As an ex-teacher, now homeschooling parent of two neurodivergent kids both of whom had major school trauma, I totally agree that school is not the right place for every child. I’ve felt the frustration of not being able to meet the needs of the kids in my class because of an external requirement that they learn in a particular way at a particular time, but I’ve also had the privilege to work with young people who are able to achieve their potential despite the hoop jumping. As a parent, I found it hard to reconcile my positive attitude towards schools with the actual lived experience of my kids. My eldest coped until secondary school when the repeated bullying over his quirks totally destroyed the happy, settled 10 year old and turned him into a miserable depressed 11 year old - it was that marked in the space of a year. My youngest has demand avoidance so after 8 months refusing school despite wanting to go, we realised that we were just making things worse for him by trying to persuade him that school was safe - it didn’t feel that way for him. In both schools the SENDCos did what they could but it was very obvious that all the ‘help’ was to enable the children to conform to adult expectations rather than to have the freedom to be the children they are.
Not all abuse is ‘serious’ requiring lawful intervention but many of these small abuses of a child’s rights combine to make life really miserable. This can be at home as well as at school and I feel is in a large part because of the control narrative that exists in both teaching and parenting communities - children must learn to conform to adult expectations rather than learning what suits them. We took time to look at the summary of the rights of a child and it was fairly obvious that their rights had not been prioritised by the school (for many varied reasons) but we realised as parents that we were also part of this control culture in the ‘best interests’ of our children.
Now we homeschool, it is challenging for me as an ex teacher to change my narrative and expectations of control - “I will teach and you will learn” - and become more flexible to allowing discovery learning and following the kids interests. They have learned more this year than they did in the last 2 years at school but I’d struggle to prove that against a ‘standard’ - we’ve explored sustainable living, structural engineering and bookbinding among many other things but I’ve not ‘taught’ long division or how to write an essay. At this point in time this isn’t relevant to my kids though it will be later on.
We decided to take as our yardstick to measure our education against as Article 29 (goals of education)
“Education must develop every child’s personality, talents and abilities to the full. It must encourage the child’s respect for human rights as well as respect for their parents, their own and other cultures, and the environment.” We reckoned that was a pretty good philosophy though unfortunately felt the school system failed our kids on all of these counts.
Catherine thanks for sharing your experience. It’s such a good reminder that control in general - wherever it happens- can be harmful. And that our schooled mindsets often get in the way of seeing what our child needs - I’ve definitely experienced some of this too!
I homeschooled my kids - now grown - on and off, and I'm now a tutor for homeschoolers. I agree with this post 100%. I agree that there should be some kind of regulation to protect against abuse.
Academic requirements should be handled separately, but I'm unsure what they should be. You mentioned the idea of some “baseline” requirements, and that's where my head goes. Before this issue can be resolved, a great deal of education about the various types of homeschooling will need to happen.
Approaching these issues from a Children's rights standpoint is a great way to start. I volunteer with Ross Greene’s Lives in the Balance organization, which exists to end corporal punishment, isolation, and the school-to-prison pipeline in general. Their website provides stats on corporal punishment in schools in each state if anyone is interested.
Wow Beth thank you, that looks like a great resource! Yeah the baseline academic thing is tough for me too. I'm not sure how to make it so that the baseline is somehow not discriminatory and not replicating a system many have chosen to step out of. Many homeschoolers ARE in favor of baseline academics because they feel it prevents educational neglect, but we'd have to define what educational neglect actually means and that could mean so many different things!!! Like is it neglect if my unschooled child doesn't learn complex maths until they're 15? I don't think so. But some might. Is it neglect if my child isn't at grade level on reading? I'm unsure of how we create this baseline. And that's why I think looking at all educational settings, from homeschooling to schools to every single setting where children congregate, from a lens of children's rights and children's safety and well-being seems like the best way to approach this, for me.
Thank you for this!!! You put some things into words that I missed, and clarified others. Really appreciate it!! I especially appreciate how you specify that bringing school into the home or forcing kids to take part in school is not the answer, and how school is used as a vehicle of policing.
