Homeschooling Associated with Beneficial Learner and Societal Outcomes but Educators Do Not Promote It

Abstract

This article reviews research on homeschool learner outcomes and evaluates opposition to homeschooling. It synthesizes research on learner outcomes related to homeschooling in areas of students’ academic achievement and children's social, emotional, and psychological development and the success of adults who were home educated and finds generally positive outcomes on a variety of variables are associated with homeschooling. The author identifies four classes of negativity expressed toward home-based education by the education profession, such as the claims homeschooling is bad for the collective good and that without much state regulation significant numbers of homeschooling (home schooling) parents will harm their children. The evaluation reveals that proactive opposition to homeschooling and calls for significant state control over homeschooling do not offer any empirical research evidence that homeschooling is bad for individual children, families, neighborhoods, or the collective good. The alleged harms of homeschooling or arguments for more control of it are fundamentally philosophical and push for the state, rather than parents, to be in primary and ultimate control over the education and upbringing of children so they will come to hold worldviews more aligned with the state and opponents of state-free homeschooling than with the children's parents and freely chosen relationships.

Notes

¹In this article, the term state refers to that which is of civil government, under public control, or not privately governed. When state in this article refers to one of the 50 United States, the meaning should be clear.

In this article, educator refers to those commonly considered to be a part of the education vocation or profession, such as education professors in colleges or universities, institutional elementary and secondary school teachers, school and university administrators, and educationalists in general. The author recognizes that there are others who are rightly called educators, such as homeschool parents, music teachers, and those who teach in fields such as corporate training.

The author recognizes that all forms of education/schooling—whether state-run/public schooling, private institutional schooling, or parent-led home-based education—essentially entail the teaching, training, and indoctrination (“Indoctrinate,” n.d.-a; “Indoctrinate,” n.d.-b) of children and youth.

See, for example, “Law of Noncontradiction” (n.d.), Ligonier Ministries (n.d.), “Noncontradiction” (n.d.), and Tahko (2009).

The majority of U.S. homeschooling parents know that the duty of parents to be the authorities in and responsible for their children's education, upbringing, and care is addressed in the Bible in, for example, Deuteronomy 6; Proverbs 13:20, 22:6; Matthew 18:1–7; Matthew 22:21; Luke 6:39–40; Romans 12:2; Ephesians 6:4; 2 Corinthians 6:14–18; 1 Timothy 5:8; 2 Timothy 3:14–17; further, scripture does not give the state jurisdiction over a child's education, upbringing, and care.