By Patrick O’Brien

I am a teacher. It’s a dream I’ve had since middle school, actually, when I gave a (rather long-winded) presentation to my class about some topic in history. I do not know how enlightening it was for my classmates, but for me it was a revelation, and from that moment I knew I wanted to teach. This to say, the topic of education is very important to me. 

And since the mid 1800s, the topic of education has been very important to the state as well. As a democracy, it behooves us to have an informed citizenry. That was the rallying cry of the public school reformers, and it holds true today. We talk of citizens having a right to education because there is also a responsibility incumbent upon citizens to be capable of contributing to the healthy governing of the state. But while much could be said concerning the right to education, it is the right to educate with which I am concerned. Namely, I wish to address the question: who has the right to educate? 

I do not ask this merely out of scholarly interest. How we answer this question has far reaching consequences, consequences which we are seeing play out today in the Vermont legislature. 

Recently there was a proposed amendment to H.930, the student absenteeism bill. It stated that before a family could remove their child from a public school, the school would have to report any concerns related to the child’s welfare, educational neglect, or truancy. The purpose of the amendment, according to its sponsor, was to crack down on families using homeschooling as a way of circumventing state oversight of absenteeism. While the wording of the amendment was vague, the intent seemed to be that if the school believed the parents did not intend to educate their child, the state should refuse to allow the family to homeschool. 

There are many issues with the amendment. Why would a family that did not wish to educate their child not rather take the 8+ hours of free child care which public schooling offers? Or why if the school believed there to be issues of abuse it wouldn’t have raised the concern earlier (teachers are mandatory reporters, after all)? But the issue pursuant to the question of the right to educate is this: the amendment clearly assumes the state has the right to educate the child. 

This is hardly new. Take a look at Vermont’s laws regarding homeschooling: families must send a written letter of enrollment to the state, teach mandated subjects, and annually assess their child. None of these are outlandish requirements – what is outlandish is that the state should require them. Were we to apply the same laws to any other aspect of child rearing, there would be a public outcry. Should we demand of families that they submit an intention to feed their child along with a healthy eating plan following the food groups set out by the state and that evidence of the child’s well balanced diet be collected? It is clear that the assumption running throughout is that the state has the right to educate a child and that it may waive that right to allow families to educate their child in its stead. 

The issue is, frankly, it’s bonkers. It is really a complete inversion of the truth and of the original intent of the public school reformers. The desire of educational pioneers like Horace Mann was to give children the opportunity of a better education for those families that could not provide it themselves. Public schools were a resource for families, not for the state. 

The right to educate must belong to the family. Of whom is it expected that a child will learn his or her first words? Of whom is it expected a child will learn to use the toilet and wash his or her hands? Of whom is it expected that a child will learn empathy, honesty, and right from wrong? It is from the family that a child first begins to learn, and it is the family which is most influential in a child’s educational development. 

Teachers are intimately familiar with this fact. The largest factor in a child’s academic success is the family’s investment in his or her education. Teachers may try every trick in the book to engage a child, but if the child’s family doesn’t value education or support a teacher’s efforts, the chance of the child becoming academically successful is low. The primary responsibility of education belongs to the family, and thus the right to educate must necessarily belong to the family. 

While the amendment was struck down, it is clear the legislature still largely maintains the belief that the state holds the right to educate a child and that we will see further attempts to enforce that claim in the future. Senator Kesha Ram-Hinsdale’s remark that homeschoolers do not receive enough state oversight makes that very clear.

In Defense of Common Sense is a regular column of the Vermont Daily Chronicle that seeks sensible solutions to the myriad of maladies which today afflict the body politic of Vermont. Its author approaches his chosen subjects through the lens of localism. He has no particular credentials to recommend him, only he sometimes thinks about things. His editor insists he also mention he has a Master’s in Education, as well as degrees in History, English, Classics, Medieval Studies, and Philosophy.