidence in their ability to do a com-
petent job of educating their children with minimal institu-
tional support.
In general, this is what we researchers also know: We

know from the high test scores of homeschoolers that many
parents are very serious about their academic responsibili-
ties. We know that most have strong religious or philosophi-
cal beliefs about homeschooling. We know that the leaders in
the homeschool movement are respected authorities, whose
advice is sought by parents via how-to books or speaking
engagements at conferences. We also know that home-
schooled students are social creatures, given the high num-
bers who go on to college, join support groups, are involved
in community activities, and invest long hours bonding with
their parents, siblings, and other peers.
But what about specifics? Homeschoolers, as a rule,

have been a hard group to study, since they value their pri-
vacy, and they account for only about one to two percent of
the school-aged population. Perhaps too much information
about them dims their mystique - a mystique which shuns
being categorized or legislated. There is also the problem of
trying to track down homeschoolers. Does the researcher go
to a conference and hand out questionnaires to participants?

Buy mailing lists from homeschooling magazines? Roam the
country visiting support groups? Call them like a pesky tele-
marketer? Perhaps all of the above. Perhaps none.
As homeschoolers have become less publicity-shy

and more confident about their successes, professional
researchers and graduate students have begun to glean infor-
mation about them, information that can sound both ridicu-
lous and useful. Back issues of the Home School Researcher, a
peer-reviewed journal of homeschooling, present such arti-
cles as "A Qualitative Study of the Characteristics of Home
Schooling Families in South Carolina and the Perceptions of
School District Personnel Toward Home Schooling." (Phew!)
Or, "Academic Achievement: Its Relationship to Selected
Variables Among Pennsylvania Homeschoolers." Certainly a
far cry from the days of Michigan v. DeJonge (the Michigan
family who challenged the Wolverine State's mandates that
homeschooling parents possess teaching certificates to home-
school).
Representative surveys about homeschoolers are one

way to procure sociological profiles. Surveys are useful in
that they allow outsiders to gain insight into the mindset of a
fraternity of like-minded people. What follows is a synopsis
of four such surveys - the attitudes of homeschooling fathers;
the largest study of homeschoolers to date; a small study
about New Age homeschooling families; and a study of other
research about homeschoolers.
Study Number One
In the summer of 1999, HomeSchool Dad magazine

released the results of a brief survey examining the attitudes
of homeschooling fathers, an understudied group. Publisher
Jaren Green, who is a Mormon and an unschooler, sent out a
questionnaire which 200 families answered. His primary
goal was to learn what fathers had to say about home educa-
tion. (6) Here is a synopsis of some of what Green learned ...
Describe Dad's involvement in homeschooling on a regular

basis.
46% - described themselves as minimally involved

40% - said they were moderately involved
7% - said they were not involved at all
7% - were largely, or equally involved
Describe the amount of time Dad spends with the children

during an average day.
54% - 1 to 3 hours
30% - more than 3 hours
16% - less than one hour
Breakdown of how many dads were initially resistant to

homeschooling.
39 - did not want the children socially isolated

28 - did not want the children sheltered from the 'real
world'
25 - did not believe the parents had the ability to edu-
cate adequately
22 - did not want the children to grow up "weird"
14 - did not want to leave the mainstream
If Dad was resistant, why did he agree to it?
43 - concerned about public school situation

39 - concerned about child's academic needs
25 - concerned about child's spiritual needs
What are the current ages of the children in your home-

school?
ages 0 to 7 - 50%
ages 8 tol2 - 34%
ages 13-18 -16%
Dads, do you wish to continue home education?
Yes - 90%
Not sure - 9%
From this survey, one learns that fathers of home-

schooled children are hardly deadbeats, but neither are most
very involved in the homeschool. This confirms the opinion
of Michael P. Farris, Home School Legal Defense Association
(HSLDA) president and author of The Homeschooling Father.
He writes, "When the truant officer comes to a family's door,
we usually get a call from Mom. If officials send a letter
threatening legal action, normally we hear from Mom. We
recognize that Dad is often at work during the hours when it
is necessary to contact an HSLDA lawyer. But there have
been dozens and dozens of times that I have experienced the
following scenario: I return a phone call to a family needing
legal assistance. Even though the father answers the phone,
he immediately turns the call over to the mother, since she is
'handling the home schooling.' " (7)
One also learns that, in time, fathers become more

committed to the idea of homeschooling, and that these men
have been willing to give this educational choice a try
because of their discontent with public schools. Finally, a sig-
nificantly lower number of older children are being home-
schooled than younger children, which agrees with research
estimates that the teen-age homeschooling population is
smaller than that of elementary school age.
There is a caveat to this survey. The homeschooling

story is also one about fathers who have transformed their
lives by starting home businesses or have chosen to bypass
the corporate ladder to have a hands-on involvement in the
homeschool. Like Jaren Green, himself. Green, who lives in
Colorado, quit his day job to publish HomeSchool Dad maga-
zine and help his wife teach their four children. Or attorney
Ken Robinson (see Chapter 1), who is married to an award-
winning illustrator, Ruth Sanderson. He keeps his law prac-
tice to a part-time endeavor and homeschools his daughter.
Wid, my husband, devoted an entire school year to teaching
our youngest son and volunteering in a homeschool learning
cooperative. A survey of those who are reinventing the
father-as-breadwinner paradigm would be welcome.
Study Number Two
Lawrence Rudner, a researcher affiliated with the

