The rise of homeschooling

With the widespread school approach getting increasingly trendy – homeschooling – many parents stop sending their children to a traditional school, which is the compulsory education set up by Government. Parents actually have different reasons for choosing this option. In any case, the dissatisfaction of the conventional school system might be the common reason why parents homeschool their kids.

A brief story of Homeschooling
Homeschooling is first of all another approach to educating children without being in the classroom. Education is home-based, mostly led by parents, tutors, or even online teachers. In fact, the concept of homeschooling rose in the 1970s when some popular authors and researchers started writing about educational reform and suggested home education as an alternative educational option. One of them is John Holt, who devoted his life to homeschooling movement. In his popular book entitled “Teach your own ”he evokes a certain sense of “Humanity” through homeschooling. Here is an extract of what he wrote in his book: “(…) I have used the words “homeschooling” to describe the process by which children grow and learn in the world without going, or going very much, to schools, because those words are familiar and quickly understood. But in one very important sense they are misleading. 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 a school at all (…) It is a natural, organic, central fundamental human institution, one might easily and rightly say the foundation of all other institutions”.

The legality of homeschooling
As a result of homeschooling movement, several countries across the continents started shifting from traditional education to parent-led home-based education. Correspondingly, it has been legalized. In USA, for instance, there are about 2.5 million children being homeschooled and it is legal in all 50 states each under different regulation laws. According to the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI), there were 2.5 million homeschool students from kindergarten to 12th grade in the United States, which represent 3 to 4 percent of school-age children. In fact, 2.5 million estimated in spring 2019 – with the percentage of the homeschool population which is continually raising(at an estimated 2% to 8% per annum over the past few years).

Source: National Home Education Research Institute