Homeschooling needs a new name — any ideas?

Homeschooling is a misnomer. A new name is needed to describe the new wave of tech-savvy, creative and entrepreneurial families taking their kids out of the traditional school system and designing their education. My friend, Eric Ries, suggested “Modular Learning” to describe this decentralized school system starting to emerge. Do you have any ideas to add to the list?

When schools closed in March 2020, many homeschoolers expressed annoyance, bordering on outrage that families forced to homeschool were calling themselves homeschoolers.

“This is not homeschooling,” they said “it’s school at home.”

The word homeschool tends to conjure up images of a mom in a homespun dress teaching arithmetic on a chalkboard hung up at the end of her kitchen table from 9am-3pm.

Historically, a large number of families have chosen to homeschool for religious reasons, or due to the lack of proximity to a local school.

But there’s a growing movement of “homeschoolers” (until we find a better word) who are not educating their kids at home around the kitchen table, but much more so because they think that they can do better than the local schools available to them.

These kids are not learning at home. They’re learning out in the community. They’re traveling the world…