University of Maryland, College Park, surveyed 20,760
homeschooled students in 11,930 families in the spring of
1998. To date, this has been the survey of the broadest scope
done about homeschoolers. The families were solicited
through Bob Jones University Press Testing Services, and
Were contracted to take the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills or the
Tests of Achievement and Proficiency. According to Rudner,
"Students were given an achievement test, and their parents

were asked to complete a questionnaire entitled 'Voluntary
Home School Demographic Survey.'" (8) This survey offers a
window into the world of white, overwhelmingly Christian,
middle-class homeschoolers - a majority of the homeschool-
ing movement. The results of this study were published in
Education Policy Analysis, a peer-reviewed journal published
by the University of Arizona.
Some of the results of the survey follow.
Academics. The achievement test scores of these

homeschoolers were solid. Median scores ranged in the 70th
to 80th percentile. Twenty-five percent of these students were
enrolled a grade or two above their conventionally-schooled
peers.
Parents' Education. Homeschooling parents have

more education than the general population. Eighty-eight
percent of respondents said they continued their education
beyond high school. One in four homeschool students has
one parent who is a certified teacher.
Income. Homeschooling families have a higher medi-

an income ($52,000 in 1997) than the median income of all
American families with children ($36,000 in 1995).
Large families. The majority (62.1%) have three or

more children. Most American families with school-aged
children have only one or two children.
Marital status. The overwhelming majority of home-

schooling parents are married couples (97.3%), compared to
only 72% of families with school-age children nationwide. In
addition, 76.9% of homeschooling mothers do not work for
pay, while 86.3% of those who do work, work only part-time.

In 1996, only 30% of married women in the general popula-
tion with children under 18 did not participate in the labor
force.
Age of homeschoolers. In this survey, only 11.4% of

homeschooled students were in grades 9 through 12, com-
pared to 30.3% nationwide.
Racial minorities. A small percentage of racial minori-

ties (only 6% of those surveyed) participated in the study.
The percent of minorities in public schools nationally is
32.8%.
Religious preferences. The religious preferences of

the mother and father were Independent Fundamental
(25.1%), Baptist (24.4%), Independent Charismatic (8.2%),
Roman Catholic (5.4%), Assembly of God (4.1%),
Presbyterian (3.8%), or Reformed (3.4%). In 93.1% of the fam-
ilies, the religious preference of the father was the same as
that of the mother.
Television viewing. Homeschooled children tend to

watch significantly less television than the average American
child. Only 1.6% of homeschoolers in the 4th grade watched
more than three hours of television per day, compared to 40%
of 4th graders nationwide.
One might conclude that a formula for being a suc-

cessful homeschooling family is this: have a good income,
live in a religious and educated two-parent family, limit out-
side entertainments, and have a mother who is willing to
make this her daily work.
This is not to say that there are not heroic success sto-
ries involving single mothers and inner-city families (who
may have fewer professional or material resources). No
doubt, however, amenities, shared values, and family cohe-
siveness make the task markedly easier.
Study Number Three
'New Age Families Who Educate Their Children At

Home' is a study by Maralee Mayberry of the University of
Nevada, Las Vegas. Mayberry offers a fascinating look at
families who homeschool for a particular ideological reason
- the parents are involved in the so-called New Age move-
ment. The research focuses on only eight families in Oregon,
but Mayberry posits that they "supplied ample data to pro-
duce an exploratory case study of New Age parents who
teach their children at home." (9) Here is a brief summary of
the characteristics of these families.
Occupational - While these are highly educated indi-

viduals, the fathers are largely self-employed as craftsmen -
musicians, photographers, agriculturalists. While some of
the women are not in the labor force, the majority are pursu-
ing flexible careers, like art, holistic healing, or freelance writ-
ing.
Political - While New Age homeschoolers' political

affiliations are outside the traditional framework, they are
fervent supporters of social change. They often incorporate
their activism into their curriculum. One mother describes
her children's pursuits: "Our interests [the parents'] have
actually become part of the curriculum. Our children have
spontaneously taken part in Peace House projects ... partici-
pated in an anti-war play sponsored by the Educators for
Social Responsibility ... written letters for peace to politicians

