Why We Homeschool in Antigua Guatemala
My wife is Nordic. Back home, homeschooling is effectively outlawed. That was one of the many reasons we moved back and relocated to Guatemala. Here, we have something precious: time and freedom. Freedom to educate our children in line with our beliefs. Time to live by our values.
Homeschooling in Guatemala is legal. The constitution guarantees the right to education, and that includes homeschooling. While the Department of Education doesn’t officially recognize it, there are still ways to get all the required diplomas. We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.
In most countries, homeschooling has become a privilege. It demands sacrifice. One parent usually gives up a second income. That’s the cost of giving your children an education that’s tailored, honest, and built to prepare them for a world spinning faster than ever. Uncertainty—in society, in the economy, in our work places—is now part of the equation.
Our modern school system is barely 150 years old. It wasn’t built for this world. It lags behind. We’ve seen it firsthand. Most of the young people we’ve met in recent years seem lost in it. It’s not just the schools’ fault, but the system doesn’t help. Throw in phones, AI, distance learning, the pandemic, and the breakdown of the family unit—and their minds are scattered. You can feel it.
We can feel it because we lived it. The education we received was already a step down from our parents’. And theirs was worse than our grandparents’. EM Foster’s 1909 short story The Machine Stops wasn’t fiction, it was prophecy.
It’s been a slow slide. But now, it feels like we’ve hit the cliff. Read the inaugural addresses of the first twenty U.S. presidents. These were written for the public. Today, you’d need a PhD to write like that. Or to even understand it. The fall is real.
The industrial school system wasn’t built for children. It was built for profit—and later, for safety. In a classroom of twenty or more, no teacher can meet each child where they are. There’s no room for tailored challenges or deep attention. And yet, real growth only comes through struggle and adversity—intellectual, emotional, or physical. Every child needs that steady strain. It forms character. It sharpens reason. These are the foundations for a life of strength, clarity, and purpose.
That’s why homeschooling in Guatemala wasn’t just an option for us. It became a priority.
Why We Chose to Homeschool:
We love our children. We want to spend as much time as we can with them.
The values guiding modern education don’t match our own, nor do we believe they are the best for our children.
Private school costs have exploded, with no clear link to better quality or outcomes.
Antigua has good alternatives we may consider later on—but as complements, not replacements.
Our off-grid homestead gives our kids freedom and hands-on skills no classroom could match.
My wife is an excellent educator—better than most, even the well-intentioned ones.
We’ve found a community of other homeschoolers we can team up with—for classes, lessons, even short-term co-ops.
And community is important, a childhood is not complete without friends. Yet, industrial schooling peers are not the same necessarily. One of the most common arguments against homeschooling is the concern about “socialization.” The word gets tossed around like a trump card, as if sending a child to a room with 30 same-aged peers for eight hours a day is the gold standard of human development.
But let’s be honest: what kind of socialization are we talking about?
Is it conformity to group norms? Obedience to bells? Learning to suppress individuality to fit a structure designed for mass compliance? Or is it the cliques, the bullying, the passivity, the endless pressure to perform for approval—socialization, or social conditioning?
Real socialization isn’t about fitting in. It’s about learning how to relate—across ages, cultures, temperaments, and roles. It’s watching adults interact with respect. It’s negotiating conflict with siblings. It’s helping a neighbor. It’s listening to an elder. It’s learning by doing, with others, in real life.
Homeschooled children often interact more freely and meaningfully with a wider range of people than their peers in traditional schools. They aren’t herded by age or status. They speak with adults, play with toddlers, and collaborate with teens. They learn to relate as humans, not just as students.
The real myth is thinking that crowd exposure is the same thing as healthy social development.
I remember the lessons my father taught me far more vividly than most high school classes I barely passed—mostly because of my overactive imagination. He taught me how to shoot a rifle. How to protect my siblings. How to seek counsel from my elders. How to be charming without bending over backwards. How to work tirelessly for years, with discipline, to reach a goal. And how to research any topic with erudition before trusting the so-called experts. The importance of trusting God and his will. That we, his sons and daughers are unbreakable no matter how rugged life gets.
He was a natural contrarian. And he shaped who I became from an early age.
My mother taught me the spirituality of Guatemala—its Nahuales in stones and the Ahau in the white smoke of the ritual fire. She taught me how to sell anything to make a living, how to be frugal with my hard-earned money, how to build friendships and maintain them. How to never attach yourself to anything material. Above all, she taught me how to be happy—and to strive for humility. Happiness is the capacity to be grateful for life, both good and bad.
These are life lessons only family can give. And she gave them freely, without the pressure of a grade, without curriculum—only out of love.
And that’s what education should be: a labor of love. Education is inherited, the same way height or the color of our eyes is.
In homeschooling children interact with parents, extended family, family friends and every day strangers that provide unique opportunities for learning. There’s no theory of “natural science” that compares to growing your own food. There’s no math class that matches budgeting your solar power or water storage. There’s no “life skills elective” more immersive than building a chicken coop, fixing a pipe, or learning to cook from scratch with what’s in season.
Off-grid living demands presence. It slows you down and grounds you in reality. Your children see the direct link between cause and effect. They know where energy comes from. They understand waste. They watch the rhythms of the weather. They learn the value of effort, the meaning of enough, and the joy of simplicity.
It also creates time—real time. Without hours wasted in traffic, in administrative meetings, or in numbing digital distractions, life opens up. There’s time for reading, thinking, exploring. Time for deep work and unstructured play. Time to follow a question until it blooms into understanding.
And perhaps most importantly, there’s space for wonder and yes, contemplative idleness.
This path takes sacrifice, yes. But I can’t think of anything more important than passing on the tools my children will need. Critical thinking. A classic liberal curriculum core. Values that would make me proud as a parent. Curiosity. A love for reading. A skillset rooted in discipline and compassion. These are the pillars. The bar is high. But so are the stakes.
Homeschooling in Antigua Guatemala is a blessing. The community is real. The weather is eternal spring. Nature is always within reach. Downtown and the surrounding villages are full of culture, color, and practical learning. We’re not alone in this—and neither are you.
Rather than embrace the status quo, strive to shatter it. Remember that above all, results matter.
“You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?”
