Introduction and Compulsory Attendance
Home-Schooling: Introduction
The oldest education system
- Home-schooling is the oldest and most ancient educational philosophy.
- Before formal schooling started, some children went to study with great philosophers and thinkers, but most children learned life skills at home from parents.
Life skills
Parents centuries ago taught their children to cipher, build, and create the tools necessary for day-to-day living.
Meaning of education
- Education had a different meaning in ancient times.
- Soft skills (marketing, leadership, finance) were not sought.
- Hard skills (crafts, pottery, carpentry) were essential to live a successful life.
Specialised tasks
Hunting, sewing, tailoring, and other specialised tasks were learned from parents, extended family, or neighbours.
Compulsory Attendance
Massachusetts (1852)
In 1852, when public schooling had already become common, Massachusetts became the first state in the United States to pass a compulsory attendance law. The law included mandatory attendance for children between the ages of eight and fourteen for at least three months out of each year.
Spread
Other US states followed; by 1918, the whole country had endorsed compulsory attendance.
No Child Left Behind (2001)
Passed as a re-authorisation of the ESEA Act; focused on standardised testing for students across the country.
Global picture
Due to the popularity of these laws in the United States, many other countries adopted similar laws. Most countries in the developed world have laws regarding compulsory attendance of minors.
Exemptions
Exemptions to compulsory attendance are given when a child attends a private school or is instructed at home for a certain number of hours daily.
Home-schooling is at once the oldest educational arrangement and one of the most contested modern ones. The article works through its long history before compulsory schooling, the rise of compulsory attendance laws from 1852 onward, and the exemptions that made modern home-schooling possible.
Home-schooling as the oldest education
Home-schooling is, in one sense, the most ancient educational philosophy. Before formal schooling existed as an institution, the question of how children would be educated was answered locally by their families and communities. Some children, in classical civilisations, were sent away to study with great philosophers and thinkers; the famous schools of antiquity (Plato’s Academy, Aristotle’s Lyceum, the rabbinic schools of Judea, the academies of imperial China) trained relatively small numbers of students. Most children of those eras did not attend such schools. They learned what they needed to know at home, from their parents, in the daily life of the household and the wider community.
This means that home education was the default arrangement for most of human history. Universal mass schooling is a recent innovation, less than two hundred years old in most countries. Before its spread, the home was the primary educational setting for nearly all children, and parents and other adults of the household and community were the primary teachers.
The content of this older home education was different from what modern schools teach. Education in ancient times meant something different. Soft skills in the modern business sense (marketing, leadership, finance, complex interpersonal navigation in large organisations) were not what most children needed. Hard skills mattered: the crafts, the pottery, the carpentry, the agricultural work, the textile work, and the household management that the family’s economic survival depended on. A child learned these from older family members who had mastered them.
Specialised tasks (hunting, sewing, tailoring, metalwork, healing arts, navigation) were learned either from parents who happened to have the skill, from extended family members or neighbours who did, or through arrangements like apprenticeship that placed a child temporarily in another household where the skill could be learned in practice. The community as a whole, not just the immediate family, was the educational institution.
A modern home-schooling movement looks different from this older home education, of course. Modern home-schoolers live in societies where literacy, numeracy, scientific knowledge, and abstract reasoning matter much more than they did to a pre-industrial farming family. But the underlying arrangement (the home as primary educational setting, parents as primary teachers) has long historical roots, and modern home-schoolers often draw strength from this history.
The default educational arrangement for most children in most cultures, with families and communities as the primary teachers
Before formal schooling existed as an institution, most children learned at home from their parents and the wider community. The classical schools (Plato’s Academy, Aristotle’s Lyceum) trained small numbers; most children of those eras did not attend. Universal mass schooling is a recent innovation, less than two hundred years old. The content focused on hard skills (crafts, pottery, agriculture) the family’s economic survival required. Specialised tasks were learned from parents, extended family, or community members through arrangements like apprenticeship.
The rise of compulsory attendance
The arrangement of universal home-based education ended, for most of the developed world, in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Mass public schooling became the dominant model, and laws were passed to require children to attend. The transition was relatively rapid by historical standards and reshaped the educational landscape within a few decades.
