This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, March 22, 2018.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Home schooling in the United States is growing,

and yet the popular conception of homeschoolers

is hopelessly antiquated.

Author Zach Slaback had a rude awakening when he began working with homeschoolers a few years

ago, and he learned that homeschoolers are very diverse and extremely well organized.

His advice to lawmakers who might want to regulate homeschooling,

is this the hill you want to die on?

So detail for me having your appreciation for homeschoolers as a group changed.

Yeah, no, so I was not homeschooled. I knew a couple of people growing up who were homeschooled and they were, you know, kind of odd.

And as I got older, the more and more people I met who did homeschool, you know, they were like different libertarian types, so I kind of figured

it was an ideological thing for them, but I still thought most of the people who were involved

in homeschooling are probably doing it for religious reasons.

I probably don't necessarily agree with those religious reasons and they probably are you

know honestly the notion that I think most people have of homeschoolers are people you

know churning butter at four in the morning with denim skirts down to

their ankles right and that was more or less kind of the the notion I operated by

because I think that's the popular notion that we have of the

stereotype and I got an opportunity several years ago as while I was doing

business development for a company called Praxis to go and interact with a lot of

homeschoolers. A number of our customers were homeschoolers,

...