{"id":510,"date":"2012-12-10T14:47:03","date_gmt":"2012-12-10T14:47:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/?p=510"},"modified":"2014-02-12T19:24:35","modified_gmt":"2014-02-12T19:24:35","slug":"free-to-learn-homeschooling-in-albania","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/?p=510","title":{"rendered":"FREE TO LEARN: Homeschooling in Albania"},"content":{"rendered":"

Record:<\/strong> Timothy Hagen, \u201cFree to Learn: The Rationale for Legalizing Homeschooling in Albania\u201d in Central European Journal of Public Policy<\/em> 5, no. 2 (December 2011): 50-85 [available fulltext here<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Summary: <\/strong>Hagen, a professor of economics at Epoka University<\/a> in Albania, here offers what is I think the first ever article about homeschooling in that country.\u00a0 He begins by noting that after the fall of Communism in 1991 the Albanian government began to allow private schooling.\u00a0 He argues here that the halting steps Albania is making toward acknowledging the right to homeschool is the right way to go, and that homeschooling should take its place alongside other forms of schooling in the panoply of options available to Albanians.<\/p>\n

Article 57 of the Albania Constitution mandates free public education to all citizens and also allows for private schooling.\u00a0 Historically, homeschooling has not been allowed, but Hagen tells us that a new law is being drafted that will allow it.\u00a0 Then he gives several arguments for why this new law is a good idea.<\/p>\n

First, as in other countries, sometimes homeschooling is a practical necessity.\u00a0 For some it may be a child with special needs or a bullying situation.\u00a0 In Albania evidently there is a big problem with blood feuds, so parents may need to keep their sons inside the home to protect them from revenge killing.<\/p>\n

Second, he reviews some of the American literature on academic achievement, generalizing that homeschoolers outperform students in other educational settings.\u00a0 Within this section he acknowledges that \u201cfactors other than the variable of homeschooling\u201d like race and class may explain these findings. (p. 56)\u00a0 Hagen includes in this survey some research that usually doesn\u2019t appear in homeschooling lit reviews about how low income children benefit from structured early childhood programs but wealthy children benefit from staying at home.\u00a0 Hagen concludes his survey of all this with the observation that at least we can say with certainty that homeschooling as such isn\u2019t damaging children.\u00a0 While it may not be the best choice for everyone, for attentive parents with resources it can be a viable option.<\/p>\n

Third, Hagen offers a more philosophical rationale for homeschooling\u2013that it helps guard against totalitarianism.\u00a0 He cites the Communism of Albania\u2019s past and the dictatorship of North Korea\u2019s present as examples of how government education can devolve into mass indoctrination.\u00a0 Homeschooling allows ideological pockets of resistance to exist in a society.<\/p>\n

Fourth, Hagen makes a rather ham-fisted argument that homeschooling is in accord with Natural Law.\u00a0 I say ham-fisted because he doesn\u2019t seem to really understand Natural Law philosophy.\u00a0 For Aquinas, the Natural Law gives us three grand principles.\u00a0 The first is self-preservation.\u00a0 The second is the propagation of the species.\u00a0 (These two pertain to our animal nature) The third principle is the use of reason (pertaining to our spiritual nature).\u00a0 Homeschooling is not self-evidently part of the natural law.\u00a0 You can get to it by a process of reasoning from the second principle I suppose, but it\u2019s a mistake to think that the Natural Law is this long list of things people should and shouldn\u2019t do.\u00a0 It\u2019s also a mistake to (as Hagen does) assume that human made laws like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the Convention on the Rights of the Child are expressions of Natural Law.\u00a0 [It’s especially interesting that he uses the Convention on the Rights of the Child, as this document has come under such feverish criticism by HSLDA and other “pro-family” groups in the United States].\u00a0 What Hagen wants to say is that homeschooling should be seen as a human right.\u00a0 He could have said that without wading into the very treacherous waters of Natural Law ethics.<\/p>\n

