Fall 2018

12 / 24

12
I grew up wearing mood rings and bell bottoms, playing with Shrinky Dinks and an
Easy Bake Oven, and listening to songs like “Summer Breeze” and “American Pie.”Yes, I
was a child of the late‘60s/early‘70s. Back then, I hadn’t even heard of homeschooling.
Yet, while many of us were still kids, the modern homeschooling movement in America
was born.
While it’s true that as far back as Colonial America, many families, some well-known
like the families of George Washington, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson, taught
their children at home, it wasn’t until the 1960s and 1970s that the homeschooling
population had grown enough to even be noticed. These parents were the pioneers
of a new movement to strengthen the family and better educate their children. Home
educators during these years would have been noticed more so if the vast majority of
them hadn’t been homeschooling underground due to an unsupportive legal climate
for home education in most of the US.
The 1980s marked a significant shift, however, thanks in part to several individuals
who laid the groundwork, educational reformers like John Holt, Raymond Moore, and
Gregg Harris, as well as the monumental legal efforts of the Home School Legal De-
fense Association. Because of their hard work and the hard work of many others, the
message of educational freedom and parental rights spread, along with legal changes
which codified those freedoms in many states.
In 1990, the first year I started homeschooling our oldest child, Bethany, the home-
schooling landscape in America looked far different than it does today. Families who
answered God’s call to teach their children at home were still considered pioneers, trail-
blazers who faced a lack of curriculum choices and uncertain freedom, even though it
was now legal to homeschool in all but a handful of states. With a strong sense of
conviction and armed with a hopeful resolve, these pioneers forged the trail that even-
tually became a highway for families wanting to give their children an excellent, moral
education.
Why is looking to the past important for homeschooling families today?
The sacrifices and efforts made by those pioneers, educational thinkers, HSLDA, and
How to Strengthen the
Homeschooling Community:
Look to our past, focus on the present, and
plan for the future
BY TRACY KLICKA
individual families, were costly ones. They
made possible the climate of freedom,
acceptance, and accessibility we all enjoy.
The work of my late husband, Christo-
pher Klicka, Senior Counsel at HSLDA and
a much-loved speaker at homeschool
conventions, gave me an insider’s view
of the movement as a whole. As a home-
schooling mother of seven children, the
youngest now 16, I personally watched
the movement grow from toddlerhood
to adulthood.
We have benefitted greatly from the
work of our homeschooling forefathers,
and looking through the scrapbook of
our past helps us to remember the price
that was paid in the early years of the
homeschooling movement so that we
might enjoy great freedom today. If you
haven’t read about the beginnings and
development of homeschooling in Amer-
ica, I encourage you to read Home School-
ing, the Right Choice, and Home School
Heroes, the Struggle and Triumph of Home
Schooling in America, both written by my
late husband, Chris. His books have docu-
mented well the vast amounts of our na-
tion’s homeschooling history.
The wisdom of focusing on the
present
While home education is definitely
mainstream, the landscape is rapidly
changing in America. Burgeoning gov-
ernmental regulations and an increased
intolerance of Judeo-Christian religious
expression make the sacrifices of our
nation’s homeschooling pioneers even
more valuable. This growing threat of
pervasive government control could spell
trouble for the future of our homeschool-
ing freedoms.
Because more regulation is always pos-
sible, as home educators we would be
wise to do everything we can to maintain
our current educational freedoms. How
do we do this? By teaching our children
well, being committed to our children’s
academic success, complying with state
homeschooling regulations, joining with
HSLDA to advance and protect educa-
tional freedoms, and setting an example
in our own homes of faithfulness, dili-
gence, and love.
God is with us to help in all of these
areas. Yet, as freedom can never be
guaranteed, our efforts today are just
as important as were those of America’s
homeschooling pioneers. Giving great
attention to what we are doing now as