One of the publications I keep up with, and recommend on this blog, is The Old Glory Club. Recently one of their members, Heather Carson, put out a piece entitled Homeschooling is an American Tradition, which was a nice summary of John Taylor Gotto’s The Underground History of American Education 1. While never mentioning Gotto, a life-long educator and close associate of Ron Paul, Heather wrote a Spark Notes of The Underground History that I would have appreciated in graduate school when I had to read Gotto in a week (alongside four other books…requiring lots of coffee and a few cigarettes).
When it comes to homeschooling, there are a number of different positions, which vary from banning it as a means of ensuring social stability and maintaining a common base of knowledge, to, as Carson does, championing it as the superior mode of education. This later position has many of the holes the libertarianism its adherents often espouse, which reduces to trying to fit the very messy world into nice and neat apriori propositions, giving us a political Kantianism. 1
Before moving on, I need to acknowledge a potential awkwardness. Many of you know that I am an ardent supporter of the 45K Plan, which you can read about in detail, and learn how to support, on our website. The basics of it is as follows: on average, it takes $15,000 a year to send a child to public school. Some states it is as high as $17,000. Public schools are much more expensive than most private schools, but we only notice the price tag on the later because the former is paid via property taxes, and thus tuition is a) never directly stated, and b) spread across the whole of a locality, and not paid by a single family. Whereas most school choice bills allot tax credits or vouchers, the 45K Plan says that Americans, if they are being made to pay for education, deserve to choose where that money is spent. Long story short, each family should get the $15,000 (on average) allotted to their child, and allowed to spend it at the school of their choosing, up to their third child (hence 45K). I have lobbied for this bill, organized people to write letters to their representatives, and got my podcasting chops by debating Dave The Distributist on the merits of the 45K. So, on paper it looks like I should agree with Carson…but here I am writing a response article.
We have a very good thing going on the school choice front. Every year more and more school choice bills get passed, and some states are getting rather close to the 45K Plan, like Arizona and Alabama. I agree with Carson that the current public-school model is unworkable. First off, as schools get bigger and bigger, more kids fall through the cracks as it becomes impossible for a teacher to personally know, and have a relationship with, every student, and thus suicide and school shootings become a reality. Second, the Prussian model, or even the STEM model, so distained by Gotto does leave out a well-rounded education, the type of liberal education that seeks to form virtuous adults who speak well, write well, and think well. Finally, it is apparent to anyone to the right of Bernie Sanders (which includes a lot of Democrats), that public schools have a clear political agenda, and teach that Christianity has been a force of oppression, and that men, especially white men, are to blame for most of the world’s horrors.
There is a real problem, a lot of Americans are aware of it, the majority of Americans support school choice, and the number, and quality of school choice bills, are increasing. Take a look at this paragraph from a 2021 article regarding Pennsylvanian voters:
“And on the issue of education, where Democrats have embraced the teaching of critical race theory in public schools, just 15% of Pennsylvania voters say that history classes should be focused on racism, and 88% believe parents have the right to see all books and materials used in the classroom. In addition, nearly three out of four parents (73%) of school-aged children are “more likely” to vote for a candidate if that person supports school choice.”2
These are not just conservative Republicans mind you, but voters across party affiliation, gender, and race.
Given the momentum of the school choice movement, I would hate to see all progress made on this front be given up through the adoption of a radical pro-homeschool position. I support the right to homeschool, mind you. There are some situations where a child will learn best at home, especially if the surrounding schools are bad quality or dangerous. Part of why I champion the 45K Plan, talking everyone’s ear off about in online and in-person, is to make homeschooling a realistic possibility. However, I seriously doubt whether it can be said that homeschooling is the superior form of education in good faith. Granting Gotto/Carson’s entire case3, both against compulsory education and for the higher test grades and lower sexual abuse in homeschools, there are some serious faults in contemporary homeschooling.
It is true that homeschooling has been a part of American life for some time, as public schools have been. Yet, the culture around homeschooling is a very recent phenomenon, and is soaked in fear of the outside world. You will often come up against worries about “the state”, how it will “snatch our children away from us”, and memorized statistics about sexual abuse, bullying, and school shootings. I do not deny any of these statistics, and if you have read this blog, you know I am not a fan of how this country has been governed over the past one-hundred years, to put it mildly. We subsidize with our own earnings what is either communist propaganda, or what might be worse, a cult where kids are taught since middle school (if not elementary school) that the purpose of education is to get a job, and the purpose of a job is to get money, and what the liberal arts have called The Good Life, is only available in retirement. We are offered Judith Butler and Jeremey Bentham, and told this is all there is.
