schoolers, oppose the system because they have strong convictions that
their approach to education — whether fueled by religious enthusiasm
or the individual child’s interests and natural pace — is best.
“The bulk of home schoolers just want to be left alone,” says Enge
Cannon, associate director of the National Center For Home Education.
She says home schoolers choose that path for a variety of reasons, but
religion plays a role 85 percent of the time.
Professor Van Galen breaks home schoolers into two groups. Some home
schoolers want their children to learn not only traditional subject
matter but also “strict religious doctrine and a conservative
political and social perspective. Not incidentally, they also want
their children to learn — both intellectually and emotionally — that
the family is the most important institution in society.”
Other home schoolers contend “not so much that the schools teach
heresy, but that schools teach whatever they teach inappropriately”.
Van Galen writes, “These parents are highly independent and strive to
‘take responsibility’ for their own lives within a society that they
define as bureaucratic and inefficient.”