After laying out his argument, Hagen considers two possible objections to homeschooling.\u00a0 First, how can society ensure that homeschooling parents are actually providing an education and not just using their children as labor or abusing them?\u00a0 Second, how can proper socialization be assured?\u00a0 To the first objection Hagen says that neighbors or others who worry that a family might not be teaching their children adequately or might be abusing them can report them to the police or to social services.\u00a0 But Hagen thinks that parents who homeschool typically won\u2019t be the sort of parent to neglect or abuse their children.\u00a0 At most we need \u201cminimal regulations, civil society, and legal punishments.\u201d (p. 70)<\/p>\n

Hagen has three points about socialization.\u00a0 First, public schools don\u2019t hold a monopoly on socialization.\u00a0 Lots of evidence exists that homeschooled kids in other countries are doing just fine socially.\u00a0 Second, socialization is not a legitimate domain of government.\u00a0 People have the right to socialize with whomever they choose, or in the words of the Universal Declaration, \u201ceveryone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association\u2026no one may be compelled to belong to an association.\u201d (p. 71)\u00a0 Third, legalizing homeschooling doesn\u2019t mean that kids are going to stop going to school.\u00a0 If a parent thinks her child needs school for social skills, she\u2019ll send the child to school.\u00a0 Hagen concludes this section with a longish discussion on the topic of democratic civic formation.\u00a0 Hagen basically thinks that homeschoolers really do want their kids to learn to love others and be tolerant.\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t have any evidence for or against this, but he thinks those who worry that homeschooling will indoctrinate children into intolerance and theocracy are paranoid.\u00a0 Parents are no more scary than governments in this matter.<\/p>\n

Hagen finally makes a few suggestions as to how homeschooling should be assessed or regulated.\u00a0 He thinks an annual test would be fine, or annual notification and submission of curriculum plan.\u00a0 He\u2019s also fine with regular monitoring meetings between government officials, parents, and children.\u00a0 He thinks that any or all of these approaches should be done \u201cin an atmosphere of advising and assisting families to ensure the best education for their children\u201d rather than \u201cwith an antagonistic, inquisitional attitude.\u201d (p. 78)<\/p>\n

Appraisal:<\/strong>\u00a0 I found this text to be uneven.\u00a0 The review of the literature on academic achievement was better than I expected, and coming early like it did it raised my expectations for the rest of the piece.\u00a0 Unfortunately the evidentiary base for many of Hagen\u2019s other claims was far weaker\u2013especially his coverage of socialization and democratic formation.\u00a0 Most notably, however, I learned very little in this article about homeschooling in Albania.\u00a0 Almost all of Hagen\u2019s article is a summary of and interaction with mostly American scholarship.\u00a0 I was hoping for more on what is going on on the ground in Albania.\u00a0 How many families are actually homeschooling?\u00a0 What kinds of people are they?\u00a0 Are they similar to the sorts of families that have been found in studies of other European countries or does the Albanian situation bring something new into the discussion?\u00a0 He did mention that tantalizing thing about boys being hidden their homes to protect them from revenge killings.\u00a0 Is this pervasive?\u00a0 Is homeschooling connected in any way to religious revivals that have come to Albania\u2019s Muslim majorities and Christian minorities in the post-communist years?\u00a0 I wish Hagen had talked about that sort of thing rather than giving us a decent but not great review of the American literature that has already been summarized so many times.<\/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: Timothy Hagen, \u201cFree to Learn: The Rationale for Legalizing Homeschooling in Albania\u201d in Central European Journal of Public Policy 5, no. 2 (December 2011): 50-85 [available fulltext here] Summary: Hagen, a professor of economics at Epoka University in Albania, … 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":[10],"tags":[428,431,426,429,433,427,63,430,432,425,434,384],"class_list":["post-510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international","tag-albania-constitution","tag-aquinas","tag-central-european-journal-of-public-policy","tag-communism","tag-convention-on-the-rights-of-the-child","tag-epoka-university","tag-hslda","tag-natural-law","tag-rights-of-the-child","tag-timothy-hagen","tag-universal-declaration","tag-universal-declaration-of-human-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510","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=510"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1126,"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510\/revisions\/1126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}