Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol. 44, No.

4, 2010

Restricted Liberty, Parental Choice

and Homeschooling

MICHAEL S. MERRY AND SJOERD KARSTEN

In this paper the authors carefully study the problem of liberty

as it applies to school choice, and whether there ought to be
restricted liberty in the case of homeschooling. They examine
three prominent concerns that might be brought against
homeschooling, viz., that it aggravates social inequality,
worsens societal conflict and works against the best interests
of children. To examine the tensions that occur between
parental liberty, children’s interests, and state oversight, the
authors consider the case of homeschooling in the Dutch
context.

A number of political virtues are prized in all liberal democratic societies;

these include liberty, toleration and equality. Though the value of each
may be weighted differently according to time, place and circumstance,
liberty is fundamental. Liberty is the means by which persons are able to
exercise their moral agency absent of coercion, and without liberty all talk
of toleration and equality collapses. The best way to facilitate liberty is to
allow persons to pursue their interests according to their own principled
beliefs so long as they do not unduly interfere with, or limit, the liberty of
others. With liberty comes the right to make decisions about oneself and
one’s possessions without unwarranted interference. Therefore, apart from
its legitimate paternalist forms, coercion is wrong except where it is
necessary to restrain the abuse of liberty.
The state is called upon to promote justice by legitimately arranging the
liberties of persons in the social and political sphere. It does this in at least
two ways. First, it will subsidise or provide services, such as public
transportation, health care, housing and education, without which many
citizens would be less free to take up meaningful pursuits. So with respect
to liberty, the state’s role is that of enabler. Yet paradoxically the state
also enables by restricting human liberty. For instance, states organise and
regulate freedoms, say through progressive taxation or anti-trust laws, so
that persons (or corporations) with more resources are less able to exploit
those without them. Yet even when just states restrict liberty, such actions
are only justifiable when it can be shown that doing so promotes other
goods, such as greater equality or social order.
When it comes to regulating or ordering liberty, liberal states are
generally more democratic agencies of just distribution, by which citizens

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498 M. Merry and S. Karsten

may avail themselves of valuable social goods. Thus, with respect to

education, the liberal state will also use its authority and overview to
promote basic opportunities of all children irrespective of background or
wealth. These opportunities are intended to promote basic competencies
such as literacy, but also from civic capacities concerning the way the
political institutions function and the skills needed to influence the
political process.
Yet the authority of the state, even in the freest and most equitable
societies, has never been uncontroversial. In all liberal democracies there
remain hard tensions between personal liberty and equity, pluralism and
democratic access, and among different conceptions of what constitutes a
good life. These tensions are perhaps especially visible in the educational
sphere. Indeed, in all liberal democracies the freedom to choose the type
of education one wishes his or her child to have—provided it is both
available and affordable—is an assumed parental right. Where basic
educational opportunities exist, and rudimentary political freedoms are
secured, paternalist rights are supported by the fact that parents generally
assume primary responsibility for raising their own child, even if that
responsibility entails—for a majority of parents—the habit of sending
their child to the nearest public school. So parents generally enjoy
considerable freedom in deciding the type of upbringing and education
their children receive. What remains to be seen is whether the parental
appeal to personal liberty in educating one’s child at home potentially
conflicts with the aim of promoting the interests of children and whether
the state has a role to play in seeing that those interests are secured.
In order to give these tensions a sharper focus, we will examine the case
of homeschooling. Homeschooling is an illustrative example because
parents who homeschool question the conventional wisdom that going to
school makes a child more free. Further, homeschooling represents the
ultimate expression of parental liberty (and authority) over a child’s
education: by effectively removing one’s children from school, parents
express their educational preferences in ways that appear to directly
challenge the paternalistic role that states typically assume. Further, in
many countries, homeschooling is carried out with very little direct
oversight (Glenn and de Groof, 2002); accordingly its growth is generally
viewed with consternation by the wider public. Meanwhile, home-
schoolers have fought, and continue to fight, difficult battles in the courts
in order to secure their parental liberty to educate their children as they
desire (Isenburg, 2007; Somerville, 2005). Yet if states assume an
important guardian role both in the provision and supervision of
education, should parental liberty be restricted in order to secure
important personal and social goods, and on what grounds might that be
established?
To assess the challenges that homeschooling poses (and faces) as a
marginal, and perhaps uncertain, alternative to educational options
directly under government supervision, we will briefly consider the
situation in the Netherlands. The Dutch case is particularly illuminating
for several reasons, not least of which is that homeschooling, while not

