Luke over at the Sonlight blog has a very interesting post that comments on another post and some comments from another blog about educational freedom. It is all a very interesting read on a topic of great interest to many of us homeschoolers. There are many fairly partisan factions within the homeschool community. Sometimes, about the only thing we have in common is our desire to have ownership of the way we raise and educate our children. Some people want to abdicate that responsibility and give it to the state or the church. Some, apparently want to abdicate that responsibility and let the child decide what they need to learn for themselves. The writer of the original post stated that “…It’s not real education freedom when church, state or even the parent-teacher controls what the child learns, knows and believes.” The writer later commented that such control actually offended her. The conversation started out as a discussion of the face the homeschool community shows to the world and the growing acceptance of homeschooling by the community at large.
Some want to fit their kids into a rigid classical (these seem to be the lawyerly and political types) or theistic (the fundamentalists) setting. Some are only doing it because their government school alternative is bad and they cannot afford to send their kids to a private school. Some are even doing it so their kids can concentrate more heavily on sports, spelling bees, art, music, horses, or some other such thing. Some want to give their child “educational freedom”. The reality is that there are many reasons homeschoolers do what they do. If there was only one reason when they started, there are probably many reasons after they have done it for a year. We all have our reasons, but on some level we are kind of on the same side in putting the best face forward for homeschooling as a whole.
I was disabused of that notion to a certain extent yesterday due to this very engaging conversation. After getting pretty exercised by the different comments flying back and forth I realized that there were at least two competing worldviews represented in the discussion and that there was really no common ground to be had. It seemed peculiar that the side that advocated for control and guidance of their children during their growing up years was the one that appeared to take the “live and let live” position. Meanwhile the side that was for what they called “educational freedom” was offended because of what she felt might be someone trying to exercise any control over the education of her charges even though they argued, quite thoughtfully, just the opposite. AND it might look bad to onlookers.