35 Reasons Pt 3

35 Reasons Pt 3

Democracy 27. Is home-schooling only for the rich? Now more than ever before, the coordination of children’s learning from the home is an option within the means of ordinary people. No more is home-learning a luxury open only to the favored children of the upper class, with their nannies and tutors. ‘Thanks to audio, video, computers, and the written word, you can have private lessons from the best teachers in the worldÑat home, and at prices that won’t make your checkbook scream.’ More than money, it mainly takes time for a child to keep a daily journal; consult reference books on hand; carry a much-worn library card. In the information age, the world lies at the doorstep of any home for a quite modest investment. 28. Is home-schooling elitist? While an occasional family will home-school their children because they are gifted or to provide them with an accelerated academic program, in our experience such families have been in a minority and this is not our aim or motivation. Home-schooling appeals to families for both pedagogical and worldview reasons that reach across class lines and are not greatly affected by gifted or exceptional abilities. The only sense in which home-based learning may be said to be elitist is that home-schooling requires a commitment to education on the part of the whole family that is not necessarily universal. However, many families with an equal commitment to education will select traditional schooling for their children, so any appearance of elitism is only accidental.

‘Maximum, individualized preparation for citizenship and life work is provided by home education, as evidenced in the lives of George Washington, Thomas Edison, Helen Keller, Agatha Christie, Franklin Roosevelt, and others.’ Governor Bellmon of Oklahoma, Home Education Week, 1989 29. Is home-schooling pluralistic? We have touched on this question above in discussing the origin of Lutheran and Catholic parochial schools. Their pluralistic vision, as contrasted with the public school ethic, raises many questions about America’s democratic experiment. One might wonder how it can be that pluralism in educational systems should be seen as contrary to a pluralistic society. The problem some see with home-schooling is one of too much pluralism, so that the major threat alternative education of any kind seems to pose to democracy derives from an accelerated fragmentation, ghettoization, and polarization of society. In contrast to the implicit universalism of the public school ethic, we believe that religion and worldview differences cannot and should not be excluded from public discourse. Cannot, because democratic public discourse must be rooted in traditions of belief that transcend the state if liberties are to survive; and should not because agents in free public debate may legitimately ground their values and moral visions in religious or worldview contexts while searching for common ground for the common good. The tension of worldview pluralism with a unique and standardized system of education is evident. Can a common vision of the common good be forged in public discourse if Americans do not receive the imprint of a monolithic education to which all must conform? Our hope is that home-schooling on a large scale will not further the fragmentation and polarization of American society, but itself to contribute to a more enthusiastic and better facilitated cooperation between diverse people. Only as the common good comes to be articulated in a manner that does justice to our diversity will our unity be genuine and meaningful. We insist, however, that the educational arena is precisely the forum where intellectual and religious pluralism, with all of its risks, must be preserved for the sake of liberty itself. If liberty is not maintained in education, how will it be sustained in any other area of society? A common public ethic must be forged from the interaction of diverse elements in society within an open educational arena, not imposed from above by legislative or political means. Our vision then is one where innovative educational policies will enable public, private, and home schools to interact and cooperate for mutual advantage.

Early Objectives of Public Education
Early compulsory and formal public schooling had a variety of objectives of which ‘Americanization’ was central. It sought to remove the stamp of ethnic cultures and individuality that immigrant family-related learning environments propagated. Another function of formal schooling was to counteract the undesirable characteristics that were seen to be particularly evident in the lower classes of society. In these ways, public schooling could be regarded as an action against the family unit; it was seen as a remedy for the multiple ills of lower-class family structure. Knowles et al., 201. 30. Is home-schooling subversive? In the short-run, home-schooling may indeed seem subversive. But is the primary aim of education a well adjusted citizen and a compliant follower, or an independent thinker with the potential to challenge the social order from a fresh perspective? This question is not beside the point. With respect to the legitimacy of state aims in education, Neuhaus reminds us that ‘the public square is not limited to Government Square.’ And again, that ‘the things that matter most happen in the Ômediating structures’ of our personal and communal existence. These structuresÑfamily, neighborhood, church, voluntary associationÑare the people-sized, face-to-face institutions where we work day by day at our felicities and our fears.’

