Luke, Catherine. (2003, April 3). Home schooling: Learning from dissent. Canadian Journal of Educational Administration and Policy, Issue #25. Retrieved 7/10/13 from https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/cjeap/article/view/42689. (Does well at clearly and dispassionately presenting homeschooling as a challenge to the assumptions implicit in the state/public school system of Canada, or of any nation. “While home schooling is at a considerable distance from and runs counter to many of the central principles of the public education system, I believe it has the potential to offer us an important and challenging critique of that system. Rather than dismissing home schooling as a choice that is irrelevant to public school reform, I believe educational reformers, administrators, and teachers have something to learn from parents who choose to teach their children at home” (paragraph 3). “Perhaps the most compelling and complex argument against home schooling is that home schooling is an inherently asocial and apolitical behaviour in the context of a democratic society. ….. Unless one can move to the position that individual fulfillment does in fact contribute to the greater good of society, home schooling is clearly moving away from the democratic theory that informs our public education system and in its quiet way presenting a serious challenge to the central tenets of both our educational and political systems.” “We need to ask some crucial questions about the conditions for learning, looking beyond the givens of the public school system: can children learn more readily in a non-authoritarian environment? do children learn better through contact with the real world outside the school and classroom? could children benefit from a more leisurely approach to learning where they could consider what they hear and observe in a more contemplative setting? what qualities do parents bring to their teaching that we may not be considering and nurturing when we select and train professional teachers? Is it possible that we have taken for granted the basic structures of the public system — teacher training, school buildings, classrooms, textbooks and subject-organized curriculum — to such an extent that we have been unable to even ask these questions effectively? We can hope that home schoolers in the future will open their lives to this kind of research in order, perhaps, to instruct the public school system about some fundamental principles of teaching and learning.”) (Keywords: homeschooling, reasons, public schooling, schooling, choice, market)

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