A Philosophical Argument against Homeschooling, Part 2

This is the second of a two-part review of Randall Curren and J. C. Blokhuis, “The Prima Facie Case Against Homeschooling” in Public Affairs Quarterly, 25, no. 1 (January 2011): 1-19.

In my previous post I argued against the historic backstory Curren and Blokhuis provide as the underpinning of their argument.  Today I will look at the argument itself.  In general they make two basic claims.  First, they claim that all children are entitled to equal public protection of their educational interests, which means that all forms of education, including private schooling and homeschooling, must provide equal educative opportunities.  Second, they claim that the nature of knowledge is such that, especially at the secondary level, parents (or any other citizen) can be presumed to lack competence to teach, and that anybody who wants to teach must overcome this presumption of incompetence by proving their merit.

Curren and Blokhuis elaborate on these claims through a three-part argument.  I will first summarize their argument and then offer some critiques.

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Joyce on Patriarchal Homeschooling, Part 2

This post continues my review of Kathryn Joyce, Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement.

In my last post I summarized Joyce’s book.  Here I will offer three criticisms and then try to generalize a bit from her data.  In my next post I’ll offer some predictions for the future of the Patriarchy movement.  First for the critique:

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Part 2 of Gilbert on Motherhood

This post reviews part two of Neil Gilbert, A Mother’s Work: How Feminism, the Market, and Policy Shape Family Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008).

In the book’s first section Gilbert described the long-term trend among American women toward having fewer children and investing more of their time in paid labor.  In the second section he explains how capitalism, feminism, and government policy influence the choices women make about whether or not to have children and how to raise them. 

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Neil Gilbert on Motherhood, Capitalism, and Feminism, part 1

This is the first in a series of posts reviewing Neil Gilbert’s new book A Mother’s Work: How Feminism, the Market, and Policy Shape Family Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008).

Gilbert, a professor at U.C. Berkeley, has a long and distinguished track record working in many fields related to social policy, welfare, and family issues.  This, his latest book, turns his considerable experience and acumen to the vexing issue of the choices women make about motherhood and paid employment.  He argues that the shift over the past forty years away from motherhood and toward paid employment is not the result of women now having the freedom to go to work nor is it a matter of economic necessity.  Rather, he argues that three factors have conspired to undervalue motherhood: 

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Part 4 of review of Williams, ed., AT ISSUE: HOMESCHOOLING

In this final entry I will finish out my review of the anthology AT ISSUE: HOMESCHOOLING, summarizing chapters 7-13 much more briefly than in previous entries. 

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