A Homeschool Journey, Part 3: The Research Begins

I walked into the public library on a mission. I had decided to find out all I could about home education. Our experiences in school and our personal beliefs as related in my previous post, The Decision: Why We Considered Homeschool, had sparked an idea. And we intended to investigate the possibility of pursuing this path for educating our children. Our library is a large, county-wide one with many branches. Surely they would have plenty of books on the subject. The only problem was, the modern homeschool movement was relatively new and not nearly as common as it is now. I was a little disappointed in the selection, but there were some very informative books on the shelves. I eagerly took them to the desk, checked them out, and went home with my homework for the month.

Author and educator John Holt had several books on the subject. Holt started the nation's first home education newsletter, Growing Without Schooling, and was a proponent of "unschooling" -- the belief that, given the freedom to follow their interests, children will learn. His book Teach Your Own was one of the earliest books on homeschooling to be published. Written from an entirely secular point of view, some of his ideas were not in line with our thinking. But although we felt that children need a little more guidance than what Mr. Holt suggested, his ideas opened our minds to possibilities beyond the classroom setting. Maybe kids don't have to sit at a desk for six hours a day in order to learn!

Most of the other books available on the subject at the time were written by Raymond and Dorothy Moore. Two of the earliest pioneers of today's homeschool movement, the Moores were Christian educators who advocated delaying formal studies in their book Better Late Than Early. While we didn't agree with all of their ideas either, their books Home Grown Kids and Home School Burnout supported the thought that "homeschooling" didn't have to mean "school-at-home".

There were other books, as well. I read everything I could get my hands on about home education. As the years went by, more families were pursuing this path and more books were published. What wasn't available in the library, I purchased (the books in the picture above are just the tip of a very large iceberg!). As I read the success stories of others, I became convinced that we could do this! Meanwhile, God blessed us with one child and then another. And before long, it was time to really take it seriously. If we were going to homeschool, we had to make the commitment. If only we could overcome our fears!

Come back next week for Part 4 of our story!