THE RIGHT TO BE INCLUDED: Homeschoolers Combat Structural Discrimination in the Czech Republic

Record: Irena Kašparová, “The Right to be Included: Homeschoolers Combat the Structural Discrimination Embodied in Their Lawful Protection in the Czech Republic” in International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education 8, no. 1 (2015): 161-174. [Abstract]

Summary: Irena Kašparová is an assistant professor of sociology from Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic. Although compulsory school attendance is generally seen as a mark of social progress, in this article Kašparová uses a longitudinal, ethnographic study of homeschooling families to explain how the compulsory education law of the Czech Republic has resulted in structural discrimination.

While homeschooling has been legal for children at the primary level since 2005, there are discriminatory devices built into the law that families must fulfill in order to homeschool. In order to investigate, Kašparová interviewed homeschooling parents and children as well as the teachers and directors of schools that enroll homeschooling children. She also regularly observed the homeschooling routines of six families, monitored the most frequented Czech homeschooling forums, and attended conferences/workshops for homeschooling families.

Kašparová notes that education in the Czech Republic has always been strongly connected to schools. During the socialist era from 1948-1989, homeschooling was seen as an option for people with disabilities or other differences that made them unable to be integrated into mainstream schools. Today, homeschooling in the Czech Republic is often chosen by conflictualists who accuse mainstream schools of imposing their world views. Of particular concern is the way that schools impose the government’s family policy. Homeschooling mothers often do not want to put their children in daycare and go back to work in the timing that the government lays out.

Now moving into the heart of her argument, Kašparová describes five conditions in the country’s 2005 homeschooling law which may create conditions for structural discrimination:

  1. First, the educator must hold at least a high school diploma. While some of her interviewees believed that this is an unnecessary requirement because a person without a high school diploma may actually be a better teacher than someone with more education, Kašparová notes that it is also an element of structural discrimination because of the country’s history. Up to the 1970s, it was common for the communist regime to restrict the educational options of certain segments of the population, meaning that today they would not be able to educate their children at home.
  2. Second, the homeschooling family must find a school willing to oversee and examine the child when it is time for the regular compulsory testing. While all primary schools may accept homeschoolers, the school director has a lot of power as to how the homeschooler is actually received. To illustrate this point, Kašparová describes a director who tested a homeschooler in a mocking manner in front of her peers on the same information students in the classroom study, rather than assessing the child on the project-based learning that the family had been using at home.  Interestingly, Kašparová notes that this has caused specialized homeschooling schools to form as families search for understanding school directors. It has created exclusion rather than inclusion for homeschooling families.
  3. Third, the family must provide a letter explaining why homeschooling should occur. This is problematic because evaluation of the letter is made by the school director, whose judgments are not bound by any objective criteria. Many homeschooling parents feel as though fulfilling this condition requires a high level of literacy, debate, or even legal training.
  4. Fourth, the family must declare that they have sufficient space and material means to educate the child. While homeschoolers do not receive any financial support from the state, their index school does receive the same money it would receive if the homeschooler were a typical student. Therefore, some schools enroll homeschooled students only as a means of financial survival. Families might receive textbooks and consultations, but the rest of the financial burden falls of families since, due to the frequent distance from their index schools, homeschooling families are usually unable to take advantage of subsidized meals or after-school activities. Also, homeschooling is difficult financially for many people, since it often involves the loss of an income.
  5. Finally, the most difficult requirement is that the homeschooling family must provide a letter of opinion from a Pedagogical-Psychological Advisory Bureau. Like the school directors, the decision to permit homeschooling ultimately comes down to the personal beliefs of the person at the bureau. Kašparová gives several accounts of officials who said things like, “You have a healthy child? Then homeschooling is out of the question. I do not believe this exclusion is good for anybody” (pg. 170). While there are some homeschool-sympathizers on the bureau, many officials are still influenced by the beliefs of the socialist regime, which only permitted homeschooling for children with special needs because they were considered second-class citizens. For healthy children, homeschooling is seen by many as a form of discrimination where they are separated from other children.

Because of these five reasons, argues Kašparová, homeschoolers face structural discrimination in the Czech Republic. While the criteria may appear objective, the process hides the subjectivity of the actual decision. Czech homeschoolers are increasingly turning to the schools specializing in homeschooling that are forming in many regions. Furthermore, when it comes to lower secondary school (ages 12 to 16), the situation is even more dire since there are only a few schools that the government allows to provide homeschooling at this level. Many Czechs equate education with information, so when it comes to the secondary level’s more robust information content many are skeptical that parents can be successful. As such, homeschooling at the lower secondary level can be stopped at any time according to the will of the officials. Also, since there are so few schools approved to offer homeschooling at the lower secondary level, everything becomes more difficult and expensive due to the increased geographic distance between home and school.

Appraisal: Kašparová’s study joins two articles by Yvona Kostelecká as the foundation of our understanding of homeschooling in the Czech Republic. With Kostelecká’s article dating back to 2010, it is good to have Kašparová’s more current insight and to gain a better understanding of the intricacies of Czech homeschooling law. Through her in-depth interviews and observations with a variety of subjects and in a variety of situations, Kašparová was able to get a good grasp on a segment of the population that is still relatively unexplored in the Czech Republic. While it is possible that she may have mostly worked with the most active and ardent homeschoolers in the country, I find this unlikely since all homeschoolers will be active and ardent when they constitute such a small percentage of the population in a country that is so wary of them. In any case, her varied methods at least allowed her to question the information that she gained from any one source. For example, by interviewing homeschooling families and then observing them in their homes for several days, Kašparová could see whether they actually practice the methods in the way they say they do.  All in all an excellent addition to the literature on home education in Eastern Europe.

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