What Does It Mean To Homeschool for Religious Reasons?

Updated to correct link to Alasandra's blog and fix a couple of spelling errors.

Alasandra takes on the silly anti-homeschooling article here (we blogged about a similar, but different article here; there seems to be an outbreak of anti-homeschooling nonsense about).


Those papers and the article about 'Sham homeschooling' both make a fundamentally erroneous assumption- they read that the majority of homeschoolers homeschool for religious reasons and jump to conclusions, false ones, about what that means.

Alasandra points out that pagans and religious Jews might homeschool for religious reasons, not just scary bad Christian fundamentalists (she also points out how illiberal it is to restrict Christian fundamentalist parents from sharing their spiritual views with their children).
More below the 'jump' (a new feature at blogger I just discovered- that, er, doesn't seem to work):




Yuracko writes:

the homeschooling movement has come to be defined and dominated by its fundamentalist Christian majority many of whom choose to homeschool in order to shield their children from secular influences and liberal values.

West, who you may recall was disgusted that some homeschoolers might live in trailer parks, writes of 'fundamentalist Protestant parents' who homeschool:

 'because they do not approve of the public schools' secularity, their liberalism, their humanism, their feminist modes of socialization, and in some cases, of the schools' very existence."

And Richard Collins writes:

After homeschooling became dominated by right wing Christian theocrats, millions of vulnerable children (estimates are suspect because of poor reporting requirements) became virtual prisoners in their own homes, pawns in a scheme to overthrow the United States Government and replace it with a theocracy.

He followed that up in the comments by insisting on equating  homeschooling for religious reasons with sequestering and isolating children from all contact with the outside world:

It is a fact that the census data shows 75% of parents say there reason for homeschooling was religion. Until the laws are strenghtened regarding reporting no one can say with certainty how many children are sequestered for religious "education" purposes.

(Minor question- has there been a  census with questions about homeschooling?)

It sounds like these three have all been taking notes from the same source- I wonder what it is?  It's certainly not reality.

There is no reason to suppose that homeschooling for religious reasons means precisely what these illiberal and illogical writers suppose it does.   I am a conservative Christian who homeschools for 'religious reasons,' but my religious reasons include valuing children as individuals who learn best on their own path rather than in an institution in lock step with a government mandated program.  As a conservative Christian I believe that it is my responsibility to educate my children, not the government's.  Homeschooling, as an atheist/agnostic friend describes it, is just a beautiful way for a familiy to live, and that, too,  is in keeping with my religious beliefs about what a family is and fulfilling our family's purpose and place in the universe.

Even when the religious reasons are seemingly to keep children from being exposed to the school's 'secularity' (I've never seen a truly secular school) or 'humanism,' deeper investigation reveals that this is really a debate about readiness and age appropriate material.  No, I did not want my small children reading 'Heather has two Mommies,' or whatever it was.  Nor did I want condoms handed to my ten year olds without my knowledge or input (fifth grade was the norm in every state we've lived in).   It does not follow that I locked them in a cellar and refused to let them out, nor does it follow that this means they never have any exposure to or contact with homosexuals or sex education. 

It is also part of our family's religious beliefs that children need time and lots of it with their fathers.  In my husband's job for the first ten years or so we homeschooled, the children could have seen their father only on weekends and school holidays because of his workshift.  Homeschooling made it possible for our children to spend quantities of quality time with their father, while his peers lived in the same house with their kids, but only saw them on weekends.

Our religious values are behind various activities we've participated in with our children over the years, or encouraged our children to do without us- volunteering at a soup kitchen, nursing homes, an orphanage, a vet clinic, helping a young mother who had a miscarriage, or a family where the mother is on bedrest, taking in Blynken and Nod on weekends and holidays, volunteering at the library, and so forth- so far from sequestering and isolating us, those religious beliefs that prompted us to homeschool also prompt us to reach out to the community, and homeschooling makes it possible for us to do many of these things at times that are more convenient and helpful to those we wish to help. 

Nonreligious homeschoolers may have many of the the same values I do here, and reach the same conclusions, of course, which is why it is so muddleheaded of these three to suppose that saying one homeschools for religious reasons is synonomous with saying "My children live in the attic and I toss them fishheads through the grate in the floor."

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