Philosophical Problems Associated with Home Schooling

Home schooling is the practice whereby school-aged children, rather than attending public or private schools, are educated at home, typically by their parents/guardians. Home schooling allows parents, who so choose, to provide their children with an alternative educational environment. It also provides parents the ability to opt out of the public school system for practical or personal reasons (Wikipedia, n.d.). The philosophical problem with home schooling relates to the idea of a child’s open future and his or her future autonomy rights. That is, as a child, one is not competent to make decisions today which will have an impact on one’s life going forward. As a result, the child must be protected from that incompetence today in order that the child might fully develop their potential and thus have an open future.

Compulsory public education is the state’s attempt to protect a child’s right, held in trust, to an open future. This right has been recognized in the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and is read into the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Generally speaking, parents who choose home schooling for their children do not dispute the child’s right to an open future. Rather, these parents question whether the state has a prior right over the parent of a child to determine what an open future for their child means.

From the state’s perspective, protecting a child’s right to an open future is directly linked to the idea of future autonomy rights of the child. That is, the child should be prepared now in order that they may exercise autonomy in the future. Future autonomy is the child’s ability, in the future, to make their own choices about what they wish to pursue; what interests them; what they do not wish to pursue; what holds no interest for them.

From this perspective then, education must be more than a positional good aimed simply at facilitating economic participation. Education must also be focused on creating good citizens. Part of creating good citizens is fostering the ability in each individual to flourish. Human flourishing concerns itself with the pursuit of a good life. In order to pursue a good life, one must have the capacity to do so. This capacity comes from exposure to different conceptions of “the good” and the autonomy to make decisions to accept or reject those conceptions. That is, this capacity includes both the ability to understand and accept different ideas and conceptions of the good and the ability to understand and reject these different ideas and conceptions. Exit rights are key to the exercise of true autonomy.

The philosophical problem with home schooling now becomes two-fold. The first problem relates to whether a child’s parents/guardians or the state should direct that child’s education. The second problem relates to whether the state’s view or the parents’/guardians’ view of how to ensure a child’s open future and future autonomy rights should take precedence.

The answer to these problems is probably “yes” on both counts. A child spends some six hours per day, five days per week in a public school. The balance of their time is spent at home, or at least outside of school. This creates an opportunity for partnership in the education of a child. By withdrawing a child from public school, parents deprive that child of the peripheral education that occurs in a public setting. Socialization and the building of social skills; exposure to other points of view; exposure to other lifestyles and beliefs all occur within a public school but outside of the formal curriculum. Although many parents who home school attempt to offset these deficits through having their child participate in community activities outside of the home, the microcosm of the child’s community that exists within a school setting can not be replicated.

Parents/guardians choose home schooling for many reasons. These reasons may be well intended but are not always altruistic. Many of these reasons (i.e., faith, personal beliefs, political views) ultimately serve the purposes of the parent/guardian. That is, because the parent/guardian doesn’t agree with some aspect of what is happening at the school or with the curriculum, they choose to have their child drop out of that society rather than help them to understand the nuances, differences, or opposition they are facing at school.

By dropping out of the school community the child’s capacity to flourish becomes narrower. Notwithstanding a parent’s/guardian’s world view and open-mindedness, the viewpoints and materials to which a child is exposed at home is by definition much narrower in scope than that of a public institution with an broad base of input that is situated in a community of people and influenced by the experience and resources of the state.

Moreover, the quality of education delivered and the accountability of a parent for that education in a home schooling situation is much less stringent than that of a public school. So then, from a comparative standpoint, the parent/guardian has created a situation whereby they have no real way of knowing whether their child is prepared properly for further education. This is important because many, if not most, home schooled children at some point enter the public school system – whether at high school or community college or university.

This phenomena brings up one last question. That is, what would the true motivation for a parent/guardian to remove a child from public school be when in most cases they will re-enter the public system later in their education, either by choice or necessity (i.e., college or university in order to at least acquire some skill set necessary for economic participation).

I would suggest that the underlying motivation for most parents/guardians to home school is not to facilitate their child’s right to an open future and a capacity for autonomy. Rather, I would suggest that the motivation lies in the parent/guardian wanting to protect or shield their child from something with which the parent/guardian either disagrees with, is scared of, or doesn’t understand. Further, I would suggest that these parent’s have unwittingly undermined everything they purport to be interested in, namely, the quality of their child’s education.

Although there is a critical role to be played by a child’s parents in that child’s education, they are not in the best position to dispassionately and objectively protect their child’s right to an open future. Going back to Aristotle, the ideas of a liberal education and a collective or community of learning have been cornerstones for human flourishing. Creating the capacity to evaluate alternatives, think critically, and make choices in one’s best interest in the pursuit a good life require a broad perspective and a tolerance for ideas which simply can not be provided for or duplicated in a home schooling environment.

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