5 reasons why homeschooling is a vital educational option

Homeschooling is in the news again because of a sensational story: one homeschooling family severely neglected their children.The knee-jerk response to a problem like this is to restrict, regulate, or abolish.

But have no doubt about it, homeschooling is an educational choice that is a vital one for families. Here are five reasons why homeschooling needs to remain an option for all families:

1. Different people, different educational needs

Our schools, whether mainstream public schools or elite private schools, are largely set up to offer one-size-fits-all education. The few schools that actually serve the needs of kids on the fringes are generally too expensive for most families. That leaves an enormous gap that is filled by homeschooling.

Although I know many people who homeschool largely because of their family values, a good percentage of families come to homeschooling originally because of educational needs that aren’t being served. Gifted children, twice-exceptional children, children with learning disabilities, children with specialized academic interests—it’s hard to find a single school that serves their needs. When it works for the family, homeschooling is uniquely suited to these students. Most homeschoolers in this category do “go to school”—just not one school. Their education is patched together using trained educators, therapists, and schools to meet their unusual mix of needs.

2. Promotion of family values

Back in the 80’s when “family values” became a code phrase for right-wing Christian, I would have recoiled at using the phrase for myself. However, I believe that “values” has now been reclaimed and redefined. Although many homeschoolers choose it for religious reasons, many others choose it because of family values that come from another religion or are not religious in nature.

Every time yet another article about toxic school environments hits the Internet, homeschoolers trade them around with comments such as “this is why we homeschool.” Some families value non-violence and homeschool to maintain a peaceful, vegetarian lifestyle. Other families value cross-cultural communication, and they homeschool so that they can travel, learn other languages, and provide service work in needy areas. Some families homeschool because their unusual child was bullied. Some families homeschool simply because they value education, and their children’s schools seem not to.

3. Pushing innovation and choice

Over the time since I started homeschooling, it’s happened over and over: I learn about a new educational idea from homeschoolers, and then I watch as it trickles into mainstream education. Does your school have a STEM program? No schools I knew of had one when I started homeschooling, but homeschoolers were all over it. Now it’s become a staple of more progressive schools. Does your child have a teacher who is integrating project-based and child-led learning into the classroom? Homeschoolers have been doing that forever.

When a culture allows educational choice, it encourages innovation.

4. Resisting groupthink

Yep, this sounds pretty lefty-liberal, but it’s part of homeschooling on all parts of the political spectrum. Homeschoolers of various types have their own problems with groupthink, of course—it’s only human to want to be part of the flock. But the choice to homeschool is a choice to forge your own path, no matter what your political direction is. The parents who choose homeschooling “because all my friends are doing it” are generally the least successful. It’s the parents who resist groupthink who find their home in homeschooling.

5. It’s a free world

This is something people used to say a lot when I was a kid in the Midwest, and I have mixed feelings about it because it was often used to justify bigotry. But the fact is, living in a society that controls every aspect of the citizen’s lives isn’t good for anyone. In order to take the good we get with freedom, we also have to accept the risks. Granting freedom to our citizens comes with the responsibility to maintain a delicate balance between free rights and social responsibility. Every time we face a new issue in our society, from vaccination to teaching evolution, we have the obligation to weigh the freedom to live as we wish with our responsibility to maintain a healthy, safe society for everyone.

Homeschooling, to me, is one of the risks we have to allow. We don’t require education, training, or any sort of license for parents. It’s the most dangerous occupation we allow people to practice without regulation. Yes, there are bad parents. And some bad parents inevitably choose homeschooling. But the good that we get as a society from allowing this choice is worth the risk.