Tilting at Homeschooling Windmills

Ann and Bob Smith are a devoutly religious couple who choose to homeschool their seven-year-old twins Susan and Sam. In accordance with their religious beliefs, they teach their children only religious doctrine, refusing to provide their children with a basic education in reading, writing and arithmetic.

Thus begins a lengthy article authored by Kimberly A. Yuracko from Northwestern University School of Law (available in PDF form here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1016778)

Of course, Ann and Bob Smith are simply a figment of Yuracko’s imagination. While some of the Christian homeschoolers I’ve become aware of are teaching some dubious stuff and calling it science, they are (at least from my experience) far more likely to follow a strict and challenging boxed curriculum than secular home schoolers.

Yuracko’s article is based on a few different premises I completely disagree with:
1) that parental control over children’s basic education flows from the state (rather than vice versa).
2) that a good education necessarily includes indoctrination in such liberal values as sex equality, gender role fluidity, multiculturalism, etc.
3) That the state’s obligation to ensure children receive the abstract values mentioned above in their educational regimen overrides the parent’s rights to transmit their own family/cultural values to their children.

Yuracko begins by asserting that homeschooling puts children in danger of not receiving a minimum education.

“Much has been written in the popular press about the superior academic achievement of homeschooled children. However, the widely-touted studies showing that homeschooled children outperform their public school peers deserve skepticism. They generally suffer from selection biases among homeschoolers and do not control for the family characteristics of the homeschooling and non-homeschooling families being compared. With only half of all states requiring standardized testing or evaluation of homeschooled students, and with poor enforcement of such requirements where they do exist, there is simply no good data on what and how much homeschooled students are learning.”

In a scientific journal the writer would be expected to establish, from the numbers that do exist, upper and lower boundaries in order to better estimate the true achievement of home schoolers in general. But this is a law article. We can just ignore the numbers, however inaccurate, that have been collected and proceed to anecdotal evidence.

“Anecdotal evidence suggests that at least some homeschooled children, by design or accident, may not be receiving even a basic minimum education. The fact that one cannot know for sure how rare such occurrences are is itself a problem. I contend in this Part that, as a matter of federal and state constitutional law, states may not permit such deprivation.”

Anecdotal evidence also suggests that at least some public schooled children, by design or accident, may not be receiving even a basic minimum education, but that’s another matter.

Lets look at the anecdotal evidence she cites in her footnotes. The first two anecdotes are quotes from unschooled teens that indicate that they spend most of their time doing things they like — dance and snowboarding, in these instances. This alone does not in any way indicate that those teens were unable to do other, more ‘educationally acceptable’ things.

My son, for instance, has spent most of his time in the last month building and enacting elaborate medieval battles with plastic knights and cardboard castles. While it doesn’t sound like he’s being thoroughly educated, he also happens to read at a third grade level and is starting second grade math, which is a tad better than his public-schooled age peers who have just begun senior kindergarten.

The other anecdotal evidences in her footnotes could more easily be described (and prosecuted) as child abuse. And as sad as it is that these things happen in ‘home schooling’ families, they no more indict home schooling than anecdotal evidence of molesting teachers and bullying peers indict public schools. And there is no need for further legislation to protect these children when the existing legislation, if applied and enforced, is fully adequate.

Let me just make this little analogy to illustrate why Yuracko’s argument doesn’t fly with me:

I don’t think I need to say more on this point.

Yuracko’s second issue with home schoolers is that homeschooling parents with peculiar beliefs may provide their sons with far better and more sophisticated educations than their daughters.

I have never heard of this particular problem occurring with home schoolers, and, perhaps aside from some self-enclosed religious circles, I don’t think it’s a common occurrence. Even among religious groups that set themselves apart– like FLDS, Amish or Old Order Mennonites– you’d be less likely to find undereducated HOMESCHOOLED girls than undereducated girls in a separate, group-run school system. The primary reason being that if the tradition of homeschooling is to be continued, the girls need an education sufficient to educate the next generation of patriarchs, lest illiterate girls produce illiterate sons and the whole sub-culture goes up in a social darwinian flame after a few generations.

And, to be honest, I don’t think I can see the benefit of the state forcing an Amish school to teach sexual equality. It would hardly prepare those children for the life they are most likely to live.

But this leads, I guess, to the next objection … that home schooled children might not be taught “liberal values” — or worse — that they be taught values considered anathema by the bulk of liberal society.

And as much as it might get me in trouble with my fellow secular home schoolers, I don’t think it’s wrong that fringe groups, or any group, educate their children with values outside the norm. After all, the values of any society are fluid and constantly changing. If certain groups wish to try to influence the direction of that evolution, I believe they should be free to do so, as long as the values they are promoting do not promote physical, actual harm to other people or property.

So, from my libertarian viewpoint, if they want to teach their own children that all non-Christians, gays, and left-handed people are going to hell, that’s fine with me. If they want to teach their kids that the earth is flat, that Jesus had a pet dinosaur, or that the earth was created two weeks ago, that’s fine with me too. While I believe all those things to be false, in most professions one’s belief in the shape of the earth or the origin of the universe are pretty irrelevant. I don’t care if my dentist believes in intelligent design. I don’t care if my accountant is a member of the flat earth society. I only care that they can do the jobs I need them to do.

But perhaps my belief that religious home schoolers should be given all the freedom they want to instill their particular Christian values to their children comes partly from the fact that as a Libertarian, my own values and political views are as anathema to the political mainstream as the values and views of Christianity.

Might sound like strange bedfellows, but I’d rather hang with a freedom loving Christian than an authoritarian ‘freethinker’ any day.

Tags: homeschooling, home schooling

Test Your Child's Toys for
Lead Using Lead Inspector
Lead Test Kits! Click Here

This entry was posted on Monday, October 1st, 2007 at 10:37 pm and is filed under Homeschooling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.