{"id":288,"date":"2012-10-26T18:18:07","date_gmt":"2012-10-26T18:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/?p=288"},"modified":"2014-02-12T19:35:45","modified_gmt":"2014-02-12T19:35:45","slug":"homeschooling-the-future-an-argument-both-for-and-against-increased-regulation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/?p=288","title":{"rendered":"HOMESCHOOLING: THE FUTURE, an Argument both For and Against Increased Regulation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Record:<\/strong> Ronald Kreager, Jr., \u201cHomeschooling: The Future of Education\u2019s Most Basic Institution,\u201d in University of Toledo Law Review<\/em>, 42, no. 1 (Fall 2010): 227-233. [Excerpt available here<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Summary\/Critique: <\/strong>Kreager, a J.D. candidate at the University of Toledo College of Law, here pens a sprawling and somewhat eccentric article on several topics related to homeshooling.<\/p>\n

He begins with a cursory history of homeschooling, drawn largely from an article published in 2009 by Chad Olsen reviewed here<\/a>.\u00a0 Like Olsen did, Kreager here misinterprets the Supreme Court\u2019s 1973 Wisconsin v. Yoder<\/em> decision, wrongly reading it as establishing a Constitutional \u201cright to homeschool one\u2019s children when a religious motivation to do so exists.\u201d\u00a0 (p. 233)<\/p>\n

Yoder<\/em> did no such thing.\u00a0 \u201cHomeschooling\u201d wasn\u2019t even at issue.\u00a0 The question was whether Amish parents violated Wisconsin\u2019s compulsory education law when they forbade their children from attending school after 8th grade as doing so would threaten their Amish way of life.\u00a0 The Supreme Court agreed with the Amish parents, arguing in an intentionally narrowly-worded opinion that there were likely very few other religious groups in America that could qualify for such an exception.\u00a0 Kreager, Jr. must know this since his article shows evidence that he actually read the decision.\u00a0 But his stance as a homeschool advocate I suppose motivated him to fudge on this crucial point just like Chad Olsen did.\u00a0 For full details of the Yoder <\/em>case and what it did and did not do see Shawn Peters\u2019 fine book The Yoder Case: Religious Freedom, Education, and Parental Rights<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Next Kreager looks at how States regulate homeschooling, dividing the various state laws into Linda Dobson\u2019s three classes: \u201cprivate school laws, equivalency laws, and home education laws.\u201d\u00a0 This part of the article comes mostly from a 2002 article by Judith McMullen published in the South Carolina Law Review<\/em> and from HSLDA\u2019s website.\u00a0 No need to go into a summary of it all here.<\/p>\n

After the summary, Kreager claims that the first two approaches\u2013regulating homeschooling as if it were private schooling and considering it a valid form of \u201cequivalent instruction elsewhere\u201d\u2013are not good enough.\u00a0 He wants every state to have an explicit home education law.\u00a0 He wants these new or revised explicit laws to include four things:\u00a0 1. all required regulations narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest, 2. added protections for religiously-motivated homeschoolers, 3. \u201cliberal parental qualification standards,\u201d and 4. annual assessment of all children, with multiple options for how to do this.<\/p>\n

Homeschoolers have since the late 1970s debated whether or not having an explicit law is a good idea.\u00a0 Some have always argued that lack of specificity is better because the more detailed the law the greater the regulatory environment.\u00a0 Others would accept the notion of an explicit law in theory but would be loath to accept the specifics of Kreager\u2019s proposed law, especially the annual testing.\u00a0 But Kreager himself shows no signs of being aware of such possible objections.<\/p>\n

Next, Kreager goes on a meandering trip through some of the classic homeschooling issues, all categorized under the notion of threats to the practice.\u00a0 First he discusses the desire by some to regulate homeschooling more, which I find quite ironic given how his own proposed law would dramatically increase regulation in many states.\u00a0 But Kreager has in mind people who think homeschooling doesn\u2019t socialize students well.\u00a0 He responds in the usual way, saying that the homeschooled kids are alright.\u00a0 He touches lightly on some other issues as well, all very cursorily.<\/p>\n

Finally he takes up the United Nations\u2019 Convention on the Right of the Child.\u00a0 Here he basically summarizes HSLDA\u2019s aggressive opposition to it and their efforts not only to keep the U.S. from ratifying it but to pass a Constitutional Amendment explicitly permitting home schooling.\u00a0 Kreager is charitable in how he says it, but he basically says this an unattainable fantasy.<\/p>\n

Appraisal: <\/strong>After reading it through I found myself wondering why this article was published.\u00a0 It is entirely derivative, either from other and better essays published in law journals or from popular sources like newspapers and the HSLDA website.\u00a0 The only take-home messages I get are that we have here another future lawyer who doesn\u2019t understand Yoder<\/em>, and an erstwhile friend of homeschooling who somehow doesn\u2019t understand that he\u2019s being inconsistent when he opposes increased regulations of homeschooling while arguing for explicit laws requiring annual testing.<\/p>\n

Milton Gaither, Messiah College, author of Homeschool: An American History<\/a>\"\"<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer<\/strong>:\u00a0 The views expressed in reviews are not the official views of ICHER or of its members.\u00a0 For more information about ICHER\u2019s Reviews, please see the \u00ab\u00a0About these Reviews \u00bb Section.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Record: Ronald Kreager, Jr., \u201cHomeschooling: The Future of Education\u2019s Most Basic Institution,\u201d in University of Toledo Law Review, 42, no. 1 (Fall 2010): 227-233. [Excerpt available here] Summary\/Critique: Kreager, a J.D. candidate at the University of Toledo College of Law, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[243,106,63,245,244,23,248,240,246,247,242,241,123],"class_list":["post-288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal","tag-amish","tag-chad-olsen","tag-hslda","tag-judith-mcmullen","tag-linda-dobson","tag-north-carolina","tag-right-of-the-child","tag-ronald-kreager-jr","tag-south-carolina-law-review","tag-united-nations-convention","tag-university-of-toledo-college-of-law","tag-university-of-toledo-law-review","tag-wisconsin-v-yoder"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=288"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1151,"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288\/revisions\/1151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}