P.S. Sorry for the lack of in-text footnotes, Google Drive couldn't transfer them over. Here's the doc in case you want to check sources easier: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IygbDO8m6oc9CIwJAGj2O95EKrcXJZB9S19Rp5SGeGE/edit?usp=sharing
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Educating Optimal Citizens: Can Homeschooling Produce Optimal Citizens?
Joseph Hoffman
8 December 2017
Professor Newton
UUNI 110
In his seminal work The Republic, the Greek philosopher Plato sought to determine what a just society would look like. On his way to creating the perfect society, he spent a maddeningly large portion of the text on how children ought to be educated; he believed that the formation of citizens’ brains determines how society will turn out. Partisan and ideological differences aside, we all desire for our children to develop into intelligent, engaged, socially adept, productive, and happy citizens. However, the best way to get this outcome has been a source of debate for centuries. This paper will examine the effectiveness of the method of education which around three percent of the K-12 population here in America are currently experiencing: homeschooling. For the purposes of the argument presented in this paper, the main question posed is this: does homeschooling produce citizens who are intelligent, socially adept, and tolerant of other viewpoints? There are two sides to the debate on homeschooling. Critics like George Steward contend that homeschooling will stunt a child’s social skills, academic growth, and political civility by allowing parents to indoctrinate their children in extremist ideologies. On the other hand, proponents of homeschooling like Michael Farris argue that homeschooling provides the best environment for parents to cater to their children’s academic needs or desires, provide them emotional and moral guidance, and help them become productive members of society. It is my belief that homeschooling can produce the most optimal citizens through its emphasis on parent-child relationships and the diversity allowed in academic and social settings. That being said, there are many gaps in the evidence on this topic and further areas of research which need to be explored.
A significant (though not large) number of academic papers have been dedicated to comparing academic achievement of homeschooled and conventionally schooled students, using scores from standardized tests such as Iowa, SAT, or ACT. While these comparisons are interesting, they bear little to no weight in determining which students go on to become engaged, socially adept, productive, and happy members of society. A student’s higher grade in ninth grade, for example, might be correlated with higher earnings in adulthood, but it does not necessarily tell us whether that student will do a large or a small amount of good for his community or his country, whether he will have good emotional health in adulthood, etc etc.
Instead of comparing quantified, empirical test results, we begin with an argument brought forward by many homeschool parents. Homeschool blogger Tina Robertson wrote in 2015, “Homeschooling for the lifelong love of learning is not only the building block to a strong character but it is the impetus for self-learning. Self-learning is like a glue that sticks way beyond your few short years of homeschooling.” These and other proponents argue that the uniquely homeschool way of weaving together life, education, academics, and family activities instills in a child an enjoyment of learning which will stick with them as adults. Is this theory supported by any evidence? Researchers at the University of Bielefeld in Germany conducted a study in which adults were asked about their experience in secondary school. The author’s findings were summarized in this way:
“Results show that recollections of inwardly oriented forms of former learning motivation contribute positively to task value while recalled outward motivational orientation shows a negative relation. Our results suggest that motivational orientations associated with secondary school—and probably actually experienced at that time—are important prerequisites for the formation of task value during adulthood. Task value, in turn, is an important factor for people’s task choice, and should therefore be relevant as a predictor of their ongoing educational activities and lifelong learning.”
The above study indicates that if a child has intrinsic motivation for learning (a desire to learn for one’s own sake, not merely out of submission to teachers, parents, etc.) at a young age, it can be reliably predicted that they will continue to learn more and more even after they’ve grown up. The conclusion here is that fostering a love of learning, an intrinsic motivation, should be an important part of education. But the key question is whether homeschooling or conventional schooling better achieves that end.
Stephen Gorard and Beng Huat See of the University of Birmingham examined surveys of 14- to 16-year olds from 45 different schools in the United Kingdom, including both state-run schools and private schools. The central question on the surveys was simple: do you agree or disagree with the statement, ‘I enjoy school’? The researchers concluded, “A majority of students nearing the end of their compulsory schooling do not enjoy education. In fact, only 44% of students in year 11 enjoy being at their school.” Interestingly, the study found that there was no significant variation in level of enjoyment among different types of schools or school settings themselves. In other words, a private boy’s school in the heart of Manchester displayed very similar levels of enjoyment as a state-run school in Shrewsbury.