This is an excellent post about whether or not to support the regulation of homeschooling.
A few points I would like to highlight or double down on.
1) The section **Abuse, isolation and misinformation does happen in the name of homeschool and this matters** acknowledges that abuse happens, and that should be a concern for anyone who cares about children. But two sentences in sequential paragraphs highlight a problematic way of thinking about regulation:
"Many of these families include adults with prior convictions for domestic abuse, who are allowed to homeschool their children regardless. // Importantly, Black and Latinx/Hispanic homeschoolers are the fastest growing groups, and we have no studies that link these groups of homeschoolers with abuse (as far as I can tell)."
It seems natural that laws regulating homeschoolers to prevent abuse might prohibit people with prior convictions from homeschooling. However, the criminal justice / school / social services system is not race neutral, it amplifies and perpetuates harm against BIPOC communities. So such a prohibition would disproportionately harm BIPOC communities, especially Black and Indigenous families and children. So yes, this is one example that highlights the later section titled **Regulation might actually impact the most marginalized, and have no impact on those who are actually guilty of abuse.**
2) Speaking of regulation, in the section ** Trained teachers are not always in the child’s best interest** it points out that "there is a legitimate fear that children who are following a child-led path, or unschoolers perhaps, could appear to be behind their schooled peers when in fact they are following a different path to education.
This is spot on and a major concern of mine. Anyone who has followed my public comments or work in education over the past 15 years know that I feel that schooling is a terribly harmful system that prevents education far more than it delivers it. Age based, behaviorist, sequential learning is extremely damaging not only to the intellectual life of many students, it is inefficient at delivering the most basic learning that the system insists it is needed for. Even if one is for regulation to prevent abuse, a focus on ensuring that the equivalent to schooling is done at home won't lessen the abuse, it will just transfer some of the abuse from the school into the home. Regulation shouldn't commingle concerns about curriculum and abuse.
3) The section **Abuse happens in school, and in spite of school** highlights that "child abuse happens in schools too. This year (2023), a CBS investigation found that schools systematically covered up sexual abuse, and that 5 million children will be abused in school by the time they graduate."
This is an important point that gets overlooked by people with the usually false a priori assumption that school provides the one safe space for abused kids. School is not always a safe alternative to the home for the many kids abused at home, and it is most certainly not a safe alternative for the kids who get abused at school who are not abused at home.
But going further, while some homeschooling families may use homeschooling as a way to cover up abuse, the larger scale harm may very well come from the institution of schooling that is rarely held accountable for the abuse that happens in schools. Kids can be trapped in abusive homes, but they can be trapped in abusive schools, as well. Both are terrible. In the home there may be no escape. In the school there may be school resource officers (cops) who threaten violence preventing escape, the institutional stamp of retribution and shame and failure, and municipal lawyers eager to protect the institution from being held accountable, and those same lawyers may bring action against families who are suffering.
4) In my opinion, from the perspective of the state, the problem here is not necessarily that homeschooling gives cover to abusive families, although it does happen. The problem is that the school has taken on an extraordinary broad role that goes far beyond education. It is now seen as a vehicle for social service, and a surveillance agency. This can never work in a society that gives families the freedom to opt out of schooling. By situating social services and state surveillance in the schools we are guaranteeing that kids will fall through the cracks. We must provide vital youth services and support to all kids, not just those enrolled in state sanctioned schools, meaning we must remove such services from the schools. And we must stop using schools as a way to surveil and police families, which goes back to point one, as such surveillance and policing is going to continue to disproportionately the most marginalized groups.
5) Finally, the section **Sometimes homeschool abuse is not only individual, it’s systemic** highlights the perhaps the biggest shift in perspective needed for actually supporting young people. The focus needs to be on youth rights as opposed to parental rights. If we have a society that supports the right of the youth, as opposed to the right of parents, educators, or institutions to control children, then we can help young people escape both abusive home and school environments.
