“In Dropping Out: the rewards of homeschooling,” Liz McCloskey describes in almost idyllic terms her experience of taking the “time” away from her own pursuit of a doctorate to homeschool,  over two successive years, her two boys.

Among homeschoolers McCloskey’s decision to home school is not in my experience typical of the genre. McClosky did not describe any particular disaffection with either the public or parochial schools of her American neighborhood. Her primary reason appears to be the opportunity it provided for herself, as parent, to spend more intense time (emphasis in original) with her children.

In my experience with home schooling parents, this is not the typical motivation. Most often a parent has a difference of opinion with the curriculum of either the public or Catholic school. This difference, in many cases, involves a dispute regarding the role of sex education being taught in the school.

Some Christian parents do not want any discussion of the reproductive process imparted to their child. Sub-issues such as birth control, HIV/AIDS, vaccines, abortion and reproductive technologies are seen as secular manifestations of a degenerate society.

It is harder to fathom similar objections in Catholic parents who have the option of having their children educated in Catholic schools, where the “family life” program has been vetted and approved by the local education commissions of the regional conference of Catholic bishops. Or if in the American instance the local diocesan bishop.   Such Catholic parents appear to demonstrate one or more of, an ideological affinity with their evangelical Protestant counter-parts, the practice of an often mythical interpretation of traditional pre-Vatican II Catholicism or have experienced a disconcerting difference of opinion with a teacher or principal of a local Catholic school.

Personally, I have no problem in principle with the concept of home schooling; however recent actions in California and Germany bring to the fore issues which we in Canadian and particularly in Ontario blissfully ignore.

In California a judge determined that home schooling violated a provision in the law requiring a qualified teacher to teach children, meaning in effect, that unless the parent was a teacher the parent could not home school. The ruling, as one would expect, met with a storm of protest on the part of American homeschoolers and has since been reversed. It does, however, raise a serious issue; specifically, in the 21^st Century should parents be required to meet some minimum standard of education themselves before they are permitted to home school their children?

In Germany, the state has stringent requirements which must be met before parents are permitted to home school. In this case when parents refused to meet those requirements, the state mandated them to send the children to school and threatened to remove them from the home for non-compliance. In response, the parents and children fled the country.

In this case the issue of the role of the state to ensure a minimum standard of education be met or conversely, the degree of freedom from state interference in the education of a child is brought to the fore.

Within the North American homeschooling paradigm parents have virtually unfettered freedom to pass on whatever information and values they wish. In a society in which education becomes the ever increasing currency of success does the state have a role to play in ensuring that all of its children reach a certain standard of literacy? Where all children in publicly supported schools are required to meet a defined schedule of proficiencies, it is legitimate to ask why homeschooled children should be exempt. Should the privilege of homeschooling in a societal regime which makes education mandatory and establishes educational benchmarks by age then ignore those who have opted to homeschool in lieu of the public education process? I think not.

In Ontario, school boards in theory are to track those parents who homeschool and provide some oversight of the process. This may be what the book says but it is certainly observed more in the breach than the law for a whole variety of reasons. Simply put, it is time for the province to create a computerized process where all homeschooling parents must register their children with the state and agree in turn to meet a minimum standard of educational attainment or forfeit the right to home school.

At the same time in this age of radical ideologies, religious fanaticism and the concomitant insecurity which such movements breed it is also legitimate to ask, should parents be permitted to pass on values which promote racism, hated of others, or violent rebellion against the state?

There is little doubt that if such a poll were commission, we could expect a resounding NO! Yet in effect there is little in law, to my knowledge, to constrain a parent from so doing. In Canada, the law has clearly determined that no such teaching is permitted in our public schools. Why then, under the guise of homeschooling, should the transmission of such values be tolerated?

For that matter why should parents even be permitted to teach “Creationism” as science when it would never be countenanced in our schools?

Similarly, according to Eric Bugyis, a doctoral candidate who is interning at Commonweal magazine, The Jesus Camp movie shows that many of the children brought up in extremely conservative evangelical communities are homeschooled (so) not being challenged by plurality and are not being socialized to make their arguments in a properly public forum. Is this aspect of schooling important? Should homeshooling parents have to demonstrate such opportunities do exist?

It is doubtful that the Catholic Church and United Nation’s position that parent’s are the first educator’s of their children was ever intended to justify the passing on of values which are antithetical to the welfare of the wider community or the principles of love and compassion taught by Jesus Christ.

As Liz McCloskey demonstrates in her article, there are without doubt some good reasons for parents who wish to homeschool their children to do so. There are however, reasons for vigilance by the state to ensure that the education provided in such a setting is not counterproductive to the general welfare of society as a whole.

In neither Canadian nor American society is such oversight in place. It is time it was put in place.

© copyright, Tomorrow’s Trust, 2008

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