‘The school should not be an agent of the State or the larger society, but an agent of the community of families closest to the child.’

James S. Coleman

Home-based learning reinforces the family’s role as a mediating structure between the individual and the state, and thus in the long run contributes to liberty rather than threatens it. Sustaining the liberty of families makes sense democratically as an empowerment of persons in their homes and local spheres of activity. Only to statist theorists who believe that every question is ultimately a political question must home-schooling be perceived as unacceptably subversiveÑand then it finds its rightful place among the similarly anathematized institutions of family, church, or any kind of neighborhood association.

‘How small, of all that human hearts endure, That part which laws or kings can cause or cure! Still to ourselves in every place consign’d, Our own felicity we make or find.’

Dr. Johnson 31. Is home-schooling legal? Remember that legal allowances for private schools were not granted readily in the wake of the nineteenth century common school movement. A 1925 ruling (Pierce v. Society of Sisters) struck down an Oregon ban on all forms of private education. Only then did the Supreme Court stipulate that government schools could not coercively monopolize education, asserting: ‘the child is not the mere creature of the state.’ Home education cases arose in the 1970’s. In 1972 (Wisconsin v. Yoder) the Supreme Court granted Amish parents the right to educate their children at home for religious rather than personal or philosophical reasons. A flurry of court cases at the state level followed the Yoder ruling. Three issues have been central: (1) whether compulsory attendance statutes are legitimate in view of the vagueness of criteria used to define a school, or the unlawful delegation of power to school administrators; (2) whether a home school qualifies as a private school; and (3) whether a home school should qualify as an acceptable educational equivalent to a public school. Constitutional principles invoked in defense of home education include the First Amendment (free exercise); the Fourteenth Amendment (due process); and the Ninth Amendment (privacy). States have also differed on whether ‘schooling’ should be defined according to the learning outcome or merely the institutional setting. Often what is really at issue, for a politically-entrenched education lobby, is the reduction in financial aid public school districts face as a result of lower attendance rates (an average of about $5,000 to public school districts per year per child). A more positive way of putting this is to note that, given the above estimate of about one million home-schooling families, home-schoolers are saving tax-payers at least five billion dollars a year. Yet in Iowa as late as 1987 a minister served 30 days in jail for educating his daughter at home without state approval. Prosecution is still a viable threat in some other states as well, such as Michigan. Yet Knowles et al. conclude that home education is now moving out of the phase of legal confrontation into a period marked more by cooperation and consolidation: ‘While most litigation proceedings were initiated by school officials, in most states a majority of legal cases in the 1970’s were decided in favor of the parents. This outcome may indicate both the unsubstantive nature of many arguments that were brought against home-school parents and the ignorance or misinterpretation of the law on the part of administrators initiating the cases.’

