More American Jews should consider homeschooling, writer concludes

If you’re Jewish and deciding between public schools or day schools for your children, try a third educational option – homeschooling, a mother of six argues.

“Watching peers struggle under the weight of schooling that is either financially crushing or functionally inadequate, I find it difficult not to feel that the Jewish community is overlooking an obvious release valve,” explains Bethany Mandel for Tablet Magazine.

“Homeschooling is not an escape from responsibility but a reordering of it, and for those willing to consider it, it offers something increasingly rare: the ability to build a calm, coherent, and meaningful family life around cherishing the fleeting years of childhood rather than constantly fighting against them.”

Mandel, a communications consultant and freelance writer, has a 12-year-old daughter who is enjoying an “unorthodox mix of studies” including French, Irish dance, the philosopher Plutarch and a possible internship as a doula.

“I have been homeschooling while working part-time, and what has become most striking to me is not how difficult homeschooling is, but how reflexively people who have never tried it insist that it is impossible – often in the same conversations in which they lament the cost of private school or the dysfunction of public education,” Mandel observes.

‘One of the fastest-growing forms of education’

Once considered a fringe practice, homeschooling has skyrocketed since the COVID-19 pandemic and should be recognized as “an increasingly mainstream choice,” she argues.

“Homeschooling is now one of the fastest-growing forms of education, embraced by families across racial, religious, and political lines who want more time with their children, more course options, and more control over the social environments in which their children spend most of their waking hours.”

As previously reported by The Lion, parents who homeschool often cite dissatisfaction with public schools as a factor in their choice to withdraw their children.

“Most people would agree that success, in life or education, is really about being able to function well in the world, holding a job, supporting yourself or a family, contributing to your community, and engaging meaningfully with the people around you,” said Lisa Berry, a homeschool mom in Maine.

“Academic mastery mattered, but not in a rushed or checklist-driven way,” she added about her homeschool experience. “One of the greatest advantages of homeschooling is the time it allows, time to fully grasp a subject before moving on and time to explore interests more deeply when curiosity takes the lead.”

Mandel agrees, listing time as one of homeschooling’s “most underappreciated benefits.”

“Traditional schooling consumes far more than classroom hours; it colonizes family life through early mornings, commutes, homework battles, and the constant pressure of moving children through rigid schedules designed for bureaucratic convenience rather than human development,” she contends. “Homeschooling collapses much of this inefficiency, leaving large stretches of the day available for reading, exploration, volunteering, and rest.”

Confusing ‘form with substance’

Mandel also tackles two arguments against homeschooling from a Jewish perspective – the first involving a perceived lack of resources.

“Because relatively few Jews homeschool, there are fewer Jewish curricula, co-ops, and communal supports, which in turn makes homeschooling feel isolating,” she writes, “That scarcity is then cited as proof that homeschooling is impractical, rather than as evidence of communal underinvestment.”

The second argument revolves around the “institutional prestige” of third-party private schooling.

“Homeschooling, by contrast, appears too informal, too individualized, too resistant to standardization,” Mandel acknowledges. “But this confuses form with substance. Education is not made serious by bureaucracy or price; it is made serious by rigor, attention, and intellectual engagement.”