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illegal, is certainly marginalised. Indeed, the Dutch continue to view

homeschooling as both unnecessary and undesirable. Second, in the
Netherlands both freedom of education and parental liberty are
uncontested constitutional rights when choosing an education for one’s
child, though all schools—public and private—are subject to state
oversight. Third, the Netherlands has an extremely diverse school choice
system—incorporating a variety of school types—in which it is at least
theoretically if not practically feasible to attend any school one wishes to
attend without prohibitive costs involved. Fourth, while being generous in
its support of educational diversity, the Dutch state sets arbitrary limits on
the types of education available to parents. Consequently, homeschooling,
for the moment, represents a direct challenge to the way freedom of
education is usually interpreted and applied in the Netherlands. Therefore,
the Dutch situation is a suitable ‘test case’ for it exemplifies many tensions
one associates with restricted liberty and parental choice.
We will proceed as follows. In the first section, we examine the place of
personal liberty as a good, and the state’s role in facilitating and protecting
it. We show that while parental freedom is not boundless, the importance
of robust pluralism for liberal societies, perhaps especially in the
educational sphere, warrants its protection. We also highlight the role
both parents and the state play in protecting children’s interests. We then
sketch the outlines of a citizenship argument and an autonomy argument,
foreshadowing later discussion.
In the second section, we examine the reasons why homeschooling in
the Netherlands remains a difficult path to pursue, and whether these
difficulties are consistent with its own constitutional guarantees of
freedom of educational choice. We assess the features of the Dutch
educational model, one in which there is considerable pluralism and
parental liberty, yet one that simultaneously restricts how that liberty is
applied. We ask whether the restriction of liberty in the case of
homeschooling is tenable.
In the third section we return to the worries over citizenship and
autonomy, and evaluate the strengths of these arguments vis-à-vis
homeschooling. We specifically evaluate the following claims brought
against homeschooling: (1) that it aggravates social inequality; (2) that it
increases societal conflict, and finally (3) that homeschooling interferes
with the wellbeing and interests of children. We argue that parents are
generally better placed to attend to the needs of their own children, but
that parental liberty—in education as in other matters—in some cases may
require restriction so that the best interests of children are served. For this
some type of oversight is required but in order to justify the restriction of
parental liberty the state must attend to the specifics of individual cases.

I LIBERTY, THE FAMILY AND THE STATE

Perhaps with the exception of self-contained anarchist communities (e.g.
kibbutzim, free and modern school movements) arguably equipped to

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govern themselves, a minimalist state is typically necessary, if for no other

purpose than to arrange the liberties of persons in the social and political
sphere. Put another way, the state serves the important purpose of
protecting the rights of citizens to exercise their natural liberties as they
see fit provided the liberties of others are not violated. Indeed, laws
governing public health and safety may be enacted for the legitimate
purpose of restricting human liberty and promoting justice. This
constitutes the state’s legitimate paternalist role.
Most persons recognise that some oversight is required as it pertains to
what persons do with their liberty. For example, traffic and weapon laws
legitimately restrict what persons can do with their liberty in order to
secure relative order and security. Even principled libertarians, who place
considerable stock in their liberty to dispose of their property as they
choose, would nevertheless recognise important ‘side constraints’ (see
Nozick, 1974). These constraints describe things we are not permitted to
do if the result is to recklessly disregard the interests of others. Hence even
libertarians are prepared to admit some (coercive) state interference for the
purpose of protecting liberty rights.
Yet more than merely protecting or regulating liberty, states also play an
important role in facilitating it. For example, states typically assume the
responsibility for providing and regulating the education of children.
States ensure legal entitlement of all children to a minimally adequate
education but also have among their aims to promote literacy and
numeracy skills sufficient for employment, public reasonableness and
civic competences or attachments that facilitate political participation. In
sum, then, the state is generally recognised as the guarantor of last resort
in arranging the liberties of co-equal citizens, and specifically in seeing to
it that children receive an education that is sufficient for self-
determination. Yet while there is basic consensus on the legitimate uses
of liberty, and moreover concerning the various ways that the state may
use its authority to regulate the uses of that liberty, the state’s role
continues to be controversial in its infringement of liberty in two areas: (1)
its distribution of resources through coercive taxation, and (2) its
encroachment on the prerogatives of parents in directing the lives of
their own children. In what follows we limit our attention to the second
item.
State-provided education, in all of its forms, has enjoyed a place of
prominence for well over a century in all liberal democratic countries, and
today support for public education remains strong. One of the guiding
principles of state-provided education is that everyone, irrespective of
income/wealth, religious or non-religious affiliation, race or gender,
ability or disability, has access to a free education and, at least in principle
if not in practice, the opportunity to make social advances as a direct result
of that educational benefit.1 Above all, the availability of state-provided
education to all children irrespective of income and wealth is viewed as a
public good worth defending, even by those who opt out of the system.
Though other relevant purposes and benefits of education may be named,
it is sufficient to posit here that one of the principal purposes of public

