Homeschooling: a learning experience for the whole family

Just recently, the California Court of Appeal for the Second Appellate District reversed its earlier ruling to make homeschooling in California illegal unless the parents had teacher certification. This ruling, which would have affected over 166,000 homeschoolers, ignited a huge outcry from people across the nation. So strong was the support for homeschoolers, that in the Court of Appeal, the three judges voted unanimously in  favor of reversing the former ruling.

This incident sheds light on the fact that homeschoolers in the United States are now a force to be reckoned with. And their numbers are growing. According to a survey made by the US Department of Education, there were 850,000 homeschoolers in 1999. By 2003, the numbers had grown by 29 per cent to 1.1 million. In 2006, according to the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI), there were between 2.0 to 2.5 million children being educated at home. “Homeschooling,” writes the institute’s Dr Brian Ray, “is now bordering on ‘mainstream’ in the United States. It may be the fastest growing form of education in the United States.”

Why are so many parents choosing to educate their children at home?According to the same survey, put out by the US Department of Education, 31 per cent of parents chose to home school because of their concerns with the school environment, such as negative peer pressure and drugs. And 30 per cent of parents did so in order to give religious and moral instruction. Indeed, these would be our primary reasons for choosing this path.