.. and protested the treatment of Native Americans at Big
Mountain." (10)
Religious - Organized or institutionalized religion is

not a strong influence in the lives of these New Age families,
because it is viewed as a distraction from more avant-garde
spiritual pursuits. Consequently, they see little value in pur-
suing Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish expressions of faith.
Rather, they participate in less conventional activities like
Sufi dancing or full moon celebrations, and are sympathetic
to the tenets of Buddhism or Pantheism.
Educational - When it comes to academics, New Age

parents rarely express their philosophies of education in
commonplace terms of teaching their children to read and
write well. Instead, they believe that education should
encompass the emotional, spiritual, intuitive, creative, aes-
thetic, and rational. They believe public schools are bureau-
cratic institutions that should do away with such traditions
as attendance-taking and numerical grades. But they are not
opposed to public school educators teaching sex education
classes and evolution.
These New Age families, whose lifestyle sounds more

exotic than that of more conventional homeschoolers, have
concluded that their children should not attend public
schools as a way to avoid weakening their deeply-held
beliefs. As Mayberry writes, "Modern social institutions,
including public education, are often seen as embodying sec-
ular science's rationalized world view which devalues the
very concepts that are the cornerstones of New Age thought
- individual potential, spirituality, and holism. Home school-
ing provides the opportunity for some New Age adherents to
provide their children educational experiences which nur-
ture these ideals." (11)
Study Number Four
Dr. Brian Ray, president of the National Home

Education Research Institute, has authored a booklet titled
"Homeschooling on the Threshold: A Survey of Research at
the Dawn of the New Millennium." In the publication, Ray
says that his goal is "to review important and representative
research on home schooling to date." (12) To that end, he ana-
lyzed over 150 pieces of research. What follows are general-
izations about homeschoolers, from the available body of
scholarly research, that were especially noteworthy.
*In the fall of 1998, about 25,000 single-parent families

were homeschooling.
*Male and female students are equally represented in

home schools.
*Children are taught at home, on average, for a period

of 4 to 5 years. Most homeschooling parents say that they
plan to keep their children at home through their high school
years.
*Homeschoolers do not use public school services

very much. Only a minority join public school interscholastic
sports teams and bands.
*Homeschooled students are formally schooled at

home approximately 3 to 4 hours per day.
The learning programs that homeschooling parents

create are highly individualized and flexible. Families favor
using both home-made materials and pre-packaged curricu-
la.
*The amount of money that families spend per child

per year averages $450. This money usually goes toward
textbooks, field trips, and outside classes.
*The average homeschooling parent has attended or

graduated from college. However, a consequential number of
parents only have high school educations.
*Homeschooling is pursued by parents for an assort-

ment of reasons, including teaching a particular worldview,
avoiding negative peer influence, increasing the parent-child
contact, and creating the opportunity to make greater aca-
demic gains.
In the coming months and years, as homeschooling

becomes more and more mainstream, many additional stud-
ies will be conducted. Some will focus on academic achieve-
ment, others on socialization, and, as the numbers escalate,
still others on the effects homeschooling has on taxpayer-
funded public education. Advocates will seek to demonstrate
the favorable results of the movement, while opponents will
use findings to discredit their growing nemesis. These stud-
ies will assist parents and policy makers who are looking to
make informed choices about this educational option.
Conclusion /123
Chapter 10
Conclusion
If you, the reader, have waded through this book and

are still undecided about the homeschooling adventure,
whether it's right for you, try to think of it in terms of what's
right for your children. You love them most; you know them
best. The first step can be the toughest, but it ought to be
taken. Many other families are already down the road a
ways, and they will be there to help you and encourage you.
May God bless you with wisdom in your decision-making
process.
If you, the reader, are a fellow traveler on the teach-

thine-own road to educational excellence, I congratulate you
for your commitment and urge you to keep fighting the good
fight. As you may have already discovered, there are bumps,
curves, and even detours encountered along the way. But
they are outweighed by the joys, blessings, and successes we
experience in this calling.
In a speech concluding his two-day "school reform

tour," given during the spring of 2000, President Bill Clinton
offered his opinions about homeschooling. To the chagrin of
home education advocates, the President suggested that
even successful private endeavors, like homeschooling,
should not go unhampered by government impositions.
"If you're going to [operate a home school]," Clinton

remarked, "your children have to prove that they're learning
on a regular basis, and if they don't prove that they're learn-
ing then they have to go into a school - either a parochial or
private school or a public school." (1) In his speech, President
Clinton also stated, "The best thing to do is to get the home
schoolers organized." (2) Of course, the President really

means, organized by government, because, in actuality, large
homeschool organizations - that offer a wide range of servic-
es to families, from newsletters to e-mail networks to confer-
ences to field trips to classes - already exist in every one of the
fifty states.
This is clearly a case of government, at the federal

level, attempting to create a remedy for a problem that does
not exist. And of a public official, who is completely ignorant
about the enormous gains made by homeschoolers.
As has been argued throughout this book, parents

who assume the extraordinary burden of schooling their chil-
dren are by definition parents uncommonly dedicated to
their children's education. Indeed, the modern homeschool-
ing story is fundamentally one of a grassroots movement of
maverick parent-educators, from Miami to Des Moines to
Fairbanks, who are teaching their children how to read and
write at kitchen tables. Many have even graduated from
these make-shift classrooms. Dedicated parents have suc-
ceeded in making a countercultural idea acceptable, and they
have achieved their goals without much applause and with-
out a dime of government funding. They have also advanced
the role of parental rights in education, as well as offered an
exciting model of reform for future generations.
Homeschooling parents have triumphed when they have
assumed the responsibility of teaching, training, and socializ-
ing their children.
The reality, verifiable by anecdote and standardized

