Recently we looked at Elizabeth Bartholet’s attack on homeschooling. There have been many excellent articles critiquing her thinking. One such, written by Kevin D Williamson appeared in the National Review. Williamson notes the reason many like Bartholet fear homeschooling and want it banned. School is an essential part of state monitoring.
Homeschooling inhibits the ability of the state to conduct surveillance on some families. “There is no way of knowing how many homeschooled children experience a childhood comparable to Tara’s,” she [Bartholet] writes. “But we do know that the homeschooling regime permits children to be raised this way.”
In addition, Williamson further highlights why Statists love public schooling, and fear homeschooling: public schooling is actually for the benefit of the State.
The economic argument is straightforward and points back to Prussia, the spiritual homeland of progressivism. From Frederick the Great and Johann Julius Hecker through the Progressive Era to today, schools have been treated as factories that produce what the state needs: able administrators and bureaucrats in the context of the emerging Bismarckian welfare regimes and, later, workers in the industrial economies. Schools organized this way do not exist to serve children or families: They exist to serve the state, and children are not the customers — they are the product.
Williamson argues that what is being fought over here is whether children are the property of the state, whether education exists for the student or the state, and whether there is any private realm.
Homeschooling is based on a radical proposition that is utterly incompatible with Professor Bartholet’s politics. Homeschoolers insist that their children are not the property of the state, to be farmed and dispatched in accordance with the state’s needs; the homeschooling ethos insists that the purpose of education is to serve the needs and interests of students rather than those of the state or of business; it insists that there exists a sphere of life that is private and not subject to state surveillance, and that this sphere covers family life and child-rearing unless and until there is some immediate pressing reason for intervention.
So what is the debate really about?
The debate about homeschooling is not really about educational outcomes — there are good and bad homeschooling practices, good and bad public schools, good and bad private schools, etc. — but about who serves whom and on what terms. Do American families serve the state or does the state serve them? Do we live our lives and raise our children at the sufferance of the state, or is the state an instrument of our convenience?
In a chapter from Hold on to your kids by Dr Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Maté, the authors mentioned in passing that home-schoolers are favoured applicants of some big-name universities. They go on to quote Jon Reider, former admissions official at Stanford University in California that they are desirable because “homeschoolers bring certain skills – motivation, curiosity, the capacity to be responsible for their education – that high schools don’t induce very well.”
This was twenty years ago, but interesting nonetheless. In my experience of homeschoolers, these words ring true. And I am a high school teacher.
I recently became aware of a call by Harvard University law professor Elizabeth Bartholet for a presumptive ban on homeschooling.
Her concerns are outlined in a recent article in Harvard Magazine:
Elizabeth Batholet
Firstly, there are no academic checks or requirements for parents who homeschool. The implication is that children who homeschool will be shortchanged academically. Secondly, Bartholet worries about the isolation homeschooling causes, and in consequence of this, the potential for parental abuse. A third concern for Bartholet is that many homeschool families are conservative Christians who are seeking to remove their children from mainstream culture. Apparently these evil conservative Christians are ideologues who question science and promote female subservience and white supremacy! So in this third objection to homeschooling she implicitly outlines what she sees is the purpose of compulsory government education. For her, one part of state education is that it helps children to become productive members of society, but the other aspect of education is exposing children “to community values, social values, democratic values, ideas about nondiscrimination and tolerance of other people’s viewpoints”.
The article concludes with Bartholet reassuring us that she thinks parents should still have“very significant rights to raise their children with the beliefs and religious convictions that the parents hold”, and adds that children attending a school for 6-7 hours a day does not unduly limit parents’ influence on a child’s views and ideas.
Does Homeschooling Hinder Children Academically?
Let’s critique the argument and begin with her point about the shortchanging of children academically. Unfortunately for Bartholet, if we are arguing a case against homeschooling on purely academic terms, the evidence supports the homeschooling side of the argument. Studies show that children who have been homeschooled tend to perform better than students in public schools. In one review of the literature on the subject, Brian Ray concluded that homeschooling children on average are “at the 65th to 80th percentile on standardized academic achievement tests in the United States and Canada, compared to the public school average of the 50th percentile.” As a teacher, who has a wife who homeschools our children, my own anecdotal experience has been that there is a certain academic benefit to the practice. My ten-year-old daughter recently picked up and enjoyed Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, and read Animal Farm by George Orwell. I say this not to boast, but just to point out that she is in no way being hindered by her homeschooling education. In fact, she is most likely being given the time and opportunity to do things she certainly wouldn’t be doing if she were in a regular classroom, even at a decent school!
