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Is Home Schooling a Preference or a Right?
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Volume 39, Program 14
8/8/2002
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Is home schooling just a preference or is it a right? Today on Home School Heartbeat, Michael Smith, talks with Tom Washburne, about the legal basis for parents' right to home educate their children.
Michael Smith:
Dr. Robert Reich's paper entitled "The Boundaries of Parental Authority" sets forth some truly a dangerous ideas concerning home school freedoms. Please tell our listeners some of the legal and Constitutional arguments against this challenge.
Tom Washburne:
As we have been discussing this week, Dr. Reich would like to counter the Constitutional right of parents to raise children with a new right, the right of children to receive an autonomous education. His argument is that home education needs to be regulated because, and let me quote him, "it must be the function of the school setting to expose children to and engage children with values and beliefs other than those of their parents." He needs to assert this new right, Mike, because the court cases have limited the government's ability to regulate home education. Unless some new interest, such as the child's, is put into the constitutional framework, the government cannot regulate home schools. But Reich is wrong. While children do have some rights of protection, such as child abuse laws, the law does not recognize children as having rights of choice. These rights have always been reserved in our society for adults -and simply giving children rights of choice will not turn them into adults.
Michael Smith:
Tom, thank you. I'll look forward to tomorrow to find out whether you think these are really challenges that we can expect against home schooling.
Rob Reich's assertions really do attack the core of home schooling. Tom Washburne has written an excellent response piece, and you can get your copy absolutely free, just by requesting The Boundaries of Parental Authority. Call us toll free at 866-338-8614. That's 866-338-8614.
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Washburn refutes the idea that children should be burdened with adult “rights of choice.” He points to the real issue motivating home schooling critic Robert Reich to argue that children have an interest in education separate from the state’s and separate from their parents—namely that home school children are beyond the influence of the educational elite’s relativistic worldview.
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