Don't be one of "those" homeschoolers

The anger at public schools is misguided. Homeschoolers need public schools and vice versa.

I’m alarmed at the way some homeschooling leaders are emphasizing the “failure” of public schools as a way to recruit new people into home education. The underlying idea is that homeschooling is better than what traditional public schools can offer. The way home educators prove that home learning is better than compulsory public education is to bash the brick and mortar schools most people attend.

What a misguided approach to thoughtfully thinking about education!

When I wrote my book Raising Critical Thinkers, I explained the remarkable rise of public education around the world. In the 19th century, a vision for providing education to all people flourished—the factory worker and the elite. This radical notion would be funded by the state (not private purses). Thomas Jefferson’s 18th century vision was realized in the 19th century in the United States. We also saw public education take off in Western Europe and Prussia. It was after World War II that the rest of the world implemented the modern concept of free, compulsory education for all.

It isn’t an exaggeration to say that without public school, we wouldn’t have global medicine practices, airline companies for every country, universal infrastructure for roads, electricity, transportation systems that play nicely together, agricultural business that supplies food to every square inch of our communities, modern governments that are not monarchies, telecommunications (including phones, television, and the internet) and all sorts of structures from skyscrapers to the Sydney Opera House to houses in the suburbs. All of these are beautifully interconnected and can be found in every corner of the globe.

It took all the years humans have been on planet earth to get to this point of glorious, interdependent civilization. In fact, it took the last 150 years of dedicated public education for enough of us to become valuable contributors to this global project.

It is because we’ve educated billions of people that we have factories and international shipping companies and rockets that can visit the moon or space stations and satellites.

I don’t ever want to hear anyone bashing the achievements of global public education in order to talk a few suburban moms in the United States into homeschooling their kids. Without public schools, our collective good is harmed.

As a homeschooler, sometimes I legitimately cringe at the way homeschoolers speak with such smug certainty about what it takes to learn, as though schools have never produced anyone who is literate, mathematically competent, and historically grounded. Schools achieve this goal every day of the year.

Can we discuss failures in schools? Limits to how learning is achieved? The dangers inherent in an outdated system? Absolutely. By the way: homeschooling needs scrutiny for its liabilities, too.

How should home educators think about public education? Should they oppose it, use it, ignore it?

The rise of state sponsored schools

In the 19th century, there was significant distrust towards educating the masses. Religious and political groups in Europe and the United States feared indoctrination away from their belief systems.

Get that? People didn’t want public schools because they were worried about the schools secularizing students or leading them to understand their rights. Education was traditionally a privilege of the elite. It ensured that the ruling class had more power and control than those they ruled.

The expansion of education to the masses threatened existing social hierarchies, as some elite classes feared that an educated lower class might challenge the status quo (you know—make them think they had rights, could participate in their government).

Not only that, pervasive child labor, sectarian religious competition, and reluctance to levy taxes for schools delayed providing compulsory elementary education to working-class children.

In the U.S., the push for public education grew in the 19th century, with the realization that educating children from all social classes could benefit the economy and society. The shift happened gradually as industrialization created a need for a more educated workforce and democratic ideals gained traction.​ It’s not an exaggeration to say that the middle class owes its existence to public education.

In fact, the chief charge homeschoolers make against public education today is that it is a factory-like setting designed to produce obedient workers, not an environment for developing innovators and critical thinkers.

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Why should homeschoolers care?

If we’re going to care about education, we can’t simply ignore public education or treat it as an evil that should be removed and defunded. What should we do about children who don’t have access to a parent with a quality education? What if there are children who are learning English in school (rather than at home)? What about children who are in families without financial resources to provide schooling?

Public school may not be perfect, but it is certainly better than assuming every child can be taught at home by a parent.

There are a few more reasons homeschoolers ought not bash public education.

1. You never know when you will need it for your kids. Death of a spouse, divorce, financial insecurity—these can all undermine the intention to homeschool. Kids deserve to rely on an education, not worry that they will not get one because their family situation has changed.
   

2. Your children are friends with kids in public schools. When we vilify the other education model, we teach our children to judge their peers as inferior. When our kids find out that their public schooled friends know something they haven’t yet learned, it can be a pretty destabilizing moment for your child. If, on the other hand, they see school as simply another way to learn, they will be more likely to take that moment in stride.
   

3. The success of our nation depends on good schooling. Home education brings a viable critique to the status quo system. We can offer our insights into learning when we see ourselves as members of the national project of learning. Dismantling public education does not advance our goals for our nation.
   

4. We threaten the rights of homeschool when we are combative. Home education is one form of learning. We want all forms to thrive—tutorial, private, public, charter, and homeschooling. If we hive ourselves off, we are more likely to come under scrutiny and attack.

The idea that homeschooling is right for everyone is laughable. Homeschoolers are not exempt from doing a poor job of teaching their kids. There are support groups for kids (now adults) who were homeschooled who feel that they got a poor education, in fact. It’s important to recognize that abuses exist in all forms of schooling. We should care about all of our kids, not just our own.

Homeschooling is only the right choice when the parents are accountable for how they raise and teach their children. I do believe that our kids belong with us, but they are not ours alone. They have rights as citizens of our country, too. They cannot be abused, harmed, neglected, malnourished, or left uneducated.

Public schools provide a stable learning environment for countless kids of all backgrounds. Our communities are as strong as our public schools, in fact. One way we play nicely with public schools is to participate in them. Join the local school board, create the possibility of part time enrollment for homeschooled kids.

So no, I won’t be bashing public schools. That said, I am quick to critique some of the outdated models for learning that no longer match today’s social and economic needs. I wrote about some of those ideas in my book Raising Critical Thinkers.

What are you thoughts? How do you think about a homeschooler’s relationship to public education?