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education is to enhance the child’s wellbeing; stronger variations will

include developing one’s capacity to identify with and reflect upon a set of
judgments and beliefs about what constitute a good life. Call this the
autonomy argument. Yet public education is also frequently portrayed as a
unique institutional vehicle through which fellow citizens from diverse
backgrounds may be bonded together around a shared set of values. Call
this the citizenship argument. Private forms of education, but also
homeschooling, are thus seen as a serious threat to democratic solidarity
and social cohesion. (We return to these arguments later.)
Be that as it may, pluralism of educational choice is already the norm in
all liberal democracies, even though the scope and effects of pluralism
will vary widely from place to place (see Glenn and de Groof, 2002).2 In
most democratic societies schools that meet basic state requirements3 are
generally free to develop a school curriculum consistent with pedagogical
or religious philosophies and frameworks, and to recruit teachers qualified
and eager to foster the sorts of outcomes adumbrated by those pedagogies.
Assuming that parents who choose to home educate do so with the right
sorts of motivations, viz., attending to both the academic and the personal
needs of their children, there are still questions concerning whether
parents are authorised and qualified to carry out their aims of home
education. Additionally, there are worries that parents, acting upon their
own sense of entitlement, will possibly infringe upon the interests of their
children.
It should go without saying that parents’ ready interest in the welfare of
their children is not something that they would perceive as an
infringement but rather an obligation or duty that derives from one
simply being a parent.4 Framed as a feature of paternalism, parents
consider it chiefly their responsibility to care for their own children, to
nurture and to guide them, and this includes making most major decisions
on their behalf. This is because children are, in the main, not accountable
for their decisions in the same way as adults given their underdeveloped
maturity and reasoning capacities (Archard, 2003; Merry, 2007a;
Schapiro, 2003). How parental paternalism is expressed will vary widely,
of course, but it will seem obvious to many parents that they are best
placed to make decisions on behalf of their own children by virtue of their
simply being the parent. Yet the paternalistic function of the state is also
exercised on behalf of children, to ensure that their interests are looked
after. Liberal democratic states normally have child-protection services
and foster care because it cannot be assumed that parents will always look
after their interests. So when it comes to education, both the parents and
the state make claims on what is best for children.
One of the things being contested by parents who homeschool is not
only the assumption that a child’s autonomy and wellbeing is enhanced in
schools, but also whether schools really do encourage worthwhile shared
values and whether the offerings of citizenship are found exclusively
within the domain of the school. Homeschooling parents also question
whether those public benefits are the only—or even the most important—
ones worth pursuing. For example, the cultivation of family intimacy is

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generally recognised as an important good worth pursuing, both to parents

and children (Brighouse and Swift, 2006; Merry and Howell, 2009), even
though its public benefits remain unclear. While family intimacy may be a
precursor to other forms of attachment and responsibility—a view
advanced by Aristotle among others—the point here is simply that a
ranking of personal or social goods may vary and this is consistent with
robust pluralism. Personal goods may not always trump political goods
such as civic unity or social cohesion, but neither do political goods
automatically trump personal ones (see Galston, 2002, 2005).
Further, while the state may override parental authority in cases of abuse
or neglect, parents normally possess the right to exercise their personal
liberties both to meet a child’s basic needs and also to pass along one’s
personal values. If parents do indeed have these prerogatives, it is not
unreasonable to depict education both as a public, but also as a personal or
private good. Naturally this will entail the prerogative to decide the sort of
education one’s child receives. In all liberal democracies these
prerogatives are protected and revered rights and, consistent with these
entitlements, parents may extend these prerogatives to homeschooling.
Indeed, it is noteworthy that even its sharpest critics make no argument in
favour of abolishing it.
Yet despite hard fought for freedoms to educate children at home,
homeschooling continues to be viewed with suspicion. Alarmist reports in
the United Kingdom, Germany and elsewhere document a fear that parents
are inculcating beliefs, values or habits that run contrary to integration,
national identity, and social cohesion (Spiegler, 2003; Stevens, 2005;
Yuracko, 2008). Further, the aversion of some home educators to state
oversight, coupled with rising concern over ‘irresponsible’ parenting, has
precipitated appeals for the state to intervene to avert potentially harmful
outcomes for children (Gaither, 2009; Holguin, 2003a, 2003b; Schneider,
2007; Unruh, 2007). To illustrate these concerns more concretely, we now
consider the Dutch case in order to examine the phenomenon of
homeschooling in a context that provides extensive (though restricted)
parental freedoms within a robustly plural educational system.

II THE NETHERLANDS: PLURALISM, FREEDOM AND RESTRICTION

In international discussions on the expansion of parental choice and the
private delivery of education, the Dutch arrangement is frequently
regarded as a unique setting for testing many arguments in the choice
debate. The ‘success’ of the pluralist Dutch education system is advanced
as an argument for more private delivery of education in other countries
(Dennison, 1984) or, conversely, as a warning to not go down that road
(Walford, 1995). Central to the Dutch arrangement are two constitutional
rights: the right of freedom of education and the right of public and private
institutions to equal public funding. As a result, approximately 70 percent
of Dutch parents send their children to schools that, although established
by private associations and managed by private school boards, are

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nonetheless fully funded and regulated by the central government