The pivotal moment in the United States, where compulsory attendance was first established, was 1852. In that year, when public schooling had already become quite common, the state of Massachusetts passed the first compulsory attendance law in the country. The law required mandatory attendance for children between the ages of eight and fourteen for at least three months out of each year. By modern standards, the requirement is modest: three months a year for six years. But it was the first time the state had compelled school attendance, and the precedent mattered.
Other states soon followed Massachusetts. The pattern repeated across the country over the next several decades. By 1918, every US state had endorsed compulsory attendance laws. The transition from voluntary education to compulsory attendance was complete in less than seventy years.
The compulsory attendance principle continued to develop through the twentieth century. The most prominent recent example in the United States is the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, passed as a re-authorisation of the older Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The Act focused on standardised testing for students across the country, extending the federal involvement in education beyond what previous laws had attempted. The Act’s specific features have been controversial, but the underlying compulsory-attendance principle it operates within was settled long before.
Due to the popularity of these laws in the United States, many other countries adopted similar laws over the twentieth century. Today, most countries in the developed world have some form of law regarding compulsory attendance of all minors. The principle that children must attend school until a certain age is now nearly universal in developed societies, even though the specifics of the laws vary considerably across countries.
A modern home-schooling movement therefore operates inside a legal framework that, by default, requires school attendance. The exemptions are what make home-schooling possible.
Massachusetts passed the first compulsory attendance law in 1852; by 1918 every US state had similar laws
The Massachusetts law required mandatory attendance for children aged 8-14 for at least three months out of each year. By modern standards this was modest, but the precedent mattered. Other states followed across the next seventy years. By 1918, every US state had endorsed compulsory attendance. The principle extended through the twentieth century (No Child Left Behind in 2001 focused on standardised testing). Most countries in the developed world have adopted similar laws. Home-schooling now operates inside a legal framework that, by default, requires school attendance.
Exemptions and the modern movement
The widespread adoption of compulsory attendance laws raised an immediate question: what exactly counted as attending school? The laws targeted children who would otherwise be unschooled; they did not necessarily target children whose parents wanted to educate them at home or in a private school. Exemptions developed almost from the beginning.
Exemptions to compulsory attendance laws are given, in various US states and in many other countries, when a child either attends a private school or is instructed at home for a certain number of hours daily. The exemption is conditional: the home instruction must meet certain standards and must reach certain time minimums. But within these conditions, home education is recognised as a legitimate alternative to public school attendance.
The structure of the exemptions shapes modern home-schooling significantly. Parents who want to home-school must navigate the specific exemption rules in their jurisdiction. The rules vary widely: some places require formal registration with the state, others do not; some require specific qualifications of the parent-teachers, others do not; some require standardised testing of the children, others rely on parental judgement. The variations matter for the actual experience of home-schooling families.
The modern home-schooling movement gained significant momentum in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s, partly in response to dissatisfactions with the public school system and partly in response to the growth of alternative educational philosophies (including the unschooling movement associated with John Holt). By the 1980s and 1990s, home-schooling had grown into a substantial alternative educational sector in the United States, with hundreds of thousands of families participating. The movement has continued to grow in the twenty-first century, with similar movements developing in many other countries.
A home-schooling parent today, in a country with compulsory attendance laws, is engaging in a legal arrangement that the laws specifically permit through the exemptions. The arrangement is no longer the default it was before the 1850s; it is now a chosen alternative to the default of public school. The choice has practical, philosophical, and sometimes ideological dimensions that shape how the home-schooling life actually plays out for the family.
The laws permit alternatives: a child attending a private school or instructed at home for a certain number of hours daily can be exempted
Exemptions are conditional: the home instruction must meet certain standards and reach certain time minimums. But within these conditions, home education is a legitimate alternative to public school. The specific rules vary widely across jurisdictions: registration requirements, qualifications expected of parent-teachers, standardised testing requirements, contact with state authorities. Parents who want to home-school navigate these rules in their jurisdiction. The modern movement gained significant momentum in the US during the 1960s-70s.
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