All Work Is Homework

By Adam Scheuer, The Harvard Political Review, July 19, 2004

The fastest growing industry in the United States is not in the tech sector, and this industry's bubble certainly won't burst. With homeschooling, there's only upside. In the past two decades the growth rate of homeschooling has increased enormously. Disillusioned parents have been pulling their children out of the secular and in many instances substandard public education system, taking education into their own hands.

Homeschooling was illegal in about half the states during much of the 20th century, but today it is legal nationwide. Since 1980, homeschooling has grown by about 15 percent a year, more than doubling every five years. When the Department of Education last estimated homeschooling numbers in 1999, it counted 850,000 children, up from 360,000 a decade earlier. Though the Department of Education has stopped keeping track of numbers since 1999, other estimates place the number of homeschooled American students at about two million. In fact, it is estimated that today nearly one in 25 students is taught at home.

Origins and Overtones
Despite its relatively recent growth, homeschooling is far from being a new phenomenon in U.S. history. Before public education was widely available nationwide, many children obtained their formal education at home. Homeschooling lost its prevalence in the 1870s with the advent of compulsory public school attendance and required teacher training, but it began its resurgence in the 1960s with the rise of the anti-establishment counterculture movement. Liberal parents, frustrated by the rigid structure and conservative nature of schools at the time, became convinced they could do a better job of educating their own children. Many pulled their children out of schools and employed the "unschooling" and "deschooling" techniques propounded by John Holt, an influential critic of mainstream education who advocated an educational method that follows a child's interests rather than one that follows an established curriculum.

Although an atheist, Holt was a pioneer in a market that today is most often associated with conservative evangelical Christianity. In the 1980s and 1990s, more families began homeschooling their children, often because of religious convictions. Aghast at what they saw as an increasingly secular culture, and objecting particularly to bans on school prayer, to sex education, and to the teaching of evolution, parents took it upon themselves to educate their children at home in a religious environment.

Paul Schultz, a Harvard undergraduate who was homeschooled from kindergarten to third grade, is a Harvard-campus advocate of homeschooling. Schultz told the HPR that his parents believed that through homeschooling, he would receive a better overall academic education. Yet this was only part of the motivation behind his parents' decision to home-school. "They wanted to be in charge of my religious education," Schultz told the HPR. "They didn't believe in various propagandist things like sex education that would be taught in public schools." Expressing the beliefs of what is fast becoming a mainstream evangelical movement, Schultz said, "Any private school that is non-denominational is effectively anti-religious. It can be either for or against it. It can't be both."

Homeschoolers Unite
Homeschooling has spawned an industry of textbooks, curricula, workbooks, magazines, and supplies worth at least $850 million a year. In addition, cyberspace offers online courses, chat-rooms, and websites devoted to homeschooling. Virtual communities allow homeschoolers to share information and successful learning experiences. Drawing on a broader range of resources than were available a decade ago, homeschooling parents now find it considerably easier to homeschool than ever before.

Although many professional educators disapprove of homeschooling and claim that it limits children's exposure to peers or people of different cultures, current laws in 16 states allow homeschoolers "equal access" to activities like music and interscholastic sports at local public high schools. Support groups bring homeschoolers together in a wide variety of social activities. Founded 13 years ago, the National Christian Homeschool Basketball Championship drew over 200 teams from 25 states to its 2003 tournament. High school proms, seen by many as the archetypal American high-school experience, are inching their way into homeschooling communities. One well-known homeschoolers' prom, at the Makoy Center in Hilliard, N.J., had a statewide attendance of 50 during its first year in 2000. Last spring, the event drew nearly 200.

From Home to Higher Ed
As their particular brand of education proliferates, increasing numbers of homeschoolers are negotiating the college admissions process, applying to and entering mainstream and even elite academic institutions. Homeschooled children are in fact just as likely as other students to attend colleges and universities, in part due to new, more accepting attitudes toward homeschooled applicants in college admissions offices. A January 2003 report by the National Association of College Admission Counselors in Alexandria, Virginia showed that 74 percent of colleges surveyed had formal policies to judge homeschool credentials, up from 52 percent in 2000.