(Dijkstra, Dronkers and Karsten, 2004).
At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, two trends stand out in
the Dutch educational situation. The first is that within the Dutch school
system the rights of parents count for less than the right of schools to
realise their denominational or educational character. The liberty to
provide education is chiefly the right to found a school and to teach on
the basis of a particular philosophical conviction.5 Further, in the
Netherlands private school boards now wield a lot of control over the
organisation and direction of a school; yet one might also say that they
operate as professional interest groups responsive to the demands of the
local market and not, strictly speaking, to the specific concerns or interests
of parents. Hence private school boards have become the agents of liberty
rights.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, the traditional aversion to the
state as sole educator is on the wane. While in the past the unity of the
Netherlands had developed by focusing on the right to be different,
prominent politicians and publicists now see this as its greatest threat.
Changes within the Dutch political climate, due only partly to large
pockets of urban poverty among visible immigrant minorities, have been
dramatic in the past ten years and talk of ‘shared cultural values’ now has
widespread currency. Thus, within this new ‘framework’ the liberty of
parents with ‘deviant’ religious or pedagogical ideas, including the desire
to homeschool one’s children, does not seem to fit.

Homeschooling in the Netherlands

Notwithstanding the diversity of options within the Dutch educational
system, the choices on offer do not address every parental concern.
Accordingly, in 1969 the compulsory school attendance law (Leerplicht-
wet, art. 5,b) made provisions for parents to exempt children from school
if the parents objected to the direction or orientation of the available
schools. Reasons for exemption are limited to matters of conscience and
not to teaching methods. So, for example, parents whose spiritual
convictions are in conflict with the orientation of the local school are, in
principle, permitted to request an exemption from compulsory school
attendance.
Even so, the number of homeschooling families in the Netherlands
remains extremely low. Fewer than two hundred and fifty Dutch children
were homeschooled during the 2006–07 school year, or approximately
0.01% of the total number of school aged children (Blok, 2004; Blok and
Karsten, 2008). Yet even these few families have managed to do so with
great difficulty, and the former Minister of Education van der Hoeven
openly declared that homeschooling was not in the interest of the child
(Klagen over het Onderwijs 2004). Today, oversight of homeschooling is
absent, and little is known about whether, or how, exempted children are
being educated outside of school.

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In 2003, the government initiated a discussion about the position of

home education in the Netherlands. The present government does not
support extending the possibilities for home education; it explicitly hopes
that homeschooling will only be an exception and not an alternative to the
school system. Presently the Ministry of Education is calling for further
research, detailing the experiences in other countries, in order to ascertain
the extent to which homeschooled children manage to succeed both in
higher education and the labour market. It is also considering the
introduction of specific procedures for inspection of the education of
children of parents who are exempted under the compulsory education
law.
So while homeschooling has become an increasingly popular form of
parental choice in North America and numbers of homeschooled children
in other European countries have doubled or tripled in recent years,
authorities in the Netherlands are reluctant, if not fiercely opposed, to the
expansion of homeschooling. Indeed, what remains clear in the Dutch case
is that despite the constitutional guarantee of freedom of education, the
liberty to homeschool in the Netherlands remains highly suspect, if not
strongly discouraged. Parental liberty, then, is generally restricted to the
existing system.
Of course one reason why the Dutch are generally nonplussed by the
decision to homeschool derives from the fact that its school system is
purposefully plural in character. It therefore seems unnecessary to opt out
of a system in which so many choices are available. Yet this is a thin
argument, for there is a host of reasons why parents may decide to
homeschool that have nothing to do with school diversity.6
There is a related explanation, which points to a time-honoured tradition
of freedom of religion in a country historically torn along denominational
lines. This way of organising and viewing educational liberty has cast a
long shadow over the debate concerning permissible and impermissible
forms of education. This history partly explains the worries about further
fragmentation along—chiefly non-Christian—religious lines. Here the
problem with homeschooling seems to be that it steps outside of well-
recognised boundaries and thus represents an unknown commodity whose
time to be fairly considered has come. Thus homeschooling raises
eyebrows—in the Netherlands, but also elsewhere—because there is very
little knowledge, outside of homeschooling circles themselves, of what
goes on. This concern is not trivial, but without compelling evidence
to suggest that homeschooling harms children, or fails to prepare them
for meaningful participation in society, this objection loses much of its
force.

III HOMESCHOOLING AND OBJECTIONS TO PARENTAL CHOICE

The brief foregoing discussion illustrates that even in highly pluralistic
school systems, such as the Netherlands, where multiple educational
philosophies and denominational differences are supported by the state,

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attitudes towards homeschooling continue to be negative and formidable

obstacles remain in place. Much strong resistance arises from the belief
that compulsory attendance laws safeguard children’s interests by
ensuring an adequate level of education necessary for functioning in
society and contributing to its economic stability. And certainly an
educated person is more free—to reflect, to take up pursuits that require
more refined skill sets, to enjoy higher levels of control over one’s work,
etc.—than one who is not.
Yet these beliefs are not in conflict with the view that education
routinely occurs outside of schools. Indeed, homeschoolers frequently
remind their critics that schooling and education are not the same; there
are many sites of education that facilitate learning, discovery and growth,
including libraries, sites of business and the outdoors. It seems fairly
uncontroversial, then, to posit that schools are not the exclusive sites of
educational experience.
Let us now turn to what we earlier called the citizenship argument and
the autonomy argument and focus on those more carefully. The citizenship
argument, among other things, implies that the expansion of home-
schooling would undercut the conditions for a stable and just democratic
society. We will parse this claim into two more specific objections: first,
homeschooling conforms to a privatisation impulse that will exacerbate
social inequality; and second, homeschooling facilitates unmonitored
private allegiances—such as religious commitment—that will inevitably
aggravate societal conflict. We then turn to the autonomy argument,
whose main concern is with the wellbeing and (future) liberty of the child.
In both cases we draw upon the Dutch situation for examples.

