July-August 2005 Selected Content

Don't Let Compulsory Attendance Turn into Compulsory Education

Homeschoolers are often asked to prove that their children are being educated. When the challenge comes from relatives, friends, or acquaintances, it varies from a minor annoyance to a serious interpersonal dispute, but it doesn't prevent us from homeschooling. However, when legislators, judges, or court commissioners challenge us, homeschooling freedoms can be undermined. One of the most effective ways to deal with such legal challenges is to explain that laws require attendance, not education. This column explores what compulsory school attendance laws actually require, why so many people fail to understand the distinction between compulsory attendance and compulsory education, and how homeschoolers and others can use this distinction.

Laws Require School Attendance, Not Education

Laws also define what schools must do that is educational, such as having a curriculum that covers basic subjects. Additional requirements are placed on public schools that want to receive state tax dollars (which, of course, all public schools do). They often include ensuring that curriculums meet state standards and that students take standardized tests. In addition, schools in states that want to receive federal tax dollars for education (which all states do) are required to meet additional criteria that have recently been greatly increased under the new federal No Child Left Behind law. Private schools that accept state or federal tax dollars or both are also required to meet extra criteria. These extra requirements are not part of the basic definition of a school. Private schools that do not accept tax dollars do not have to meet them. And homeschools are private schools, even if state laws don't specifically label them as such, because they are schools that are not public. This is why homeschoolers who are determined to avoid unnecessary government requirements refuse to accept tax dollars, either directly as grants or indirectly as tax credits or deductions.

The fact that laws require attendance can also be seen in the definition of truancy and penalties for it. Truancy is clearly understood as failure to attend school. It is independent of education. Laws don't say, "You only need to attend school often enough to be able to pass your courses." Or "If you already know the material that's being covered, you don't need to come to class today." Or "If you can come up with a better way to learn what you need to know than attending classes, you may be excused today." Laws do say, "If you're not in school and don't have what school officials consider a 'good excuse,' which pretty much means a serious illness, YOU ARE TRUANT, regardless of how smart you are, how much you already know about what's being taught, how meaningless or irrelevant or wrong it is, or how much more you could be learning some place else." The penalties for truancy are serious: fines, jail terms for both students and parents. (The penalties are also ineffective, but that's outside our discussion.)

Generally speaking, laws do not require compulsory education. It's not hard to figure out why not. Among the reasons:

• First, there's no common agreement about what it means to be "educated." Can you dislike math and still be educated? If you have outstanding mechanical or musical abilities but are not drawn to the printed word, can you be educated? If you need to move around and talk a lot to learn things, is there any hope for you? If you're smart enough to see through the phoniness and artificiality of school and strong enough to protest, aren't you doomed to failure?

• Second, even if we could agree on what one needs to know to be "educated," we lack the means to determine what people know. "Wait a minute," some will object. "Tests show what people know." Sorry about that. Tests can only cover a tiny fraction of a subject. They measure how well a person performed on a given test on a given day, not how much a person knows. Some know a lot more than tests show; in fact, they know so much that they realize many questions oversimplify and distort things, and they can't choose a "right" answer because, really, all the possible choices are usually at least a little bit wrong. Some people have different perspectives and life experiences than the test makers, so the questions don't make sense to them. Some excel at things that are not covered on tests (creativity, mechanical ability, musical ability, compassion, justice) but not on the things that are included. Some have good test-taking skills even though they don't know much about the material being covered, so they score "too high." Do you know what "hyperlexia" is? It's a condition in which a person's scores on reading tests indicate that they won't be able to learn to read, but they learn despite the test results.

• Third and possibly most important, schools apparently aren't capable of educating many students. Obviously, many people don't learn what they need or want to know in school. To give schools the benefit of the doubt, we need to assume that they would educate people if they could. Therefore, we have to conclude that they can't. Passing compulsory education laws that require education would not change this. Instead, such laws would show schools' failings without providing realistic solutions. (To be sure, No Child Left Behind is trying to do just this by identifying schools that are particularly bad at educating kids, based on their scores on standardized tests, and punishing these schools. Many people doubt that NCLB will work.)

Homeschoolers are not surprised that schools have trouble educating people. We've had wonderful opportunities to learn about learning. We've seen children eagerly exploring the real world, doing things and learning in the process, learning easily and well, according to their own unique timetables and in their own ways, pursuing what interests them without needing external motivation. As their parents, we've given them our support, our encouragement, our confidence, and our love, all of which have helped them learn.