We can do that without forcing school into the home, or forcing kids into schools.
Myself and others who take the position that human rights, and specifically the Rights of the Child, should be the basis of education for every child use a discord server to collaborate on campaigns to advance this position. For anyone interested to join, this is the link: https://discord.gg/TMz87k4FnC
A specific question I opened up recently is how to reconcile the right of families to choose education other than what is offered by the state (in the sense of country, not the sense of States in the USA) with the state’s obligation to ensure that every child’s right to education is realized - we need some way for the latter to take place to ensure that homeschooling is not a cover to deny a child their right to education.
We are also working to hold states accountable to providing education that respects and strives to realize child rights - because in many cases they don’t (if the public system in my country provided that I would not need to run a democratic school)
Both great point and I think about your first one a lot! I’m absolutely an advocate for children’s rights and autonomy and I worry about the parental rights movement, and yet it is parental rights that allow us to unschool!
I’m in the UK so our experiences are somewhat different.
When our government were trying to implement a home education register last year the most alarming stories I heard about were local authorities that had put mothers and children in immediate danger by “accidentally” disclosing the address of the family to an abusive father. The arguments being that if every address is on a database with various other very personal information, such dangerous breaches may become easier.
Also some local authorities have such a negative view of home educators that they will do their best to proceed to formal steps to enforce a school place for a child, often from lower economic homes and other groups more likely to face discrimination. I have spoken to more than one parent in such a group where the parent is convinced that their child would seriously harm themselves if forced back into school.
It’s a difficult issue and one out seems we will be facing again in the new year.
Rosie thanks for sharing your thoughts. I think there are absolutely very different issues with the UK proposed regulation, and that yes regulation can be problematic in more than one way and in different ways based on the context. What’s your government doing now? Did they back off or are they still trying to implement this? I lost track.
It was part of a bill that also included various changes to the ways schools function. The whole bill was scrapped because of objections to those other elements.
After this, the Welsh Assembly introduced new guidance which enabled far more reach by local authorities. Now the UK government is planning to introduce new guidance in 2024. It seems to be the home education related aspects of the original bill being pushed through a different legislative channel.
This academic part seems tricky! I think there are some people who are not resourced or qualified to facilitate educating their kids (even SDL requires a lot of facilitation from a parent!) and that educational neglect is a form of abuse. We know that kids brains are developing and learning so quickly in the early years and that basic education opens up so many doors and opportunities for people (especially women and other marginalized groups) later in life—which is why oppressors have always fought to keep marginalized people away from education.
All this to say—yes! Academic standards are tricky AND homeschooling can be abuse in more than just physical ways.
Agree that educational neglect is real and should be addressed. And yeah - not every parent is necessarily suited to home educate. The question is how do we create academic standards that are valid across the board for all families in all situations?! It seems almost impossible to actually have academic standards and take into account deschooling time for the child, cultural frameworks, learning disabilities, neurodivergence, and more.
We live in a state with more regulations than most, and for the most part I don’t mind them. Are they annoying? Sure. But if they prevent kids from being abused, then I’m happy to check boxes.
I think the core argument of anti-regulators is whether or not parents who are abusive would even bother to file affidavits or do any of the requirements set by the state. Would they just not enroll their kids at all? I find that hard to believe since even abusive parents of schooled children fill out paperwork and send their kids to school....
Some studies suggest that abusive parents withdraw their kids from school after they get warned about truancy - disappearing from the records then becomes a way to continue acting without being found out. So I think we can’t assume all abusive parents are the same. Perhaps some wouldn’t bother filing paperwork but others, like you said, absolutely would. I’m reallly on the fence about regulation but not from a personal perspective: I have no issues curtailing my own freedom. It’s more from tho e point of view of others who might be doing a great job homeschooling but might be more tlikely to be targeted. But I think we can make regulation that addresses this - do I have a ton of faith in local governments to actually do this right? Not really.
