municipal home rule: see home rule, municipal.

home schooling, the practice of teaching children in the home as an alternative to attending public or private elementary or high school. In most cases, one or both of the children's parents serve as the teachers. Like the charter school movement, home schooling usually arises from religious or other disenchantment with conventional public schools. Home schooling may also include full-time education at hiome by hired tutors.

Although home schooling had been practiced for generations in the United States, it was largely illegal during most of the 20th cent., but since the 1970s it has become one of the most rapidly growing educational trends in the nation. The contemporary movement initially arose mainly among Protestant conservatives who wished to provide their children with religious and moral instruction forbidden in public settings. By the mid-1980s there were roughly 50,000 home-schooled children in the United States, and by 2000 an estimated 1.5 million were being educated at home. The movement has largely been an American phenomenon. In Europe, home schooling is usually illegal or tightly restricted. The largest European home education community is in Great Britain, where by 2000 approximately 10,000 children were being home-schooled. At the beginning of the 21st cent. a majority of the parents engaged in home schooling continued to be motivated by religious beliefs. The home school movement has, however, always had other components, and it encompasses a broad cross-section of Americans, both religious (in a wide variety of faiths) and secular.

During the late 20th cent. the fastest-growing approach to home schooling was generally called "unschooling." In this system, which arose largely from educator John Holt's books How Children Fail (1964) and How Children Learn (1967), teaching responds to an individual child's talents and interests rather than adhering to a conventional curriculum. Whatever their manner of practice, proponents of home schooling cite figures showing that children who learn at home generally score higher on standardized tests than their traditionally schooled contemporaries. Some critics nonetheless question the real quality of such education, and also argue that it isolates children, depriving them of necessary social interactions and inhibiting collaborative and cooperative skills.

In the United States, home schooling has been legal in all 50 states since 1993, with regulatory laws and performance-tracking procedures differing widely from state to state. Some home school opponents feel that many state laws are too lenient, permitting teaching by parents who are inept or inattentive. The Home School Legal Defense Association, founded in 1983, provides information to parents and others on home schooling and its regulations; it also actively opposes the creation of nationalized standards for home schooling. Most states also have a number of local home schooling organizations. Publishers, responding what is now a mainstream movement, are producing a variety of materials geared toward home schoolers, and most colleges and universities now have developed criteria whereby they can admit the home-schooled.

home rule, municipal, system adopted in many states of the United States by which a city is given the right to draft and amend its own charter and to regulate purely local matters without interference from the state legislature. The rapid growth of urban centers in the latter part of the 19th cent. brought new and complex problems; the state legislatures, which had controlled most city government, found themselves incapable of handling the fast-growing cities. In 1875, Missouri adopted the first municipal home rule clause in its constitution; other states have followed its lead. The form of the rule varies greatly from state to state. There are two principal types of municipal home rule: constitutional home rule, by which cities are given the right by the state constitution to form their own charters; and legislative home rule, by which local autonomy is granted through an act of the state legislature. Local and general concerns cannot, of course, be strictly delimited, and there are frequent legal and political contests concerning jurisdiction. The growing importance of the suburbs and the relative decline of cities have led to the concept of metropolitan government as an intermediary between city and state government.

home missions: see missions.

home economics, study of homemaking and the relation of the home to the community. Formerly limited to problems of food (nutrition and cookery), clothing, sewing, textiles, household equipment, housecleaning, housing, hygiene, and household economics, it later came to include many aspects of family relations, parental education, consumer education, and institutional management. The application of scientific techniques to home economics was developed under the leadership of Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards; later an emphasis was placed on the social, economic, and aesthetic aspects. Although called in some countries home science, household arts, domestic science, or domestic economy, the subject is known today in the United States as home economics, and specialized terms are used for its subdivisions. The field of home economics has, at different times, emphasized training in needlework, cookery, the management of servants, the preparation of medicines, and food preservation; such instruction was once given mainly in the home and from a practical rather than a scientific standpoint. In the United States the teaching of cooking and sewing in the public schools was coincident with manual training for boys, beginning in the 1880s. State institutions, notably in Iowa, Kansas, and Illinois, pioneered in introducing home economics courses on the college level in the 1870s. In 1914, the Smith-Lever Act made federal funds available for extension work in home economics and agriculture, in cooperation with the states; through this provision, supplemented by later acts, home demonstration work is carried on in many rural localities. The Smith-Hughes Act of 1917 instituted secondary school vocational education in home economics and other fields. Home economics, once taught only to women, is now taught to both men and women; in the United States home economics courses are taught mainly at the secondary school level, more commonly in rural than in urban areas. The International Federation of Home Economics, an organization devoted to the teaching of home economics on a worldwide basis, has members in over 60 countries.