Privatisation and Social Inequality

There are many ways to interpret inequality. We will not examine those
here. For this discussion, social inequality refers to educational
opportunities that are available to some and not to others, thus
advantaging a fortunate few. In the educational realm, this often takes
the form of the familiar public-private debate. Yet the public-private
school distinction in the Netherlands, while not meaningless, certainly
does not represent the sharp division that it generally does in many other
countries.7 In theory, the system is designed to be open and accessible to
all potential choosers, provided there is sufficient space for the applicant.
So in the Netherlands ‘private’ options are already available within the
state-funded system of education. Private schools, within a properly
regulated system, can thus operate as a public resource (Merry, 2007b).
So how well does the social inequality objection fit the decision to
homeschool? As we have seen, homeschoolers feel that the choices
available to them do not address all of their concerns. They would also
argue that it is at least controversial to claim that children’s interests are
better served in the public sector. As we will argue below, the interests of
children are a complex affair and must be assessed according to specific

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contexts and individual characteristics. In many cases, children are

certainly better served in private settings if this means fewer incidents of
bullying, less exposure to risk-taking behaviour, and more attention is
given to the learning needs of a particular child (Merry and Howell, 2009).
But does homeschooling contribute to social inequality? Here the
concern seems to be that children in advantaged families will receive a
uniquely beneficial education to which others do not have access. After
all, homeschooling normally requires that certain arrangements and
resources be available in order for things to go well. Homeschoolers
generally consist of two-parent families (Ray, 2005); the typical
homeschooling parent has a university degree (ibid.);8 most have (or
make) the time to educate their children at home; most are very motivated,
etc. Indeed, without these—and other—conditions there is a strong
disincentive to take up or sustain the enterprise.
There are two possible responses to this. First, these characteristics are
shared by many parents whose children attend schools, and one might just
as easily argue that having extra parental resources, in addition to what
schools are able to offer—attentive teachers, lab equipment, class variety,
favourable peer effects, extracurricular activities—advantages children
who attend schools. To be sure, homeschooled children may receive more
individualised attention, and, if things go well, spend more time with their
parents. But strictly speaking this may or may not be an advantage, and it
is far from obvious how this exacerbates social inequality. More likely,
these are hypothetical allegations of benefits and outcomes for which there
is simply a paucity of evidence.
Second, the concern that children who are homeschooled will receive
extra attention, care and nurture, ironically implies that the worry about
protecting children’s interests may be misplaced. Yet even if these
concerns are not misplaced, there is no reason to assume that
homeschooling, with the right regulatory conditions in place, couldn’t
work alongside existing educational systems.9 But the point here is simply
that pluralism and social equality need not be incompatible aims; private
impulses can be tamed by sensible—and not heavy-handed—state
regulation whose goal it is to ensure that basic fairness procedures apply
and that children’s interests are also served.

Private Interests and Societal Conflict

The second objection, that pursuing private interests will exacerbate
societal conflict, addresses the tension between individual liberties and
broader societal welfare sustained through mutually shared civic
obligations and shared values. In all societies the concern for social
cohesion appears to centre on citizenship as a set of necessary dispositions
for binding persons of disparate backgrounds together around a
constellation of shared interests and commitments. Citizenship will entail
different kinds of responsibilities and obligations. Weaker variants
require knowledge about the way the political system works, and also

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that one obey the existing laws and respect the constitutional freedoms of
others, even when one does not personally agree with their choices.
Stronger variants entail cultivating a set of dispositions capable of
sustaining political practices that require that citizens promote the
effective functioning of their own political institutions, and perhaps the
most obvious way it does this is through schools. Yet whichever version
one prefers, citizenship represents only one of the interests or commit-
ments that persons have. Moreover, there is no reason to think that one’s
public duties ought to take priority over all other interests. Indeed, it
would be difficult to imagine this being true for anyone but the most
zealous patriot.
Promoting good citizenship (which incidentally is now compulsory in
all Dutch schools since 2006) is predicated on the idea that schools are the
best place to promote social interaction on the basis of equality and
respect. Some parents may want to foster that same type of interaction, but
some may not. It may be the case that some parents whose loyalties lie
elsewhere will nourish commitments that (appear to) militate against the
public good. The state will want to ensure that what is a positive
alternative for some is not used by others as a vehicle to promote
intolerance.
Here two things should be noted. First, the claim that shared school
attendance fosters greater social cohesion has never been convincingly
demonstrated, notwithstanding repeated claims to the contrary.10 Second,
social cohesion must be balanced against the demands of pluralism: liberal
democratic states must struggle to balance shared interests and
responsibilities with the equally important aim of facilitating the liberties
of its citizens to pursue life projects that enhance their personal wellbeing.
So pluralism (as a political value) requires that persons can do
permissible—though perhaps not always desirable—things with their
liberty. This means respecting the other’s right to make one’s own choices
and live with the consequences.

