Home Schooling as a Viable Alternative to Public Education

Introduction: The Rise of Educational Alternatives

Traditional school-based education was once thought to be the most effective and essential component of children's learning. Yet recent trends have dramatically increased the number of alternatives available to students and their parents. One of those alternatives — historically regarded as inferior to school-based education — has become increasingly popular: home schooling. Critics once denounced the choice as a detriment to children's social development (Veigle 1). Yet it is not the home school that is under attack in our culture today — it is the public school itself.

It is no accident that one of the most significant countercultural movements in America today has been the parent-driven expansion of educational alternatives to the public schools, particularly the rise of small public "charter" schools (schools released from mandates and bureaucratic regulations), denominational private schools, and home schooling (Mack and Duflon 18).

Opportunities for change have arisen as a result of many factors, not the least of which is a general dissatisfaction with available public education. This paper addresses the question: should more children be home-schooled? It examines problems with school-based education and disputes some popular myths associated with home schooling. The central argument is that home schooling is a viable alternative for many students and should be more widely embraced.

A leading education expert, John Holt, expresses concern about the isolation children experience when they are removed from their community to attend school. "Holt feels that children are not treated as if they are part of the community, that they are removed from the community for their education, and that they are not ready for it when they graduate" (Hausen 163).

In many cases, the bright children Holt taught in public schools would play a role of obedience and passivity. "We ask children to do for most of a day what few adults are able to do even for an hour," he observes. Children should be helped to make sense of the world and should have the "freedom to live and think about life for its own sake." Schools should offer a broad range of artistic, intellectual, creative, and athletic activities. Communities could become places where people ask questions of one another and share what they know (Hausen 163).

Holt is a strong supporter of home schooling. His observations stem from many years as a teacher in public schools. He believes that the challenges students face in a public school setting are fundamentally contrary to their natural development into successful adults. He advocates home schooling for concerned and able parents, and contends that government interference undermines the rights of parents to educate their own children or to have the final say in educational decisions (Hausen 163).

Even within a home school setting, the state retains at least a limited degree of control over the subjects being taught and the educational progress of students. Different states hold different standards for accepting a home schooling arrangement, yet nearly all require yearly — if not quarterly — progress reports of one form or another (Innerst 11).

Problems with Public School Education

Public schools have been under intense scrutiny for several years. The level of student failure in the United States — one of the most advanced nations in the world — casts reasonable doubt upon the validity of the current school system. The response from public education has been to adopt a system of outcomes-based testing, which does not change the school itself but instead drives educators and students to follow a curriculum geared almost exclusively toward test success. There is no real proof that anyone is learning more than they were before testing became the central focus.

As Thomas and Bainbridge argue:

"Those who don't wish to educate all our children will simply substitute pleasant-sounding rhetoric for resources. Intoning a slogan like 'No Child Left Behind' never taught a child to read. Neither did 'All children can learn.' But the most preposterous of these empty rhetorical phrases is 'No Child Left Behind.' The simplicity and stupidity of this statement prevent us from doing what we ought to do: provide sufficient resources to educate all our children successfully. The complexity of providing for an adequate education — as nearly 15 state supreme courts have said — requires much more than slogans." (Thomas and Bainbridge 781)

Many schools fall far short of the resources needed to educate children to a standard our society should find acceptable. Even early reformers are disappointed by the new standards, which serve largely as a smokescreen concealing the fact that children are failing not because of inadequate testing procedures, but because of inadequate school funding and poor school design.

"The majority of our schools are underfunded, especially those in low-wealth states and in low-wealth school districts. Children in these schools lack adequate instructional materials and access to technology, and they are often housed in buildings that fail to meet the safety codes of their states. They are usually taught by less-qualified personnel. These children are left behind." (Thomas and Bainbridge 781)

These children and the institutions they attend are inadequate — a breeding ground for discontent and disillusionment, particularly when students come to realize that no matter how hard they work, the success they hope for may remain out of reach.

