Test 11 16

Homeschooling for the Common Good?

"I wonder how we can discuss homeschooling’s regard to the common good as an institution, rather than as individual families and students. Considering how diverse homeschoolers are, perhaps an effective idea to develop in our paper would be how the institution of homeschooling could possible keep in check society and lead us toward a tolerance of even those who disagree with the democratic vision. This, however, is a dangerous question. If we encourage citizens to draw the lines of the common good not even by our common citizenship but as a vague concept of humanism, critics would caution against loosing our narrative and creating a people who cannot function as citizens anymore . . .
This is precisely the question – what’s the balance between, on the one hand, a state-centric vision of the government as the only proper arbiter of truth and the meanings of citizenship, and on the other hand a tribalism with no common interests. We want to find the middle ground that might alleviate the fears of both extremes. That’s our theoretical work – articulated a framework for homeschooling and the common good. Then our empirical work comes in and verifies whether or not, in fact, homeschoolers fit the theorectical framework we've crafted."