Homeschoolers Aren’t Waiting on Politicians’ Promises of School Choice: New at Reason

More than 2.3 million children will be homeschooled this year.

J.D. Tuccille writes:

My son is part of the surge in the number of children learning at home. The reason for our choice is ably captured in a point made by John Taylor Gatto, a former New York State Teacher of the Year who became a critic of government-controlled education. In his 2008 book, Weapons of Mass Instruction, Gatto wrote about the difference between schooling and education. “Education is a matter of self-mastery, first; then self-enlargement, even self-transcendance—as all possibilities of the human spirit open themselves into zones for exploration and understanding. There are points where the two conditions inform one another, but in schooling, somebody else’s agenda is always uppermost.”

You could say the same of any institution—that its interests overwhelm the individual concerns of the people within it. But that’s why it’s always a good idea to have alternatives and an exit strategy for when “somebody else’s agenda” is incompatible with your own.

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