Editing Homeschooling (section)

=== United States ===
Resistance to laws mandating school attendance emerged as early as the end of the nineteenth century.<ref name="valiente2022" /><ref name=":11" />{{Rp|page=16}} [[Catholic]] groups in particular resisted the enforcement of Protestant ideals in public schools, as was observed in the 1844 [[Philadelphia nativist riots]]. Philadelphia's Roman Catholic bishop requested that Catholic schoolchildren be permitted to read the Catholic [[Douay bible]] in school rather than the Protestant [[King James Version]], which was granted. This decision fanned [[anti-Catholic sentiment]], sparking a rumor that Catholics were attempting to remove the Christian Bible from schools.<ref name=":11" />{{Rp|page=16}} [[Toledo, Ohio]], minister Patrick Francis Quigley was put on trial in 1891 for resisting the requirement to report the names of students at his school, which he was principal of; he argued unsuccessfully that "the state has no right to control the education of the child."<ref name=":11" />{{Rp|page=16}} Resistance to mandatory schooling was sporadic throughout the 19th century as the state undertook more responsibility in protecting the [[rights of children]].

In 1913, the US [[Bureau of Education]] established the Home Education Division, an organization that worked with the National Council of Mothers and [[Parent-Teacher Association]]s to provide home curriculum materials; these were meant to supplement, not substitute, for public schooling. In the early 20th century, the headmaster of [[Baltimore]]'s [[Calvert School]], Virgil Hillyer, recognized that various students at his school were unable to attend due to ill health and began to send out lesson plans to those students' parents. The [[Calvert method]] became a popular early home curriculum. Its advertising in periodicals such as ''[[McClure's]]'' admonished parents that the curriculum was necessary to provide a proper education.<ref name=":11" />{{Rp|pages=|page=26}} This form of homeschooling was targeted primarily at those who needed to educate their children at home due to ill health, and many of their materials were dispatched to hospitals.<ref name=":11" />{{Rp|page=26}} In 1940, remote education began to be delivered via telephone.<ref name=":11" />{{Rp|page=28}}

In the 1960s, [[Theonomy|theonomist]] [[Rousas John Rushdoony]] began to advocate homeschooling, which he saw as a way to combat the increasingly [[secular]] nature of the [[Public school (government-funded)|public school]] system in the United States. He vigorously attacked [[progressivism|progressive]] [[school reform]]ers such as [[Horace Mann]] and [[John Dewey]] and argued for the dismantling of the state's influence in education in three works: ''Intellectual Schizophrenia'', ''The Messianic Character of American Education'', and ''The Philosophy of the Christian Curriculum''. Rushdoony was frequently used as an expert witness by the [[Home School Legal Defense Association]] (HSLDA) in court cases. He often advocated the use of private schools.<ref>{{cite web|last=Edgar |first=William |title=The Passing of R. J. Rushdoony |work=[[First Things]]|access-date=2014-04-23 |date=January 2007|url=http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/01/the-passing-of-r-j-rushdoony |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140404033004/http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/01/the-passing-of-r-j-rushdoony |archive-date=April 4, 2014 }}</ref> The HSLDA, founded in 1983, was highly successful in influencing the legal status of homeschooling in the United States.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Patterson |first1=Jean |last2=Gibson |first2=Ian |last3=Koenigs |first3=Andrew |last4=Maurer |first4=Michael |last5=Whitterhouse |first5=Gladys |last6=Stockton |first6=Charles |last7=Taylor |first7=Mary Jo |title=Resisting Bureaucracy: A Case Study of Home Schooling |journal=Journal of Thought |date=2007 |volume=42 |issue=3 |page=73 |jstor=jthought.42.3-4.71 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/jthought.42.3-4.71 |access-date=25 June 2024}}</ref> In the 1980s, homeschooling was illegal throughout much of the United States for parents who were not themselves trained educators. Today, the United States has some of the most lax laws around homeschooling, with most states requiring little to no oversight and no educational requirements for parents.<ref>{{Cite news |last1=Jamison |first1=Peter |last2=Meckler |first2=Laura |date=2023-12-28 |title=Home-schoolers dismantled state oversight. Now they fear pushback. |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/12/28/homeschooling-regulation-esa-school-choice/ |access-date=2024-10-08 |newspaper=Washington Post |language=en}}</ref>

[[Conservative Evangelical]] Christian parents were increasingly dissatisfied with the public school system and were the main demographic that organized to promote home education in the United States{{when|date=March 2025}}.<ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Talbot |first1=Margaret |title=The New Counterculture |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/11/the-new-counterculture/302341/ |website=The Atlantic |date=November 2001 |access-date=25 June 2024}}</ref> Prominent right-wing evangelical pastor and activist [[Jerry Falwell]] sought to terminate [[sex education]] and discussions of [[evolutionary biology]] from American school curricula, instead recommending replacing both topics with [[School prayer|prayer]] and [[Bible study (Christianity)|Christian Bible study]].<ref name=":11" />{{Rp|page=35}} The movement embraced claims by Christian parents who advocated for homeschooling, such as Raymond and Dorothy Moore.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Riley |first1=Gina |title=Differences in Competence, Autonomy, and Relatedness between Home Educated and Traditionally Educated Young Adults |journal=International Social Science Review |date=2015 |volume=90 |issue=2 |page=11 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/intesociscierevi.90.2.02 |access-date=25 June 2024}}</ref> Another influential figure associated with the rise of the homeschooling movement was [[John Holt (educator)|John Holt]]. Holt believed that informal education was better than compulsory education and expressed these views in his books ''How Children Fail'' and ''How Children Learn''.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Gaither |first1=Milton |title=John Holt |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Holt |website=Encyclopaedia Britannica |date=8 May 2024 |access-date=1 July 2024}}</ref> Holt advocated for [[unschooling]], whereby children learn without any formalized curricula or expectations.<ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Hanes |first1=Stephanie |title=Free-range education: Why the unschooling movement is growing |url=https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2016/0214/Free-range-education-Why-the-unschooling-movement-is-growing |website=The Christian Science Monitor |access-date=1 July 2024}}</ref> As homeschooling caught on in Evangelical Christian circles, the number of children being homeschooled increased massively, with some estimates suggesting the number went from under twenty thousand in the 1970s to nearly 500,000 by the end of the 1980s.<ref name=":11" />{{Rp|page=74}}