‘Twofold otherness’: on religion, spirituality, and home schooling in the Czech Republic

ABSTRACT

In the Czech Republic, home schooling is an increasing but still rare education practice. The country is at the same time not favourable to public demonstrations of religion. In such a specific context, we investigated the intersection of religion, spirituality, and home schooling. Drawing on a broad ethnographic research design, we identify three levels of strategies employed by religious or spiritual home-schooling parents to negotiate their ‘twofold otherness’. On the individual level, these parents significantly sought religious or spiritual support in their decision to home-school. On the societal level, the local community played a crucial role in assisting parents with home schooling. Simultaneously, fearing the reactions of home-schooling opponents, the families decided to keep their religion or spirituality to themselves. We conclude that the ‘twofold otherness’ is a vulnerable position for home-schoolers in the Czech Republic which forces the families to remain private about both their education style and spiritual or religious ideology.

KEYWORDS:

• Home schooling
• religion
• spirituality
• Czech Republic

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Czech Science Foundation under Grant GA16-17708S ‘Homeschooling – facts, analysis, diagnostics’. We thank our informants for sharing their privacy with us.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Grantová Agentura České Republiky [GA16-17708S].

Notes on contributors

Andrea Beláňová

Dr. Andrea Beláňová earned Ph.D. in religious studies at the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University in Brno. Currently she works as a lecturer at the Faculty of Education, Charles University, and as a post-doc at the Institute of Sociology of Czech Academy of Sciences. She focuses on the intersection of religious and secular sphere and spent one year as Fulbright visiting researcher at University of Nevada in Reno.

Yvona Kostelecká

Dr. Yvona Kostelecká obtained Master of Biology and Mathematics at the Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague. She earned Ph.D. in Education at the Faculty of Education, Charles University in Prague. Currently she works as a Research Fellow at the Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Education, where she focuses on integration of immigrants into the Czech educational system; the individual education and issues related to foreign migration of scientists and researchers.

Kateřina Machovcová

Dr Kateřina Machovcová a lecturer at the Faculty of Education, Charles University, where she provides courses related to social psychology. Between 2016–2018 she has cooperated on the project Home schooling – facts, analysis, diagnostics. Furthermore, she is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Psychology, Czech Academy of Sciences. Katerina is a graduate of the Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University in Brno.

Marta McCabe

Dr. Marta McCabe has served as an EAP Instructor at Durham Technical Community College since 2015. In addition, she is a founder and a president at the Czech and Slovak School of North Carolina and a research scientist at the School of Education at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. Her research examines mainly the intersections of education, language, and migration and focuses specifically on the linguistic, social and cultural adaptation of second-generation immigrants from Eastern Europe.