Ramsay, Sir Bertram Home, 1883-1945, British admiral. A career naval officer who retired in 1938, he returned to the service in World War II to command British and Allied naval units in some of the most spectacular operations of the war. He directed the evacuation of Dunkirk (1940), led the Allied fleets in the invasions of Africa (1942), Sicily, and Italy, and commanded, under General Eisenhower, the naval operations in the invasion of France in 1944. He was killed in a plane crash.

President Lincoln and Soldier's Home National Monument: see National Parks and Monuments (table).

Marchmont, Patrick Home of Polwarth, 1st earl of: see Home of Polwarth, Sir Patrick.

Lincoln Home National Historic Site: see National Parks and Monuments (table).

Kames, Henry Home, Lord, 1696-1782, Scottish judge and philosopher. A man of broad interests and a wide-ranging intellect, his works included dissertations on Scottish law, agriculture, and problems of moral and aesthetic philosophy. Among his writings were Introduction to the Art of Thinking (1761) and Elements of Criticism (1762).

Home, Daniel Dunglas, 1833-86, Scottish-American spiritualist medium, b. Edinburgh, Scotland. He was taken to the United States when a small child. At age 13 he claimed to have discovered his gifts for dealing with spirits, and from 1850 to his death he had a triumphant career as a medium, always retaining his amateur status by refusing money, although he did accept expensive gifts. In his drawing room séances furniture moved with no apparent cause, ghostly hands appeared, and furniture and Home himself would levitate in the air. There was much dispute about the validity of these highly physical manifestations of spirits. Though numerous efforts were made to expose him, none was successful.

Home, 14th earl of: see Douglas-Home, Alexander Frederick, Baron Home of the Hirsel.

Home of Polwarth, Sir Patrick, or Sir Patrick Hume of Polwarth, 1641-1724, Scottish statesman. Devoted to Presbyterianism, he opposed the policies of the duke of Lauderdale, took part in the unsuccessful rebellion of the 8th earl of Argyll in support of the duke of Monmouth, and fled to France. He returned (1688) with William III, who made him Baron Polwarth (1689), sheriff of Berwick (1692-1710), lord chancellor of Scotland (1696-1702), and earl of Marchmont (1697).

Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site: see National Parks and Monuments (table).

Home Rule, in Irish and English history, political slogan adopted by Irish nationalists in the 19th cent. to describe their objective of self-government for Ireland.

Origins of the Home Rule Movement

A basic theme in the history of Ireland through the centuries of English dominance was the desire for control over its domestic affairs. The modern Home Rule movement began in 1870 under the leadership of Isaac Butt, whose program appealed most strongly to the Irish middle classes. The long agricultural depression beginning in 1873 increased economic stimulus for Home Rule, and under the leadership of Charles Stewart Parnell the movement gained support from the agricultural laborers and erstwhile members of the Fenian movement. In this period only a minority had recourse to violence, and Parnell disavowed the murder of two British officials in Dublin in 1882 (see Phoenix Park murders).

The First Home Rule Bill

In 1886, William Gladstone committed the Liberal party to Home Rule. His bill of 1886 would have established a separate Irish legislature, while reserving many powers, including taxation, to the British Parliament at Westminster. The bill failed to pass, and the incoming Conservative government developed a policy of land reform (see Irish Land Question) to mollify the Irish. The unity of the Irish party in Parliament collapsed after Parnell was ruined by a divorce scandal in 1890.

