What kind of homeschooling would you call "traditional homeschooling"?

Question

there are so many kinds of homeschooling out there that you don't realy know what you would call "traditional" anymore.

I was just wondering

Answer 1

How about (drum roll) traditional homeschooling?

***UPDATE: OK - I guess I deserved the TD... maybe...

Answer 2

Where I live, traditional homeschooling refers to something where the parents have total say over the child's program, do all the marking, etc. It means, here, it's most like how homeschooling was before mass public schooling came into being.

Answer 3

Tricky, depends how far you go back and probably which country you're in.

Here in the UK we generally say Home Education not Home Schooling so I'd think of "traditional homeschooling" being a school at home model using books and a curriculum developed by the parents and it being a largely American concept probably with the parents being hard-line Christians.

Over here the early Home Educators were much more likely to be taking a largely autonomous (unschooling) approach because doing it for religious reasons just wasn't an issue here unless you wanted to AVOID religion. So "traditional home educator" here would suggest more of a hippy, free spirit, lifestyle choice image with the kids learning what interested them, and keeping chickens ;-)

Answer 4

Traditional home-education? Here in Australia, we don't use the term 'homeschooling' either.

Traditional to me probably means station/bush kids doing correspondence lessons with either their mum or a governess.

Answer 5

Education of children was going on long before any schools, compulsory or not, opened up. That education consisted of hands on practical skills, knowledge of facts, etc. and most times, some sort of religious training as well.

If you are talking about the United States home school "movement," then it varies too. "Unschooling" was used in the 80's it just didn't have that term. "Classical" was also used.... as were many others.

I consider most methods traditional, as teaching one's own children was going on long before schools were around, and it is generally a most normal and healthy thing, regardless of method, as long as there is diligence to it.

Answer 6

Well, back in the 80's when the "new" HS'ing movement started, there were not a lot of options for HS curricula.  Many families used school programs and adapted them for home use. These were mostly textbook & workbook methods.  Some used copywork, studied in a classical curriculum method, or used what was available.  Many had to make their own lesson plans with materials available at libraries (public or their own), or what educational resources they could find.  This would all be "traditional".

Now, a generation later, there are so many different methods and products, it can make your head spin!  I think the largest change in the past 10 years has been the explosion of online and computer-based learning.