PARENTS’ RIGHTS AND EDUCATIONAL PROVISION: An Argument for Abolishing all Private Schooling

Record: Roger Marples, “Parents’ Rights and Educational Provision” in Studies in the Philosophy and Education 33, no. 1 (January 2014): 23-39.

Summary:  Marples, a Principal Lecturer in Education at University of Roehampton in London, here makes a spirited argument against the legitimacy of non-government schooling in all but the most extreme circumstances.

Marples begins by asserting that the claims of parental “rights” go back to Lockean notions of property rights and to claims by philosophers like Robert Nozick and Charles Fried that the child is an “extension” of the parent.  Marples disagrees.  For him, “treating children as mere appendages to their parents is both to disrespect and undermine their moral status.” (p. 24)

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CONFUCIAN WORK AND HOMESCHOOLING: A Look at Home Education in China

Record: Xiaoming Sheng, “Confucian Work and Homeschooling: A Case Study of Homeschooling in Shanghai” in Education and Urban Society, XX, No. X (2013), 1-17. [abstract here]

Summary:

The article under review here is a condensed version of a 2011 work by Sheng, recently reissued by Sense Publishers and available here.

Sheng begins by reminding readers of the profound economic changes that have taken place in China since market-based reforms were implemented in 1978.  Most significant for this study has been the rise of a large middle class in several of China’s cities.  Homeschooling, argues Sheng, has emerged along with this middle class in such cities as Beijing and Shanghai.

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