Kattiness Everdeen wrote: ↑Tue Dec 15, 2020 6:39 pm
Thanks for the input! The generational homeschooling is just odd though. I didn't even know it existed until television shows in the 2000's started making fun homeschoolers. How did average people back in the 80's/90's even know it was a thing you could do? Even the super religious people I knew went to religious schools back then. I have also heard Colleen talk about not having tv and toys like normal kids, which is also very Duggar-like. I don't recall ever seeing pictures of them in prairie dresses though, so perhaps they were just that really strange family down the street that your parents told you to stay away from.
This is a very interesting discussion! I was homeschooled in the 90s. My family got into it for mostly educational reasons, but that wasn't typical at time. From my perspective, at that time many ultra conservative Christian/religious families started becoming concerned about some of the "controversial" teachings in public schools (sex ed, evolution, etc). Religious schools tend to be expensive, competitive to get into, and rigorous. Many of the families we knew who homeschooled early on had many children and little money. They also didn't care too much about traditional academic subjects and had so many kids that they needed the older ones at home to help out. But homeschooling was not really accepted, and I remember being so afraid of the "truancy officer" and my mom keeping record of all our work, and people asking us why we weren't in school if my mom took us out during school hours.
The landscape did change drastically by the time my youngest sibling graduated high school in the 2010s. I think this was in part due to people starting to homeschool for different reasons. Like my family focused on academics. Some families we knew had a child with behavioral issues at school and they wanted to help them. Or their child had an interest like gymnastics that took up all their time. I imagine the Ballingers with their interest in doing theater and music sought out homeschooling as a way to have more freedom and a creativity-focused education. Also her brother's hearing issues may have played a role in their choice to homeschool.
This is a very interesting topic to reflect on! Here is an interesting article I found on the history of homeschooling:
https://responsiblehomeschooling.org/re ... schooling/
Personal:
As I mentioned my family started homeschooling because my parents didn't think even the private school was challenging my older sibling and me. Both of my parents were highly educated and had great jobs, my mom's was in a field that had few women and she was advancing quickly because of that. She quit her job to teach us, and I still am thankful for the great quality of education we had. Having people like that in the homeschooling movement definitely helped it expand and become accepted as a valid form of education. I went to a traditional high school because my parents wanted me to be competitive for college admissions. But my youngest sibling was homeschooled all the way through high school and got into several decent colleges (the focus wasn't on academics as much by that time either though. Being around all the homeschooling families rubbed off on my mom as well, and she became ultra conservative and wants nothing more for my sisters and I than to have a large family and stay home and homeschool our kids.)