When a child is kept home out of fear, the parents often shift their mistrust of teachers to all authority figures, teaching their children that they ought to be suspicious of everyone, leaving their parents as their sole authority. Why would this not be the case? If our schools, government, and media are all trying to hurt my child, what other institutions have fallen? Since most adults have gone to public school, take cues from the mainstream media, and compliant, even if uneasy about, the government, most adults are all but primed to perpetuate the very ideology you are trying to shield your child from. Should we teach our children to ask questions? Of course. Generalized suspicion, however, is not asking questions, it is a smothering blanket that harms relationships, and looks a lot like generalized anxiety. Having ample exposure to the homeschool community (though never homeschooled), I have seen this play out many times, with priests and pastors falling under the same suspicious gaze teachers fall under, even when these priests and pastors agree with homeschool parents on 99% of issues. Other homeschool parents too, fall under suspicion. Kids tend to be timid, and despite homeschool proponents insisting that socializing is still possible, if not better, most have limited exposure to children who are not part of the typically closed social circle of the homeschooling community.
At the risk of getting too anecdotal, when I was in college, my peers who went the craziest, drank the most, did drugs, and experimented with homosexuality, were all homeschooled. I went to a Christian liberal arts college, and one of the few colleges left in America that is serious about living the Christian life, and not just using it as a marketing strategy. All of those behaviors were discouraged, and faculty who taught something contrary to Christian orthodoxy were liable to being fired on those grounds alone. Those who went to public school were relieved and found the college to be an oasis, and those who went to alternative schools, which we will look at in a second, performed at the top of their class. Given an environment promoting the Christian life, studies geared around reading the church fathers and the classics, the behavior of these friends might have very well been due to their strict upbringing, and thus at the first sign of freedom they did everything contrary to their parents’ will.
“Okay Rose”, Carson might say, “I am sure that in your experience you have come across examples of homeschooling done poorly, but all education can be done poorly, and in the absence of any hard data, you are just sharing stories.” Very well, but these stories are not unique to me. I am willing to bet money that my readers have all met someone who was homeschooled that was either a) timid because they were raised to fear the world or b) went wild at the first opportunity for freedom. We all know one of these people, and humans learn from pattern recognition.
Now I want to pivot. I get uncomfortable criticizing someone’s personal decisions, and I am running that risk right now, if I have not already done it. If you want to homeschool your children, I respect your right to do so, and I have, and will continue to, work to make that easier for you. The problems homeschooling try to address are, however, better addressed by alternative forms of education. Classical and Montessori schools are widespread as of 2023, and were designed in active opposition to the same Prussian model Carson and I both oppose. Classes are small enough that a teacher can know every student in the school intimately, there is a heavy focus on the arts, literature, and creativity, a good number of Classical and Montessori schools intentionally integrate ages (the house system is the most popular method), there are significantly lower rates of sexual abuse, no school shootings I have been able to find, graduates are better well-read than their public school counterparts, and, finally, the canon of Western civilization, not communism, is taught.
Heather Carson wrote a good article, and I do recommend reading Gotto’s book if you are interested in either homeschooling or the un-schooling movement. I respect people’s right to homeschool, think at times it might be best given certain situations, and have fought for the 45K Plan, which would make homeschooling a possibility for every family. Yet, when the public is singularly in favor of school choice, are increasingly skeptical of the public education system, when school choice bills are being passed at greater and greater frequency and quality, and when there is an existing network of alternative schools that address all of the homeschooling community’s concerns, to double down on the superiority of homeschooling, which tends to nest in generalized anxiety, producing either adults in need of socialization or party animals, would be to forfeit a victory we are so terribly close to having.
Kantianism, as we remember, is the philosophy of modernity, with its rigorous attachment to method and exclusion of phronesis and variance between cultures.
It is interesting that both communists and Curtis Yarvin agree with Gotto that America’s sinfulness originated with those pesky Anglo Protestants, America’s founding stock, who we get so much pleasure from by violently wisping, like Wormtongue, “Puritan!”
I recommend Lew Rockwell’s critique of vouchers to you (second half of article.)
https://www.lewrockwell.com/1970/01/lew-rockwell/school-vouchers-rip/
Link to Heather’s article is not working. Try this: https://open.substack.com/pub/oldgloryclub/p/homeschooling-is-an-american-tradition