Seton Home Study School - History

History

In 1975, Anne Carroll, the wife of Christendom College founder Warren Carroll, started a Catholic school in Manassas, Virginia called Seton High School. The emphasis Mrs. Carroll placed on integrating the Catholic faith into the curriculum was unusual for the time, and soon many parents who did not live near the school were requesting admission by correspondence. Realizing the potential for the correspondence concept to expand, Mrs. Carroll asked Dr. Mary Kay Clark, an educator from Ohio, to come to Virginia as the Director of an independent K-12 Seton Home Study School. Dr. Clark became the Director of Seton in 1985 and moved the Home Study School to Front Royal, VA with a total enrollment of less than one hundred students. The two schools have developed independently since that time.

Seton’s curriculum was largely based upon reproducing textbooks which had been used in the Catholic school system in the 1950s. Textbooks published in the 60’s and after didn’t have the same focus on the Catholic faith which Seton was trying to provide. Seton eventually began to write some of their own books, and by the mid 1990s began to publish color textbooks in earnest. Encouraged by Dr. Mary Kay Clark’s eldest son and Seton’s Vice-President, Ken Clark, Seton soon became the largest publisher of Catholic textbooks in the English language. Currently, Seton still uses a few books from outside publishers in its curriculum, but the vast majority of materials are from Seton Press. With the new possibilities available though the internet, Seton has created a wide array of online resources for enrolled students through its web portal “MySeton.”

Seton had experienced exponential growth ever since its founding. In the 1980s, homeschooling was still a relatively unknown phenomena. Seton strongly believed in the benefit homeschooling could provide for families, not only because of the superior formation in the Catholic Faith that it could offer, but by strengthening families. Dr. Clark began to travel across the country hosting Catholic homeschooling conferences to introduce new families to homeschooling. As homeschooling in general became more accepted in society, Seton’s enrollment gradually swelled to its current number of 11,000 enrolled students.