Homeschooling Subculture

Before the advent of compulsory education laws in the United States from 1852-1918 a majority of children were educated by their families or communities. This early type of home education was the norm worldwide until the turn of the century, and is still widely practiced in developing countries. However, in developed countries since the universal adoption of such compulsory education laws home education has been driven into a more deviant subcategory. As a result, the homeschooling community as an identifiable social subcategory and centralized concept was born circa 1965. This was an ironic sociological trend since home education was originally the dominant method of American education which then progressed into a deviant and stigmatized subcategory. This process of community creation fits uncomfortably within Sykes and Matza’s theory of delinquency and techniques of neutralization as a homeschooler would typically “define himself as lacking responsibility for his deviant actions” (Sykes & Matza, 133). Thus this technique of neutralization when employed by the homeschooling community in DC attempts to mitigate the counter-culture aspects of homeschooling as a deviant subgroup, even as homeschooling becomes more mainstream.
As a direct result of this social stigma, …show more content…
According to Donnelly, the DC homeschooling community solidified in an organic pattern without any significant pioneers since “private tutelage has always been available to those in DC who want to take advantage of it” (Donnelly). Furthermore, there are not “any different reasons to homeschool in Washington DC than on the national level” (Donnelly) although on the opposite end of the motivational spectrum, there are numerous advantages awarded to the homeschooling community in DC not available anywhere else. As Donnelly explained from his own family’s personal