The Second Home Rule Bill

In 1893 the Liberals passed the Second Home Rule Bill in the House of Commons, providing a bicameral legislature for purely local matters and Irish representation at Westminster to vote on Irish taxation. While unsatisfactory to Home Rule advocates, the bill was, nevertheless, defeated in the House of Lords. Advocates of constitutional means to Home Rule began to lose ground to republicans and revolutionaries. The ideals of an increasingly self-conscious Irish people, expressed by the Gaelic League and Irish Ireland culminated in the founding (c.1900) of Sinn Féin. The Irish Council Bill of 1907, which was to establish a purely Irish body to direct the spending of Irish tax proceeds, failed to pass because of Irish dissatisfaction with the plan.

The Third Home Rule Bill

In 1912 the Third Home Rule Bill passed the House of Commons. The most notable difference from the bill of 1893 was that it would have eventually given control of the police to Ireland. A tremendous outcry arose in Protestant Ulster, which feared Roman Catholic domination. Private armies—the Ulster Volunteers (in the North) and the Irish Volunteers (in the South)—were raised, and civil war threatened if the bill became law. In 1914, Commons again passed the bill, but the House of Lords excluded Ulster from its provisions. The Commons voted to allow Ulster to vote itself out of Home Rule for six years. At the outbreak of World War I the bill was passed once again with the proviso that it should not go into effect until after the war. The law never took effect.

The Irish Free State and the Fourth Home Rule Bill

By this time Irish labor leaders like James Connolly had been drawn into the struggle, and Irish radicalism—along with impatience and doubts as to Britain's good faith—brought about the Easter Rebellion of 1916. In 1918, S Ireland elected to Parliament only Sinn Fein members pledged to republicanism instead of Home Rule. These members did not go to Westminster; they set up their own Irish assembly, the Dáil Éireann, which declared Ireland independent. There followed a period of guerrilla war between the nationalist Irish Republican Army (IRA) and a force of British irregulars known as the Black and Tans.

In 1921 the British government entered into negotiations with the de facto Irish government headed by Eamon De Valera. The Irish Free State, with dominion status, was created by an Anglo-Irish treaty in 1921. Remaining ties with Great Britain were gradually discarded (see Ireland, Republic of). The six counties of Northern Ireland (see Ireland, Northern) remained part of the United Kingdom, their government established under the provisions of the Fourth Home Rule Bill of 1920, which was rendered void in the South by the establishment of the Irish Free State. The continued British presence in Northern Ireland was abhorrent to Irish nationalists, but except for scattered IRA terrorism, the issue was dormant until Protestant repression led to revived militant nationalism among Northern Ireland's Catholics.

Home Rule in Contemporary Northern Ireland

Escalating violence between Protestants and Catholics and an intensive campaign of terror by the IRA caused the British cabinet to suspend the Northern Ireland government in 1972. A new government was established in 1973, in which the Roman Catholics shared power with the Protestant majority for the first time and provision was made for increased cooperation with the Republic. However, Protestant pressure brought about the resumption of direct British rule of Northern Ireland in 1974. Direct rule continued until 1981.

In 1985, Great Britain signed an agreement with the Irish Republic, giving the latter a consultative role. While the Catholic party (SDLP) favored the agreement, the Protestant Unionist Parties used their majority in the regional Assembly to block it, resulting in the resumption of direct rule in 1985. An accord reached in 1998 provided for a new assembly, but disagreement over the disarmament of paramilitary groups slowed the formation of a multiparty goverment (Dec., 1999) and the end of direct British rule. Disagreements on the same and on other issues have led to several suspensions of home rule.

Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC), former U.S. government agency established in 1933 to help stabilize real estate that had depreciated during the depression and to refinance the urban mortgage debt. It granted long-term mortgage loans to some 1 million homeowners facing loss of their property. The HOLC ceased its lending activities in June, 1936, by the terms of the Home Owners' Loan Act.

