“The homeschooling movement in the United States has reached a level of institutional maturity that few could have predicted only a decade or two ago. A massive infrastructure is in place, from curriculum companies to social groups, catering to the millions of people who engage in homeschooling.” - Thomas E, Woods, Jr., Crime Against the State: Why Progressives Hate Homeschooling
I wonder if many of today's homeschoolers can really understand what an incredible phenomenon, even miracle, the growth of homeschooling over the past two decades is.
My first year homeschooling -- 1985 -- I had never even heard the term. I met my first fellow homeschooler during my second year of teaching my children and started a homeschool group that same year.
When my oldest son reached fourth grade, I discovered Saxon Math. The program started with the 65 book. The 54 book was in the test-marketing stage and I was part of the target group for the test. My copy was completely handwritten. Each chapter was stapled together and added to the pile of other chapters.
I coordinated the first curriculum fair in my area that invited actual publishers (prior to that, families would get together once a year to show their curriculum, which is still a good idea). Hundreds of the companies that set up at fairs today did not exist twenty – or even ten – years ago.
The most common response I encountered when people discovered I homeschooled was: “Is that legal?” Today it’s: “I know someone who does that.”
Even the word “homeschool” has evolved. During most of my homeschool years it was two separate words, and while many parents said they home schooled, you never heard a child say he or she home schooled, but rather that he was home schooled.
In some ways, I think this last thing may be the most important bit of progress. While my children have always been self-educators, they never used the terminology of self-education: I homeschool.
Maybe it would be good for us to impress upon our children the full potential of those words used by a student: I homeschool. I take an active role in my education. Education is not something I just wait for someone to do to me.
This is how we produce those “lifelong learners” the teaching industry is so fond of talking about and so loathe to actually empower.
Tammy Drennan has homeschooled and helped others start homeschooling for 23 years. Her web sites and blogs include: www.homeschoolstarter.com and www.educationconversation.wordpress.com.
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Jul. 25, 2008
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Posted by Tammy Drennan 