The Interests of Children

The third and final objection to homeschooling we consider is that it
interferes with the wellbeing and (future) liberty of children. Here we turn
and look more squarely at the autonomy argument. The claim goes
something like this: parents who homeschool their children exercise
complete authority over their education; such absolute control limits the
child’s exposure to different ways of life. We therefore have reason to
worry about the homeschooled child developing the capacity to become a
free, self-determining agent. ‘To become free,’ Reich writes, ‘students
must be exposed to the vibrant diversity of a democratic society so that
they possess the liberty to live a life of their own design’ (Reich, 2002,
p. 59). The restriction of parental liberty is therefore necessary in order to
prevent children’s liberties from being stunted, or their interests from
being neglected.

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What precisely are the interests of children? The interests of children

will diverge, in the details, from one child to the next, which is to say that
beyond rudimentary welfare concerns the ‘needs of children’ cannot be
generalised but will require attention to specific cases. Yet in the main we
may say that children, like all human persons, have an interest in
wellbeing. Though broad in scope, wellbeing will minimally entail basic
protections, nourishment, and education. But wellbeing will equally entail
the capacity to take up pursuits (e.g. vocations and relationships) that will
contribute to a flourishing life. Put more strongly still, wellbeing is related
to the (future) interest in self-governance, viz., the capacity to direct one’s
own life and to identify with it from the inside. One’s capacity to think and
speak for oneself is a valuable good whose future realisation requires the
right sorts of social arrangements and personal care. The challenge lies in
determining just which sorts of environments or personal attention fit that
prerequisite, not least of which because the scope of any child’s needs is
naturally a complex affair and at least partly will be determined by
personal characteristics as well as contextual constraints. Therefore, when
we examine the educational interests of children, a one-size-fits-all
approach is not only impractical and unpopular, it is also likely to be
unjust.
To avert unnecessary harms, liberal critics of homeschooling typically
focus on its lack of public accountability. Oversight of some kind is
believed necessary to curtail privatisation tendencies that threaten social
cohesion and equality of opportunity, but also an erosion of good
citizenship and public reasonableness. That, in a nutshell, was the
citizenship argument we addressed above. But the more pressing liberal
concern boils down to a loss of individual autonomy. Again, Reich, writes
of homeschooling: ‘total customization . . . threatens to insulate students
from exposure to diverse ideas and people and thereby to shield them from
the vibrancy of a pluralistic democracy’ (p. 56). Consequently, strict
guidelines and oversight are believed necessary for controlling parental
liberties in order to protect the interests of children.
There are a number of problems with this line of reasoning. First, it is
curious that homeschoolers would be singled out here. Parents of all sorts
‘customise’ the education and upbringing of their children in a million
different ways, especially when they are more educated and have plentiful
resources at their disposal. These include a range of educational and
recreational environments in which parents surround themselves and their
children with those who share the same core values, habits and
preferences.11 Unsurprisingly there is little concern with this sort of
customisation.
Second, liberal critics typically presume more than they prove and not
infrequently cast hypothetical allegations of aims and outcomes for
homeschoolers (or private schoolers) against idealised aims and outcomes
of public schools (Hardenburgh, 2005; Howell, 2003; Merry, 2007b). That
is, public schools are cast as uniquely qualified to facilitate meaningful
liberal virtues of civic intelligence and engagement. Yet not only is the
basic claim highly questionable, especially for all sorts of marginalised

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 Restricted Liberty, Parental Choice and Homeschooling 509

groups, it also of course ignores the fact that public schools promote
(explicitly and through the hidden curriculum) all sorts of values both at
odds with parents’ wishes as well as conditions favourable to the
cultivation of autonomy (De Ruyter and Merry, 2009; Molnar, 2005;
Pope, 2001; Powell et al., 1985).
Third, putting aside for the moment the daunting logistical challenges
associated with homeschool regulation, one is confronted with the
immense difficulty of assessing for liberal virtues (among them ‘civic
preparedness’, public reasonableness, multicultural tolerance and auton-
omy) in an uncontroversial way. Robert Kunzman sensibly observes:

What does it mean for us to be able to ‘step back’ and reflect on what
we’ve been taught about the good life, to evaluate and perhaps change
those beliefs? And even if we could reach a consensus about such criteria,
it seems beyond the pale to assert that state departments of education
are qualified or capable of making such judgments concerning the
thousands of homeschooled children within their borders (Kunzman,
2009, p. 325).