Consistent with the nationwide trend, Harvard College has seen a steady increase in applications from homeschoolers during the past decade. Harvard Director of Undergraduate Admissions Marlyn McGrath Lewis told the HPR that, although Harvard does not keep track of the number of homeschooled applicants each year, "We've probably seen two or three dozen in the past year." The reasons for the increasing number of applicants are twofold, Lewis explained. "Firstly, more people are being homeschooled. Secondly, a larger proportion of people being homeschooled realize they can apply and be admitted." Lewis pointed to the fact that Harvard's acceptance rate for homeschooled applicants is about 10 percent-the same rate of acceptance as for traditionally-schooled applicants.

A School of Their Own
Not all homeschoolers are comfortable entering mainstream educational institutions. A conspicuous symbol of the dynamic, unique character of the homeschooling movement is the newly christened Patrick Henry College, intended specifically for homeschooled students. Its 106-acre campus was built from scratch by Michael Farris, president of the Home School Legal Defense Association and a leader in the homeschool movement since the 1980s. In 2000, Patrick Henry's inaugural class contained only 90 students, but it had grown to 242 in the span of only three years. Despite the existence of some 3,600 non-profit colleges in what many see as an already saturated market, Farris hopes to enlarge his undergraduate student body to 1,600, as well as launch a new law school that will enroll 400. Farris's plans for Patrick Henry's expansion are ambitious, but could well prove feasible considering the recent growth of the homeschool movement.

While Patrick Henry certainly adds diversity to the educational experience in the United States, the school's leadership seems intent on cultivating an institutionalized religious consensus. As a testament to the link between homeschooling and evangelical Christianity, applicants to Patrick Henry must describe their "personal relationship with Jesus Christ and [their] walk of faith." Professors must sign a "statement of biblical worldview" that emphasizes the creationists' account of the origins of the universe, and the literal truth of the Virgin birth.

Because of its "statement of biblical worldview," Patrick Henry was initially denied "preaccreditation" from the American Academy of Liberal Education, a private group approved by the U.S. Department of Education to accredit liberal arts colleges. Only students at schools that are privately accredited can receive federal aid. In a letter to Patrick Henry, AALE President Jeffery D. Wallin wrote that the school's statement of worldview conflicts with AALE requirements that "liberty of thought and freedom of speech are supported and protected, bound only by such rules of civility and order as to facilitate intellectual inquiry and the search for truth." Only in November 2002, after Patrick Henry slightly modified its "statement of biblical worldview" to provide for discussion of dissenting opinions did the AALE approve it for accreditation.

Increasing Visibility
Mobilized and increasingly active, homeschoolers are fast become a politically salient interest group. Despite claims of political or ideological impartiality, the public face of homeschooling is conspicuously evangelical Christian. The Home School Legal Defense Fund recently launched a project called Generation Joshua that offers high school level civics lessons through an online curriculum, and coordinates student volunteers to help in local races where a conservative Christian candidate is in a close race.

Expect to hear more about this growing movement in the upcoming decade. On the campaign trail in 2000, George Bush said, "In Texas we view homeschooling as something to be respected and something to be protected. Respected for the energy and commitment to loving mothers and loving fathers. Protected from the interference of government." With a more visible face in politics, the homeschooling movement could provide a mobilizing issue for conservative voters in the 2004 elections and beyond.

As cyberspace breaks down boundaries, learning no longer is confined to a desk-filled classroom with a teacher presiding in front of a blackboard. As more parents choose to homeschool, the movement's affiliated apparati grow as well, making it easier and more likely for new parents to make the switch to homeschooling. Patrick Henry College may be just the harbinger of a new and powerful social trend spreading across the country.