This essay by Michael Farris outlines why it is so important to fight for homeschool rights.
Patrick Farenga looks at the history of homeschooling from before the founding of our country to present day. He includes discussion of the work of some important people in the homeschooling revolution.
The right to home school is based on two fundamental principles of liberty: religious freedom and parental rights. Whenever one of these two freedoms is threatened, our right to home school is in jeopardy. Here are the battles we think home educators will be facing as we enter the next century:
This is the first part of a comprehensive series on the history of homeschooling in America.
In July 2000, Louisiana residents Joyce and Eric Burges created the National Black Home Educators Resource Association, a nonprofit organization that provides advice on curriculum materials, pairs new families with veteran home educators, and produces an annual symposium. The Burgeses’ goal is to encourage other African-American families to become more involved in their children’s education. This article tells their personal story and how they have impacted the community in which they live.
The Homeschool Speakers and Vendors Association (HSVA) was originated and founded by Steve Clark, a homeschooling dad from Louisville, KY. From 1998 to the present, Clark also spent over 2000 hours working in homeschool booths and speaking at homeschool conventions all across the US and Canada. After meeting hundreds of other speakers and vendors at these conventions, Clark saw that there was a great need for an association that would provide support and assistance, mainly in the areas of compiling convention information and developing marketing resources. After brainstorming the idea with other vendors and speakers, Clark and his wife, Katrina, launched HSVA in 2003.
Steve Moitozo explains how homeschooling is parents deciding and directing the education of their children—deciding and directing the education, not doing all the educating.
A media kit is a document you provide to potential advertisers and other parties you are interested in working with information about your value as a partner. It is meant to reflect your reach as a blogger. A media kit can be as simple as an ad page with basic blog and social media numbers or as complex as a full-blown demographic study of your readers printed and bound. Whatever kind of media kit you choose to create, remember to be clear and concise.
A look at the battle for the homeschooling movement and the demographics of homeschooling families that challenges the notion that all homeschoolers are conservative fundamentalists. This article is a critical look at the HSLDA.
Would-be reformers of the current educational system, including corporate altruists nor philanthropic foundations, have shown much interest so far in homeschooling's increasing popularity. Instead, they've focused on the promotion of charter schools and school vouchers. In this article, Greg Beato details some of the efforts of big business to reform public schooling, taking a look at corporate sponsorships, grants, and scholarship programs. It examines the dichotomy between those who criticize the system as an Industrial Age artifact and simultaneously push for more standardization and regimentation. Homeschoolers have provided an alternative that offers positive results in academics and other accomplishments. The article continues by looking at the future of the relationship between business and homeschoolers, from increasing scholarship opportunities to partnerships between homeschooling groups and corporations.
This is an interview with Dr. Raymond Moore, with an emphasis on his and his wife's influence on the homeschooling movement.
NCHE appealed to its members to contact their legislators in visits to Raleigh and via telephone with three messages: 1) North Carolina homeschoolers are committed, conscientious, law abiding, intelligent and friendly people. 2) Home schools are an effective means of education. 3) Our desire is for our existing protection under the 1979 “Church School” law to be left untouched.
While the NCHE leadership was praising God for the Delconte decision, they knew they would soon be in a fight to keep the right to educate their children at home. In the March/April Greenhouse Report (mailed on May 24, 1985) they warned, “…we must be more watchful than ever to protect our freedoms. Already the media, public educationists, and some legislators are saying, ‘now that it’s legal, we need to regulate it.’” In the same issue, NCHE encouraged homeschoolers to work to keep the then current law unchanged, to comply with the law and to keep the quality of instructional programs high. They also advised, “Be ready to drop everything and go to Raleigh at a moment’s notice. The battle is only beginning.”
With podcasts you have a chance to reach a new component of the homeschool audience that you might not reach via newsletters, blog posts, or social media. This video details three advantages to marketing through podcasts.
North Carolina, like other states, has come full circle in the education of its youth -- from home instruction in years past to teaching children in groups (called schools) and then since the 1980's a growing trend back to home instruction. This article details the history of homeschooling in North Carolina. Discusses the Delconte case, the Department of Public Instruction legislative efforts, and the status of home schools today.
This infographic from OnlineCollege.org features a graphical representation of the history of homeschooling, methodologies, statistics, and other interesting facts.
An interview with John Holt from 1980 from The Mother Earth News. Holt discussed his own schooling experiences, how he discovered the key to real learning, and how the idea of homeschooling developed. He also discussed some concerns that parents new to the idea of homeschooling have. There is a short description of some of the legal issues that homeschoolers have faced and where the homeschooling movement is headed.
How to get bloggers interested in your products so that they will write product reviews on their homeschool blogs -- have an outstanding product first of all and give bloggers incentives. Find social media savvy homeschool bloggers on Twitter and G+ using two special hashtags.
When Michael Farris and Michael Smith founded Home School Legal Defense Association in March of 1983, home schooling was just a tiny blip on the education radar screen. The concept of parents teaching their children at home was relatively obscure, and the families who chose to follow this non-traditional education route were fairly certain to face opposition from the educational bureaucracy and following legal entanglements, as well as from their own friends and family.
Concerns about the arrests and court rulings against homeschoolers prompted the Goldens and the Manahans to form North Carolinians for Home Education (NCHE) with the intention of encouraging and organizing homeschoolers across the state. They began with organizational meetings in public libraries in early 1984.
This is a great list of famous people who did their learning at home. Includes presidents, athletes, performers, scientists, artists, inventors, educators, writers, and entrepreneurs.
Twenty years ago, home education was treated as a crime in almost every state. Today, it is legal all across America, despite strong and continued opposition from many within the educational establishment. How did this happen? This paper traces the legal and sociological history of the modern home school movement, and then suggests factors that led to this movement's remarkable success.
It is important that homeschoolers know the early history of NCHE and homeschooling in NC. Homeschooling is now widely accepted in North Carolina as a good alternative method of education. It was a much different climate for home education in the early 1980s.
The years 1990-1992 marked an important turning point in the homeschooling movement. Cheryl Seelhoff looks at this important time. She explores educational philosophies as a source of division, the home-centered living movement, the issue of remarried homeschoolers, the expertization of homeschooling, and more.
How homeschoolers interact with social media. Myths about using social media for marketing to the homeschool audience. Social media preferences for the homeschool market.
In the late '80s a small group of concerned parents helped pass a law making NC one the most homeschooling-friendly states in the nation. 2013 marked the 25th anniversary of North Carolina’s homeschool law. It is now also the year the law was amended. It is good to reflect on our history while we also imagine and work for the future of homeschooling in NC.
he headline on the December 1987 Greenhouse Report read, “Will This Be the Last Year for Home Education?” This was not a sign of surrender, but a call to action.