Origins

Believe it or not, both of these pedagogies have a common origin. In 1970, John Holt, an educational theorist and advocate of school reform, argued that the emphasis on memorisation in formal schools created a repressive learning environment designed to turn children into obedient workers. Holt called for parents to liberate their children from formal education and instead follow a method today known as "unschooling." So we can state that homeschooling and unschooling are closely related but not the same (CRHE, 2014).

John Holt

Educational theorist Raymond Moore, a friend of Holt's, was quick to join the conversation after his arguments helped early homeschoolers, claiming that children should be homeschooled until the age of eight or nine to give them a solid educational, psychological and moral foundation. Moore's 1981 book, Home Grown Kids, quickly gained popularity and was often the first book read by homeschoolers (Gray and Riley, 2013).

Raymond Moore

By 1990, homeschooling was no longer associated with the liberal education reform movement of the 1970s, but with the Christian right and conservative religious ideologies. Although Holt and Moore together founded the homeschooling movement, and their books and publications were the lifeblood of the movement in its early years, their leadership did not last beyond the 1980s. After Holt's death in 1985, Moore suffered exclusion from the new homeschool leaders, who did not consider him sufficiently "Christian" (Gray and Riley, 2013).

In the same year, Moore made an unsuccessful attempt to unite the homeschooling community, even as groups and organisations became increasingly explicitly Christian, often requiring members to sign statements of faith and excluding those who homeschooled their children for other reasons. Michael Farris was the first and foremost leader of the new movement (CRHE, 2014).