It would appear that many children in conventional school do not enjoy their education. According to the Bielefeld motivation research, this lack of motivation in secondary school predicts that the children will not be motivated to learn in adulthood. In contrast, the existing evidence indicates that homeschool children tend to be more intrinsically motivated to learn. The most relevant study here is one performed by Gina Riley in 2015 for the International Social Science Review. She based her study on the work of psychologists Deci and Ryan, who point to three factors which make up intrinsic motivation: competence (the feeling of mastery over a task which drives one to take on more tasks), autonomy (a sense of choice and self-direction rather than outward rewards), and relatedness (establishing connections in educational environments). The researchers surveyed one hundred young adults aged 18 to 25, half of which had been homeschooled and half of which had been traditionally educated. They summarized in this way: “This study shows strong evidence that on average, home schooled students tend to have a higher level of competence and autonomy satisfaction compared to traditionally schooled students. There was no evidence to suggest there is a difference in the level of relatedness satisfaction between the two groups.”
Possible shortcomings of this study include the small sample size and the fact that it was based on volunteers participating; however, both conventionally-schooled young adults and homeschooled young adults volunteered, so the two groups are equal in this regard. The study strengthens the argument that homeschooling provides a better environment for children to actually enjoy learning. While ‘conventionally’ educated children are forced to maintain a strict schedule of filing in and out of certain classrooms at certain times when learning is supposed to take place, strict, rigid learning is not usually a tenet of a homeschooler's life. Rather, a ‘typical day’ in the life of a homeschooled student often does not exist, and parents often view all parts of their child's life as 'education,' from calculating good deals at the grocery store to watching Forrest Gump with friends. The order of activities is flexible and the methods of learning are varied. Homeschooling proponents make the argument that if conventionally schooled students report not enjoying school, as well as having lower levels of intrinsic motivation, it calls into question whether traditional school structures can reliably produce optimal citizens who continue to learn, inquire, and innovate later in life.
However, there is certainly opposition to this claim. Lubienski, Puckett, and Brewer notably argued in 2013 that any positive study results of homeschoolers are merely a product of the fact that many parents who homeschool are white, privileged, high-income-earners. In these critics minds, the method of education is not what matters – it is the privileges and abilities of the parent. What must then follow from their argument is that if we examine poor, minority families who homeschool, we should see negative outcomes similar to those for traditionally educated poor minority children. We must take this critique into account, as demographic differences certainly complicate the argument. It is unfortunately extremely difficult to prove causation rather than simple correlation in educational studies; however, the strongest argument against this claim comes from Brian D. Ray, who responds that the evidence indicates that demographic parental differences for homeschoolers predict very little variation in their academic achievement.
Ray conducted a survey in 2010 of 11,739 homeschool students ages 5 to 18, collecting demographic information as well as standardized test scores. Ray found that there were indeed statistically significant differences in scores for varying levels of family income, gender, money spent on education materials, and number of children in the family. However, these each only explained one half of one percent (0.5%) or less of the differences in test scores. Even parental education level explained only 2.5% of the differences in test scores. Ed Collom found even less distinction in his 2005 in a study of New Mexican homeschoolers, and concluded, “The student achievement findings parallel much of the previous research cited earlier. Student gender, amount of instructional time, household income, and teaching experience are not statistically associated with student achievement…. student race also has no statistical relation to achievement here. The two great divides that public school children face—race and class—are inconsequential for student achievement among home-educated children.”
Standardized test scores during school, of course, only measure how well material is being absorbed by students. What Ray and Collom’s study illustrate for us is that variables like family income and race actually play little to no role in predicting a homeschool student’s absorption of material during their education. This is contrasted with conventionally schooled children who, as Collom pointed out, often face great disparities in achievement because of these factors. There is something about homeschooling, many proponents contend, which better allows children to learn.
If this is the case, then what could that factor be? Homeschool parents such as Robinson would indicate that homeschooling gives parents more time and opportunity to be involved in their child’s education, and that parents are the best suited to adjusting for their own child’s academic needs. In a 2014 study conducted by Ming-Te Wang and Salam Sheikh-Khalil, several ‘waves’, each of around one thousand students from 10 different public high schools, were surveyed. The aim was to statistically test the impact that parental involvement in education has on academic and emotional/mental issues in students’ lives. The researchers concluded, “Parental involvement was found to improve academic and emotional functioning among adolescents. In addition, parental involvement predicted adolescent academic success and mental health both directly and indirectly through behavioral and emotional engagement.”
