While I’ve written appreciatively about public schools like those that have educated my wife and our children, I also appreciate the diversity of educational models available in this country. That includes homeschooling, which we used for our kids during my 2016 sabbatical and actually accounts for more students at Bethel than any single high school, public or private.
But homeschooling is itself quite diverse and frequently misunderstood. So to shed some light on that model of education — and to help me write a chapter aimed at homeschooling families in my still-gestating college guide — I asked
if she’d answer some questions.A historian trained at the University of Notre Dame, Dixie is contributing editor for Front Porch Republic, associate editor for Hearth & Field, and the author of her own Substack newsletter, The Hollow. She lives in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, where she’s both homeschooling her own kids and writing a history of homeschooling for Eerdmans.
Dixie, I know that you come to this topic both as a homeschooling mom yourself and as a historian writing a book about homeschooling. Let me start with your own story: what led you into homeschooling? (Were you homeschooled yourself? When and why did you decide to educate your own kids in this way?)
I attended public schools for grades K-12, including one overseas for a time, but I did know a homeschooler or two while I was growing up in Southern California. My parents were also both educators, and my dad, in particular, knew a number of leaders in alternative education, including John Holt and Ivan Illich. So I was already pretty familiar with the idea of homeschooling, if not the practice, by the time I began studying homeschooling from a historical perspective. I began studying homeschooling seriously in grad school at Notre Dame, when my dissertation advisor suggested the topic as a way of bringing together my interests in the histories of education, religion, childhood, and the family.
When I first began interviewing homeschoolers for my dissertation, I was expecting my first child and was surprised at how many questions I was getting about whether I planned to homeschool the baby. I was open to all sorts of schooling and making those decisions felt very far away at the time. But in the end, we decided to homeschool our (now four) kids based on a combination of family and local circumstances, as well as our beliefs about education and our religious and moral perspectives. It was a choice that was very specific to our situation, rather than an anti-school sort of choice or an ideological one. One main factor was that our eldest child was not yet ready to learn to read at age 5 or 6, and I anticipated that a conventional school would make her feel stressed or even stupid because of this, even though it was too early to “worry” about not reading.
And we still revisit the decision every year for each child. For now, homeschooling seems to be the best option for us.
If you now put on your historian's hat… how would you analyze the homeschooling story you just told? Are your reasons for homeschooling similar to those of many other families, past or present? For what other reasons have American families tended to choose this mode of education?
It has really been a privilege to study homeschooling both from the outside and the inside, first as someone with no connection to the practice and now as a homeschooling parent. I was surprised when I began my historical research by the constellation of reasons that families choose to homeschool; I imagined that people would have one or two strong reasons to homeschool, but I have found that that is rarely the case. I was also surprised to learn that while some homeschoolers are anti-school — they don’t believe in conventional schooling at all — many more are open to different schooling solutions but choose to homeschool. In this way, my family is typical: we homeschool for pedagogical, financial, geographical, moral, and religious reasons. My research has suggested that even homeschoolers who see homeschooling as a calling for God often have an openness to the possibility that private religious schools might be a good fit for some families, or that multi-day homeschooling academies might work as well or better than full-time family schooling.
Furthermore, the homeschooling boom that began in the 2020-2021 school year, when the percentage of American schoolchildren who were homeschooled rose above 10% for the first time, suggests an inverse corollary: that many families who use conventional (public or private) schools are not opposed to homeschooling, per se. In fact, many were willing to switch to homeschooling during the COVID-19 pandemic when circumstances made this the best choice for their families. Of these, some returned to conventional schooling by 2023, but others continued homeschooling.
So while religion has always been a major motivator for many homeschoolers, there are two important realities that complicate the idea that homeschooling is just a religious movement: first, that most families have multiple reasons for homeschooling, and second, even before the pandemic, most twenty-first century homeschooling families do not cite religious beliefs as their “top” reason for choosing to homeschool. Post-pandemic, homeschoolers are even less religiously-motivated. More often, there is a concern about peer pressure or physical or moral safety or academics in public school that motivates parents to begin homeschooling; but of course, sometimes that is a religiously-motivated concern! So it's quite complex, even on the individual family level.