Think how handicapped schools are. Would you like to be presented with 20 to 30 kids you'd never met in September and told you had to prepare them all to score well on unfair and biased tests before June, while keeping them in one room, separated from the real world and from their families and others who know and love them, without older people to be role models, without much fresh air or decent food or a chance to go to the bathroom when they need to? Really, it's amazing that anyone learns anything in a conventional school!

So laws wisely require attendance, not education. If you don't measure up to the schools' idea of what education should be, you and your parents don't have to pay a fine or go to jail. The worst that can happen is that you're not allowed to move on to the next grade, although many, many children keep moving along even though they haven't learned what they were supposed to so far. Further evidence that laws do not require education appears when parents get really fed up and sue schools for failing to educate their children. In such cases, courts rule in favor of the schools. This is not surprising; in fact, the courts have to rule that way. Think of the chaos and the number of lawsuits that would result if courts allowed parents to sue schools for failing to educate their children!

It is important to note that the lack of laws requiring education plays a major role in maintaining freedom of education for everyone, not just homeschoolers, and thus in maintaining freedom of thought. If laws did require education, the government would directly control education and indirectly control people's thinking since education has a strong influence on thought and belief. As we homeschoolers work hard to oppose compulsory education, we are also working to maintain freedom of education and of thought for our whole society.

Unfortunately, there are a few exceptions to the general rule that laws don't require education, namely, homeschooling laws that require parents to submit proof that their children are being educated. Some states require that homeschoolers be examined by evaluators approved by the schools or submit portfolios or scores on standardized tests. These laws should not have been passed. They discriminate against homeschoolers by requiring more of them than is required of other students. They also set a dangerous precedent of compulsory education. (However, it would not be advisable for homeschoolers in states with such laws to rush to either the legislature or the courts to try to have them changed.)

At this point, the distinction between compulsory attendance and compulsory education may seem obvious. After all, people generally refer to the laws under discussion as "compulsory attendance laws" or "compulsory school attendance laws." Why then aren't these points obvious to legislators, judges, the general public, and even some homeschoolers? Why don't legislators and the general public realize that it is inappropriate to require compulsory education of homeschoolers (or anyone else)? One reason is the wide acceptance of the notions that "real learning" takes place in a conventional school and that the most important things people learn are what they study in school between ages of 6 or 5 or 4 and 18 or 22 or 26. We homeschoolers have done a lot to reclaim learning, but the task is far from complete.

In addition, our society gives moral authority to people who have important positions in education, such as teachers, principals, school superintendents, etc. Many people look to such officials for the answers to questions about education and trust their responses. However, we need to remember and explain to others that although these school officials may have moral authority, they do not have legal authority either to define education or to require compulsory education. We can ensure our freedoms by not confusing the moral authority ascribed to them by the larger society with legal authority.

How Homeschoolers Can Use This Distinction

• When legislators or others claim that laws are needed to ensure that homeschoolers are being educated, we can explain that compulsory education is not required of students who attend conventional schools so it would be discriminatory to require it of homeschoolers. We can also explain that requiring compulsory education of homeschoolers would set a dangerous precedent for students in conventional schools and for our society as a whole.

• In situations where social workers, judges, or court commissioners insist that homeschoolers demonstrate that they are being educated and/or are at grade level, homeschoolers can oppose such compulsory education on principle. If authorities threaten to require that homeschoolers attend conventional schools because they are not learning enough or may not learn enough through homeschooling, a similar argument can be used.

• When ex-spouses are skeptical about or oppose homeschooling and demand proof that their children are being educated, homeschoolers can explain the problems with compulsory education.

• When someone challenges our homeschooling on the basis of our children's failure to learn something important, we can point out that although we want very much for our children to be educated, the laws do not require education, people don't agree on what it means to be educated, and we don't have a good way to determine what people know. These points may seem formal and stilted, but using them in this way reminds us of their importance and helps other people understand them.

What We Can Do

• Remember the importance of the distinction between compulsory attendance and compulsory education.

• Explain this distinction to other homeschoolers, legislators, people who might be involved in court cases, etc.

Conclusion

© 2005, Larry and Susan Kaseman