In today’s LA Times it was reported that the California State Apellate Court ruled that children being taught in private must be taught by someone who actually holds a teaching credential (Ruling seen as a threat to many home-schooling familes, LAT, March 6). The ruling actually comes in response to a law suit filed on behalf of children in an alleged abusive situation and in response to some of the relative murkiness of California educational laws. The particulars, in this case, aren’t what are important. However, the response to the ruling from the home-schooling crowd has been one of instant outrage and this response is significant. The majority of kids educated in the home are Christian and the whole point of parents in these families that educate their kids at home is to somehow keep their kids “pure” and “safe” from ideas and notions they might be “forced” to learn in public schools. These families see the ruling as an attack on Christian values.

I would argue, however, that they are wrong on that account. I would also argue that they are wrong to educate their children at home in the first place.

The article provides a quote from a man (who doesn’t want his name used for fear of being prosecuted) who educates his son at home, and this quote pretty much sums up the perils of home-schooling:

“I want to have control over what goes in my son’s head, not what’s put in there by people who might be on the far left who have their own ideas about indoctrinating kids,” he said.

Is it indoctrination to teach kids about history? About science? About social responsibility? About reading? Writing? Arithmetic?

The peril is that the people who want to “protect” their kids are, to a great degree, only performing their own form of indoctrination and they are doing so at the cost of their child’s ability to function in a pluralistic world.

Other home-schoolers in the article specifically state a little bit more explicitely that they don’t want their children going to public school because they don’t want their children to learn about evolution, homosexuality, same-sex marriage, and sex education. I would also argue that they probably don’t want their kids to learn any sense of social responsibility either since by excluding their children from the world around them they devalue that world and all of the rest of us in it.

Home-schooled children by default get only one view of the world — it is a sanitized view that in no way prepares them for the realities they will encounter later in life. They are taught from an early age to discriminate against others — if homosexuality is being taught as “wrong” then children will be trained to treat those people as somehow being inferior and thus will discrimination continue. This is WRONG. There can be no excuse or justification for purposefully teaching children to discriminate against others. I’m sure that those with very tightly held beliefs in this area would argue that homosexuality is “evil” or a “sin”. Well, I don’t know if it is or not, but I have read the Bible and no where do I find Jesus telling his disciples to avoid the sinners. Jesus himself said that he did not come to cure the well but the “sick”; he sat down to eat with the “sinners”; he healed the “diseased”; he died for everyone — NOT just the “straight” people. He did not tell his disciples to discriminate against others. He did not say to avoid others. He did not say to teach your children to be bigots, which is what adults do when they teach their children that they are somehow better than anyone else. He did say, however, that those that purposefully lead others astray are to be condemned worse than those who merely rejected his message.

Same-sex marriage is, according to many Christians, to be deplored also as being evil. Those who would exclude their children from public schools don’t want them to see that it might be possible for “non-traditional” relationships to be good relationships. Love, apparently, is evil, if it is not between a man and a woman. That’s too bad. We need MORE love in this world, not less, and to say that love is evil simply because it does not fit into a preconceived notion of what love is, is a travesty. Love is the greatest commandment. I don’t recall any restrictions being placed upon it. Parents also don’t want their children to be educated about sex. This may have something to do with marriage or it may not — in many ways Victorian views on sex never died so it is hard to tell if parents simply don’t want their kids having sex outside of marriage or if they don’t want their kids have sex period. Furthermore, they don’t want their kids to hear about contraception, even if it might keep them from getting diseases. They don’t want their daughters to get vaccinated to protect them from cancer because somehow this will make them run right out and have sex. Since it is unlikely that the parents will provide accuarate information about any of these cases, I guess they simply want their kids to learn things the hard way.

Evolution is a whole other ballgame. I will be writing on evolution and education in other articles, but briefly, to pull your child out of public school simply because you don’t want them to learn evolutionary theory shows a backwardness that is just alarming. The use of reason is not evil. To say that you don’t “believe” in evolution, and to teach your children that same belief, is like saying you don’t believe in the world. You can’t make evolution go away simply by saying you don’t “believe” in it. Science Luddites hurt everyone, not just themselves.

And let’s not forget that home-schooling is also an economic issue. Who home-schools? Since in all likelihood it is a parent doing the schooling, only those families with a single-source income high enough to allow one parent to stay home can home-school. The poor, who might also have very strong beliefs, are out of luck. Christian parents, educating their children at home, in effect are committing a great act of social injustice in my opinion. They are perpetuating economic inequality. They are opting out of social responsibility by failing to contribute to the education within the broader community. Rather than fighting for equality for all students to learn, they have packed up their toys and gone home. They’ll keep their kids “pure” but the rest of us, probably quite literally, are damned in their opinion.

Home-schooling might be beneficial for a student with special needs, but for the majority of kids it is a travesty. They don’t have to learn to get along with other kids who are different from them — this leads to discriminatory behavior and a lack of humility and sense of fairness. They don’t have to learn to formulate their own opinions because their opinions have been given to them by their parents. They learn exclusions, rather than inclusion. They learn that isolationism is good. They learn that Jesus only came for them, and not the rest of us too.

That, too, is a pity.