Might there be a tension in the thought of conservatives and libertarians who laud the market while advocating not merely the right to home school but the superiority of homeschooling itself?
One of the virtues of the extended free market is that it allows for (and rewards) the division of labor and the benefits that flow from this arrangement.* In particular, as Adam Smith noted in his An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, the division of labor allows for “the great multiplication of the production of all the different arts . . . which occasions, in a well-governed society, that universal opulence which extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people.” Add to that the idea of comparative advantage, and to riff on the Red Stripe beer commercials, “Hooray markets!”
But does this hold true in the realm of education? I don’t see why not. If some individuals focus on learning and practicing the knowledge and methods most effective at producing education, we could certainly expect better outcomes to flow from this than if we used amateurs (including ourselves) to educate our children. But the potential benefits don’t stop there. Those who don’t choose to enter the teaching profession or formally teach their own children can specialize and focus their productive energies on activities for which they have a comparative advantage. The outcome?: Kids benefit from better teaching. Parents benefit from the more efficient allocation of their talents/labor. And society is better off as a whole.
Therefore, those who value efficiency and market outcomes should celebrate this. But why then do so many conservative and libertarian parents homeschool their children and celebrate it as a superior arrangement?
One possible reason is that they believe education is not exactly rocket science, so the benefits from the division of labor are anywhere from zero to minimal (or even negative if you can’t replicate the individualized instruction when farming out education to specialists). This might be true for grades K-5 – but even there parents face huge opportunity costs from doing something that, ostensibly, others can do easily. And I really doubt this assumption is true for grades 6-12 since it is probably quite difficult for most parents to have the specialized knowledge necessary to teach children more advanced subjects. I’m a university professor, and I’m pretty sure someone else would be better placed to teach my kids a whole range of subjects than I am (even leaving aside the opportunity cost issue). That doesn’t mean I believe that all or even a lot of teachers – especially in public schools – actually know what they are talking about. But theoretically specialization should result in…actual specialized knowledge. And superior schools with the right incentive structures are likely to get teachers who know their stuff and how to teach it.
Another possible reason is that homeschooling advocates believe the benefits of individualized instruction (possible with homeschooling) will more than compensate for the losses sustained due to lack of specialized knowledge. Again, this might be true for grades K-5. But I doubt it for the higher grades. And I think many homeschoolers doubt it too – which is why homeschoolers of older children often try to arrange a more traditional group instruction session led by another parent who has special knowledge in a particular subject area like math or science. Of course, doing this necessitates sacrificing one of the supposed benefits of homeschooling.
A third possible reason is that homeschooling advocates think peer effects in regular school settings are decidedly negative, while homeschooling allows for greater and better control of whom their kids associate with during their formative years. I think this is a decent argument if we assume that the kids your children interact with in your neighborhood, churches, and other social institutions aren’t pretty much the same as they’d meet at your local public or private school. But is this assumption true? Moreover, what is lost from not having to interact and learn how to deal with a broader set of people? Of course, this last question could also be asked of those who send their kids to selective (read: expensive) private schools and public schools in high-end communities.
A fourth possible reason is that homeschooling advocates simply reject what goes on in more traditional group educational settings, public or private. Here we have what I think is the strongest grounds for the superiority of homeschooling. Whether it is the green theology, the cult of athletics, fear of school drug cultures, the politically-influenced (or just plain misguided) curriculum, or the general base culture that many schools tolerate or even celebrate, traditional educational settings give parents a lot of reasons to think they aren’t the best environments for their children. However, many communities have private schools that, while not immune from such things, do not suffer greatly from them either. This is particularly the case for religious schools, which many prefer anyway. Therefore, parents have an option other than homeschooling that allows them to avoid the overall environment problem. Religious schools also offer the moral and ethical education that many homeschoolers want for their children (and that, according to one study, motivates them to take their kids out of traditional school settings in the first place). Unfortunately, the fact that individuals in the US are forced to pay twice for schools if they send their kids to private school prevents many parents from choosing the private school option (or at least forces more trade-offs).
Of course, there are many other reasons why parents might choose homeschooling. Moreover, I don’t want to suggest that homeschooling is a bad option, especially compared to the many failing public school systems around the country. However, I did want to note the possible tension between belief in the efficacy of what markets can harness and zeal for homeschooling. For many people, private schooling seems to offer the best option if one wants to take advantage of the division of labor and comparative advantage, avoid the worst aspects of public schooling, and minimize opportunity costs involved in home schooling. Politically, this means that we ought to work for greater school choice so that more parents can take their children out of destructive public schools without having to lose out on what Adam Smith taught us more than two centuries ago.
