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AWAY WITH ALL TEACHERS:
THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF HOME SCHOOLING
Michael W. Apple
University of Wisconsin, Madison
This document is available at:
http://www.asu.edu/educ/epsl/EPRU/resources/Apple.Away.Tchrs/Apple.Away.rtf
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If one of the marks of the growing acceptance of ideological changes is their positive
presentation in the popular media, then home schooling has clearly found a place in our
consciousness. It has been discussed in the national press, on television and radio, and in widely
circulated magazines. Its usual presentation is that of a savior, a truly compelling alternative to a
public school system that is presented as a failure. While the presentation of public schools as
simply failures is deeply problematic,1 it is the largely unqualified support of home schooling
that concerns me here. I am considerably less sanguine.
Data on home schooling are not always accurate and are often difficult to compile.
However, a sense of the extent of home schooling can be found in the fact that the National
Home Education Research Institute has estimated that as of the 1997-1998 school year, there
were 1.5 million children being home schooled in the United States. The Institute also has
suggested that there has been a growth of 15% annually in these numbers since 1990. While
these data are produced by an organization that is one of the strongest supporters of home
schooling, even given the possible inflation of these figures it is clear that this is a considerable
number of students.2
1 It is important that we remember that public schools were and are a victory. They
constituted a gain for the majority of people who were denied access to advancement and
to valued cultural capital in a stratified society. This is not to claim that the public school
did not and does not have differential effects. Indeed, I have devoted many books to
uncovering the connections between formal education and the recreation of inequalities
(see, for example, Apple 1990; 1995). Rather, it is to say that public schooling is a site of
conflict, but one that also has been a site of major victories by popular groups (Reese,
1986). Indeed, conservatives would not be so angry at schools if public schools has not
had a number of progressive tendencies cemented in them.
2
For further information on the National Home Education Research Institute and on its
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In a relatively short article, I cannot deal at length with all of the many issues that could
be raised about the home schooling movement. I want to ask a number of critical questions
about the dangers associated with it. While it is quite probable that some specific children and
families will gain from home schooling, my concerns are larger. They are connected to the more
extensive restructuring of this society that I believe is quite dangerous and to the manner in
which our very sense of public responsibility is withering in ways that will lead to even further
social inequalities. In order to illuminate these dangers, I shall have to do a number of things:
situate home schooling within the larger movement that provides much of its impetus; suggest its
connections with other protectionist impulses; connect it to the history of and concerns about the
growth of activist government; and, finally, point to how it may actually hurt many other
students who are not home schooled.
At the very outset of this article, let me state as clearly as I can that any parents who care
so much about the educational experiences of their children that they actively seek to be deeply
involved are to be applauded, not chastised or simply dismissed. Let me also say that it is
important not to stereotype individuals who reject public schooling3 as unthinking promoters of
ideological forms that are so deeply threatening that they are--automatically--to be seen as
beyond the pale of legitimate concerns. Indeed, as I have demonstrated in Cultural Politics and
Education (Apple 1996), there are complicated reasons behind the growth of anti-school
sentiments. As I showed there, there are elements of "good" sense as well as bad "sense" in such
beliefs. All too many school systems are overly bureaucratic, are apt not to listen carefully to
parents' or community concerns, or act in overly defensive ways when questions are asked about
data on home schooling, see the following website: <http://www.nheri.org>
3 In the United States, the term “public” schooling refers only to those schools that are
organized, funded, and controlled by the state. All other schools are considered “private”
or “religious”.
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what and whose knowledge is considered "official." In some ways, these kinds of criticisms are
similar across the political spectrum, with both left and right often making similar claims about
the politics of recognition (see Fraser 1997). Indeed, these very kinds of criticisms have led
many progressive and activist educators to build more community-based and responsive models
of curriculum and teaching in public schools (Apple and Beane 1995; 1999).
This said, however, it is still important to realize that while the intentions of critics such
as home schoolers may be meritorious, the effects of their actions may be less so.
While there are many home schoolers who have not made their decision based on
religious convictions, a large proportion have (see Detwiler 1999 and Ray 1999). In this essay, I
shall focus largely on this group, in part because it constitutes some of the most committed
parents and in part because ideologically it raises a number of important issues.
Many home schoolers are guided by what they believe are biblical understandings of the
family, gender relationships, legitimate knowledge, the importance of "tradition," the role of
government, and the economy (Detwiler 1999 and Kintz 1997).4 They constitute part of what I
have called the "conservative restoration" in which a tense alliance has been built among various
segments of "the public" in favor of particular policies in education and the larger social world.
Let me place this in its larger context.
4
In part, the attractiveness of home schooling among religiously motivated parents is also
due to a structural difference between schools in the United States and those in many
other nations. Historically, although at times mythical, the separation between state-
supported schooling and an officially defined state religion has been a distinctive feature
of education here. Thus, the absence of religious instruction in schools has been a source
of tension among many groups and has generated even more anti-school sentiment (see
Nord 1995). I have discussed some of the history of the growth of conservative
evangelical movements and their relationships with anti-school sentiment in Apple (in
press).
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Education and Conservative Modernization
Long lasting educational transformations often come not from the work of educators and
researchers, but from larger social movements which tend to push our major political, economic,
and cultural institutions in specific directions. Thus, it would be impossible to fully understand
educational reforms over the past decades without situating them within, say, the long struggles
by multiple communities of color and women for both cultural recognition and economic
redistribution (see, e.g., Fraser 1997). Even such taken for granted things as state textbook
adoption policies--among the most powerful mechanisms in the processes of defining "official
knowledge"--are the results of widespread populist and anti-northern movements and especially
the class and race struggles over culture and power that organized and re-organized the polity in
the United States a century ago (Apple 2000).
It should, then, come as no surprise that education is again witnessing the continued
emergence and growing influence of powerful social movements. Some of these may lead to
increased democratization and greater equality, while others are based on a fundamental shift in
the very meanings of democracy and equality and are more than a little retrogressive socially and
culturally. Unfortunately, it is the latter that have emerged as the most powerful.
The rightward turn has been the result of years of well-funded and creative ideological
efforts by the right to form a broad-based coalition. This new alliance, what is technically called
a "new hegemonic bloc," has been so successful in part because it has been able to make major
inroads in the battle over common-sense.5 That is, it has creatively stitched together different
social tendencies and commitments and has organized them under its own general leadership in
issues dealing with welfare, culture, the economy, and as many of you know from personal
5
I have demonstrated the success of this movement both historically and empirically
elsewhere. See Apple (2000) and Apple (1996). For a history of the tensions
surrounding the forces of conservative modernization specifically in the United States,
see Foner (1998).
