INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON HOME EDUCATION: Do We Still Need Schools?

International Perspectives of Home Education discusses home-based education in a wide variety of countries such as the UK, USA, Australia, Israel, Afghanistan, Norway, Germany and more. The volume was edited by Paula Rothermel, a UK academic in the field of home education. She is Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) and Elected Associated Fellow of the British Psychological Society (ABPS). She also coordinates the International Network for Research into Home Education, a global community of scholars interested in home education research.

 

Over the next several weeks, all 21 chapters will be reviewed in order. Links will be added as reviews are posted. Here follows a table of contents for the volume:

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Recent Developments in Home Education Law in Spain

Record:  María J. Valero Estarellas, “The Long Way Home: Recent Developments in the Spanish Case Law on Home Education” in Oxford Journal of Law and Religion (2013): 1-25. [Available here].

Summary:  Estarellas, a professor at Centro Universitario Villanueva, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, here summarizes recent case law pertaining to home education in Spain.  In 2010 the Spanish Constitutional Court handed down a major decision that is having a transformative impact on home education cases around the country.

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Gretchen Abernathy Reviews in English a Spanish Language Article about Homeschooling in Spain

This week again I have asked a guest to review for me.  In this case it was because the article is written in Spanish.  Thankfully, my sister Gretchen Abernathy is a professional translator with many years of experience translating Spanish language theological scholarship into English.  Here follows her expert summary and evaluation of a recent piece by three scholars from Spain.  I have again cross-posted this review on the ICHER website.  I’m encouraging my readers to familiarize themselves now with that site, for soon I’ll be moving over to it exclusively.

Record: Elizalde, M., Urpí, C., and Tejada, M., “Diversidad, participación y calidad educativas: necesidades y posibilidades del Homeschooling”[“Diversity, Parent Involvement and Quality Education: Needs and Possibilities of Homeschooling”], in Estudios sobre educación, vol. 22 (2012), pp. 55-72. [Available here]

María Ángeles Sotés Elizalde, Universidad de Navarrra

Carme Urpí, Universidad de Navarra

María del Coro Molinos Tejada, Universidad de Navarra

Summary: Elizalde, Urpí and Tejada, all representing the Universidad de Navarra in Spain, discuss in very general strokes the phenomenon of homeschooling in Spain and in a few other select countries, evaluating the issues of diversity, parental involvement and quality therein. Starting from the basic premise that education is necessary for children, especially in countries where millions of children and girls in particular have no access to basic formal education, they observe the irony that as baseline literacy needs are met in environments of material abundance, other problems arise: discipline, lack of motivation and mistreatment among students. The authors suggest that, given the transition from precarious to prosperous formal education in developed countries, the time is ripe to evaluate how homeschooling offers a positive pedagogical response and alternative that should be awarded legal credence and greater public acceptance.

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