Calvert Home School

Innovation of Calvert Homeschooling

The Calvert Day School was a prominent school in the early 1900's that was run by a Harvard educated school master named Virgil Hillyer. Although there were many schools being run in those days, the Calvert Day School is one of the few that still have a name in homeschooling today. What did Calvert do differently and how did a day school become part of many homeschooling parents' discussions to this day?

Mainly, is was this Harvard scholar who had the idea to sell the school's Kindergarten program to parents who were unable to send their children to Calvert. This was popular with parents because they were then able to give their children the same educational advantage at home as those parents who had the ability to send their children directly to the Calvert Day School.

As you can imagine, this practice did not stop with just the Kindergarten material. Hillyer decided to test his market by placing ads in National Geographic for his Kindergarten curriculum for only 5 dollars. Since the response was overwhelming, Calvert eventually made their full line of curriculum available to parents opting for one reason or another to homeschool their children. Within 5 years of that first kindergarten course offering, more than 300 children were enrolled in Calvert teaching in homes.

When the 1930's came around, you not only could find Calvert curriculum in the United States, but in more than 50 countries! The US Government even began using the Calvert curriculum to teach soldiers' dependents who were stationed throughout the world. Calvert teaching in the home is still going strong and celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2006.