One must be careful when drawing conclusions about homeschooling from this study, but it does support the argument that more involvement leads to positive outcomes. Homeschooling represents perhaps the maximum level of parental involvement that is possible for a child’s education; indeed, the whole idea is that students’ learning experiences come from family encouraging and facilitating their education. Though parents who put their children into private or public schools can be motivated and encouraging to their child, they are inevitably sending their son or daughter off to another place for eight hours every day where paid teachers will attempt to encourage and facilitate their child’s education.
However, many vocal critics of homeschooling have argued that parents do not, in fact, know what is best for the child. They point out that many homeschooling families are conservative Christians who may spend more time trying to get their child to believe that Jesus died for their sins than teaching them how to perform long division. Kristin Rawls described her experience with a very conservative Christian mother in a 2012 Alternet article; the woman’s daughter was unable to read at eleven years old. Academics like Robin L. West decry the deregulation of homeschooling in the US in many states, where “parents who keep their kids home and don’t tell a soul are well within the bounds of the law.” This raises an important question: if we were to encourage homeschooling, would many parents simply neglect their child’s education?
Nationwide surveys of homeschooling families confirm that religion motivates a large percentage of parents to homeschool. The National Household Education Surveys Program, sponsored by the Department of Education, is designed to obtain information which is representative of the entire population. In April 2017, statistics published from 2012 surveys of homeschooling parents indicated that “A desire to provide religious instruction” was identified as an important factor in the choice to homeschool by 64 percent of respondents, and as the most important reason by 17 percent. The most frequently identified as ‘most important’ was “A concern about the environment of other schools, such as safety, drugs, or negative peer pressure,” chosen by 25 percent of parents. Clearly, the critics are correct to point out that a substantial portion of homeschooling parents have chosen to keep their child from conventional school because they want to raise their child into a particular religious belief.
Interestingly, Professor Milton Gaither of Messiah College points out that homeschooling has not proved to be any more or less effective at creating religiously dogmatic citizens. A 2010 analysis of national survey data found that young adults who were homeschooled did not differ significantly from public schooled young adults in their level of religiosity; it indicated that regardless of the method of education a parent chose for their child, the parent’s religious commitment was the most significant predictor of the child continuing in the religion.
Still, some opposed to homeschooling may call for academic safeguards, such as mandatory teacher certification for parents who wish to homeschool. Dumas, Gates, and Schwarzer balk at this, citing evidence that homeschooled children whose parents are not certified teachers score academically at the same level as homeschooled children whose parents are certified. It appears that a middle ground for the two sides is the regulation present in around twenty states – requiring homeschool children to take a standardized academic test every year. As Brian Ray of the National Home Education Research Institute points out, the academic results tend to show excellence: for example, when the State of Oregon regularly reported on standardized test outcomes for different education types, homeschool students averaged in the 71st to 80th percentiles. It is a great injustice that some extremely religious, dogmatic homeschooling families can get away with not truly educating their children in certain states. However, a reasonable solution that can be agreed upon by both homeschooling advocates (like Brian Ray) and homeschooling critics (like Robin West) is that the state check in on children periodically to make sure they are receiving an education of the same quality as conventionally educated children.
What have we seen from the above argumentation and evidence? We examined how a majority of conventionally-schooled students reported not enjoying school, and how homeschooled students scored significantly higher than traditionally educated students in indicators of intrinsic motivation. We then explained that typical demographic differences such as race and class make little difference in homeschool students’ academic achievements, though they do for conventionally-educated children. We noted that psychology tells us that more parental passion and engagement in a student’s learning inspires greater academic achievement and better mental and emotional development, and that homeschooling represents perhaps the highest level of parental engagement possible. The way which many homeschool advocates argue this research is that homeschooling provides children with a better opportunity to gain a lifelong love of learning. However, those who oppose homeschooling argue that parents are not the best suited for facilitating a child’s education, instead focusing more on moral or religious instruction. Though survey data does indicate that many homeschooling parents chose to homeschool for religious reasons, state standardized testing for homeschooled children provides a middle ground solution to ensure that parents do not completely ignore the educational needs of their children.
