Home Schooling Support Group

This community is dedicated to parents, educators, and students involved with home schooling. Home schooling - also called home education or home school - is the education of children at home, typically by parents or guardians, rather than in a public or private school. Prior to the introduction of compulsory school attendance laws in the 19th century, most childhood education worldwide occurred within the family or community, with only a small portion of the population attending schools or employing tutors. Currently, the majority of children in developed nations receive their formal education at a public institution. Homeschooling is an option for parents who wish to provide a different learning environment for their children than they believe is attainable in public schools. It is also an alternative for those families who are unable, for practical or personal reasons, to comply with the regulations of a public school. Homeschooling may refer to instruction in the home under the supervision of correspondence schools or umbrella schools. A curriculum-free philosophy of homeschooling may be called unschooling, a term coined in 1977 by American educator John Holt in his magazine Growing Without Schooling.