Benjamin Franklin on
Alternative Education

‘The colonial government of Virginia, according to Benjamin Franklin, set up a fund for the purpose of educating a half-dozen young Indians at William and Mary College. The government promised to see that the students would be well provided for and instructed in the learning of white people. ÔIt is one of the Indian rules of politeness,’ wrote Franklin, Ônot to answer a public proposition the same day that it is made; they think it would be treating it as a light matter, and that they show it respect by taking some time to consider it, as of a matter important.’ The Indian spokesman, therefore, did not answer until the following day. He began then by expressing his genuine gratitude toward the Virginian government for making the offer: For we know that you highly esteem the kind of learning taught in these colleges, and that the maintenance of our young men, while with you, would be very expensive to you. We are convinc’d, therefore, that you mean to do us good by your proposal; and we thank you heartily. But you, who are wise, must know that different nations have different conceptions of things; and you will, therefore, not take it amiss if our idea of this kind of education happens not to be the same as yours. We have had some experience of it; several of our young people were formerly brought up at colleges of the Northern Provinces; they were instructed in all your sciences; but, when they came back to us, they were bad runners, ignorant of every means of living in the woods, unable to bear either cold or hunger, knew neither how to build a cabin, take deer, or kill an enemy, spoke our language imperfectly, were therefore neither fit for hunters, warriors, nor counselors; they were totally good for nothing. We are, however, not less oblig’d by your kind offer, tho’ we decline accepting it; and, to show our grateful sense of it, if the gentlemen of Virginia will send us a dozen of their sons, we will take great care of their education, instruct them in all we know, and make Men of them.’ 32. What is required in the education of citizens in a democracy? Democracy does not require that citizens possess the same knowledge in detail, nor even the same ways of thinking. The basic literacy skills on which democracy depends are not at issue either; children learn their first language at home, which is as difficult as learning to read. In addition, home-schoolers share with public-schoolers any common core of cultural literacy specifiable by reasonable curricular criteria, including the English language and sufficient emphasis upon American history and government (often lacking in public schools, as shown by the examples noted above). Democracy requires more than either basic literacy or cultural literacy, however. Virtue, to sustain personal commitment to liberty, and to inform moral judgment on the part of its citizens, stands out as an underappreciated prerequisite of the public order. On all of these points it cannot be said that the practice of home or private schooling constitutes a direct threat to democracy (cf. Franklin on Education, boxed text). Virtue is as important as basic skills and cultural literacy; the public schools have no monopoly on any of the three. 33. Will Home-schooling spell an end to public schools, and thus indirectly to democracy? Has the UPS put the US Postal Service out of business? Then why should alternative means of education threaten the survival of a government-sponsored service? Has the disestablishment of church and state put an end to religion in America? Then why should the disestablishment of an exclusive, mandatory educational system threaten learning? Home-schooling can contribute to making America more literate, not less, and to a deepened appreciation of liberty for all, with tolerance for an increasing diversity of experience and background in the ‘new world order.’ 34. How might public schools and home-schoolers cooperate? Home-school students use the library and enroll in special classes (e.g., science, music, art) of the Granite School District in Salt Lake City. The San Diego City School District employs six full-time teachers to assist home-schooling families as part of its Community Home Education Office. Services include parent training, provision of textbooks and curriculum guides, student access to science labs, computer laboratories, etc. Knowles concludes that ‘There are probably few limits to the ways in which cooperation between schools and home schools can occur…. cooperation has occurred because forward-thinking educators recognize that home education is not a concept that can or should be defeated. Instead, they work toward the educational welfare of all children.’ I would add that with such a spirit of cooperation, public schools need not fear retaliation by disaffected families when the next bond issues come up for vote, or the next education bill goes up for debate. What may happen is that the boundaries between home schools, private schools, and public schools will blur as educational opportunities become more flexible and financially accessible across the continuum of private and government sectors. Through innovative programs such as those implemented by San Diego and Salt Lake City, the three forms of schooling may converge in a symbiosis that will prove advantageous for allÑand especially for children, the students of today and the citizens of the twenty-first century world.

35. Any more questions?
We can’t consider them all, of course, and haven’t even answered some of the most common (though you can sing twelve of them with the song below). What we want you to know is that it’s okay with with us if you ask.

‘The 12 Days of Homeschool’
(Tune: ’12 Days of Christmas’)

1. On the first day of homeschool my neighbor said to me: ‘Can you homeschool legally?’
2. Are they socialized?
3. Do you give them tests?
4. What about PE?
5. You are so strange!
6. Why do you do this?
7. How long will you homeschool?
8. Look at what they’re missing.
9. I could never do this.
10. They’ll miss the prom.
11. What about graduation?
12. Can they go to college?