"Homeschooling" is a Misnomer

May 4, 2013

Even as homeschooling becomes increasingly common and public awareness of the practice is growing, an ever increasing number of people I know are looking for different words to describe what we do.

School-at-Home: Ideal Picture or Nightmare Image?

After all, for many of us "homeschooling" is a total misnomer.  Sure, there are people who do the stereotypical School-At-Home-sitting-at-the-kitchen-table-with-a-math-textbook, but most of the people I know who have chosen to take their kids out of school do not recreate School-at-Home.  Why would we?  We've gone another route for good reason.

Hell, many of us are not even home very often. Instead we spend our time out in the world, at museums, playing and learning with friends, supporting mentorships for ourselves, our families or our children, learning through travel, creating things at Maker-spaces, volunteering...the list goes on...and on.

And some critics of homeschooling, thinking that school-at-home is the work of over-bearing helicopter parents, might imagine it more like this:

These days many people I know are increasingly using alternative terminology like Independent Learners (my personal favorite), Autodidacts, Custom-Schoolers, Custom-Learners, Unschoolers or Free-Range families.