In Defense of Homeschool Families

As seems to be the fashion lately, yet another major news outlet has published yet another opinion article implying that the nearly 4 million homeschooled children in America need special protection from their own parents.

In a guest op-ed, author and homeschool graduate Stefan Merrill Block shares the painful details of his relationship with his mother, who homeschooled him for five years in the 1990s. Going public with a history of family dysfunction and abuse is not an easy decision, and I honor Mr. Block’s choice to share his story and pursue healing. Nonetheless, his call for universal regulation of homeschooling demands a response.

I am a homeschool graduate. My four siblings were homeschooled, and my nephews and niece are currently homeschooled. We are part of the diverse and growing cohort of people who have firsthand experience with homeschooling. Like every public-school student you’ve ever met, each homeschooler has a unique personality and story. But in the aggregate, homeschoolers are overwhelmingly proving that neither traditional public schooling nor government regulation is necessary for children to thrive both academically and socially. Nor are homeschooled children any more likely than children in traditional schools to be abused or neglected by their parents.

Mr. Block acknowledges that “each home-school is different, and of course, most home-schooling parents do not abuse or neglect their children.”  But he sees homeschooling itself as inherently risky for children because it removes “what schools provide: a place where children learn and are with one another, a place where adults outside the home interact with children and can intervene on a child’s behalf, and also a transparent, public minimum standard of education.” These claims are far removed from reality. I respect what our public schools are trying to achieve and the dedicated personnel who work in them. But public education is in crisis mode. Children are regularly abused by teachers and staff, bullied by their peers, and left behind academically. And the system seems incapable of repairing itself.

These problems have gotten worse, not better, in recent years. For Mr. Block to claim that today’s public schools are peaceful, happy utopias ignores not only the evidence, but also the lived experiences of children and families across our nation.

The “solution” posed by Mr. Block to perceived inadequacies of home education is the United Kingdom’s “Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.” This bill is so antithetical to our nation’s robust history and legal traditions of parental rights, family autonomy, freedom, and pluralism that it gives the government the power to decide who can homeschool, makes a centralized database of every homeschooled child, and gives the state, not parents, the ultimate authority over how to raise and educate all children.

To Mr. Block, the fact that most homeschooling parents have their children’s best interests at heart should make them welcome government oversight: “Indeed, it would seem that these parents would invite outside assessments to demonstrate the success of their approach. At the very least, it’s hard to understand why home-schooling parents would not warmly welcome routine checks of health and wellness, in order to protect those children whose parents misuse home-schooling to abuse and isolate their children.” All I can say to this is that any parent—indeed, any person—who has run innocently afoul of the educational bureaucracy, child protective services, the judicial system, or any tax department is not likely to “warmly welcome” the sort of invasive and controlling interventions Mr. Block proposes.

The U.S. Supreme Court addressed the issues raised by Mr. Block in its landmark 1979 decision in Parham v. JR. The Court said: “Our jurisprudence historically has reflected Western civilization concepts of the family as a unit with broad parental authority over minor children. Our . . . constitutional system long ago rejected any notion that a child is the ‘mere creature of the State’ and, on the contrary, asserted that parents generally ‘have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare [their children] for additional obligations.’ . . . The law’s concept of the family rests on a presumption that parents possess what a child lacks in maturity, experience, and capacity for judgment required for making life’s difficult decisions. More important, historically it has recognized that natural bonds of affection lead parents to act in the best interests of their children. . . . The statist notion that governmental power should supersede parental authority in all cases because some parents abuse and neglect children is repugnant to American tradition.”

Parham v. J.R. was not an isolated ruling. Over the last century, the highest court has ruled time and again in favor of parental rights and educational freedom in cases like Pierce v. Society of Sisters, Wisconsin v. Yoder, Meyer v. Nebraska, Troxel v. Granville, and (just this year) Mahmoud v. Taylor, to name a few.