Amar Bhide's emphasis on decentralization, case by case methodology, the critical value of dialogue and relationships, and the pathological centralization that prefers mechanistic and numerical models: all of this applies to our mass coerced approach to schooling as well.

Massive school districts and the disenfranchisement of families from participation in schools have created the system we have today, a system that is highly centralized, does not work on a child-by-child basis but prefers standardization (charters and public); and imagines that it can use numerical grades and tests to measure people instead of using dialogue and relationships to support learners.

Homeschooling has made relationships front and center in the child's world and that is a direct counter to the large, centralized system. The mechanistic approach to schooling replaced the truly small and local one-room schoolhouses that were relationship-based and local. Schools have grown large, impersonal and factory-like. Changing this system means bringing back human relationships and dialogue and small-scale interactions that are humane and democratic.

BELOW: INET's complete interview with Amar Bhidé, the author of the recent book "A Call for Judgment."