But let us assume for a moment that strict state oversight of all educa-
tional options is the norm. Even so, the prerogatives of parents to
choose an education they deem suitable for their child will continue
to be widely recognised and protected by constitutional law and
international declarations on human rights. Increasingly prohibitions
against home education are being struck down as unconstitutional,
arbitrary and discriminatory. These are simply the political realities. While
parents may not exercise their liberties without restraint, they are
generally assumed to be best placed to know and understand what is
best for their own children. Even the fiercest critics of home education
understand on principled grounds that parents enjoy important preroga-
tives where their children’s education is concerned, but also that a robust
pluralism must allow for a wide range of choices in the educational
sphere.
Here, then, is the crux of the matter: the liberty of parents to select
an education they deem suitable for their own children, provided
that parents’ own liberties do not unduly or improperly infringe upon
the liberty of their children—which in any case is rather difficult
to assess—is one that is consistent with a liberal democratic state
aiming to facilitate a plurality of choices as well as the exercise of
individual liberty. Where liberty is restricted by the state, it must be
justified either by considering the general harms done to others, or by
attending to the specifics of individual cases. Parental prerogatives are not
absolute, but parents assume an important role in the allocation of
authority over the education of their children, and, as we have argued,
parents generally are better placed than the state to know what their
children need.
Either side can err. States can overextend their legitimate reach by
being too intrusive into the lives of families, disrupting important forms

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510 M. Merry and S. Karsten

of intimacy and attachment; states also can wrongly assume that civic
virtues are exclusively fostered within the domain of their own
institutions. Parents, in turn, can abuse their liberty by misapplying it to
their children, equating their own wellbeing with their children, and
hindering the child’s development by imposing expectations and beliefs
with which a child may not easily identify. Parents may also thwart the
development of their child’s liberty by sending them to the nearest state
school, where they may be under-challenged, or worse, continually bullied
and harassed. So while parents may in fact be best placed to know what is
best for their own children, their paternalistic wisdom is far from
infallible.
So a balance is needed. In the first section, we demonstrated that states
do not grant unlimited freedoms; coercive restrictions of liberty by the
state are justified when doing so ensures the expression of liberty for
others. Indeed, liberty is not an all-consuming value, overriding all others.
The restriction of liberty also extends to persons as parents. The liberties
of parents need to be balanced not only against the interests of other
parents (parents may not hoard resources that effectively deny
opportunities to other parents and their children), but also against their
own children.
This means that the preferences, interests and liberties of their children
also must be considered. Hence the liberty rights of parents with respect to
their own children are not absolute, and the state interference with parents’
liberty can go some distance in promoting a child’s wellbeing. The point
here is simply that a system of checks and balances will help to insure
against liberty being abused but that the details of that system12 remain
somewhat elusive beyond specific cases. To help avert the abuse of
liberty, the distribution of authority—with neither parents nor the state
controlling all of it—constitutes wise policy.

CONCLUSIONS
In this article we have examined the tensions that arise in the case of
homeschooling when the liberty rights of parents potentially clash with
the interests of children and the expectations of the state. With respect to
the basic liberties of parents to choose an education they deem suitable
for their child, homeschooling will increasingly be an attractive option to
parents who find the alternatives available to them unsatisfactory.
Accordingly, liberal democratic states will play a crucial role in
facilitating the choices parents have, and those choices must be
consistent with serving the interests of the child. Yet beyond basic
welfare concerns the interests of children, as we have shown, will not
conform to one model or approach, but need to be appraised in particular
cases.
If the liberties of children are disregarded or thwarted through
homeschooling or any other means, the state’s role as protector of
children’s interests will trump that of the parents. That is, the best grounds

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 Restricted Liberty, Parental Choice and Homeschooling 511

for restricting the liberty rights of parents to homeschool would be to avert

the infringement of a child’s wellbeing, thus inhibiting its (future) liberty
and capacity for self-governance. However, homeschooling does not per
definition constitute such an infringement, and thus all cases must be
decided on the basis of evidence—which entails some form of oversight—
and not conjectures about hypothetical privatising effects that threaten to
eat away at social cohesion, good citizenship or autonomy. The decision to
homeschool appears consistent with any meaningful interpretation of the
liberty to follow one’s conscience. Unless there is clear evidence of a
child’s wellbeing being contravened, the restriction of legitimate liberty to
choose among a range of reasonable educational options constitutes an
injustice.
Homeschooling need not occur—as it does in many places—completely
out from under the governance of the state. Given what we have argued
concerning the role that states may play in ensuring that children are
looked after, its paternalistic role must not be discounted. We briefly
considered the Netherlands as a test case for homeschooling and it seems
appropriate to return to it here. The Dutch model exemplifies a facilitative
state that values and supports both educational pluralism and parental
liberty. Public and private options are incorporated into the Dutch
educational system so that privatising impulses are reasonably tamed. Yet
the flexibility of the Dutch system is deceptively thin. The urge to regulate
and control what all schools do produces effects that even the system’s
internal diversity cannot dispel. While the Netherlands does a better job
than most in balancing parental liberty, children’s interests and state
oversight, our examination of the homeschooling case exposes at least one
worrying inconsistency. However, given its relatively small size, the
Netherlands may be able to experiment with more ambitious forms of
oversight (e.g. periodic home inspections) that are not taxing either to the
government or too intrusive to the families concerned. Importantly, recent
evidence suggests that Dutch homeschooling families are not averse to
such oversight, provided that supervision is not punitive in character (Blok
and Karsten, 2008).
But for that to happen, much would need to change. While not
technically illegal, homeschoolers in the Netherlands face daunting
bureaucratic obstacles and populist pressures to restrict—with talk of
social cohesion and integration—educational choice. What is particularly
striking is that the constitutional guarantees of parental liberty with
respect to freedom of education appear to be somewhat arbitrarily
circumscribed.
By treating homeschooling as aberrant the Netherlands also risks
illegitimately restricting parental liberty and misapplying its own
constitutional principles of freedom of education to include only
institutionalised schools. Doing so, we suggest, will inevitably lead to
conflict. If the Netherlands manages to resist these impulses, it will
demonstrate that it continues to be a country where liberty—with
appropriate restrictions—continues to be a value worth protecting and a
country where the wellbeing of children continues to be a top priority.