The next topic to tackle is the interpersonal, social values and skills that children ought to develop in their formative years. Does homeschooling create citizens who can work together, relate to one another, act fairly, and engage in the political process? After all, how can our society be productive if our citizens don’t know how to communicate and help each other, and how can our citizens be happy if they have no ability to relate to their fellow citizens? Teachers’ unions, some social scientists, and other critics have theorized that attending a school is a necessary part of a child’s development. Phoenix pediatrician Daniel Kessler, for example, said in a 1998 Newsweek article, “Kids need to be successful in three overlapping spheres--at home, at school and with peers. Home schooling compresses all that into a single setting that can be very difficult for kids.” Meanwhile, advocates like Zak Slayback put it blithely: “Do you really think that sitting in a cinderblock room, being forced to learn things you don’t want to learn with people you don’t really know, is the best way to socialize anybody?”
When parents choose to enroll their children in a private or public school, the child’s school day might look like this: take the bus, head into class, go to another class, get lunch with friends, go to a few more classes, take the bus home, do homework, and play with friends. A proponent of this model (such as Kessler) will point out that there are many, many opportunities for social learning in that day – talking to friends at lunch, choosing who to sit with on the bus, etc., etc. But what is the other side? What does the school day, or the week, look like for a homeschooler?
This is a frustrating question because of the very nature of home education; each family has their own way of home education, so a single layout of activities cannot be generalized for the entire community. That being said, Brian D. Ray, president of the National Home Education Research Institute, did carry out a large study of homeschooled families in 1997. Through surveys sent to randomly selected homeschool families via mailing lists or home school support groups, Ray surveyed 1,657 families with a total of 5,402 homeschooled children. The data must be taken with a grain of salt, seeing as it was published by the NHERI. Nonetheless, it found, among other things, that 87 percent of K-12 homeschool students played with people outside the family, 84 percent went on field trips, 77 percent attended Sunday school, 48 percent participated in group sports, 47 percent took music classes, 42 percent took classes outside the home, 33 percent did volunteer work, and 25 percent were involved in other activities. The mean number of activities per student was 5.2. The Coalition for Responsible Home Education interprets these numbers warily, saying “Ray…. found that a full 13% of homeschoolers in his sample did not play with people outside of their families, suggesting that at least some homeschooled children are more socially isolated than homeschool advocates may like to admit.” Of course, the 13% number could be the result of a large number of kindergarten-aged toddlers in the sample who were not really old enough to cruise around town making friends. In any case, no research has shown findings to contradict the conclusion that the majority of homeschooling students are involved in a variety of social activities outside the home; no research has indicated that any large percentage of homeschooling parents keep their children literally sequestered inside the house all times of the day for their entire life. Indeed, that kind of parenting may critically impair the student’s academic and social development, something parents wish to avoid. Though legalization of homeschooling gives parents the opportunity to shelter their child from any social interaction, no data indicating that this actually occurs on a large scale exists. The question is now, how can homeschooling’s flexible, varied social approach work in creating citizens?
Brian Ray, the same researcher as above, conducted a study of over 7,000 adults who were previously homeschooled. He found that they scored higher than national averages in civic engagement like turning out to vote, participation in public meetings, writing to government leaders, contributions to political parties or causes, and involvement in community service organizations. Once again, this was published in the National Home Education Research Institute.
Similarly, another research group dedicated to producing homeschool research, the Canadian Centre for Home Education, published a well-referenced study of homeschooled adults in a younger age range. Van Pelt in 2003 surveyed 162 previously homeschooled adults and found, “The average age of this group of young adult respondents is just under 21, yet they volunteer at a high rate, with more than 82 per cent holding one or more volunteer positions in their communities (significantly, more than half of these positions in leadership). More than 60 per cent of these young adults report having voted in the last five years and none report having received any form of social assistance. While this is not a representative sample of all Canadian adults ever home-educated, it does point to a body of citizens that contributes to and participates in their communities.”
