| The Economist |
February 26, 2004 |
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A Revolution Is Happening in American Education The Economist Just how bad are American schools? And how deeply do conservative
Americans distrust their government? One answer to both these questions
is provided by the growth of homeschooling. As many as 2m American
students—one in 25—may now be being taught at home. The growth of homeschooling is all the more remarkable when you
consider two facts. The first is the commitment of the parents. They
give up not just a free public education, but also often the chance of
a second income as well, because one parent (usually the mother) has to
stay at home to educate the children. The next is that the practice challenges most of the assumptions behind
public education. For most of the past 150 years, compulsory mass
education has been the hallmark of a civilized society. Sociologists
such as Max Weber have hailed the state's domination of education as a
natural corollary of "modernization". Yet in the most advanced country
on the planet (on many measures), more than 2m parents insist that
education ought to be the work of the family. How has this come about? FAITH'S IMPERATIVES The market for teaching materials and supplies for homeschoolers is
worth at least $850m a year. More than three-quarters of universities
now have policies for dealing with homeschooled children. Support
networks have sprung up in hundreds of towns and cities across the
country to allow parents to do everything from establishing science
labs to forming sports teams and defending their rights and reputation.
When J.C. Penney started selling a T-shirt in 2001 that featured "Home
Skooled" with a picture of a trailer home, the store faced so many
complaints that it withdrew the item from sale. Homeschooling is a fairly recent phenomenon. When Ronald Reagan came
to power, in 1981, it was illegal for parents to teach their own
children in most states. Today it is a legal right in all 50 states.
Twenty-eight states require homeschooled children to undergo some kind
of official evaluation, either by taking standardized tests or
submitting a portfolio of work. Thirteen states simply require parents
to inform officials that they are going to teach their children at
home. In Texas, a parent doesn't have to tell anyone anything. The main reason why legal restrictions on homeschooling have been
swept away across so much of America is the power of the Christian
right. Not all homeschoolers, of course, are religious conservatives.
One of the first advocates of homeschooling, John Holt, was a
left-winger who regarded schools as instruments of the
bureaucratic-industrial complex. A lively subdivision of the
homeschool movement, called "unschooling", argues that children should
more or less be left to educate themselves. And the number of black
homeschoolers is growing rapidly. Yet the Praetorian Guard of the homeschooling movement are social
conservatives. They turned to homeschooling in the 1970's in response
to what they saw as the school system's lurch to the secular left—and
they still provide most of the movement's political muscle on Capitol
Hill. Senator Rick Santorum homeschools his children—or, rather, his
wife does. Another Republican homeschooler, Congresswoman Marilyn
Musgrave, sponsored a bill to clear up various legal confusions about
grants and scholarships for homeschooled children. George Bush has tried hard to keep homeschoolers on his side. During
the 2000 campaign, he said: "In Texas we view homeschooling as
something to be respected and something to be protected. Respected for
the energy and commitment of loving mothers and loving fathers.
Protected from the interference of government." As president, he has
held several receptions for homeschooled children in the White House. Just as the teachers' unions provide so many of the Democrats'
volunteers, homeschoolers are important Republican foot-soldiers.
According to the HSLDA, 76% of homeschooled young people aged 18-24
vote in elections, compared with 29% in that age group in the general
population. Homeschoolers are also significantly more likely to
contribute to political campaigns and to work for candidates—normally
Republican ones. AN EDUCATION THAT WORKS One-to-one tuition, goes the argument, enables children to go at their
own pace, rather than at a pace set for the convenience of teaching
unions. And children can be taught "proper" subjects based on the
Judeo-Christian tradition of learning, rather than politically correct
flimflam. Some homeschoolers favour the classical notion of the
trivium, with its three stages of grammar, dialectic and rhetoric
(which requires children to learn Greek and Latin). This sounds backward-looking, but homeschoolers claim that technology
is on their side. The internet is making it ever easier to teach people
at home, ever more teaching materials are available, and virtual
communities now exist that allow homeschoolers to swap information. The other factor working in homeschooling's favour is its own success.
Many parents have been nervous about homeschooled children being
isolated. With almost every town in America now boasting its own
homeschooling network, that worry declines. Homeschooled children can
play baseball with other homeschooled children; they can go on school
trips; and so on. What about academic standards? The homeschooling network buzzes with
good news: a family with three homeschooled children at Harvard; a
homeschooler with a bestselling novel; first, second and third place
in the 2000 National Spelling Bee; a first university for homeschooled
children (see article[1]). Systematic evidence is more difficult to
find. There are certainly signs that homeschoolers are thriving. One recent
survey by the HSLDA showed that three-quarters of home-educated adults
aged 18-24 have taken college-level courses compared with 46% of the
general population. But this is hardly conclusive. Homeschoolers do
not have to report bad results. Moreover, homeschoolers may simply
come from the more educated part of the population. Yet these arguments point to change in the way the debate is unfolding.
It is no longer about whether homeschooled children are losing out,
but whether they are doing unfairly well. "Maybe we should subcontract
all of public education to homeschoolers," Bill Bennett, Mr Reagan's
education secretary, once wondered mischievously. That looks unlikely.
But America's homeschoolers represent an assault on public education
that teachers everywhere should pay attention to.
February 26, 2004
The 2m figure comes from the Home School Legal Defence Association. The
most recent (1999) survey by the Department of Education put the number
at only 850,000. The chances are that the HSLDA is closer to the truth.
Rod Paige, the education secretary, uses its figure in his speeches,
and, although homeschoolers tend to refuse to answer government
surveys, a wealth of anecdotal evidence suggests that homeschooling is
on the rise.
So there is certainly an ideological edge to many homeschoolers. But
do not be misled. First, this is a bottom-up movement with parents of
whatever political stripe making individual decisions to withdraw their
children (rather than following orders from higher up). Second, the
movement has a utilitarian edge. Homeschoolers simply believe that
they can offer their children better education at home.
