Acceptability
"The emergence of children themselves as actors vindicating their right to education and rights in education promises to endow the notion of acceptability with their vision of how their rights should be interpreted and applied."
--Tomaševski
Tomaševski (2001) defines the acceptability of education as essentially the quality of education. Thus, she highlights government actions surrounding ensuring "education which is available and accessible is of good quality" (Tomaševski, 2001). She notes that this definition has also been broadened by the "development of international human rights law" (Tomaševski, 2001).
Acceptability: A Discussion
In the law passed in 2012 in Lithuania, the writers specified that, “Family education is equivalent to school education” (Lithuania, 2019). However, it was evident that the legislators in Lithuania were concerned that it would not be. Although it is legal to homeschool, there is an important emphasis on the acceptability of education. As the Lithuanian Education Minister Algirdas Monkevičius noted in a press release that they legalized homeschooling, “after laying down certain conditions for families, putting in place safeguards to protect children and defining the role of the school in this process” (Andrukaity, 2020). Thus, it seems that their concerns surrounded the quality of the education and the safety of the educational environment.
Similarly, legislators in France were also concerned about acceptability of home education, although the motivations for their laws are more nationalist in nature. Although those in France are concerned about the quality of the academic instruction, they are more focused on the quality of the context of the instruction. With the focus primarily on the perceived relationship between homeschooling and extremism, the type of acceptability the French legislators are concerned with surrounds the idea that one function of schools is to “inculcate the values of the Republic” and provide children with the space to develop ideas freely and critically (Elysee, 2020).
In the U.S., the concerns around home education are also around acceptability. The concerns mainly stem from concern around abuse and neglect, quality of academics, the potential lack of socialization, and the potential lack of exposure to various values and beliefs. However, the current focus, stemming from books like Tara Westover’s book “Educated” and Bartholet’s influential publication, is on the safety of the child and the educational environment provided (Bartholet, 2020;Parsons, 2024). In fact, an organization called Homeschool Alumni Reaching Out (HARO) found that of the 3,700 formerly homeschooled individuals they surveyed, about 42 percent reported having been abused or neglected (Bartholet, 2020). As Bartholet (2020) noted, “Children are the quintessential politically powerless group,” and in the case of homeschooled students, in desperate need of the protection they are guaranteed in the United States.
Personal Insight
As a formerly homeschooled individual who has also held several internships and volunteer positions in public schools, I enjoyed creating this project and learning about the view of homeschooling in different contexts around the world. It was also interesting to explore the history of the movement in the United States. While I have done research on the current state of homeschooling in the United States previously, I had not delved deeply into the theories which motivated the movement. Having been homeschooled in a secular, liberal educational context as well as a religious context (Christian and Islamic), I was interested to explore the academic view on these types of homeschooling. Based on my personal experience, I believe that academics misunderstand fundamentally that the problems with the secular context of homeschooling stem from too much freedom given to the child while issues with the religious context stem from too little freedom given to the child. These issues stem from misapplications of Holt's view on "freeing the essential Child" and Moore's view of "protecting the fragile child" (Coalition for Responsible Home Education, 2021b). In my experience, concern surrounding the quality of the academic instruction should be much more focused on secular homeschooling than religious homeschoolers. In general, religious organizations provide a quality of education which is at, or above that which traditional schools provide, not considering perhaps the neglect of specific science topics such as evolution. However, they restrict freedom of thought in a way which is concerning, and concern for abuse stemming from strict religious beliefs is not unjustified.