I by no means mean to denigrate teachers or independent schools. They certainly hold a valuable place in society. Homeschooling is not for everyone, all I am seeking to do is suggest that children are definitely not academically disadvantaged by homeschooling.
I certainly would agree with Bartholet that in some rare cases there are parents homeschooling their children who are not equipped to do so. However, given that we also have teachers who are not particularly well-equipped to educate our children, I don’t see this as a knock-down argument.
Does Homeschooling Children Leave them More Open To Abuse?
Illustration by Robert Neubecker
Let me begin by addressing the isolation that Bartholet suggests is dangerous. The article in Harvard Magazine includes a telling illustration. A girl is imprisoned in a house of books, one of which is the Bible. Meanwhile, the poor wee thing is looking out at all the public school children who are having a fabulous time. Unfortunately for Bartholet, the picture she, and this illustration paint is highly inaccurate. In actual fact, while children attending schools are in classrooms learning from 9 to 3, homeschooling children are meeting up with friends, going on outdoor field trips and having a whale of a time! Ironically, the illustration could be equally used to show the benefits of homeschooling. Because the teacher to student ratio is so good, and behavioural issues are not so much of a problem, most homeschooling families tend to get their academic work done by lunchtime, leaving plenty of time to catch-up with friends for extracurricular activities.
But let’s return to the substance of her second criticism. She is concerned with parental abuse of children. Once again, Bartholet’s argument here is based on little evidence. She cites one example of a homeschooler who was abused. There is hardly a week that goes by where I don’t read of a teacher sexually abusing a child under his or her care. This is pretty common stuff. In New Zealand, between 2015 to 2017, the Education Council served 196 disciplinary outcomes to 81 teachers for sexual misconduct. In a synthesis of the literature on educator sexual misconduct prepared for the U.S. Department of Education, Charol Shakeshaft highlights a report that nearly 9.6% of students are targets of educator sexual misconduct sometime during their school career. I highly doubt that anywhere near that percentage of homeschool children would suffer sexual abuse from their parents.
But in addition to sexual abuse perpetrated by teachers, public schools are also places where students can be sexually abused by each other. In the same synthesis of the literature, Charol Shakeshaft notes that the same report that highlights educator abuse of 9.6% of students suggests that of students who suffer sexual abuse at school, 21% were targets of educators, while the remaining 79% were targets of other students.
Finally, who hasn’t heard of the bullying epidemic in schools? Large schools can be havens for bullies. My own personal experience of moving from a small family-like independent school to a large impersonal public school is indicative. In my first term at the school, I was pushed down a flight of stairs by a thug and his friends, and then repeatedly punched in the head while girls and boys from the thug’s class looked on. Few days went by when I was not verbally harassed. Statistics for bullying, both physical and cyber are given on a website dedicated to the prevention of bullying in the States. This again is something children in homeschooling families are fortunately unfamiliar with.
So once again, with this second argument, Bartholet seems to lack any real firepower against homeschooling.
Does Homeschooling Children Prevent Them Learning Community Values and Tolerance of Other’s Viewpoints?
Her final critique, and seemingly her main concern with homeschooling is that parents might not expose children “to community values, social values, democratic values, ideas about nondiscrimination and tolerance of other people’s viewpoints”. Let’s be clear about this. What she wants, is for her pet ideas, the ideas of mainstream secular culture to be forced upon all children. Education is brainwashing, and she would rather it be the state that does it than conservative Christian parents whose views she disagrees with.
But surely, it is better for the sake of diversity and our democratic ideals that parents are allowed to instil in their children their values and beliefs rather than a one-size fits all approach which will stifle minority viewpoints.
In fact, there is evidence that one of the reasons the West progressed so extraordinarily in comparison to other civilizations was the comparative lack of absolute power of its governments and freedom of its citizens to innovate. An all-powerful and controlling government that seeks to promote a particular set of values is not good for society. All too often it ends in intolerance. Better to allow diversity of thought and process.