test data alike, is that in every academic area homeschooled
students are surpassing students enrolled in government
schools. Homeschooled students have graduated from pres-
tigious colleges, served in the armed forces, managed small
Conclusion / 125
businesses, run for public office, written books, played com-

petitive sports, and sold millions of CDs. Some are beginning
to homeschool their own children. There is no shortage of
homeschoolers whose quality of life far exceeds that of con-
ventionally-schooled students.
It is likely that the population of homeschoolers will

only increase if the current public school system continues to
be viewed by a growing number of Americans as an irrele-
vant, unsafe institution that can hinder a child's ability to
learn. As Chris Cardiff, writing in the Education Liberator has
stated, "The dichotomy between homeschooling and govern-
ment schooling is the difference between a moral and
immoral system. Homeschooling respects the rights of indi-
vidual families to choose for themselves, while government
schooling imposes its ideology on all children through
predatory financing and its monopoly of force." (3)
Families who homeschool believe they are using their

liberties well and wisely by teaching what they want, when
they want, and how they want, and they are not harming
other families' children in the process. The American can-do
spirit is evident in the homeschools and households which
parents manage simultaneously. Homeschoolers have
offered many Americans hope - hope that a good education
can still be obtained, and they are giving new meaning to the
old maxim "there's no place like home."
While their attainments are quite impressive, given

that they account for only approximately one percent of the
school-aged population, some people will continue to be sus-
picious and intolerant of this private education practice.
Homeschooling will not, if political leaders like Bill Clinton
get their way, be spared from the reflexive desires of some to
claim the need for government supervision, regardless of
whether the object of that endeavor wants, needs, or will be

improved by the intrusion. The only "assistance" the govern-
ment can offer to homeschoolers to simplify their task is fur-
ther deregulation, be it through homeschool tax credits or a
loosening of compulsory school attendance laws.
Meanwhile, the lesson for reformers - conservative,

liberal, or libertarian - bent on promoting educational mod-
els, such as Goals 2000, School-to-Work, charter schools, or
any other scheme that involves the State, is this: Less is best.
Homeschooling has produced literate students with minimal
government interference at a fraction of the cost of any gov-
ernment program.
Policymakers who are anxious for good news from the

educational front lines should be heartened by the words of
Martin Luther King III. At a homeschooling convention in
New England, King, the son of the celebrated social reformer
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., observed, "The kind of things
homeschoolers are doing may be the saving grace of our
nation." (4)
Endnotes /129
Endnotes
Chapter 1
1. Author's interview with Anne and Richard Maxson, Amherst,

MA, February, 1999.
2. Author's interview with Debbie Shumway, Amherst, MA, April,

1999.
3. Author's interview with Ken and Whitney Robinson, Ware,

MA, May, 1999.
4. Author's published article "Back at the Ranch," National Review,

September 30, 1996, p. 56.
5. Information about homeschools from Patricia M. Lines,

"Homeschooling: Private Choices and Public Obligations," U.S.
Department of Education, Office of Research, 1993, p. 1.
6. Information about homeschools from Brian D. Ray, "A Profile of

Home Education Research," Home School Legal Defense
Association, Purcellville, VA, 1992, p. 6.
7. Information about homeschooling from John Lyon, "Reclaiming

the Schools: Reconciling Home and Education," The Family in
America, no. 6 (June 1994), p. 3.
Chapter 2
1. Information about school entrance age from Raymond Moore,

"Homegrown and Homeschooled," Mothering, Summer 1990,
p. 79.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid, p. 80.
4. Information about government schooling from John Holt, Teach

Your Own (New York, Delacorte, 1981), p. 21.
The Homeschooling Revolution /'130
5. Ibid, p. 5.
6. Polemic on education from John Holt, How Children Fail, (New

York, Pitman Publishing Corp, 1964), p. xiii.
7. Holt, Teach Your Own, p. 5.
8. Information about the homeschooling population from Patricia

M. Lines, "Homeschooling: An Overview for Educational
Policymakers," U.S. Department of Education Working Paper,
January 1997, p. 4.
9. Information about the growth of homeschooling from Brian D.

Ray, National Home Education Research Institute, 1998, at
http://www.nheri.org.
10. Information about the growth in homeschooling from The Home

School Market (Boulder, CO, Hal Clarke, 1995), cited in "Home
Schoolers Aided by Technology," Educational Technology Markets,
April 1996, p. 1.
11. Information about compulsory school attendance laws in

Georgia, http://www.ghea.org/New%20Pages/
resourcegalaw.html.
Chapter 3
1. Polemic on school attendance laws from Samuel L. Blumenfeld,

"Are Compulsory School Attendance Laws Necessary? (Part
3)," Freedom Daily, May, 1991,
http://www.fff.org/srudent/stl099c.htm.
2. Ibid.
3. Perchemlides v. Frizzle, no. 16641 (Massachusetts Supreme Court,

November 13, 1978), p. 9.
4. Information on the DeJonge case from Christopher J. Klicka,