As an ex-teacher, now homeschooling parent of two neurodivergent kids both of whom had major school trauma, I totally agree that school is not the right place for every child. I’ve felt the frustration of not being able to meet the needs of the kids in my class because of an external requirement that they learn in a particular way at a particular time, but I’ve also had the privilege to work with young people who are able to achieve their potential despite the hoop jumping. As a parent, I found it hard to reconcile my positive attitude towards schools with the actual lived experience of my kids. My eldest coped until secondary school when the repeated bullying over his quirks totally destroyed the happy, settled 10 year old and turned him into a miserable depressed 11 year old - it was that marked in the space of a year. My youngest has demand avoidance so after 8 months refusing school despite wanting to go, we realised that we were just making things worse for him by trying to persuade him that school was safe - it didn’t feel that way for him. In both schools the SENDCos did what they could but it was very obvious that all the ‘help’ was to enable the children to conform to adult expectations rather than to have the freedom to be the children they are.
Not all abuse is ‘serious’ requiring lawful intervention but many of these small abuses of a child’s rights combine to make life really miserable. This can be at home as well as at school and I feel is in a large part because of the control narrative that exists in both teaching and parenting communities - children must learn to conform to adult expectations rather than learning what suits them. We took time to look at the summary of the rights of a child and it was fairly obvious that their rights had not been prioritised by the school (for many varied reasons) but we realised as parents that we were also part of this control culture in the ‘best interests’ of our children.
Now we homeschool, it is challenging for me as an ex teacher to change my narrative and expectations of control - “I will teach and you will learn” - and become more flexible to allowing discovery learning and following the kids interests. They have learned more this year than they did in the last 2 years at school but I’d struggle to prove that against a ‘standard’ - we’ve explored sustainable living, structural engineering and bookbinding among many other things but I’ve not ‘taught’ long division or how to write an essay. At this point in time this isn’t relevant to my kids though it will be later on.
We decided to take as our yardstick to measure our education against as Article 29 (goals of education)
“Education must develop every child’s personality, talents and abilities to the full. It must encourage the child’s respect for human rights as well as respect for their parents, their own and other cultures, and the environment.” We reckoned that was a pretty good philosophy though unfortunately felt the school system failed our kids on all of these counts.
Catherine thanks for sharing your experience. It’s such a good reminder that control in general - wherever it happens- can be harmful. And that our schooled mindsets often get in the way of seeing what our child needs - I’ve definitely experienced some of this too!
I homeschooled my kids - now grown - on and off, and I'm now a tutor for homeschoolers. I agree with this post 100%. I agree that there should be some kind of regulation to protect against abuse.
Academic requirements should be handled separately, but I'm unsure what they should be. You mentioned the idea of some “baseline” requirements, and that's where my head goes. Before this issue can be resolved, a great deal of education about the various types of homeschooling will need to happen.
Approaching these issues from a Children's rights standpoint is a great way to start. I volunteer with Ross Greene’s Lives in the Balance organization, which exists to end corporal punishment, isolation, and the school-to-prison pipeline in general. Their website provides stats on corporal punishment in schools in each state if anyone is interested.
Livesinthebalance.org
Wow Beth thank you, that looks like a great resource! Yeah the baseline academic thing is tough for me too. I'm not sure how to make it so that the baseline is somehow not discriminatory and not replicating a system many have chosen to step out of. Many homeschoolers ARE in favor of baseline academics because they feel it prevents educational neglect, but we'd have to define what educational neglect actually means and that could mean so many different things!!! Like is it neglect if my unschooled child doesn't learn complex maths until they're 15? I don't think so. But some might. Is it neglect if my child isn't at grade level on reading? I'm unsure of how we create this baseline. And that's why I think looking at all educational settings, from homeschooling to schools to every single setting where children congregate, from a lens of children's rights and children's safety and well-being seems like the best way to approach this, for me.
Yes, I agree! Thanks for your response.
