The Moral Status of Homeschooling and Public Schooling Motivations

A debate regarding the moral status of homeschooling is once again upon us. I basically agree with Conor Freidersdorf's defense of homeschooling, which is itself a reply to Dana Goldstein's criticisms of homeschooling and, to a lesser extent, those of Freddie deBoer.

Goldstein and deBoer accurately point out many dubious reasons for which a family may choose to homeschool: a misplaced or overinflated distrust of the public sphere, a preference to exercise privilege by exiting the public school system instead of using sociocultural capital to help reform it, a desire to insulate one's children from religious, racial, and/or socioeconomic diversity.

As someone primarily concerned with the moral issues surrounding this issue, as opposed to the policy issue, I have the following question: why examine the motivations of homeschooling parents any more rigorously than those of parents who choose the prima facie more progressive, egalitarian, and diversity-minded option of public schooling?

Just as there are a plurality of reasons why a family may choose homeschooling (including potentially legitimate ones, such as to better respond to special needs of one's child), so too there are a plurality of reasons why a family may choose public schooling. These motivations also run the moral gamut, from praiseworthy to reprehensible. On the positive side, parents may wish to confer positive peer effects on their student's classmates, even if their child in particular may have benefited from homeschooling. However, parents may also simply be lazy, and their children end up in public schools by default.

I grew up attending the public schools in Cobb County, an affluent suburb of Atlanta, Georgia. My parents and those many of my peers chose this district and its schools at least in part to avoid the exposure of their children to socioeconomic diversity, not to pursue it! And due to the religious makeup of the area (i.e., Bible Belt), students attending Cobb County schools were not typically exposed there to any religious diversity, or secular challenge of religion (indeed, this is the district that placed stickers in biology textbooks claiming that "Evolution is a theory, not a fact").

It's easy to assume that those who share our educational philosophies are motivated by sound considerations, and that those who oppose them are motivated by illegitimate ones. But let's not fail to take seriously the multiple motivations upon which parties to all sides of the issue may be acting.

 

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Comments

[J R M]

07:49 PM on 02/29/2012

Homeschooling is not feasible if both parents work outside the home. From a practical point of view, even if one parent is available to do it, homeschooling is an enormous amount of work, particularly if you are managing several kids.

It makes sense to homeschool if schools are violent, disruptive, anti-learning, of poor quality (which means that the kids in the classes are not interested in learning more than it means that the teachers are inadequate), of if you kids do not fit into the classroom - special needs, exceptionally advanced, etc.

Otherwise, I would tend to supplement the schools rather than take on the entire educational burden.

[tcat28]

12:31 AM on 03/01/2012

There are parents that both work who homeschool their kids. And if they are willing to take on the enormous amount of work, what is wrong with that?

The reasons you listed for homeschooling describe every school in America, no matter how "great" they claim to be. And those are the reasons why parents choose to homeschool.

[P Alan Greene]

06:13 PM on 02/29/2012

"why examine the motivations of homeschooling parents any more rigorously than those of parents who choose the prima facie more progressive, egalitarian, and diversity-minded option of public schooling? "

Because the public must live with the results of homeschooling parents' choices while having no say in them.

If a public school decides to teach that the earth is flat and one race is inferior to all others, the publicly elected school board can be pressured or replaced. But if a homeschool parent wants to bring their child up in ignorance, that parent answers to no one, and yet we will all share space in the community, the workplace, and the voting booth.

Schools are not a service provided to parents alone. The "customers" of education include employers, neighbors and fellow-citizens and only public education allows their voices to be heard.

[tcat28]

12:32 AM on 03/01/2012

the public has to live with your parental choices. We have to share a space with you.

[Pamela J. Stubbart]

03:05 AM on 03/08/2012

This is absolutely the right answer, from a public reason kind of standpoint. Homeschooling parents may face a greater burden of justification in the public sphere for their actions.

Perhaps I could have been clearer, but I had in mind something more like - why assume that homeschooling parents are any morally worse than public schooling parents? (which much of the discourse on this topic seems to do). We have to know alot about any particular case before we can say whether the parent/family in question is acting selfishly, lazily, to the detriment of the democracy, etc.