Chapter 2: Homeschooling and the Common School Nightmare

Homeschooling parents are sometimes depicted as selfish and withdrawn, preoccupied with their insular world. They withhold their young, and probably their moral support, from the famously beneficial common school, the place where, according to Levin and Belfield (2003, p. 136), children get the common experience that prepares them for civic responsibilities and cohesion. Levin and Belfield provide an impressive analysis, from one point of view, of the common school’s citizenship-building functions, and of what the public and private sectors in general can contribute. I discuss in this chapter a quite different view—iespecially of what homeschooling offers.

Levin and Belfield discuss evidence that “private schools produce more community service, civic skills, civic confidence, political knowledge, and political tolerance than public schools.” How can that happen if the common (public) school is the major source of those qualities, and if private agencies are, almost by definition in the minds of some people, neglectful of public needs?