The Right to Home School: A Guide to the Law on Parents' Rights in
Education, (Durham, NC, Carolina Academic Press, 1995), p. 63.
Endnotes /131
5. Ibid, p. 66.
6. Information from New Plymouth School District, No. 372,

Compulsory Attendance Exemption Request, passed 11-8-
82.
7. Interview with Sam Shippy by Harriet Guthertz, "Jailed father

defends taking kids out of school," The Idaho Statesman,
November 22, 1984, p. 12C.
8. Author's e-mail from Bob Fontaine, Coordinator of Elementary

Education for the state of Idaho, April 13, 1999.
9. Information about home education from "Questions and

Answers about Homeschooling," National Homeschooling
Association, Cincinnati, fact sheet, 1996.
10. Information about the state of Oklahoma's constitution, Article

13, Section 4.
11. Editorial about Karen Maple, "Crime in Vermont," The Wall

Street Journal, September 10, 1999, p. A18.
12. Information about homeschool laws, Klicka, The Right to Home

School, p. 26.
13. Information about homeschooling court cases from Home

School Court Report, April 1999, page 12.
14. Ibid.
15. Information about homeschooling movement's lobbying efforts

from Phil Kuntz, "Home-Schooling Movement Gives House a
Lesson," Congressional Quarterly, February 26, 1994, p. 479.
16. Information from Steve Forbes' speech to homeschoolers from

the Associated Press, "GOP Candidates Like Home Schooling,"
http://www.aol.com/mynews/news/story.adp/cat=010402&i
d=1999092406211495.
17. Author's interview with Steve Moitozo of Homeschool

Associates, October, 1999.
18. Information from the Free Congress Foundation, "A moral

minority?" (An open letter to conservatives from Paul Weyrich),
February 16, 1999, http://www.freecongress.org/fcf/.
19. Information about homeschoolers from Judy Mann, "Home

Schooling's Progressive Wing," Washington Post, May 26, 1999,
p. C15.
20. Information from Dr. Laura Perspective, "An Uncommon

Education," September, 1998, pp. 10 - 11.
21. Author's e-mail from Marshall Fritz, president of the Separation

of School and State Alliance, June 14, 1999.
Chapter 4
1. Information about Barnaby Marsh from author's published article,

Daily Hampshire Gazette, March 27, 1996, p. 6.
2. Author's interview with Alexandra Swann, homeschool gradu-

ate, August 1998.
3. Information from National Education Association, "B-67, Home

Schooling," 1999-2000 resolutions, at http://www.nea.org/reso-
lutions/99/99b-67.html.
4. Author's e-mail from Kathleen Lyons, National Education

Association, communications department, September 9,1998.
5. Criticism about homeschooling from Bob Chase, president,

National Education Association, Wall Street Journal, Letters to
the Editor, March 19,1997, p. A19
6. Information about interest in homeschooling from Paul

Chesser,
"Shootings a boon to home education," http://www.worldnet-
daily com/bluesky_exnews-/19990607_xex_shootings_bo.shtml.
7. Information about sexual harassment in schools from Joan

Biskupic, "Schools Liable for Harassment," Washington Post,
May 25,1999, p. Al.
Endnotes / 133
8. Information about early American education from Laura Ingalls

Wilder, Farmer Boy, (New York, Harper & Row 1971), p. 5.
9. Research about peer dependency, Raymond S. Moore and

Dennis R. Moore, "When Delay Isn't Procrastination,"
Continuing Issues in Early Childhood Education, (Columbus, Ohio,
Merrill Publishing Company, 1990), pp. 126-127.
10. Author's interview with Joshua Harris, homeschool graduate,

February 1996.
11. Information about social adjustment of homeschooled students

from Larry Edward Shyers, "Comparison of Social Adjustments
between Home and Traditionally Schooled Students," (Ph.D.
diss., University of Florida, 1992), p. 199.
12. Ibid., pp. 199-200.
13. Information about adults who were homeschooled from J. Gary

Knowles and James A. Muchmore, "Yep! We're Grown-Up,
Home-Schooled Kids - and We're Doing Just Fine, Thank You!"
Journal of Research on Christian Education, Spring 1995, Vol. 4,
No. 1, p 39.
14. Ibid, p. 52.
15. Research on the social attitudes of homeschoolers from A. Bruce

Larai, "Homeschooling and the Redefinition of Citizenship,"
Education Policy Analysis, Vol. 7, No. 27, September 6,1999,
http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v7n27.html.
16. Information on homeschoolers and support groups from

Richard G. Medlin, "Home Schooling: What's Hard? What
Helps?" Home School Researcher, Volume 11, No. 4,1995, p. 1.
17. Information from Regional Roundup, newsletter of Richmond, Va.

home educators, Volume 6, Issue 6, February, 1998.
18. Author's interview with Carol Simpson, Alaskan homeschool-

ing mother, September 13,1999.
19. Information from OCHEC, home education magazine of

Oklahoma, Winter 1999.
20. Information on Catholic homeschoolers from John Mallon, "A

Positive Good," The Catholic World Report, December 1993, p. 44.
21. Author's e-mail from Lisa Hodge Kander, manager of JHEN,

