Homeschool Parents See Promise — and Peril — in Artificial Intelligence 

The Boden family was sitting around the dinner table when Kevin Boden spoke up. A father of eight in a homeschool family, he had spotted a perfect opportunity to educate.

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He proceeded to read ChatGPT’s answer to the question, “What is the Trinity?”

“It’s pretty good,” his family told him afterward. “It seemed accurate.”

“I asked this question of ChatGPT,” he told them. It was first time the Boden family discussed AI and, years later, these conversations haven’t stopped.

A former U.S. Air Force judge advocate, Boden now serves at the Director of Legal and Legislative Advocacy at Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), as well as the head of HSLDA International. Every day, he speaks with homeschooling parents who are trying to offer their children a quality education amid the advancements and unknowns of the 21st century.

AI is the latest, and potentially most disruptive, of these technologies.

Boden is quick to acknowledge that homeschooling isn’t insulated from the debates roiling modern education. In fact, some home educators argue that homeschoolers are well-positioned to lead the way in AI adoption.

“Just generally homeschool moms and dads, they’re open to whatever works,” Dr. Brian Ray, president of the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI) and homeschool father of eight, told National Review.

Even 30 years ago, he remembers homeschoolers taking the lead in the implementation of technology within education. He said he surveyed homeschool parents on computer use before it was common in public schools and found that “a very high percent” of parents used computers to educate their children.

“They don’t have to wait for ‘research says.’ They don’t have to wait for professors of education to say, ‘Oh, it’s good,’” he said. “They just give it a whirl.”

AI use in homeschooling has not been heavily researched, but Ray referenced a study by the AI education company Age of Learning suggesting that home educators were more willing to use Chat GPT than classroom educators. If these findings are indeed accurate, Ray said he would be “not surprised at all.”

Dr. Melanie Wilson, homeschool mother of six, curriculum writer, convention speaker, and digital content creator, disagrees; she regards homeschoolers as generally more hesitant to embrace technological developments.

“They were some of the last people to embrace online learning . . . and having their kids do classes online using the internet for research,” she told NR. “I’m not saying that they didn’t use it at all, but they were most interested in physical books.”

Wilson witnessed the Covid-19 pandemic prompting more home educators to rely on online courses to teach their children, but she believes the pendulum is beginning to swing back.

“Interestingly enough, in the last couple of homeschool conferences where I was speaking and exhibiting, I heard parents starting to push back against [online classes],” she said.

Wilson believes the same will be true with AI. She says many homeschool parents remain hesitant to embrace a technology they view as potentially dangerous — but she doesn’t think the hesitancy will last.

“I think we will potentially see people really embracing it and determining what it can do,” she said, “and then maybe again, pulling back from it and saying, ‘Hey, there are some things that I don’t like about this, and it can become too much for our kids.’”

She said parents will likely use AI for its organizational abilities and to teach children topics that would otherwise be “sticking points” for parents and students alike.

“A parent could say, ‘You know, my child is really struggling with long division. Can you suggest some videos that you think might really click with this particular child?’” Wilson explained. She stressed, however, that AI should never be a replacement for learning things like basic math or writing skills.

Working at HSLDA, Boden has encountered a wide range of parent responses to AI, from parents encouraging their 13- and 14-year-olds to learn how to prompt AI to collect data or write to others who entirely forbid their kids from using it.

“I think one of the blessings of home education in general is that you can craft it around the child,” he told NR. “Instead of, for example, an elementary school or a high school saying, ‘Hey, you can’t use AI in this function. We as a parent can say, ‘Well, for this child, it kind of makes sense. They’re in 12th grade now, not ninth grade. They’ve learned to write. I’m confident in their abilities. And so they can learn how to supplement this.’”

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Wilson also believes this individualized nature of home education could play into homeschoolers’ willingness to use AI.

“And I think once homeschooling parents understand that they could create their own chatbots for their particular children — for their particular family,” she said, “I think the usage of AI in your homeschool become really exciting.”

Wilson explained that these chatbots could be specially developed to assist each child with his or her particular academic weaknesses, never as a substitute for parent instruction in most topics but as a minor supplement for specific subjects.

“I could develop a particular chatbot for one of my kids who, for example, has a particular problem with math. . . . I know that when they get the wrong answer, they just kind of shut down,” she said, “so I could give a chatbot instructions to point out to that child, ‘This is what you did correctly on this particular problem. Now the only thing we have to correct is this.’”

Wilson said she is especially excited about the potential for AI use in searching within closed databases or data sets. She said this could be a more controlled means of ensuring content is family friendly.

In the long run, Ray believes advancements like AI could contribute to a small increase in numbers within the homeschool community but does not expect drastic changes.

“[I]t’s just one more straw that lightens the camel’s back,” Ray said, though he acknowledged that AI “will enable an increasing number of people who thought maybe they were incompetent to homeschool their children.”

Boden said AI has led many home educators to wrestle with a fundamental question: What does it mean to get an education — to truly learn? The way parents answer this question points to their purpose for homeschooling, whether it is that their children attain a certain level of knowledge, work through a specific curriculum, or just check off the boxes mandatory for completing high school.

Boden stressed that AI use in education, and online education in general, should never supplement in-person relationships. He used his daughter’s online French class as an example.

“[S]he’s in some level of relationship with the peers there and the instructor, but it’s not really a relationship like she shares with us,” he said. “And it’s not even the same level of relationship that she would be in if she were to gather physically with those people — if she could shake her teacher’s hand or see her entire mannerisms.”

Ray likewise cautions homeschoolers not to lose sight of the heart of home education in their eagerness to embrace AI.

“Home education is largely about relationships,” he said. “[U]sing AI more and more and more can lend itself to less and less relationship.”

He also stressed the importance of boundaries in AI use. Like Boden and Wilson, he believes AI cannot qualify as a person and should not be treated as a substitute for interpersonal relationship nor as a source of absolute truth.

“If you believe that the responses you’re getting from AI are necessarily better than your own brain, you’re in trouble,” Ray said. “I also hope and pray that parents are teaching their children first the fundamentals of reading, writing and arithmetic before they before they turn them loose using AI, unless it’s to help them learn the fundamentals.”

Boden said AI is an unavoidable element of the world we live in, so exercising wise stewardship is crucial.

“[T]he advice that I give the most to parents is think long and hard about your own heart in this matter,” he said. “Are you operating from a position of fear?”

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