2006 Marks Our Homeschooling Centennial

What A First Century It Has Been

Virgil Hillyer, the first Head Master of Calvert School, proposed the creation of the Home Instruction Department in 1905. The Calvert School Board of Directors approved his idea of selling the Day School’s courses to people in and around Baltimore. Hillyer talked a local bookstore owner into cooperating, and by June 1906, more than a dozen students had enrolled in the Home Instruction Department.

The students received the same lessons as their counterparts in the school. Hillyer and his staff mimeographed the lessons from teachers, then sent them out in time to reach the homes of the students on Monday morning, the first day of the new week’s classes. Homeschool students’ lessons were one week behind those of the students at the Day School.

Within a year, advertisements for this new program, the first homeschool curriculum program in the U.S., appeared in National Geographic, Harper’s and other prominent magazines. Missionaries, diplomats, and others in remote locations turned to Calvert for an American curriculum.

As word spread, the numbers grew. By 1918, enrollment in the homeschooling program exceeded 2,000. By the 1940s, children of soldiers stationed in Japan and Korea were studying the Calvert program in their homes overseas. By the 1960s, several schools began using the Calvert program with their students, taking the reputation Calvert had developed for educating children in homes and expanding it into their schools.

Students in Six of Seven Continents

Since then, the number of Calvert students has continued to grow. We can claim residents of all 50 states and most likely most ZIP codes, as well as almost 100 countries. Our students have lived on six of seven continents; no one has homeschooled to our knowledge on Antarctica.

Our students have received courses by mail, ship, airplane, dogsled, and parachute, during wartimes, peacetimes, floods, and practically every other natural and manmade occurrence. Today, students in more than 150 schools learn with Calvert courses, and those schools range from private schools and parochial schools to virtual schools, charter schools to international schools.

What unites every Calvert student is the Calvert program – the composition and grammar, including diagramming sentences; A Child’s History of the World, the timeless classic history book penned by Calvert’s first Head Master, Virgil Hillyer; the study of art history and music to create well-rounded students; the distinctive Calvert Script, which serves as a secret handshake when one former Calvert student sees the handwriting of another; and the constant reinforcement of key concepts through drill.

Whether you used Calvert School’s program in 1930 or last year, the philosophy and approach at Calvert School has not changed. As Head Master Hillyer explained more than eight decades ago: "School is not the preparation for life – it is life."

We hope you will take a moment to share your story with us – and others who are part of the growing Calvert homeschool family.