The homeschooling movement hasthrived for more than thirty years, andwhen I have an opportunity to speakto homeschooled high school gradu-ates, I am impressed with their in-

sightful thinking, their big dreams, and their heartfor the world. They are empowered and equippedto go out and change their world.

Over these years, the homeschooling move-ment has been successful at raising up the nextgeneration of leaders, young people who love theLord and seek to serve Him.

In the current homeschool arena, I sense a dif-ferent emphasis being presented. Some malespeakers seem to imply that husbands need tochoose materials (as the only ones wise enoughto do so), that only Christian books should beread, and that scholarship is less relevant thanspirituality.

I find this a disturbing trend. I offer a historical analogy as a cautionary

tale.

A Brief History of Women’s Mission Societies

At a Perspectives on the World ChristianMovement class I attended, Lorry Lutz, a retiredmissionary, spoke on the role of women in mis-sions. She highlighted many stories of wonderfulthings God has done through women through the

ages. When she cameto the 19th century,she discussed the riseof women’s mission-ary societies.

After the AmericanCivil War, she said,women were forced,by necessity, to runthe farms and familybusinesses sincemany of their hus-bands—or potentialhusbands—had leftfor the war and/ordied in the war.

At this same time,many women caught avision to impact their

world and decided to carefully save funds fromtheir household money to give for world missionoutreach.

When traditional missionary boards refused tosend single women to the field, women who hadan obvious passion to share Christ with the lost,thousands of these newly-energized womenformed volunteer fund-raising organizations likethe “Cent Societies” (in which members donatedone cent per week for their charitable purpose—apenny acquired by doing without some small “ex-travagance” like tea or coffee or a fancy dress)1.They formed over 100,000 women missionary

If we are not careful,

homeschooling in America mayfollow the same

path as thewomen’s

missionarymovement.

bySarita

Holzmann

Sarita Holzmann, co-founder with her husband ofSonlight Curriculum, is aspeaker, writer, curriculumdeveloper, missions advo-cate, beloved wife, formerhomeschool mom, andgrandmother five times over.

The Future ofHomeschooling in America

18 PRACTICAL HOMESCHOOLING MARCH/APRIL 2009 WWW.HOME-SCHOOL.COM

Clementina Butler helpedfound the Women’s Foreign

Missionary Society. Sheserved in Mexico and India.

societies within local churches andraised funds and prayers. But they wentbeyond fund-raising and prayer and or-ganized their own mission boards andbuilt women’s colleges in order to trainwomen missionaries.

By 1900, over 40 denominationalwomen’s societies existed, with overthree million active women raisingfunds to build hospitals and schoolsaround the world, paying the salariesof indigenous female evangelists, andsending single women as missionarydoctors, teachers, and evangelists. Bythe early decades of the 20th Centu-ry, the women’s missionary move-ment had become the largestwomen’s movement in the UnitedStates, and women outnumbered menon the mission field by a ratio ofmore than two to one.2

Dr. Ralph Winter, instigator of themodern “unreached peoples” movementand founder of the U.S. Center for WorldMission, says he believes the strong mis-sions movement of the early 20th centu-ry was built on the sacrificial giving and prayers of thesewomen.

But, said Lutz,“these boards were per-suaded to combine withthe denominationalboards in the 1920s and30s,” and “women losttheir opportunity to di-rect the work.” Over abrief period of time,men took over leader-ship of the boardswomen had competent-ly run for more thanthirty years. And while,no doubt, certain as-pects of this take-overhad valid and godlygoals (for example, thewomen’s efforts wereless focused on church-planting, say,than were the denominational boards),the denominational boards wanted con-trol of the money the women collectedand the power to decide the direction of

the agencies. And as the women were moved out

of the leadership roles they had ful-filled so long, they also tragically losttheir passion and drive for missions.All the women who had once workedso hard and sacrificed so much tosupport “their” societies disappeared.Few vital, denominational-levelwomen’s missionary societies stillexist. Indeed, you will be hard-pressed to find many such agenciestoday.

Why Does It Matter?

I look at this history and wonder.The homeschooling movement, obvi-

ously, has succeeded as men and women,husbands and wives have worked togeth-er. Our earliest forebears in the move-ment—usually the men, the husbands—went to jail in order to win us the right toteach our children at home.

But for all the vital influence and helpof these self-sacrificing men, I don’tthink I am misspeaking when I say thatthe homeschooling movement was ini-tially galvanized and faithfully staffedprimarily by women. And I know ofmany mothers, who even without their

husband’s support(for different kindsof reasons) have con-tinued to home-school their childrenat great personal sac-rifice.

I tremble that, justas godly men’s desireto take charge of andoverride perceiveddeficiencies in thewomen’s missionarymovement may havedestroyed it, so too,an over-eager desireon the part of home-schooling fathers tocontrol the home-schooling movementmay destroy the

homeschooling movement as well. Yes, let us listen to the good counsel

of these men. But let us also beware thepotential extremes.

May God give us all wisdom and dis-cernment as we seek to pursue Hisplans.

1 For a relatively brief but detailed overview ofthis phenomenon, see “But Gideon Refused:The Institutionalization of Methodist Mis-sion” by Jane Donovan of West Virginia Uni-versity (are.as.wvu.edu/MissionPaper.htm).

2 For more on this, see for example, JohannN. Neem’s Creating a Nation of Joiners(Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 90-97 and “Aspects of the Changing Status ofNew England Women, 1790-1840” foundat http://sn.im/womenstatus.

WWW.HOME-SCHOOL.COM MARCH/APRIL 2009 PRACTICAL HOMESCHOOLING 19

San Francisco Training School andDeaconess Home, 1891

Lucy Webb Hayes, the wife of U.S.President Rutherford B. Hayes and

first president of the Women’sMissionary Society, 1890

Missionary sewing class in Japan, 1925–1826

Lucy Webb Hayes Bible School and Deaconess Home, Washington, DC, 1891