The Bealls could see the surge in Virginia, where nearly 57,000 children were being home-schooled in the fall of 2022 - a 28 percent jump from three years earlier. Yet instead, along with many others of their age and upbringing, they had walked away.Īcross the country, interest in home schooling has never been greater.

That movement, led by deeply conservative Christians, saw home schooling as a way of life - a conscious rejection of contemporary ideas about biology, history, gender equality and the role of religion in American government.Ĭhristina and Aaron were supposed to advance the banner of that movement, instilling its codes in their children through the same forms of corporal punishment once inflicted upon them. Stories in this series will analyze the rise in home schooling, explore the perspectives of current and former home-schoolers and assess home education’s impact on public school systems and on the fierce debates about what children should learn about race, gender and the role of religion in public life.Īt a time when home education was still a fringe phenomenon, the Bealls had grown up in the most powerful and ideologically committed faction of the modern home-schooling movement.

Although Aaron had told her again and again how brave she was, he knew it would be years before she understood how much he meant it - understood that for her mother and father, the decision to send her to school was nothing less than a revolt.

Their 6-year-old daughter, wearing a sequined blue dress and a pink backpack that almost obscured her small body, hesitated as she reached the doors. Christina and Aaron Beall stood among many families resuming an emotional but familiar routine: the first day of full-time, in-person classes since public schools closed at the beginning of the pandemic.īut for the Bealls, that morning in late August 2021 carried a weight incomprehensible to the parents around them. They said goodbye to Aimee outside her elementary school, watching nervously as she joined the other children streaming into a low brick building framed by the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Deep Reads features The Washington Post’s best immersive reporting and narrative writing.

Interactive body swap story at school