* Interestingly, Smith believes that the division of labor itself is rooted in our natural “propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another” rather than any “human wisdom” about its positive consequences.
Traditional schools, be they public, private, or religious, all tend toward certain questionable methods: a focus on teaching (rather than learning), a rigid schedule (day, 9 months, 12 years), age graded separation of students, etc. When we homeschooled 2 of our kids (through secondary school) we varied the format (3 months school, 1 month off). My father-in-law and my father both died in the same month. We suspended instruction for a time to deal with these issues, flexibility you don’t have in a traditional setting.
In the 7th grade students spend all year learning from their peers how to act like a 7th grader. The next year it starts over because they wouldn’t think of acting like a 7th grader anymore. On the contrary we taught our son and daughter to act like adults. The next year there was no need to learn behavior all over again.
It may be more “efficient” if I hire someone else to tend to my yard but if I enjoy doing it as a leisure activity, that’s a different matter.
As I said above, there are lots of legit reasons to homeschool and you’ve identified several. I think the consumption good argument is hardest to justify, however. If I enjoyed teaching my sons how to play the clarinet but was not very good at it – I’m not sure I would be doing right by them. You, though, might be quite proficient at teaching – so I’m not judging your case but the argument that it can be justified as a leisure activity alone (which I know you aren’t doing).
Mr. President, this seems to me a strange post. It is very difficult I think to predict what lots of home-schooling parents would choose in a genuine open market in education, one not subject to the massive distortions caused by state education. As you note, one sizable issue is the double-dipping financial issue.
It seems to me that in a genuinely free market, we might see lots of educational combinations we do not see today. There seem to me to be two significant kinds of considerations which your post doesn’t get quite right:
1. First, the benefits of comparative advantage. There is a tradeoff here in, let’s call it educational competence, vs. particular attention to students. Unless you are very wealthy, you can’t pay for both (i.e. a highly educated tutor to give one-one instruction). So there’s a tradeoff. At lower levels it’s no stretch to think the educational competence is not much of an issue. You say K-5, but do you really think you are not competent to teach, say, a 7th-grader American history, or math, with the resources available to do so? That seems to me a stretch. That tradeoff does change with advancing years, and so you also see more homeschoolers taking advantage of the comparative advantage in teaching for later grades. As best I can tell, by any standard of measurement, homeschooling parents don’t seem by and large to be getting this wrong. That is, homeschooled children by and large perform as well or better than students of other forms of primary education. Why think they aren’t using local knowledge of time and place to work out what’s best for the kids? Why suppose that the tradeoffs would be the same for all of them? Especially in large families where the marginal costs of outside tuition are high and the benefits of in-family teaching compounded?
2. Second, the social advantages. You capture some of this. Public schools are in many cases breeding grounds for really bad socialization, as you well know. This is true for both civics issues (“everybody line up for the locker inspections!”) and, shall we say, issues attending adolescence. But you neglect the nature of the relationships between homeschooling parents and their children that are, in my experience, a powerful incentive to undertake the opportunity costs involved — at least for some people. Many people wouldn’t find that a good tradeoff, but then I know of no homeschoolers who advocate it, let alone advocating mandating it, for everyone. Most sensibly think private education is a plausible and attractive alternative for many folks. State education is of course another kettle of fish, but I’m not sure why you would think genuine educational freedom wouldn’t yield a lot of different educational arrangements, many of them ones people have developed and made use of even given the sizable costs of ignoring the gifts of government as things are.
On the other hand, one of the key benefits of *not* homeschooling, from the kids point of view, is to be away from overinvolved parents.
Though in general I disliked school, it did teach me how to speak and read English (Spanish at home), introduced me to a variety of people and activities (orchestra, band, water polo) and made me learn to socialize.
It seems as though Aspergers is the latest fad, but I’m pretty flamingly Aspergian, and I would not be employable if I hadn’t burned in the hellfire of school. The whole “learning to be a 7th grader” then “learning to be an 8th grader” thing was extrememly useful to me.
I would not be employable (at all, unless I worked form home) and would be incapable of interacting with other people in a satisfying way if I’d spent most of my formative years with a tiny handful of people that loved me and wanted me to be happy.
That said, full-time traditional schooling beyond age 15 or so is a waste of time for a lot of people. I wish it were 50-50 trade school/academics.
This is the real reason, I think, that homeschooling is so popular – not because conservatives or libertarians doubt the market or division of labor, but rather that there essentially IS no “market” on education, and the abysmal quality of the so-called “education” many children receive in public schools is makes almost ANYONE capable of providing their child better education at home.
Your post on urban sprawl and its causes was enjoyable… go apply that logic to public schools.