"Descriptions of traditional mass schooling present the familiar features of educational inequality: intense overcrowding, overworked and underpaid staff, grim and decaying facilities, insufficient and outdated textbooks, ethnic and racial hostility, vast disparities in funding. The socialization that occurred was not a lesson in democratic values, but a convincing exposure to the hard realities of competition and social stigma." (Bastian et al. 35)

Socialization Myths and the Reality of School-Based Peer Pressure

One staunch critique of contemporary culture argues that the standards of socialization within public schools are themselves a source of increased violence and decreased capability among today's children:

"Could it be that in their determination to loosen children from family loyalties and to promote the peer group as a source of both emotional support and social approval, educators have inadvertently promoted such hideous behavior? [increased violence] Could it be that in their zeal to lay bare children's inner lives for scrutiny and refitting, they are selling children's souls to their peers? Some parents think they are. Home schooling parents often point up what they consider the unhealthy ways schools socialize kids." (Mack and Duflon 161)

Some of the main proponents of home schooling have long addressed socialization as something home-schooled children are supposedly missing. Yet, as this paper contends, the unhealthy nature of socialization within schools bears responsibility not only for increased violence in schools, but for increased violence among youth more broadly — youth who must cope with the unnaturally extreme pressures of peer groups and social hostility.

African-American home schooling mother Donna Nichols-White told Time magazine: "When people mention the problem of gang membership, I mention that the common factor amongst all gang members is they attended school" (Mack and Duflon 161).

Some experts agree with this connection between youth violence and the unhealthy socialization practices of schools. Former human potential movement leader Dr. Roger Coulson has acknowledged a link between behavioral education and increasing juvenile violence, disavowing such education as psychologically manipulative, destabilizing, and morally confusing:

"Social policy-makers who bemoan the propensity of teenagers to succumb to unhealthy peer pressure ought to consider rethinking the schools' herding approach to socialization and returning the focus of education to academic achievement, leaving children's psychosocial development to the family… Contemplate the outbreaks of ethnic, racial, and misogynist violence in neighborhoods where children have taken courses in 'tolerance' and 'self-esteem,' but have been given no rules to live by. Consider just briefly the deliberate sins of our schools, perpetrated daily on a captive audience of 45 million American children: they undermine family intimacies; they impede parental authority; they disorient the moral compass; they trivialize feelings…" (Mack and Duflon 161)

Conclusion: Expanding the Case for Home Schooling

Despite the repeated proof of the effectiveness of home schooling, there is still considerable opposition to it, and many parents do not fully understand the possibilities available to them. The potential of home schooling has been demonstrated in many contexts. Twelve of 55 national finalists in one year's National Geographic Bee were home-schoolers, with four making the top 10 and three in the top four. The winner was ten-year-old Calvin McCarter, the youngest competitor in the contest and a home-schooler from Grand Rapids, Michigan ("Home-Schooling Spells Success" B04).

Although most home-schooled children are taught by one or both parents in the home environment, new and exciting models are emerging — such as home-schooling co-ops, in which several families link together to benefit from each other's different strengths and the increased flexibility such arrangements allow. While home schooling is clearly not a decision to be made lightly, given the demands it places on families, more children — where circumstances allow — should be offered the opportunity.

There is little doubt that if given full information and access to available resources, many more parents would regard home schooling as a far more viable option than they previously imagined. The community must once again embrace children as they learn and grow in ways that they and their parents determine together. Children are thriving in home school settings, and as more families seek alternatives to the rigid and often psychologically and intellectually limiting offerings of public schools, this movement will continue to grow in both popularity and numbers.

Works Cited

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Hausen, E. Human History at the Crossroads: Where Do We Go from Here? Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 1996.

"Home-Schooling Spells Success in Bee." The Washington Times 17 June 2002: B04.

Houston, Robert G., and Eugenia F. Toma. "Home Schooling: An Alternative School Choice." Southern Economic Journal 69.4 (2003): 920+.

Innerst, Carol. "Home-Schooling Parents Still Battling in Many States." The Washington Times 9 Dec. 1996: 11.

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Mack, Dana, and Andrea Duflon. How Our Culture Undermines the Family. San Francisco, CA: Encounter Books, 1997.

"More Blacks Turn to Home-Schooling; Prince George's County Leads the Way as Parents Look for an Alternative to Poor Public Education." The Washington Times 9 Feb. 2003: A01.

"No Child Left Behind? It May Have Sounded Good to Some, but This Law Is Heading Down the Wrong Track." NEA Today May 2003: 20+.

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Thomas, M. Donald, and William L. Bainbridge. "No Child Left Behind: Facts and Fallacies." Phi Delta Kappan 83.10 (2002): 781.

Veigle, Anne. "Educational Housework: Home-Schooling at One Time Maligned, Has Found Acceptance as a Viable Alternative to Traditional Ways of Teaching Children." The Washington Times 1 June 1999: 1.

Wagenaar, Theodore C. "What Characterizes Home Schoolers? A National Study." Education 117.3 (1997): 440+.

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Zirkel, Perry A. "Home Sweet School." Phi Delta Kappan 76.4 (1994): 332+.