This year in June, ‘Homeschool Awakening,’ a documentary, brought the topic of teaching your own children, back into the mainstream.

Kirk Cameron is an actor, filmmaker, and the maker of the documentary. He says, ‘this movie is a deep dive into the normal lives of American homeschool families who are on the mission of putting faith, family, and freedom back into learning.’

Now that sounds serious and like an upcoming movement!

Homeschooling gained traction during the pandemic for obvious reasons. But what intrigues us is that it has still not gone back to the pre-pandemic levels. This means that parents are not backing out of homeschooling. They are still unsure about sending their children back to school. They actually like it this way!

It has been this way for quite some time, except that the reasons may differ now. For example, parents in earlier cases may have homeschooled their children for religious or pecuniary reasons. However, they prefer Homeschooling now, even when they can afford to send their children to these schools.

What is Homeschooling?

Homeschooling is not a new concept, but it is demanding the limelight now. To homeschool children is to educate them at home with tutors or parents, without sending them to public or private schools. It is an exciting notion to keep your children away from school. Parents can teach them whatever they feel is good and important for their children.

The idea of Homeschooling was put forth approximately in the 1970s by John Holt, an educational theorist. He had an ideology of teaching children at home for the first few years of their academic life. This ideology came from the traditional school system fatigue, a system where memory and stressful learning were common. He urged the parents to ditch the regular school system and homeschool their children. His ideology spelled that the automobile of education can be chosen, but the paths of schooling can be different.

Homeschooling for children can be self-paced and stress-free.

Why do people homeschool their children?

The US Census revealed that the number of parents who homeschool their children increased by 63% in 2020-2021. Data finds that some of the parents who had homeschooled their children during the pandemic are considering continuing it even after the reopening of schools.

Source: US Census

The trend shows that not all parents are happy with their children’s schooling. Be it sex education, SEL education, or any other part of the general curriculum, parents want to take control of what their children learn in their lives, including knowledge about their faith and history.

Homeschooling parents keep their children out of typical school life for multiple reasons, some of which are:

• Disliking the school curriculum and teaching methods

• Financial burden of expensive schools

• A desire to spend more time with kids and get travel flexibility too

• Keeping kids away from bullying or discrimination at school

• Religious reasons

What homeschool programs can parents use to teach children?

Homeschool families consider the world to be their children’s school and life to be their curriculum. Homeschooling parents need to be aware of the state laws before they can start teaching their children at home. They can consider what kind of curriculum they want for their children. For example, biblical learning like Bob Jones homeschool curriculum or a free, online one like Easy-Peasy curriculum.

Parents can find homeschool coops to interact with families with similar homeschool interests and take help from one another.

Some parents can teach their children, and others can hire dedicated homeschool educators. Families can either purchase or create a homeschool curriculum through different resources. Some agencies and online platforms act as resource pools having the courses and curriculum for grades ranging from kindergarten to high school.

Ed-tech companies also play a pivotal role in homeschooling children from remote areas. Online Ed-tech platforms like Study.com help provide tutors, online courses, and video lessons that help in distance learning.

Are Homeschooled children less social?

Kirk Cameron, through ‘Homeschool awakening,’ advocates that homeschooling is not just reasonable but also healthy for children. He believes that there is nothing a child cannot learn at home in the presence of their family.

Pro-homeschool parents feel that their children are not learning in a restricted campus environment, as it is in everyday schools, but in a real-world environment. They interact with members of their families, neighbors, friends, and other people, and the question of becoming antisocial is practically irrelevant to them.

Learning Pods

Learning pods are like micro-schools. Homeschool families create small groups of their own to share learning experiences and cross-teach or hire a facilitator to teach their students the same subjects. It relieves the parents of the burden of teaching all subjects to their children, increases their socialization time with same-age groups, and helps kids learn from subject experts.  

Is Homeschooling the Best for Our child?

When it comes to children, everyone wants to have the best school, the best food, and the best life for them. This is a natural parental desire. Parents are beginning to realize what they want their children to learn and not what the government-recommended syllabus is.

On the other hand, many parents feel that what the public schools teach is suitable for their children and their guidance. They do not have the time or the influence to take the entire school education of their children into their own hands. These parents believe that if they did well after learning in school, their children would too. 

Which way of schooling should be given depends on multiple factors. As we said before, there is not just one way to education!