Your home is not a school: The limits of homeschooling as a political practice

Abstract

Homeschooling is on the rise. It appeals to very different perspectives and ideologies that tend not to have common ground, from classical conservative to radical progressive. But the justifications for the practice are weak. In this paper, we build a case against the “home school” as a political practice using the existing commitments of liberal, conservative, and democratic theories of education. Whether education should aim at the cultivation of children's autonomy, their formation as members of cultural communities, or their training as democratic citizens, there are reasons to doubt that the practice of homeschooling can fulfill our educational goals. As such, we argue that liberals, conservatives, and democrats each have their own motivations to oppose homeschooling as an institutional alternative to traditional schools. Through our critiques, we also advance a metatheoretical argument in favor of centering the aims of education in our philosophical and political debates.