How American Families Built the Ultimate Counter-Culture Movement

Dixie Dillon Lane’s “Skipping School: How Homeschooling in America Went Mainstream” suggests that the first homeschoolers weren’t just iconoclasts; they were brave. The earliest homeschooling families were not protected by the law. In fact, they often broke it to educate their children at home, and they experienced overwhelming societal disdain. Yet these families doggedly pursued what they believed to be the best form of education for their kids. 

As someone who was homeschooled K-12, I saw the culture I grew up in reflected in Lane’s careful historical sketch. I learned much about the roots and history that gave rise to the current state of American homeschooling and felt a sense of pride in my people. 

Lane states her thesis clearly: “American homeschooling in the present day has deep roots in a long-held American belief that parents should hold primary influence over their children’s schooling, an influence that has been slowly lost over the past seventy-five years.” Beginning her survey in the 1950s, Lane documents how Cold War fears of communism led to increased federal control over education even as Americans began to grow wary of the government. The first homeschoolers, Lane says, “foreshadowed a new American paradox: a nation plagued with distrust yet booming with consolidation.”