What do people tend to misunderstand about homeschooling if they're looking at it from the outside?
Firstly, I think it’s easy to see homeschooling as monolithic based on whatever particular type of homeschooling is most familiar to you, but homeschooling is actually incredibly diverse — politically, racially, pedagogically, socially, religiously, etc. It’s easy to get the idea that it is not because it’s often the case that particular types of homeschoolers cluster in particular towns or regions. The Bible Belt, of course, has more than its fair share of conservative evangelical homeschoolers, including Quiverfull-type folks who are really radically countercultural. But other places seem to be dominated by conservative Catholic homeschoolers, or by liberal unschoolers, or by “crunchy” homeschoolers (who can be either liberal or conservative!), or what have you. Often these different homeschooling subcultures will unite in state- or national-level organizations or in local sports leagues, but it’s also easy to encounter only one type of homeschooler in any given locale even if there is also another thriving homeschooling subculture. The hippie unschoolers and the complementarian Baptists may both be there, but you may only know about one of them. This is part of the reason that I have focused so much of my research on California, and particularly on Southern California, because there is an unusual level of local diversity in homeschooling there and it is easy to learn about all different kinds of homeschoolers who live in the same region.
My book-in-progress, Skipping School: Finding the Roots of Modern Homeschooling in the American Past (currently under contract with Eerdmans), seeks to examine this diversity while also identifying the common threads among homeschoolers. I hope that this will provide a way of understanding homeschooling on a national level without ignoring homeschooling’s elemental diversity.
Secondly, I think it can be hard for non-homeschoolers to imagine what a homeschooling day is actually like. People tend to think that it’s either neglectful — you do no schoolwork at all! — or that you have to transplant the conventional classroom model to your living room. The idea of running a strict one-room schoolhouse for 6-7 hours each day while also trying to tend to chores, your own self-care, your own work, and possibly even a baby or toddler (or both!) sounds pretty brutal. But what people don’t realize is that most homeschooling families, while diligent about schoolwork, are able to adopt much different models of teaching and studying that can be quite effective but take far fewer hours (at least for elementary school) and often happen away from a table or desk. Some families thrive on the “school at home” structure, but homeschoolers are free to create a learning environment that works for them, and that can look very different from 6 hours at a desk.
As an insider, what have you experienced or observed as common challenges or potential pitfalls in homeschooling?
Homeschooling can have tremendous special rewards for the primary homeschooling parent, who is usually the mother. Time spent with your children is a gift, and the ability to observe, love, and know them for this many hours a day and in this many ways is truly incredible. However, homeschooling can also be hard work. You can adjust and adapt so that homeschooling works as well as possible for you, but the fact remains that it takes intellectual, emotional, and physical effort. This means, for one thing, that it usually (though not always!) requires one parent to forgo full-time paid work so that they can devote much of their time to homeschooling. This is a real financial sacrifice for many families and can also be an emotional or personal sacrifice for the mother. While this is often a worthwhile sacrifice that leads to much good fruit, it isn’t something to soft-pedal.
It can also be isolating. In this and in the other stressors of homeschooling, having a family or other local structure that supports the mother as she educates the children makes a huge difference!
Often, for example, a mother who is already a full-time homemaker will begin homeschooling and discover that she has just layered another full-time job onto her existing full-time work at home. Imagine — she is now the children's primary caregiver and their academic teacher! Plus, she's got to find a way to get to the grocery store and put three squares on the table each day! This homeschooling mother must be supported in her work and her well-being so that she and the whole family can thrive. As a homeschooling parent, it’s worth observing oneself (or one’s spouse) for a while and noting things like when you start to burn out (for me, it's after six straight weeks of school, and then more finally toward the end of March) and making a proactive plan to address them (we take a week off after every six weeks, and in April I always plan to switch to project-based and field-trip-based learning for the rest of the school year). Do not let these things slide!
Finally, let me connect this to my book project. As a historian who has both homeschooled her kids and taught college students... what advice would you offer homeschooled teenagers and their parents as they navigate college decisions: whether to go to college, where to go to college, and how to make the most of college?
