A Reluctant Homeschooler: Four Reasons I Want to be Regulated

Our library subscribes to a fairly popular homeschooling magazine that has regular features about the legal issues that are part and parcel of educating your child at home.  A common theme I see in the editorials on this topic is the idea that we homeschoolers should do everything in our power, including the language we use to describe what we do, to avoid any legal regulations at all.  States like mine, where I have a minimum of record-keeping requirements and virtually no oversight to make sure I've fulfilled even those obligations, are a dream environment for the more libertarian-minded homeschool community.

Personally, I disagree. I want to be regulated.  Now, don't get me wrong, I certainly don't want the type of over-regulation typical of most of the bureaucracy in this country, but I would actually appreciate a bare minimum of oversight.  Why? Well, here you go:


1.  Though I have my doubts about the developmental appropriateness of just how much information they are trying to cram into the Common Core, I do believe in the importance of a shared knowledge base.  I could give a philosophical explanation regarding the ties that both bind and advance cultures and communities, but, really, I just think it's socially isolating to not have at least some fundamental understandings in common, like math, language, or the Ten Commandments of Logic.

2.  In terms of that shared knowledge base, I also want to be assured that the entirety of the next generation has the critical thinking skills and scientific understandings to continue the advance of both technological and creative human progress.  I do not want proven scientific facts to be up for debate a generation from now just because half of society had an educational environment that refused to expose them to evidence or the skills to evaluate any evidence they might come across on their own - sorry, folks, evolution happens...deal with it.

3.  If there are fundamental facts and skills that we all are obligated to provide in the education of the next generation, whether that be at home or in any variety of school settings, everyone would have to have access to what those facts and skills were. As a result, regulation might come with access to more materials from the schools, like access to the same textbooks (and trust me, school textbooks are a huge help for the homeschool instructor in terms of curriculum and sequence, much more so than alternative curriculums that, while giving more flexibility, require a lot more planning time) or even test banks to help with creating fair and accurate assessments in the home setting (ideally, this would be comprised of multiple-intelligence-based questions and rubrics rather than your typical standardized testing fare).  At the very least, though, there would be a common check-list of skills to cover throughout each year, which would be a boon for curricular planning at home.

4.  My final reason for wanting to be regulated is a bit off-topic from the first three but is the most important reason I have: I admit it, I have fudged my records on occasion.  Granted, the fudging I did was minimal, like counting two half-days as one on an attendance sheet or making up a rough estimate of a grade without any assessments to back it up because I had to whip out a "progress report" to provide to an extracurricular organization.  The thing is, though, I did it - me, the stickler for the rules, the most anal-retentive person about these kinds of things of anyone I know! If I can fudge, so can anyone else and it would be irresponsible to assume that every homeschool parent out there is so dedicated that there is no need to worry: When I was a schoolteacher, I heard stories of students who had been pulled out of school by their parents only to be left home alone all day without being provided supervision or education...granted, those types of things don't happen often, but I'd rather jump through one or two small hoops to make sure it doesn't happen to anyone at all.

I'd like to finish my little rant here with an acknowledgement of the controversial nature of what I have just implied:  I have asked to be regulated - to have government bureaucracy "check up" on the way I am choosing to educate my child.  This would be especially rough for the unschoolers or followers of alternative curricular styles, like Charlotte Mason or Waldorf, all of which might have differing timetables for acquiring the shared knowledge I spoke of.  I am, however, doing what I do best, which is to daydream.  I am thinking in terms of an ideal compromise, where the suggested curricular goals are minimal skill-ups, in line with scientifically proven theories of development and pedagogy, that are general enough to leave plenty of options in terms of student-led explorations.  Honestly, I think a curricular change in this direction would help not only homeschoolers, but all educational institutions as well. So, to be clear, I wouldn't want to be regulated within our current environment of over-reliance on statistics without concern for the individual but I can see a vision of an ideal situation in which homeschooling would be seamlessly intertwined with all other schooling options in terms of regulation and resources and, though I know it's not a popular viewpoint in most of the homeschool community, I look forward to the day we could make that happen.