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512 M. Merry and S. Karsten

Correspondence: Michael Merry, Faculty of Social and Behavioral

Sciences, University of Amsterdam, Nieuwe Prinsengracht 130, 1018
VZ Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Email: M.S.Merry@uva.nl

NOTES
1. For the purposes of our argument we ignore here the economic rationale for public education, as
well as the obvious effects of social and cultural capital, but also individual talent and effort, that
structure and mediate institutional opportunities such as schools.
2. For example, private education in one context may exacerbate social inequality while enhancing
it in another. Its effects will depend on a number of institutional features and demographical
variables.
3. These will include provisions for health and safety, teacher qualifications, curricular aims that
conform to state-mandated learning targets/standards, etc.
4. While certainly not true all of the time or for everyone, for perhaps a majority of parents the
affection one has for her own child eclipses from view the conviction that one acts from a sense
of duty. Rather, one generally is motivated by love, even when one’s judgments are deeply
fallible and often are not construed by the child as loving at the time they occur.
5. School types fully funded by the state now include Steiner, Dalton, Jenaplan, Montessori,
Iederwijs, Hindu, Catholic, Islamic, Jewish and a variety of Protestant schools.
6. For example, parents may wish to adapt teaching methods to fit the child’s learning style, foster
intimacy with their child, or supplement their education with religious belief (see Collum, 2005;
Duvall, 2005; Isenburg, 2007; Merry and Howell 2009; Rothermel, 2003; Winstanley, 2009).
7. Despite this arrangement, there is growing evidence in the Netherlands that some private schools
do contribute to social inequality inasmuch as they specifically cater to cultural or pedagogical
interests of middle-class parents. Many schools impose ‘voluntary fees’ for all sorts of
extracurricular activities, and poorer parents, not realising these fees are voluntary, steer away
from those schools. However, except for a tiny number of elite international schools, which
generally cater to expatriates, private tuition-based education is illegal (see Weenink, 2005).
8. For example, the education level of Dutch parents who homeschool is well above the national
average, with 65% of mothers and 59% of fathers having received post-secondary education. See
Blok and Karsten, 2008.
9. The main challenges of course are logistical. The Dutch Ministry of Education presently
questions whether the costs and administrative burdens are feasible, particularly if the number of
homeschoolers were to grow (Blok and Karsten, 2008). While oversight in some countries does
not exist, the Netherlands could look to Belgium, Austria, Ireland or France for innovative
approaches. (See Sperling, 2005).
10. Indeed, while it may be possible to speak of shared political and cultural values, the historically
diverse Dutch system of education has facilitated a range of divergent educational visions, It
remains to be seen whether the recent citizenship mandates will assist in furthering the aims of
social cohesion (see Merry and Milligan, 2009).
11. The difference ‘exposure to diverse ideas and people’ is supposed to make is, we suspect, little more
than a quaint idea far removed from the actual experience of most children who attend schools.
Particularly given the manner in which secondary students self-select (or have parents select for
them) classes, extracurricular activities and friends, the homeschooled child who primarily
socialises with other homeschooled children is not an exceptional case. In Europe the tracking
systems are even more likely to limit interaction of students from different social backgrounds.
12. With respect to religious schools, I have defined oversight as ‘a system of accountability that
would equitably allocate the funds and governance for staffing and maintaining the general
mechanisms necessary for safety, quality of learning, and self-reliance’ (Merry, 2007b, p. 260).
Given the huge variability in homeschooling environments, oversight will require a more
cautious approach. Oversight of homeschooling requiring, for instance, registration and periodic
testing may be appropriate but in the absence of compelling reasons for more intrusive kinds of
oversight the state risks losing its legitimacy in the eyes of parents. David Archard also reminds

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 Restricted Liberty, Parental Choice and Homeschooling 513

us of the class-based risks associated with oversight that almost certainly will penalise lower
income families and minority groups (Archard, 1993, pp. 114–15). The likelihood that oversight
will thus reinforce existing inequalities is something proponents of oversight often neglect.

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