Somewhere off in the distance I heard a debate regarding the pros and cons of homeschooling.   The points raised in the discussion caused me to muse about the relative strengths of each side's arguments.   In order to properly analyze the points, I believe we have to ask ourselves why our school system exists, what its mission is, whether it accomplishes this mission, and whether its results can be substantially duplicated or improved upon by homeschooling.   If we conclude that homeschooling accomplishes the mission at least as well as the system, we can then ask whether there are other reasons, unrelated to the system's central mission, which favor formal schooling over homeschooling.

Before I begin, I should discuss my personal biases.   I attended public school.   My children attend public school.   I would never attempt to educate my own children and I have my reasons.   But my reasons are particular to me, my family and our circumstances.   They are not reasons which I can extend to others so I won't get into them here.

As I see it, the following summarizes the typical arguments against homeschooling.   I'm sure there are others but I think I've developed a list of the major ones.   That list is as follows:

• Homeschooled children are denied the full range of curriculum experiences and materials provided by the formal school system.   The NEA said, "Home schooling programs cannot provide the student with a comprehensive education experience."
• Homeschooling does not provide effective assessment of academic standing.
• Home schooled children are taught by persons not qualified to teach.
• Kids taught at home are deprived of certain socialization experiences including interaction with social / ethnic groups.   Another aspect of this criticism is home schooled kids do not experience the school social scene, especially in high school, will never learn how to relate to peers because they are over protected.   When they head off to college or other adult endeavors, they will be incapable of coping with peer pressure and making friends of strangers.
• Other arguments raised by teachers claim homeschooling places a burden upon the formal school system.
• Finally, those arguing against homeschooling claim the approach is isolationist and somehow creates a subculture of maladjusted, poorly educated adults who influence public policy in a negative manner.

I'll address the final argument first because it is more conclusion than premise and lacks any substance which can be analyzed objectively.   If homeschooling provides an adequate curriculum, valid assessment, is taught by persons qualified to teach, provides or doesn't deprive kids of socialization, then this statement falls as a last, desperate attempt to discredit something by conjecture rather than thoughtful analysis.

Secondly, the notion that home schooling creates a burden upon the regular system is complete fallacy.   There are some burdens where school systems have been charged with monitoring the progress of home schooled kids but these burdens are more than met by the savings realized when the system no longer has to provide books, desks, lockers, etc. for kids no longer part of the regular student body.   The complaint is as unreasonable as arguing against having a paid day off from work because now you have to find something to do.

Both prongs of the socialization argument are completely laughable.   Schools across this country are for the most part peculiarly local.   One doesn't generally attend any level of formal schooling with other children from grossly different social environments.   And most kids are not faced with other ethnic groups which are not well represented anyways within their own communities.   We tried bussing kids into different neighborhoods during the sixties and those experiments were disasters.   In places where there is a broad mix of socio-economic groups, the kids generally gravitate to "their own kind" and the typical social forces create worse circumstances.   Gangs are far more prevalent in mixed race schools as the kids form bonds with which to protect and isolate themselves.   This is true even in predominantly single race / economic category schools where social interaction is determined by relative wealth or other measurements.   I know the high school I went to was overwhelmingly white and the range of incomes was not tremendously broad.   Yet the Italian kids hung together, the Jewish kids were closer to each other, the most wealthy kids eschewed "the poor kids" who weren't actually poor but rather less well off than the "upper crusters," the jocks clung together as did the cheerleaders, etc., etc.   Relatives of mine have attended schools which contained mixed races and economic levels and the kids from common backgrounds always seemed to find each other.   The hispanics, blacks, white, and asians formed race-based gangs and never got along with each other.   This argument is contrived at best and never works in the real world.

Also, and perhaps more importantly, kids achieve the same degree of socialization through other vehicles such as organized sports and other outside-the-home activities - the same ones which actually provide the socialization schools falsely lay claim to.   Kids in schools certainly make friends but the bonds are stronger with those who they befriended through other activities participated in outside school.   These experience are not only more important than the opportunities found in school but they are more available when children are not engaged in slow-moving, formal school for most of their waking hours.

The first three elements of the anti-home schooling argument are by far the most important.   Our nation's schools were formed and funded primarily as a means of bringing up the country by education.   This requires a full range of subjects and intellectual experiences, individuals qualified to teach, and an efficient and effective means of measuring progress and success.   On the surface it would appear impossible for parents to provide this academic experience for their own children unless they each are qualified educators with a broad range of academic experience of their own.   But, in practice, that need is being met in creative ways.   And the results speak for themselves.

First of all, parents of homeschooled children frequently band together in community groups to teach children the full array of subjects.   One parent might be skilled at mathematics and/or sciences and handle these aspects while another is more qualified to teach language arts and literature and yet another music or the arts.   And there are any number of organizations providing curriculum guidance and materials to homeschoolers.   A parent needn't go it alone merely because they have decided to go the homeschooling route.

Without citing a specific study, and there are many of them published, in general homeschooled kids outperform their peers on standardized and other forms of testing because their home educational experiences are both broader and deeper than system educated kids.   Indeed, the most recent trend in our nation's colleges is to recruit home educated kids because they are so well prepared and because home-educated student curricula often include many subjects not included in traditional mainstream curricula.

Even among formally-educated kids, the ones who perform studies outside the bricks and mortar classroom generally do better.   For example, Asian kids and many others, including my own, seek out supplemental education.   One example of this is the "Kumon" program for mathematics in which children perform 15 minutes to half an hour of drilling each day.   So-called "Kumon kids" are frequently proficient at levels two grades or more above their formal class.   This phenomenon has much to do with the fact that Asian kids outperform all others across the nation in mathematics and sciences.   I know that my Kumon kids toughest challenge in formal school math is staying awake rather than completing their work.   They can handle the work with little or no effort and mostly ruin the curve for the rest of the class.   If fifteen minutes of self-directed Kumon were their only mathematics education, they would still outperform their peers.

If we dare to ask whether home schooling is a reasonable alternative to formal schooling, we have to ask why our current formal system exists, whether it accomplishes its mission and whether these accomplishments are met or surpassed by home schooling.   It seems obvious to me that home schooling achieves every major policy goal a formal system does, does so with even greater success, and does so far more cost-effectively.   The socialization argument has largely arisen because the other, more fundamental arguments fail.   But it too fails because it exists upon a mythical premise.

The bottom line is our school system today actually exists for two reasons.   The system exists today because there are vested financial interests in keeping it going and because it is the only way to offer any sort of education to poor, impoverished kids living in the inner city.   The vested financial interests are the teachers unions and school boards which are government fiefdoms unto themselves.   The poor, impoverished kids reason, while valid, is not enough to justify the way schools are run today.   In fact, our nation's educational system largely fails poor, impoverished, inner city kids while spending nearly twice as much per child than the successful suburban schools do.   And as more and more religious folks eschew the secularist, perhaps atheist, curriculum in favor of home schooling, there are bound to be serious debates in the coming years.   Home schooling is growing, especially among religious folks.   Colleges are recruiting home schooled kids because they are academically superior.   And as the tidal wave grows, the unions will feel more and more threatened.

The issues which need to be addressed have little to do with whether homeschooling is bad.   Rather they involve an analysis of the forces which are making it grow and what our schools can learn from the phenomenon.   We shouldn't be so much asking what our educators are against but what they are for.