The state of New Jersey is considering two bills that would place new restrictions on homeschoolers if passed. The first is Assembly Bill 5825, introduced by Assemblyman Sterley S. Stanley (D–East Brunswick). As Reason reports, the bill “would require all homeschooling parents at the beginning of the school year to send a letter to the local school district’s superintendent that includes the name and age of the student and the name of the instructor administering the home education program. Parents will also be mandated to share a copy of the homeschooling curriculum, ‘which shall be aligned with the New Jersey Student Learning Standards.’”
While a regular check-in is currently required for homeschoolers in all but twelve states (New Jersey being one of the twelve), there are no states that require homeschool curriculum to be aligned with the public schools. If this bill passes, New Jersey would become the first state to regulate homeschooling in this way.
The second bill is A.B. 5796, which was introduced by Assemblyman Cody D. Miller (D–Turnersville). This bill “requires homeschooling families to annually meet with a public school official for a basic child welfare check,” Reason notes.
Taken together, these two bills represent a concerning push toward more state involvement and control in the homeschooling world. What is especially concerning is the proposed requirement to align homeschooling curriculum with state learning standards, as this would massively curtail the freedom and autonomy of homeschoolers.
The justification for this curriculum policy is no doubt the typical concern about a “lack of oversight.” Politicians fear that in the absence of some degree of government control homeschool families will give their children a substandard education. But this ignores a crucial point.
The reason many people choose to homeschool is precisely because they find the government curriculum to be substandard, at least for their children. The government is so worried about making sure homeschool education isn’t worse than public schools, but what they forget is that in many cases it is better than public schools—either because it is more individualized or simply a higher quality, or both—so forcing it to match state standards would actually bring it down rather than up.
Governments love to assume that their own curriculum is the gold standard for educating all children. After all, it was designed by experts. But by taking their child out of the public schooling system, homeschoolers are voicing their disagreement with this presumed superiority. And given that many homeschooled children go on to have successful lives and careers, while many public-school students struggle, maybe the so-called education experts shouldn’t be so quick to assume that theirs is necessarily the best approach. Maybe imposing state standards on everyone will actually be a net downgrade for homeschoolers rather than a net upgrade. In other words, on the very issue of educational quality that this bill seeks to promote, it could well do more harm than good.
The early twentieth century libertarian journalist H. L. Mencken was keenly aware of the government’s propensity to stifle innovation and excellence. “All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him,” he wrote. “One of its primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat originality among them. All it can see in an original idea is potential change, and hence an invasion of its prerogatives.”
Prohibiting homeschoolers from experimenting with their curriculum choices is prohibiting originality, and thus innovation. It is telling parents, who in many cases are better educators than the state, that they are not allowed to give their children the superior education that they are capable of delivering. In short, excellence is prohibited. Sameness is mandated.
Kurt Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron comes to mind—a short story about a dystopian future where naturally gifted people are given handicaps so that they don’t outshine anyone else. Is that really what we want, a world where the most skillful educators are forced to comply with a standard curriculum even when they know they can do far better?
“Particularly over the past century and a half in the United States,” writes John Taylor Gatto in his 1992 book Dumbing Us Down, “spokesmen for institutional life have demanded a role above and beyond service to families and communities. They have sought to command and prescribe as kings used to do.”
This authoritarian impulse needs to be resisted, both for the sake of allowing originality and excellence to flourish, and also on the basic principle that it’s wrong to violate other people’s freedom.
It’s true that in a free society some people will raise their kids in ways we disapprove of. But at the end of the day, that’s their right—and for all we know the people we look down on today might be on to something.
