Record: Philippe Bongrand, “‘Compulsory Schooling’ Despite the Law: How Education Policy Underpins the Widespread Ignorance of the Right to Home Educate in France,” Journal of School Choice 10, no. 3 (2016): 320-329. [Abstract Here]
Summary: Bongrand, an Associate Professor of Education at the Université de Cergy-Pontoise in northern France, here offers the first article ever written in English on French homeschooling. Bongrand is currently engaged in a promising study of the records kept by French authorities on home educating families in various cities in France. These records offer, at least theoretically, population-level data given that every French home educating family is required by law to be inspected every two years.
This article, however, is more contextual. Bongrand begins with a general overview of the French educational situation, noting that both public and so-called “private” schools are funded by the government and share the same teachers and curricula. Truly private schools operating outside of this nexus account for only 2.7% of all private schools in France, most of these being Montessori or Waldorf schools. When it comes to homeschooling, in France only 20,000 children are being educated at home out of a student population of 12.3 million. Most of these students, over 14,000 of them, are enrolled in distance education programs, mostly in the government-run National Center for Distance Education.
Though France does not require attendance at school, very few French families homeschool. Why? Bongrand’s thesis is that a lot of it has to do with Government. Though schooling is not actually compulsory in France, most French citizens think it is. Bongrand quotes the 1882 law that established compulsory instruction. Here is the relevant section:
Primary instruction is compulsory for all boys and girls from the end of their
sixth year until the end of their thirteenth year. This instruction is implemented
either within public or private schools, which may be primary or secondary
schools, or within families, where the father, or any person designated by the
father, teaches. (cited on p. 321)
Bongrand explains that, while most French newspaper articles on homeschooling and many French homeschooling websites lead with this point that schooling is not compulsory in France, the belief that it is persists among the general population, among many French politicians, and even among French educational researchers. Bongrand’s own study of a few homeschooling parents’ journeys found that very frequently parents who learn that homeschooling is an option experience this knowledge as an epiphany.
Why such widespread ignorance? Bongrand thinks there are several reasons. One is that in France the few homeschooling organizations that do exist are disunited, under-resourced, run by volunteers without a lot of expertise, and not engaged in any sort of national cause or political agenda. There is no movement in France.
Another reason is government rhetoric and practice. To explicate this reason he looks at three moments in French history when homeschooling was debated and legislated by the French Parliament: the passage of the 1882 compulsory instruction act (quoted above) for children age 6 to 13, the extension of compulsory instruction to year 14 (in 1936), and the strengthening of state oversight over compulsory instruction (in 1936 and again in 1998). Bongrand’s findings are the result of analysis of the parliamentary debates that took place on each occasion.
In the debates leading up to the 1882 law home-based learning, though explicitly mentioned in the law itself, was barely discussed. The French government cared so little about this option that it didn’t even bother counting the number of home educating children most of the time. The only years counts were taken were 1901, 1906, 1998, 2010, and 2016. Furthermore, on many occasions subsequent laws that sought to build on the 1882 law used phrases equating instruction with schooling, erasing home education as a possibility. Bongrand calls the use of such phrases “legally wrong.” (p. 325).
A third reason for widespread ignorance about the right to home educate is government’s failure to keep its own laws and oversee homeschooling families. Given the expense of keeping track of homeschoolers, both local and State government just ignored them and let the few families engaging in the process do as they pleased.
A fourth reason brings us up to 1998, when the lax oversight began to change. In 1997 a child died because her parents, members of a very conservative Christian sect that practiced homeschooling, refused medical assistance for her. The story was headline news and prompted French legislators to increase regulations of homeschooling and to associate the practice with religious extremism. That association was made by many in the general population as well, further marginalizing homeschooling as a legitimate option for most French families. Bongrand ends his historical survey by noting that in 2015 and thereafter another push to increase homeschooling regulations has occurred as politicians and the French public associate homeschooling with the radicalization of young French Muslims, despite the lack of evidence that such a relationship exists.
The end result is that, whether by ignoring it or mischaracterizing it, government has contributed to homeschooling’s marginal profile in the French educational ecology. Bongrand is not suggesting any sort of animus against homeschooling in government. Most officials just don’t really think about it.
Appraisal: Bongrand’s text ends with a brief limitations statement that is right on the money. He has no data, at least as presented in this text, that links government neglect of homeschooling and homeschoolers with the low percentage in France. Bongrand’s four reasons are plausible, but others are equally plausible. France, unlike the United States for instance, has a much firmer commitment as a whole to social solidarity. Homeschooling, in contrast, seems to attract anti-establishmentarians. There may simply not be as many anti-establishmentarians in France given its deep socio-cultural national identity. France’s widespread secularism may be another cause. In the United States, while there are of course many families whose decision to homeschool is not motivated by religious commitments, for the great majority religion, usually of a conservative or fundamentalist sort, is a significant motivator. Third, adding to Bongrand’s first point about disorganized support groups, there just may not yet be enough homeschoolers in France to hit the tipping point. That tipping point may yet come, when enough families are homeschooling that the practice goes from being generally unknown to generally known, whereupon more French families will become familiar with the practice, and more of them will choose it. Finally, it may be that the extensive French safety net, the general high quality of French schools and other social programs, and the generous leave and vacation policies most working mothers enjoy all make it less likely that French families will grow dissatisfied with French schools. In the United States dissatisfaction with institutional schools has long been the number one push factor driving families to homeschooling. If that factor does not exist at the same level in France, is it any wonder that homeschooling is not more popular?
Milton Gaither
Messiah College