Homeschooling

Homeschooling or homeschool (also called home education or home based learning) is the education of children at home, typically by parents or by tutors, rather than in other formal settings of public or private school.

• From my great-grandfather, not to have frequented public schools, and to have had good teachers at home, and to know that on such things a man should spend liberally.
  • Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book I, verse 4 (translated by George Long).

• Homeschooling will certainly produce some socially awkward adults, but the odds are good they would have been just as quirky had they spent twelve years raising their hand for permission to go to the bathroom
  • Quinn Cummings, in The Year of Learning Dangerously: Adventures in Homeschooling

• Most of the homeschooled children I know have about the same amount of after-school peer time as the rest of the population—but, obviously, without that school day together, they do spend less time with their peers. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing is still open to debate.
  • Quinn Cummings, in "The Year of Learning Dangerously: Adventures in Homeschooling".

• All the homeschooling parents I know meet on a regular basis with other families. They organize field trips, cooking classes, reading clubs and Scout troops. Their children tend to be happy, confident and socially engaged.”
  • Quinn Cummings, in The Year of Learning Dangerously: Adventures in Homeschooling, p. 21.

• Homeschooling works because schooling is not the same thing as education. School is not the only place to learn, to grow up. Universities and colleges recognize this fact whenever they admit homeschoolers who have never attended school.
  • Patrick Farenga, October 25, 1991 The Exhausted School, Presented by Patrick Farenga at Carnegie Hall

• There is no school equal to a decent home and no teacher equal to a virtuous parent.
  • Mahatma Gandhi, in Matriculate To Your Perfect Degree Course, p. 161.

• We should recognize that schools will never solve the bedrock problems of education because the problems are problems of families, of cultural pressures that the schools reflect and thus cannot really remedy.
  • David Guterson, "When Schools Fail Children: An English Teacher Educates His Kids at Home", Harper's Magazine (November 1990).

• The status quo was rote memorization and recitation in classrooms thronged with passive children who were sternly disciplined when they expressed individual needs.
  • David Guterson, Family Matters: Why Homeschooling Makes Sense (1992), Ch. 5: "School, Home, and History", p. 109.

• Once upon a time, all children were homeschooled. They were not sent away from home each day to a place just for children but lived, learned, worked, and played in the real world, alongside adults and other children of all ages.”
  • Rachel Gathercole, in The Well-Adjusted Child: The Social Benefits of Homeschooling, p. xxiii.

• John Caldwell Holt was one of the earliest homeschool pioneers in addition to being an American author, educator, and early researcher in youth rights theory. He became disillusioned with the public school system after numerous years of working within it and seeking reform. Ultimately, he decided that public school reform was not possible and Holt started advocating homeschooling. He believed that "children who were provided with a rich and stimulating learning environment would learn what they are ready to learn when they are ready to learn it".
  • John Holt, Who Is John Caldwell Holt (Author). HomeschoolBase.com (2002). Retrieved on 2017-04-26.

• We can get too easily bogged down in the academic part of homeschooling, a relatively minor part of the whole, which is to raise competent, caring, literate, happy people.”
  • Diane Flynn Keith, in Page 54 - 2013 CATALOG April 24 2013 Final.

• The home is the first and most effective place to learn the lessons of life: truth, honor, virtue, self control, the value of education, honest work, and the purpose and privilege of life. Nothing can take the place of home in rearing and teaching children, and no other success can compensate for failure in the home.
  • David O. McKay, in Mormon Parenting Secrets: Time-Tested Methods for Raising Exceptional Children, p. 11.

• It’s dishonest and unacceptable to link child abusers who lie about homeschooling with committed parents who have chosen the very special and unique vocation of actually homeschooling.
  • Diana Sroka Rickert, "Illinois Reporters Use Tragic Child Abuse Case To Dishonestly Smear Homeschool Families", The Federalist (June 20, 2024)

• Media related to Homeschooling on Wikimedia Commons
• Encyclopedic article on Homeschooling on Wikipedia
• The dictionary definition of homeschooling on Wiktionary