October 23,1999.
22. Author's e-mail from Tom Bushnell, director of NATHHAN,

October 28,1999.
23. Information about progressive homeschoolers from Judy Mann,

"Home Schooling's Progressive Wing," Washington Post,
May 26,1999, p. C15.
24. Information from the Native American Home School

Association, http://expage.com/page/nahomeschool2.
25. Information about the Home Education Radio Network from

Homeschooling Today, Volume 4, Issue 6, November/December
1995, p. 28.
Chapter 5
1. Information about homeschoolers and academic achievement

from Patricia M. Lines, "Home Schooling," ERIC Digest, no. 95,
April 1995, EDO-EA-95-3.

from Brian D. Ray, "Home Education across the United States,"
Home School Legal Defense Association research study, March
1997, p. 12.

from Jane A. Van Galen, "Ideologues and Pedagogues: Parents
Who Teach Their Children at Home," in Home Schooling:
Political, Historical, and Pedagogical Perspectives, ed. Jane Van
Galen and Mary Anne Pittman (Norwood, N.J.: Ablex, 1991),
p. 45.

from Lawrence M. Rudner, Education Policy Analysis Archives,
http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v7n8/.

from Michael P. Farris, http://www.hslda.org/media/releas-
es/docs/03-23-99.html.
6. Seminfinalists in the 1998,1999, 2000 Merit Scholarship

Competition, National Merit Scholarship Corporation,
Evanston, III., 1997,1998,1999.
7. Information about Charles Foster, National Merit Scholar, from

Jim Killackey, "Norman Youth Spurns Harvard, Yale for Rose
State," Sunday Oklahoman, June 20,1999, p. 1-A.
8. Author's e-mail from Susan Richman, Pennsylvania

Homeschoolers Accreditation Agency, June 18,1999.
9. Information about Rebecca Sealfon from Julie Makinen, "New

York Home-Schooler is Queen of the National Spelling Bee in
D.C.," Washington Post, May 30,1997, p. A9; and Deb
Riechmann, "Nerve-Wracked: Home-Schooled Teen Top
Speller," Daily Hampshire Gazette, May 30,1997, p. 5.
10. Information about David Beihl from " 'La Nina' Secures
Geography Bee," from an Associated Press article that appeared
in the Daily Oklahoman, May 27,1999, p. 17.
11. Information about George Thampy from "Home-Schoolers

Sweep Spelling Bee," from an Associated Press article by
Anjetta McQueen that appeared in America Online, June 1, 2000.
12. Information about homeschoolers and college admissions from

Christopher Shea, "From Home to College," Chronicle of Higher
Education, February 2,1996, p. A31.
13. Information about homeschoolers and tertiary education from

Brian D. Ray, Strengths of Their Own - Home Schoolers Across
America (Salem, Oregon: NHERI Publications, 1997), p. 67.
14. Information about homeschoolers and college admissions from

Christian Liberty Academy Satellite Schools, Illinois, catalog.
15. Information about homeschoolers and community colleges

from Eric Goldscheider, "A center for un-schooling," Boston
Sunday Globe, March 14,1999, p. F6.
16. Information about Aaron Davidson from Isabel Lyman,

"Homeschooling Comes of Age," Charisma, June 1996, p. 64.
17. Information about the Colfax family from David and Micki
Colfax, Homeschooling For Excellence, Mountain Home Press,
1987.
18. Information about Patrick Henry College from Hanna Rosin,

"A College for Home Schoolers," Washington Post,
September 26,1999, p. A3.
19. Information about Classical Education from http://clasicalhome-

schooling.org/contents.html.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. Information about the Robinson Self-Teaching Curiculum from

http://www.robinsoncurriculum.com
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.
25. Information about Calvert School from

http://home.calvertschool.org/hs/welcome/-org/hs/wel-
come/_main.htm.
26. Ibid.
27. Information about A Beka Video School from

http://www.abeka.org/videoHomeSchool/advantage/Advant
age1.html.
Endnotes /137
Chapter 6
1. Author's interview with Jorge Gomez, homeschooling father,

August 14,1999.
2. Information about renewed interest in homeschooling from

Paul Chesser, "Shootings a boon to home education,"
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_exnews/19990607_xe
x_shootings_bo.shtml.
3. Author's e-mail from Ted Pride, Practical Homeschooling,

June 17,1999.
4. Information about homeschooling curriculum from The

Education Industry Report, "Catering To Home Schools, "
Volume 7, Number 5, ISSN # 1089 -6112, May 1999, p. 3.
5. Author's e-mails from Frank Wang and Marjorie Watson, Saxon

Publishers, November 19, 20,1999.
6. Information about homeschooling curriculum from The

Education Industry Report, p. 3.
7. Author's e-mail from Beverly Vickers, Calvert School Home

Instruction Program, November 22,1999.
8. Information about Pat Montgomery, founder of Clonlara School,

from htttp://www.clonlara.org/index78.html.
9. Information about video high school courses from The Teaching

Company SuperStar Series, p. 2.
Chapter 7
1. Author attends Hanson concert at the Hartford Civic Center,

Hartford, Connecticut, August 30,1999; and Isabel Lyman,
"Looks, not sound, behind Hanson rage," Weekend Gazette,
October 10-11,1998, p.8.
2. Information from Erik Van Gunten, "A Deficient and

Detrimental Educational Alternative: Home Schooling," essay
for ED 500 Foundations of Education, John Carroll University,
July 6,1999.
3. Author's interview with Eric Goldscheider, Boston Globe corre-

spondent, April 1999.
4. Information about homeschool graduates from Ronni Gordon,

"From home school to college," Sunday Republican, December
20,1998, pp. D5, D7.
5. Information about homeschool graduates from Cesar G.

