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スクリーンショット (2128)

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Home schoolers could argue that they are not undercutting the potential for the democratic production of the public good. They are only asking for the right to be free from government interference, while not necessarily denying their democratic responsibilities. For example, some critics of home schooling have suggested that these parents are turning their backs on fellow citizens and denying the social obligations of a democratic society (Blakely & Snyder 1997). Home schoolers have responded to this claiming that by focusing on their own families they are not turning their backs on the social contract (Ray 1997). Instead, they are supporting their rights at an individual and family level so that they may contribute to the community as autonomous individuals (Lines, 1994; Williamson, 1989).

However, this is a highly debatable view. The emphasis on freedom from government intervention, championed by home schooling, was not the only (and probably much less dominant) view of the social contract in the American institution (Sandel 1996; Matthews 1984). Second, it is debatable to claim that home schooling strengthens the common good by creating autonomous individuals. Home schooling defines liberty largely as freedom from other people's choices (in the form of the state) rather than freedom to make own choices - an autonomy that is cultivated through critical thinking skills and independence from the persuasion of others, including that of parents.

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Home schoolers have argued that, firstly, the strengths of their results contribute to the common good by providing a better-educated populace in general (Ray 1997) and secondly that a wider acceptance of home schooling would increase overall academic achievement (Lines 1994). Although these claims make sense in one regard, again they turn their back on those left in neighbourhood schools. It is assumed that the addition total mass of individual choices automatically lead to the greatest common good - that is, that I can best help others by focusing on myself! Furthermore, these arguments limit a definition of the purpose of schools to academic goals, ignoring the use of schools for other socially defined ends: assimilation, desegregation, social cohesion, or whatever is collectively valued as a society.

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By focusing only on the benefits for one's own children, and ignoring the public good resulting from public, shared education, home schooling represents a form of privatization of education. Although home schooling does not put pressure on public financial resources, it is destructive in that it privatizes the means, control, and purpose of education and fragments the production of the common public good not simply to the level of a locality or ethnic group, but to the level of the nuclear family. To some, this could be seen as a good thing. One could argue that this complete privatization is a better expression of democracy because it removes state bureaucracy and responds to citizens at the most local level. However, this absolutely denies even the most minimal community interest in democratic schooling. Supporters of home schooling might further argue that this is not the case, but that home schooling promotes the common good by cultivating future leaders for the benefit of all. This is a very elitist argument that identifies potential leaders on the basis of the fact that they happen to be one's own child, and it necessarily excludes others from that vision. Some, like Holt (1981), ask if it is so bad if the wealthy remove their children from school, because at least educators can pay attention to poorer sections of society with "undivided attention" (p. 326). This, however, would create a segregated system in which the children of the poor were left to "public" schools and others pursued private educational options according to their means, further widening the gap between those that ‘have’ and those that ‘have not’.