According to John Holt, an advocate for education reform, the emphasis that traditional schools place on reciting information from memory creates a coercive learning environment that is intended to mold youngsters into compliant workers.
During this time period, homeschooling history was just getting its footing and starting to gain popularity. Unschooling can be accomplished with children by allowing them the freedom to pursue their own interests, as Holt recommends parents do in his book titled “Unschooling.”
Holt started putting out Growing Without Schooling in 1977. This gave early supporters a way to talk to him and find out more about the group.
Raymond Moore, a long-time friend of Holt’s and an educational theorist who believed that children should be educated at home until they reached the age of eight or nine, then joined the conversation after Raymond Moore.
Raymond Moore advocated that children should be educated at home until they reached the age of eight or nine. After its release in 1981, David Moore’s Home Grown Kids quickly became a favorite among homeschooling families and one of the first books that many of them read.
Homeschooling movement and its directions
Homeschooling was already legal in every state when Holt and Moore began their fight for it, but each state had its own set of requirements, some of which were quite stringent (for example, six states required parents to have teaching licenses).
Homeschoolers in the early 1900s were required to work with their local school boards in order to submit their homeschooling plans and comply with the restrictions that were in place at the time. Moore states that during the early 1980s, “local public school administrators and primary teachers were understanding in 80 to 90 percent of all cases.”
The negotiations between homeschoolers and local officials were difficult, and Holt and Moore’s groups offered legal help to homeschoolers in the event that it was required.
The homeschooling movement underwent a paradigm shift in the 1980s as a result of the participation of a new generation of homeschoolers. During the time of the cultural wars, fundamentalist and evangelical Christians often used the phrase “Satanic hothouses” to refer to public schools.
As a direct consequence of this, many modern homeschoolers harbored ill will toward those who held positions of authority in public schools and avoided engaging in activities with organizations that they viewed as being inherently corrupt. The early support provided by James Dobson, who was the founder of Focus on the Family, and Russell Moore was a crucial element in the development of this way of thinking.
Homeschoolers once had to deal with hostile school authorities, who turned out to be much more hostile when they were confronted with legal action. Eventually, homeschooling became legal in many states. There was a growing concern among some school administrators that their authority was being challenged by the rising number of students who chose to study independently at home.
“The look over your shoulder phase”
Due to all of these factors, the 1980s were described as “the look over your shoulder phase” by the leader of a secular homeschooling organization. The next logical step for homeschoolers to take was to seek legislative support for homeschooling in their own states, which is exactly what they did in response to the shifting circumstances. Tough, many people had formal education.
Homeschoolers were split on the question of whether or not standardized testing and the submission of lesson plans constituted sufficient criteria; this was a common point of contention among homeschoolers. The question of whether or not homeschooling is within the law has been the focus of fifty separate pieces of writing.
Several comprehensive homeschooling laws
In some places, legislative action is not required, while in others, modest adjustments to existing statutes have been made, and in still others, comprehensive homeschooling laws have been written and put into effect. A piece of legislation has been made law. Some states, for instance, do not require any sort of testing or curriculum clearance for individuals who choose to educate their children at home, while others do.
At the beginning of the 1990s, there were still a few states that did not support homeschooling, despite the fact that the vast majority of states had achieved an agreement on the subject in 1989.
The 1980s were the decade that saw, in the words of historian Milton Gaither, “the shifting of the guard.” The liberal educational reform movement of the 1970s was not the philosophy that dominated homeschooling in the 1990s; rather, it was the conservative Christian theology.
Homeschooling history: Leadership that only lasted until the 1980s
Even though Holt and Moore’s writings and publications drove the movement’s early years, their leadership only lasted until the 1980s. This is despite the fact that these early years were fueled by Holt and Moore’s work. Compulsory school attendance laws were established for all homeschooled students.
Since he was a strong Christian, he was not considered for the role of new homeschool leader in the years after Holt died in 1985. They believed that he did not adequately represent the Christian faith.
An effort to bring the homeschooling community together
It wasn’t until the late 1980s that religious and nonreligious homeschoolers began to organize their own groups and became involved in legal disputes.
Moore made an effort in 1990 to bring the homeschooling community together, despite the fact that homeschooling clubs and organizations were becoming more Christian at the time and were rejecting parents who homeschooled their children for reasons other than those related to Christianity. Teachers had their unique techniques for homeschooled children, their teaching methods were very productive.
Most visible and influential figurehead
At the very beginning of the movement’s existence, Michael Farris served as its most visible and influential figurehead.
The Home School Legal Defense Association was established in 1983 by Michael Farris, a father who home educated his children and a lawyer. (HSLDA).
As a direct result of the steps taken by Holt and Moore in the early 1990s, local education officials were more open to the idea of working together with homeschoolers. In response to the increasingly adversarial relationship that exists between local government officials and religious and secular organizations that support homeschooling, a number of states have introduced legislation to address this issue (partially as a result of the entry of more oppositional and less cooperative evangelical and fundamentalist homeschoolers). Children’s education was considered the most important, especially at private schools.
The reputation of ruthlessly eliminating any remaining dissenters
In the HSLDA’s early days, either before or during its existence, the majority of the organization’s activities were carried out by other groups. In the early 1990s, HSLDA was known for its reputation for ruthlessly eliminating any remaining dissenters from within its ranks.
The nerve center of a national movement infrastructure”
The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) gained prominence as “the nerve center of a national movement infrastructure” as a result of Michael Farris’ notoriety for successfully challenging the final few remaining legal obstacles, as well as his connections to other notable homeschool leaders such as Greg Harris and Sue Welch.
These other, more contemporary homeschool leaders provided support for Farris’ efforts to seize control of both the network structure and the public perception of homeschooling. Farris’ goals were to make homeschooling more acceptable to the general public. Educating children with home education was the goal for many parents.
By the middle of the 1990s, he had successfully established total authority over both. The HSLDA was able to establish its dominance over secular homeschooling organizations and acquire political clout thanks to the hierarchical structure of the organization. Formal schooling laws were unique according to local schools.