Soriano, "I kissed dating goodbye," USA Weekend,
November 6-8,1998, p. 22.
6. Information about homeschoolers in the entertainment industry

from Bill Friskics-Warren, "Wilkinsons: A Brother, Sister & Pop
Sensation," Washington Post, October 4,1998, p. G4.
7. Information about homeschoolers from Donna G. Pierce,

"Home-Schooling - On the Road," Truckers News, March 1999,
pp. 10-12.
8. Information about homeschoolers in the entertainment industry

from Alex Tresniowski, Samantha Miller, Irene Zutell, and Amy
Brooks, "The Facts of Wife," People, July 6,1998, pp. 75-76.
9. Information about a homeschooling family from Pat Wingert

and Barbara Kantrowitz, "Two Kids and Two Moms,"
Newsweek, March 20, 2000, p. 52.
10. Information about media analysis from Robert Lichter, Daniel

Amundson, and Linda Lichter, "Media Coverage of Global
Warming: 1985-1991," The Center for Media and Public Affairs,
p. 1.
11. Information about the media and homeschooling from John

Holt, Teach Your Own, (New York, Delacorte Press, 1981), p. 356.
12. Information about the media and homeschooling from Brian D.

Ray, National Home Education Research Institute letter to sup-
porters, August 27,1999, p. 1.
13. Author's doctoral dissertation, "An Analysis of Print Media

Coverage of Homeschooling: 1995-1996," (Universidad de San
Jose, Costa Rica, 1996).
Chapter 8
1. Information about the Christian Home Educators of Colorado

from http://www.chec.org/new_site/nav_general_info.htm.
2. Information about the Colorado Springs Homeschool Support

Group from http://www.hschool.com/CSHSG.htm.
3. Ibid.
4. Information about Massachusetts Homeschool Organization of

Parent Educators from HINTS (Home Instruction News and
Tips), November 1995, Volume No. 3, Issue No. 4, p. 4.
5. Information about homeschooling support groups from Lori

Challinor, "Finding Common Ground," Home Education
Magazine, November-December, 1995, p. 34.
6. Ibid.
7. Information about homeschooling from Isabel Lyman, "Not

Home Alone," National Review, September 14,1998, pp. 32, 34.
8. Ibid, p. 34.
9. Author's e-mail from Scott Somerville, Home School Legal

Defense Association, July 26,1999.
10. Challinor, "Finding Common Ground," p. 35.
11. Author's e-mail from Fred Foote, homeschooling father, January

5, 2000.
12. Information about unschoolers from Eric Goldscheider, "A cen-

ter for un-schooling," Boston Globe, March 14,1966, p. F6.
13. Information about unschoolers from Liberated Learners, a publi-

cation of the Pathfinder Learning Center, Volume 1, Issue 3,
February, 1999, p. 3.
14. Information about unschoolers and academic standards from

Cheryl B. Wilson, "Sayer seeks stricter rules on homeschool-
ing," Daily Hampshire Gazette, August 12,1997, p. 11.
15. Information about unschoolers and academics standards from

Cheryl B. Wilson, "Concerns aired on homeschooling," Amherst
Bulletin, August 15,1997, p. 7.
16. Ibid.
17. Column by unschooling advocate Ken Danford,

"Homeschooling is best option for many teens," Amherst
Bulletin, September 12,1997, p. 5.
18. Information about Oklahoma homeschool cooperative from Bill

Scott, "Home School families form class co-op," Edmond Sun,
October 14,1999, p.1, 4.
19. Author's interviews with homeschoolers Jeremy Waller, Megan

Good, and Brook Welch in Edmond, Oklahoma, October 14,
1999.
20. Author's information from the Edmond Homeschool Co-op

meeting of Nov. 18,1999 in Edmond, Oklahoma.
21. Information about the homeschooling population from Brian D.