Whether to go to college is a tricky question. I think that this discernment simply has to be left to the family; a gap year is often a good idea, either way, as is dual enrollment in the last year or two of high school for an advanced student!
As to where to go to college, I think that it is good to think about this very practically. Student loans can be a heavy burden on a young person, so something lower-priced but still academically strong is the ideal — and yet that seems to be a diamond in the rough these days. I would certainly encourage Christian young people and their parents to consider both career goals and faith/formational goals when choosing a college. I believe that the liberal arts (as well as the sciences, fine arts, etc.) provide a strong and beautiful formation for the human person and that such an education is never wasted, so in general I think that Christian liberal arts colleges (both within and outside of your own denomination) are great places to start.
The best advice I can give, whether for choosing a college or making the most of college, is to try to honestly and prayerfully — and in conversation with trusted friends, family, and teachers — discern what your next step should be right now, rather than trying to see too far into the future, and to do this without fear! What are the goods currently before you, and what is your duty right now? Preference and desire should play a part in these choices, too.
Are there particular challenges that homeschooled kids tend to have as they make the transition into higher education? Conversely, what distinctive strengths do they often bring to their college studies?
Homeschooled students come to college with a wide range of strengths and weaknesses, just as other students do.
Many are highly self-motivated and mature and have a strong and healthy sense of self. Many have also read more deeply (and widely) and have written more (and at a higher level) than their public school peers, in particular. These students really shine and are often head-and-shoulders above their conventionally-schooled peers (with some exceptions, of course).
On the other hand, many former homeschoolers lack the very practical skills that are needed for college study, such as knowing how to meet a deadline, how to communicate with a professor, how to take a test, and that sort of thing. Those of us who attended conventional schools may not realize how important these skills are in an institutional setting and yet how hard they are to learn without previous practice. Students need to be socialized at some point into how all of this works (although I would argue that they do not necessarily need this sort of thing in the elementary or even middle school years). For this reason, I often recommend that homeschooling parents seek practice for their teenagers in these areas during high school, for the difference between strong homeschooled students who enter college and weaker students who enter is often in this area: the stronger ones have learned how to study independently, set schedules for themselves, study for and take exams, and listen and speak effectively in a classroom setting.
But the same really could be said of many conventional students, too. (Except for the testing part, which with they are highly familiar!) The main thing is to think about how a college class functions and to make sure that your student is prepared to engage in this work without your supervision. A combination of academic independence and strict accountability is an easily thing to first encounter in high school than in college.
Thanks to Dixie for taking the time to answer my questions! Look for her book when it comes out, and consider subscribing to her Substack.
This is great, and I appreciate it as a homeschooling mother.
I think an interesting addendum is homeschooling in relation to missions. Ages ago western missionaries sent their kids back to the West and they were essentially raised away from their parents (or at least fathers).
Missionary boarding schools rose as a viable educational option, ending around the time I grew up overseas. A couple of my peers were the last of those sent away to boarding school at six years old, returning home for Christmas and summers. Those mothers worked full time in the field because they did not have children in the house for long.
The recognition of the limitations and dangers of this approach grew as homeschooling grew in popularity in the evangelical community. Now, I homeschool my children where families used to send their kids to boarded school. There are no English educational options and local education is very poor. We would not be here without homeschooling. However, the role of women has changed as well. All of the women in my area are full time homeschooling moms and unable to do much work outside the home because of the need to homeschool.
While I deeply appreciate this perspective on homeschooling, it absolutely ignores one of the main problems I see in homeschooled students in my first-year college classes: underpreparedness. It’s very difficult for one person, often a person without an educational background, to prepare a learner for college in every subject. This is where homeschooling cooperatives have an advantage, but I still find that my homeschooled students have weaker writing and critical analysis skills than their school (public or private) educated peers. I know a handful of homeschool parents who focus on critical thinking and expressing ideas, and a multitude of them who think that good writing is just academic English and correct punctuation. I wish more homeschooling cooperatives existed in our area to share their strengths in instruction, but until they do, the homeschooled students’ wonderful minds are being hobbled by missing skills.