Thank you for this!!! You put some things into words that I missed, and clarified others. Really appreciate it!! I especially appreciate how you specify that bringing school into the home or forcing kids to take part in school is not the answer, and how school is used as a vehicle of policing.
This is an excellent post about whether or not to support the regulation of homeschooling.
A few points I would like to highlight or double down on.
1) The section **Abuse, isolation and misinformation does happen in the name of homeschool and this matters** acknowledges that abuse happens, and that should be a concern for anyone who cares about children. But two sentences in sequential paragraphs highlight a problematic way of thinking about regulation:
"Many of these families include adults with prior convictions for domestic abuse, who are allowed to homeschool their children regardless. // Importantly, Black and Latinx/Hispanic homeschoolers are the fastest growing groups, and we have no studies that link these groups of homeschoolers with abuse (as far as I can tell)."
It seems natural that laws regulating homeschoolers to prevent abuse might prohibit people with prior convictions from homeschooling. However, the criminal justice / school / social services system is not race neutral, it amplifies and perpetuates harm against BIPOC communities. So such a prohibition would disproportionately harm BIPOC communities, especially Black and Indigenous families and children. So yes, this is one example that highlights the later section titled **Regulation might actually impact the most marginalized, and have no impact on those who are actually guilty of abuse.**
2) Speaking of regulation, in the section ** Trained teachers are not always in the child’s best interest** it points out that "there is a legitimate fear that children who are following a child-led path, or unschoolers perhaps, could appear to be behind their schooled peers when in fact they are following a different path to education.
This is spot on and a major concern of mine. Anyone who has followed my public comments or work in education over the past 15 years know that I feel that schooling is a terribly harmful system that prevents education far more than it delivers it. Age based, behaviorist, sequential learning is extremely damaging not only to the intellectual life of many students, it is inefficient at delivering the most basic learning that the system insists it is needed for. Even if one is for regulation to prevent abuse, a focus on ensuring that the equivalent to schooling is done at home won't lessen the abuse, it will just transfer some of the abuse from the school into the home. Regulation shouldn't commingle concerns about curriculum and abuse.
3) The section **Abuse happens in school, and in spite of school** highlights that "child abuse happens in schools too. This year (2023), a CBS investigation found that schools systematically covered up sexual abuse, and that 5 million children will be abused in school by the time they graduate."
This is an important point that gets overlooked by people with the usually false a priori assumption that school provides the one safe space for abused kids. School is not always a safe alternative to the home for the many kids abused at home, and it is most certainly not a safe alternative for the kids who get abused at school who are not abused at home.
But going further, while some homeschooling families may use homeschooling as a way to cover up abuse, the larger scale harm may very well come from the institution of schooling that is rarely held accountable for the abuse that happens in schools. Kids can be trapped in abusive homes, but they can be trapped in abusive schools, as well. Both are terrible. In the home there may be no escape. In the school there may be school resource officers (cops) who threaten violence preventing escape, the institutional stamp of retribution and shame and failure, and municipal lawyers eager to protect the institution from being held accountable, and those same lawyers may bring action against families who are suffering.
4) In my opinion, from the perspective of the state, the problem here is not necessarily that homeschooling gives cover to abusive families, although it does happen. The problem is that the school has taken on an extraordinary broad role that goes far beyond education. It is now seen as a vehicle for social service, and a surveillance agency. This can never work in a society that gives families the freedom to opt out of schooling. By situating social services and state surveillance in the schools we are guaranteeing that kids will fall through the cracks. We must provide vital youth services and support to all kids, not just those enrolled in state sanctioned schools, meaning we must remove such services from the schools. And we must stop using schools as a way to surveil and police families, which goes back to point one, as such surveillance and policing is going to continue to disproportionately the most marginalized groups.
5) Finally, the section **Sometimes homeschool abuse is not only individual, it’s systemic** highlights the perhaps the biggest shift in perspective needed for actually supporting young people. The focus needs to be on youth rights as opposed to parental rights. If we have a society that supports the right of the youth, as opposed to the right of parents, educators, or institutions to control children, then we can help young people escape both abusive home and school environments.