Frederick Douglass Home National Memorial: see National Parks and Monuments (table).

Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, commonly known as Freddie Mac, privately owned, government-sponsored organization that uses private capital to buy home mortgages as a means to help lower housing costs. A sister institution to the Federal National Mortgage Association, as well as a sometime competitor, Freddie Mac aims to foster liquidity, stability, and affordability in the U.S. mortgage market to give Americans the opportunity to afford housing. Chartered by Congress in 1970, it purchases mortgages from a variety of lenders and issues numerous publicly offered securities backed by those mortgages; it also retains some securities in its portfolio. One of the country's biggest buyers of home mortgages, by the early years of the 21st cent. Freddie Mac had provided help to over 46 million families, or approximately one in every six American homes. However, disclosures in 2003 that Freddie Mac had misstated its earnings for 2000-2002 damaged its credibility. The corporation has its headquarters in McLean, Va.

Douglas-Home, Sir Alec: Douglas-Home, Alexander Frederick, Baron Home of the Hirsel.

Douglas-Home, Alexander Frederick, Baron Home of the Hirsel, 1903-95, British politician. Educated at Eton and Oxford, he was elected to the House of Commons in 1931 as a Conservative. As parliamentary private secretary (1937-39) to Neville Chamberlain, he supported the latter's policy of appeasement toward Nazi Germany. He lost his Commons seat in 1945; reelected in 1950 he resigned (1951) when he succeeded his father's peerage as the 14th earl of Home. He served as minister of state (1951-55), secretary of state for commonwealth relations (1955-60), and leader of the House of Lords (1957-60). As foreign secretary (1960-63), he pursued a policy of détente with the USSR and worked for the establishment of an independent British nuclear deterrent.

In Oct., 1963, he became prime minister after Harold Macmillan's resignation, emerging as the controversial compromise choice of a divided party. The first peer to become prime minister since 1902, he renounced his Scottish title for life and took a seat in Commons as Sir Alec Douglas-Home. As prime minister, he was handicapped by the divisions within his party and the continuing distraction of the Profumo scandal.

After the Conservative defeat in Oct., 1964, he led the opposition until July, 1965. During his term as Conservative party leader, reforms gave the party's members of Parliament the power to elect the party leader. Douglas-Home was foreign secretary (1970-74) under Edward Heath. He retained his seat in Commons until 1974, when he was created a life peer.

Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site: see National Parks and Monuments (table).

Movement to secure internal autonomy for Ireland within the British Empire. The slogan “Home Rule” was popularized in 1870 when the Home Government Association (later the Home Rule League) called for an Irish parliament. It was led from 1878 by Charles Stewart Parnell, whose obstructionist tactics in the British Parliament publicized his country's grievances. The Home Rule bills introduced by Prime Minister William E. Gladstone in 1885 and 1893 were defeated. A third bill became law in 1914 but was militantly opposed by Ulster unionists and republicans in Ireland. A system akin to home rule was established in the six counties of Ulster (Northern Ireland) in 1920. In 1921 the remaining 26 counties in the south achieved dominion status, but the link with the British Commonwealth was severed in 1949.

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orig. Alexander Frederick later Baron Home (of the Hirsel of Coldstream)

(born July 2, 1903, London, Eng.—died Oct. 9, 1995, The Hirsel, Coldstream, Berwickshire, Scot.) British statesman. A member of the House of Commons (1931–45 and 1950–51), he entered the House of Lords after inheriting the earldom of Home (1951). He served as minister of state for Scotland (1951–55), leader of the House of Lords (1957–60), and foreign secretary (1960–63) before succeeding Harold Macmillan as prime minister in 1963, relinquishing his hereditary h1s. He was unable to improve the British balance-of-payments situation and antagonized Conservatives by supporting legislation against price-fixing, but gained U.S. approval as a result of his anti-Communism. After his government fell in 1964, he became Conservative opposition spokesman on foreign affairs and later again foreign secretary (1970–74). In 1974 he was created a life peer.

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