There have been several studies on the ‘social skills’ of homeschooled students while they are being homeschooled, but I do not give them much weight here because they do not necessarily point us to what kind of citizen these students will turn into. Whether or not an eight-year-old boy gives himself a three or a fourteen rating when asked about his ‘cooperation skills’ cannot tell us if, when he is an adult, he works well with others. Thomas C. Smedley, in his graduate thesis at Radford University in 1992 studied samples of several dozen homeschool students in a given area and samples of traditionally schooled students (who share similar racial, professional, and income demographics), using self-administered ratings tests, a common method for evaluating social skills. He concluded, “In this study the findings indicate that children kept home are more mature, and better socialized.” Conversely, some studies like McKinely, et al (2007) found that their sample of young private-schooled children rated themselves higher on social skills like assertion and self-control than their homeschooled and public-schooled peers. The differences in these studies only illustrates the inconclusiveness that comes from can come from giving self-administered tests to children.
However, some serious challenges have been put forward about the social development of homeschoolers. The Coalition for Responsible Home Education, an organization which, among other goals, is dedicated to protecting homeschooled children from abuse, points out that a 2011 randomized survey of homeschooled adults and conventionally educated adults from religious families indicated that homeschooled adults were significantly more likely to report a “lack of clarity of goals and sense of direction” and “feelings of helplessness in dealing with life’s problems” than conventionally educated graduates. A conflation of causation with correlation must be avoided with this statistic, and the Coalition recognizes the limitations. It argues that some homeschooling parents raise their child with significant opportunities to interact with others, but others do not. “In other words,” reads a page on their website, “socialization can be done well in a homeschooling context, but it is something that takes time, attention, and planning.”
Researchers from both sides of the debate consistently quibble over the methodology and conclusiveness of these studies, presenting counter-studies indicating opposite findings. What we must ask is whether psychological and sociological research supports the idea that parents can ‘properly socialize’ their children on their own, as proponents like Zak Slayback claim.
Firstly, a large body of psychological research supports the theory that parents play a crucial role in the socialization process of their children. For example, Kochanksa, et al (2010) studied children and parents as they progressed through their lives. They concluded, “The findings indicate that, for children who had been secure with their mothers, the child’s willing stance toward the mother had a substantial beneficial effect, protecting children’s from embarking on an antisocial, disruptive path.” In other words, the strength of a child’s relationship with their mother and father determines the child’s later social development with peers. Nokali, Bachman, and Votruba-Drzal, in a 2010 article published in the peer-reviewed journal Child Development found that higher parental involvement in education, which they viewed as interactions which bring the systems of school and home closer together, was associated with declines in problem behaviours and improvements in social skills. Landstedt, Hammarström, and Winefield (2015) also published research in the Scandinavian Journal of Public Health indicating that the quality of peer and parental relationships in adolescence predicts adult mental and functional somatic health in adulthood. Though unbiased, homeschool quantitative research is sparse in this area, Reavis and Lakriski’s 2005 study of forty-eight traditionally-schooled children and sixteen homeschooled children published in the The Brown University Child and Adolescent Behavior Letter did find that homeschooled children reported “more positive attitudes towards teachers/coaches, more positive relationships with parents, higher self-esteem, and more positive interpersonal relationships.”
When parents choose to educate their child at home, they bring the school and the home all the way together, creating more opportunity to foster a stronger bond between them and their child. Does this strong bond and good parenting always occur in homeschool families? That, unfortunately, is a tough thing to prove. However, it is often what homeschool parents deeply desire and aim for their children to achieve. It would appear from psychological and developmental research that this focus on high-quality parental relationships and high-quality (versus high quantity) of peer relationships is highly beneficial towards the goal of creating a citizen who is socially and mentally healthy.
We now tackle our final, perhaps most controversial topic: politics. Critics of homeschooling have long held that it will induce extremism, elitism, and intolerance in citizens. For example, George Steward wrote in the Akron Law Review in 2015, “A student who is exposed to diversity is more tolerant and able to participate with greater empathy and success in the economy and political process as an adult. In contrast, students who are educated in isolation from diversity become intolerant of those who are unlike themselves because they have never dealt with the others.”
