Nearly 2 million children are homeschooled in the United States, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. And their numbers are increasing at a much faster rate than the population of public schools. Parents offer many reasons for educating young people at home, from concerns about safety or instructional quality to the desire to offer religious instruction.
Still, homeschoolers account for only about 4% of students. It would be easy to forget that compulsory education, the requirement that all children attend school for some minimum number of years, is less than a century old in some states.
But a home education was the norm in colonial Virginia. Williamsburg rightly celebrates being the home of College of William & Mary, the second-oldest college in the United States. But few Virginians had the means or even the inclination to seek a higher education.
Unlike New England, where churches and schools commonly anchored town squares, Virginia was a rural landscape. People lived farther from each other.
For most children, home was school. Then as now, young people were taught what was deemed most important to succeed in life. Today, policymakers often focus on “21st century skills.” Often they mean science and technology, though in Williamsburg we often try to remind them that if you educate good citizens, you are bound to get good workers.
In the 18th century families also tried to pass along the skills that they valued. The family Bible was often one of the few books in a household, so it was a foundation both for literacy and religious education.
Mathematical knowledge, or “cyphering” as it was often called, was learned in the context of work skills. A carpenter, for example, might need to be familiar with different formulas and equations than a printer.
Homeschool Resources on Colonial Williamsburg’s Teacher Community
Many children were apprenticed to different trades, so book learning took a back seat to the specialized knowledge that would be passed down by a master practitioner. But the majority acquired the skills and life path of their parents, and for most it was farming.
Members of the gentry class, possessing more wealth and therefore more leisure than the middling sort, often hired personal tutors to teach their children. Boys received more education than girls.
For young ladies, management of a household was a primary skill to develop. They learned to sew, to cook, and the more privileged learned also to read or play a musical instrument.
But with labor such a central part of colonial life, there was little room for frivolous learning. And for enslaved Virginians, few indeed were fortunate enough to more than a few rudimentary skills.
While homeschooling has ascended again as a popular option for American families, it looks very different. Today homeschooling represents a certain kind of freedom to pass along valued knowledge, by choice rather than necessity.
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