What I find highly amusing, is the contradiction in her argument. On the one hand, she thinks homeschooling prevents the transmission of community and social values, yet at the same time, she argues that schooling won’t “unduly limit parents’ influence on a child’s views and ideas.” So which is it? Does sending a child to a government school impact a child’s worldview and shape their values, or will it have so little impact it does not limit parents’ ability to influence their child’s views? I suspect she is being disingenuous here. It will impact children, but she wants parents to still think they are the ones in control.
It’s ironic too, that she raises the importance of children being taught “democratic values, ideas about nondiscrimination and tolerance of other people’s viewpoints” when she herself seems to favour authoritarian control, restriction of parental choice in education and a one-size-fits-all model of values transmission.
So does her argument represent a compelling case for banning homeschooling? Hardly. But it might well wake some parents up to the danger of public schools. When academics like Elizabeth Bartholet want to stop conservative Christians from educating their children at home because it tends to…well turn out conservative Christians, it might wake parents up to realise the danger of secular schooling.
With all the schools in NZ entering lockdown, it has been interesting to see the reaction of teachers and parents to what is going on. It’s made many consider whether education in New Zealand gives value for money.
Of particular interest to me have been the number of teachers and educational leaders trying to allay the fears of parents. According to some, parents shouldn’t worry too much about trying to ensure their kids are working as normal. I’ve even heard some say things like, “Six weeks of missing school isn’t going to hurt kids.” When interviewed on Seven Sharp, Nigel Latta, a well-known New Zealand psychologist and author, was asked how much school work children needed to do while in lockdown. His answer was none unless the children wanted to. Latta said, “Don’t do it, and it will do them no harm at all.” And when asked about parents who might worry about their children falling behind, he said, “They totally will not fall behind. You absolutely shouldn’t worry about this.”
Well in a sense, I understand the point. In the big scheme of things, four, five or even six weeks of missing school may not make a huge difference, particularly for a child in the primary years, and especially if they come from a loving home with fairly well-educated parents. Latta is right, it’s extremely important for parents to provide a calm and safe environment in these times.
But there’s another perspective. I’m a teacher in an independent school which works on a shoestring budget and must attract and retain paying customers. I’ve taught both primary and secondary students, and I would argue that four weeks do matter. In a well-run classroom, with an enthusiastic and organised expert teacher, four weeks can result in tonnes of learning! Parents who are paying taxes and paying a school to educate their children would not be impressed if a school made little or no progress with their child in half a term.
What if Latta and some New Zealand teachers are correct in saying that four to six weeks missed from school isn’t going to matter? That raises an important question. How important is what teachers are doing in school, if missing six weeks has few implications educationally? If this is true, what kind of value for money are we getting from our public education system? Are teachers just glorified babysitters who enable Mum and Dad to pursue a more comfortable living standard? What sort of educational bang for buck are we getting here?
In New Zealand, education makes up around 18% of New Zealand Government expenditure. That’s a whole lot of our tax dollars being put into the education of children. Given the amount of money spent, are we not entitled to expect some sort of return? What kind of value for money are we getting if 4-6 weeks or between 14 to 22% of a school year can be missed with little to no impact on a child?
If our children can be at home with Mum or Dad, ignore most if not all of their school work, and not be disadvantaged, that really doesn’t paint a flattering picture of what is happening in our schools.
But let’s be honest, not every New Zealand school or teacher would claim to have little to no effect on children in this sort of time frame. Schools vary in impact. Yet it would not be wrong to say that in a number of New Zealand schools children would be better off at home pottering around with Mum or Dad. They would learn more!
If there’s one good thing to come out of this lockdown educationally, it’s been that parents have been able to get a bit more of a handle on what their children are learning at school. A number of parents in my acquaintance have been shocked to learn just how poorly their children are being educated by their local schools.
Perhaps some parents will exit lockdown with a new perspective on education. It’s possible some will see the wasted time and opportunities in their local schools and look at change. Perhaps some will embrace independent education. Maybe others will look at lifestyle and consider whether two incomes are absolutely necessary and whether dialling down living standard expectations might enable them to homeschool. Whatever the case, let’s hope we all come out of this lockdown taking our children’s education more seriously.