Steward cited no evidence for his claim, and unfortunately, very little research has been done in this area. It is thus fitting for us to first hypothetically discuss the implications of his argument. Firstly, it is based on the idea that a traditional school setting gives children more exposure to diverse backgrounds, worldviews, and opinions. Secondly, it is based on the idea that such exposure to others will be absorbed by children, forming tolerant beliefs rather than intolerance. While attending a public school, each of the boys and girls a given student will pass in the hallway are likely to be from different cultures and belief structures. However, whether or not the student tolerates, despises, or even pays attention to these differences, much less engage with their peers to learn more about them, depends entirely on the choices of the student themself. One can certainly go through one’s entire school day with proverbial ‘blinders’ on, simply going from class to class to a solitary lunch to class to class to a solitary bus ride to home. Or, public school students can choose to only spend time with fellow classmates of their same racial, religious, or political background. Indeed, Mackinnon, Jordan, and Wilson concluded in an analysis of four separate studies that students who are more physically similar (race, wearing or not wearing glasses, clothing, appearance, etc) tend to sit close to one another in places like cafeterias or libraries. Though research on homeschoolers’ sitting habits has yet to be done, we do know from previously cited research that they are not educated in literal ‘isolation’ from other humans. In fact, parents of homeschool students often say that their children’s social lives better prepare them for adult life because, as adults, they will need to relate and work with people younger or older than them. Public or private schools, by this argument, segregates students narrowly based on their age range, whereas interaction with adults, elders, younger friends, and older friends is said to be typical of homeschoolers.
Perhaps the only direct study of political tolerance and homeschooling was carried out by Albert Cheng in 2014. Its main shortcomings are that its sample was limited to students attending one evangelical Christian college, and the fact that it was published in The Journal of School Choice (bias may be present). In any case, the study asked college students about their willingness to give liberties to those who hold differing views. Cheng wrote, “Using ordinary least squares regression analysis, I find that for these students, greater exposure to private schooling instead of traditional public schooling is not associated with any more or less political tolerance, and greater exposure to homeschooling is associated with more political tolerance.” Critics point out that this study essentially only asked students if they were okay with someone of a different opinion expressing or carrying out their beliefs; critics say there is more to be desired when building a truly tolerant population. Regardless, the political tendencies of homeschoolers truly deserve more research.
In fact, many claims and areas of this paper have been lacking in appropriate levels of research. Many of the studies we used to determine outcomes for homeschoolers as adults come from biased sources, use small, unrepresentative sample sizes, or have other shortcomings. So as we come to the end of our exploration of education models, we are left hungry for more proof. This is a critical issue, something which ought to occupy the minds of policymakers, parents, and academics alike. For our great nation’s first hundred years, the model of formalized, structured, mandatory education was nonexistent, with personalized home education being the norm for virtually all children. In the present day, after the institutional model’s hundred and fifty years of implementation, we ought to be critically evaluating it to determine if it is optimal for society. We ought to be careful that we do not view objectives that mandatory public education has set up as unshakeable bulwarks, and we also ought to be careful that we do not promote home education simply because of its historical precedence.
It is no secret that I have reached a conclusion myself on this matter. I was homeschooled for the first eighteen years of my life, and it was an overwhelmingly positive experience which I believe helped form me into an inquisitive, thoughtful, and engaged young adult. It would seem, as human tendency unfortunately seems to predict, that this exploration of the data is only confirming my pre-existing impression of home education. Based on research into intrinsic motivation and enjoyment of learning, studies and observation pointing to the fact that public or privately educated children learn to dislike or simply tolerate learning as a mandatory requirement, research into the intrinsic motivation of homeschooled students, and findings that many common demographic factors like race and class have little effect on academic absorption of these homeschool students, I contend that when parents dedicate themselves to homeschooling their child to the best of their abilities, students will grow to be lovers of learning who, later in life, will innovate, be creative, never stop gleaning new information or skills, and be productive in society. Based on research into parental involvement in a child’s social development, studies of previously homeschooled students showing them to be open, agreeable, voting, and engaged in volunteer work, and theories of public school socialization being more segregated/stratified while homeschooling socialization is more varied and diverse, I also contend that dedicated homeschooling parents can raise children who will grow up to be mature, socially adept, confident, and productive members of society. Please note, however, that these contentions are by no means proven by existing research. As before stated, more and more research, and better research, truly ought to be done to study causal relationships between positive outcomes for homeschooled adults and their education, versus ‘conventionally’ educated adults. The reader is heavily encouraged to come to their own conclusions about what homeschooling can accomplish. Critical thought is essential to a well-functioning society, and it is my firm belief that we ought to think critically about structured, institutional education, rather than simply continuing to support it because it is the way we and several generations before us have been educated.
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