Green Party Values & Homeschooling: Decentralization I

Homeschooling can be viewed as a form of decentralization of the educational factory system that has grown very concentrated. This centralization trend spans > 80 years as shown by the decreasing number of school districts within the US. Consolidation has continued unabated until the present day. Note that in 1930, the population was far smaller than the population today, 2009. Centralization has accompanied urbanization and now encompasses even rural districts once home to multi-age, one-room schoolhouses.

The creation of these large administrative units and the large schools they administer, has reduced effective parental and local control. It has created a policy emphasis on the physical infrastructure of the factory school system. The centralization tendency is actually even more pronounced since this chart does not show the remote control exercised by testing companies like ETS and College Board and the manufacturers of IQ tests. 

This massively centralized school structure is one foundation of the systematically inhumane and antidemocratic nature of schooling today. Widespread participation in this system has weakened individual initiative, dehumanized us and inured us to the steady erosion of our rights as citizens and human beings.

Homeschooling is school decentralized to the smallest unit, schooling in its most basic form. Homeschooling along with its mom-and-pop homegrown homeschooling businesses, co-ops and parent-to-parent services of all kinds represent a spontaneous decentralization of education activity. The system itself is too big and that very structure creates more problems than it solves. The Green Party tool of Decentralization is one of my favorite ways to understand homeschooling and the contributions it can make to discussions of "educational reform."