Ray, "Home Schooling on the Threshold: A Survey Of Research
At The Dawn Of The New Millennium," NHERI Publications,
1999, p.6.
22. Author's e-mail from Ben Boychuk, Claremont Institute,

December 4,1999.
23. Information about homeschoolers and access to public school

sports teams from John Giniusz, "Homeschooled Athol boy
scores in court, on the court," Greenfield Recorder, January 14,
1995, pp. 1, 5.
24. Information about Oklahoma homeschoolers, OCHEC News,

February/March 1999, Volume XVI, Number 4, p. 3.
25. Author's e-mail from Ken Robinson, homeschool father,

October 27,1999.
26. Author's e-mail from Barb Schulze, homeschool mother,

October 25,1999.
Chapter 9
1. Information about homeschoolers from Dana Hull, "Home

Schooling's High-Tech Wave: Valley Families Teach Their Own,
Thanks to E-Convenience, Affluence," San Jose Mercury News,
October 24,1999, p.lA.
2. Ibid.
3. Author's written interview wth Nancy Mansour, homeschool-

ing mother, October 1999.
4. Information about homeschoolers from Jane A. Van Galen,

"Ideologues and Pedagogues: Parents Who Teach Their
Children at Home," in Home Schooling: Political, Historical,
Pedagogical Perspectives, ed. Jane Van Galen and Mary Anne
Pittman (Norwood, NJ, Ablex, 1991), p. 67.
5. Ibid, p. 71.
6. Survey about homeschooling fathers from Jaren Green,

HomeSchool Dad Magazine, August-September 1999, pp. 2, 3
7. Information about homeschooling families from Michael P.

Farris, The Homeschooling Father (Sisters, Oregon, Loyal, 1999),
p. 36.
8. Information about homeschooling families from Lawrence M.

Rudner, "Scholastic Achievement and Demographic
Characteristics of Home School Students in 1998," Education
Policy Analysis Archives, Volume 7, Number 8, March 23,1999,
ISSN 1068-2341, http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v7n8/.
9. Information about homeschooling families from Maralee

Mayberry, "Teaching For The New Age: A Study of New Age
Families Who Educate Their Children At Home," Home School
Researcher, Vol. 5, No. 3,1989, p. 13.
10. Ibid, p. 13
11. Ibid, p. 16.
12. Information about the homeschooling population from Brian D.

Ray, "Home Schooling on the Threshold: A Survey Of Research
At The Dawn Of The New Millennnium," NHERI Publications,
1999, p.2.
Chapter 10
1. Information about President Clinton's speech on homeschool-

ing from Julie Foster, "Clinton wants to 'organize' home school-
ers," www.worldnetdaily.com, May 5, 2000.
2. Ibid.
3. Information about homeschooling and government schooling

from Chris Cardiff, "The Critical Distinction Between
Homeschooling and Government Schooling," Education
Liberator, Vol. 1, No. 5, p. 1.
4. Author's published article, "Martin Luther King III Encourages

Homeschoolers," Moore Report International, January-February
1994, p. 5.

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This book offers a comprehensive,

readable overview of the modern-

Isabel Lyman is a longtime homeschooling

She holds a master's degree in social science

Izzy can be reached at ilyman7449@aol.com.

I would like to say "thank you" to the very fine folks

Wid may be one of the few men in the country who

I would be amiss not to mention that I am extremely

And God bless homeschoolers. They are the brave-

Homeschooling exemplifies the American dream. It

This book evolved from the columns and articles I

These queries, my own journey as a homeschooling

It is my hope that this book offers a window into the

ticing what they preach. Writing this book was a rewarding

It is a wintry morning in New England. Anne Maxson,

"I didn't like the whole language approach to teaching

Anne adds a complaint that would be amusing if it

The singular event that pushed Anne and Richard into

The principal of Fort River Elementary, Russ Vernon-

"I couldn't see my son going to a school where the

Richard is enrolled in the sixth grade of the Calvert

"Being a widow, I feel a great responsibility to my late

Not far from the Maxsons live the Shumways.

Alan, 52, is a roofer, and Debbie, 47, a dance instruc-

and Cory is 13. Stephanie, 11, attends a public elementary

When they attended public school, the Shumway boys

Debbie spent three months working her way through

Nowadays, the boys spend their mornings in a well-

Debbie and her family have adjusted to homeschool-

In the blue-collar town of Ware, about twenty miles

Ken, who holds a law degree and master's of business

Ruth, 47, and Ken, 46, have chosen to homeschool

in kindergarten and second grade. It was, in Whitney's terse

Meanwhile, Ken has cheerfully resigned himself to the

Whitney, who upon observation seems to take her

Anne Maxson, the Shumways, and the Robinsons are

I, too, am a traveler on the educational road less taken.

My encounter with homeschoolers began in the

Once I had been introduced to the teach-thine-own

I discovered that homeschooling was not really that

I also discovered that the reasons to homeschool were

are finding the will and the way to make homeschooling

We made our decision to homeschool for these rea-

As I prepared for the time that school would begin, I

Still, my desire to play a daily role in training my

As the years have passed, and our curriculum has

Nevertheless, we have had much joy homeschooling

Socially we have never lacked opportunities for our

During the dozen years we've been teaching our boys,

We believe our efforts of laboring in the vineyards of

Homeschooling is defined simply as the education of

They [homeschools] range from the highly

Some homeschoolers' philosophy can be boiled down

Schooling, rather obviously, is what goes on in

Many home educators subscribe to the notion that the

often makes them peer-dependent, instead of invigorated by

Today, prominent homeschoolers include Jason

Homeschooling vs. Government and Private Schooling

There are stark differences between homeschooling

offending a special interest group. Homeschooling parents

Government schooling, on the other hand, is a duress-

A young person attending public school has little con-

Of course, home education is an alternative not only