Families and Educational Freedom: the case for home-schooling

by Julie Novak (Online Opinion - Australia)
What do American Presidents George Washington and Franklin Roosevelt, Nobel Prize winner Bertrand Russell, anthropologist Margaret Mead, and writer Agatha Christie have in common? These famous luminaries in their respective fields of endeavour were the beneficiaries of home-schooling through their childhood years.

The concept of home-schooling seems to evoke a range of negative stereotypes, including a negative picture of parents with either extremist religious beliefs, or with no real commitment to their children’s education, who lock their offspring away and place them at educational, social and perhaps even physical risk. However, as I will explain, not only are the home-schooling stereotypes unfounded, but this model of educational provision represents the ultimate in freedom and parental power in education, both qualities that are severely lacking, particularly in government school systems.