Homeschooling was the normal way to learn until compulsory school laws arrived
For most of history children learned at home or as apprentices, and classroom schooling only became the norm in the developed world in the early 19th century. In the 1980s homeschooling was illegal across much of the United States for untrained parents. By 2023 to 2024, roughly 6 percent of American students learned at home.
Home education in many cultures centred on reading religious texts and learning the arithmetic of daily life. In Christian societies that meant reading aloud, reciting and memorising scripture, alongside workshop apprenticeships, and this remained the main form of education until the 1830s. Compulsory attendance laws then pushed it to the margins, surviving mainly in isolated communities. Resistance was there from early on: in America, Catholics objected to Protestant ideals in public schools.
The modern movement began in the 1960s and 1970s, led by education reformers unhappy with industrialised schooling, and was fed by suburban isolation, school desegregation and distrust of government. A 1979 Wall Street Journal article put the number of home-teaching families at around 10,000. By the end of the 1980s the figure was nearly 500,000, helped by the Home School Legal Defense Association, founded in 1983. It is now legal in all 50 states, many of which exercise little oversight.
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated everything. Remote classes run by schools did not count, but genuine homeschooling surged: by a Washington Post estimate, a pre-pandemic 1.5 million home-educated American children became somewhere from 1.9 million to 2.7 million, comparable to charter or Catholic school enrolment. Motives range from dissatisfaction with schools, including racism, to rural isolation, frequent travel, and training schedules for young athletes and performers.
Europe varies widely. Germany enforces attendance under a school law of 1919, and families who teach at home without permission can face fines or custody battles. Since September 2022 France has allowed it only for reasons such as health, intensive sport or art, travel or distance, and parents need a baccalauréat. Critics everywhere worry about children's social skills, narrow exposure to other worldviews, underqualified teaching and hidden abuse.
Source: Homeschooling