We can do that without forcing school into the home, or forcing kids into schools.
Myself and others who take the position that human rights, and specifically the Rights of the Child, should be the basis of education for every child use a discord server to collaborate on campaigns to advance this position. For anyone interested to join, this is the link: https://discord.gg/TMz87k4FnC
A specific question I opened up recently is how to reconcile the right of families to choose education other than what is offered by the state (in the sense of country, not the sense of States in the USA) with the state’s obligation to ensure that every child’s right to education is realized - we need some way for the latter to take place to ensure that homeschooling is not a cover to deny a child their right to education.
We are also working to hold states accountable to providing education that respects and strives to realize child rights - because in many cases they don’t (if the public system in my country provided that I would not need to run a democratic school)
Both great point and I think about your first one a lot! I’m absolutely an advocate for children’s rights and autonomy and I worry about the parental rights movement, and yet it is parental rights that allow us to unschool!
I’m in the UK so our experiences are somewhat different.
When our government were trying to implement a home education register last year the most alarming stories I heard about were local authorities that had put mothers and children in immediate danger by “accidentally” disclosing the address of the family to an abusive father. The arguments being that if every address is on a database with various other very personal information, such dangerous breaches may become easier.
Also some local authorities have such a negative view of home educators that they will do their best to proceed to formal steps to enforce a school place for a child, often from lower economic homes and other groups more likely to face discrimination. I have spoken to more than one parent in such a group where the parent is convinced that their child would seriously harm themselves if forced back into school.
It’s a difficult issue and one out seems we will be facing again in the new year.
Rosie thanks for sharing your thoughts. I think there are absolutely very different issues with the UK proposed regulation, and that yes regulation can be problematic in more than one way and in different ways based on the context. What’s your government doing now? Did they back off or are they still trying to implement this? I lost track.
It was part of a bill that also included various changes to the ways schools function. The whole bill was scrapped because of objections to those other elements.
After this, the Welsh Assembly introduced new guidance which enabled far more reach by local authorities. Now the UK government is planning to introduce new guidance in 2024. It seems to be the home education related aspects of the original bill being pushed through a different legislative channel.
This academic part seems tricky! I think there are some people who are not resourced or qualified to facilitate educating their kids (even SDL requires a lot of facilitation from a parent!) and that educational neglect is a form of abuse. We know that kids brains are developing and learning so quickly in the early years and that basic education opens up so many doors and opportunities for people (especially women and other marginalized groups) later in life—which is why oppressors have always fought to keep marginalized people away from education.
All this to say—yes! Academic standards are tricky AND homeschooling can be abuse in more than just physical ways.
Agree that educational neglect is real and should be addressed. And yeah - not every parent is necessarily suited to home educate. The question is how do we create academic standards that are valid across the board for all families in all situations?! It seems almost impossible to actually have academic standards and take into account deschooling time for the child, cultural frameworks, learning disabilities, neurodivergence, and more.
We live in a state with more regulations than most, and for the most part I don’t mind them. Are they annoying? Sure. But if they prevent kids from being abused, then I’m happy to check boxes.
I think the core argument of anti-regulators is whether or not parents who are abusive would even bother to file affidavits or do any of the requirements set by the state. Would they just not enroll their kids at all? I find that hard to believe since even abusive parents of schooled children fill out paperwork and send their kids to school....
Some studies suggest that abusive parents withdraw their kids from school after they get warned about truancy - disappearing from the records then becomes a way to continue acting without being found out. So I think we can’t assume all abusive parents are the same. Perhaps some wouldn’t bother filing paperwork but others, like you said, absolutely would. I’m reallly on the fence about regulation but not from a personal perspective: I have no issues curtailing my own freedom. It’s more from tho e point of view of others who might be doing a great job homeschooling but might be more tlikely to be targeted. But I think we can make regulation that addresses this - do I have a ton of faith in local governments to actually do this right? Not really.