Home schooling (home education in the UK) has been increasingly adopted by parents in the United States and the UK as a preferred educational choice (Bhopal and Myers 2018; OSA 2018; Redford et al 2016). Despite this, understandings of its value as an educational route have been obscured within work that persistently privileges unreliable data and analysis, ignores the impacts of structural inequalities upon home schoolers and is further complicated by media and political discourses that shape policy-making and regulation. Home schooling is also a more complex area of education because, unlike school attendance which generally occurs within institutional spaces often subject to regulation by the state, it is a practice which happens within the intimacy of the family home (Kraftl 2013). This paper discusses the grounds upon which an understanding of the ethics of home schooling could be shaped.

Using the Spinozist model suggested by Naess (2005) for understanding the complexities of the deep ecology movement, including the divergent belief systems of its proponents and their relationship to practical action in different geopolitical settings; this paper argues that the ethics of home schooling can be delineated within its own global complexities. Home schooling can be seen as a platform in which the divergent pathways that lead to its adoption can then be assigned ethical value determined by the practical actions of home schoolers; and, that regulation or legislation affecting home-schooling should address the ethical demands of home schooling practice. The paper argues this is not currently happening for a number of reasons. Firstly because home schoolers are unwilling to engage in debates about ethical education, other than those shaped entirely by their personal belief systems. Secondly because policy discourses that shape homeschooling legislation are often motivated by responding to the personal belief systems of homeschoolers rather than the practice of homeschooling. Finally such discourses are often entwined within biases shaped by structural inequalities of race or class. 

The paper will unpick the divergent constellations of belief, practice and regulation of homeschooling. Beliefs might be understood in terms of decisions to home school. These include a range of philosophical, religious and political stances including those of Conservative Christian, evangelical families and left-wing, alternative radical families who believe it is the family not the state's responsibility to educate children (Cooper and Sureau, 2007). It also includes families who feel let down by schools in terms of poor academic performance, experiences of bullying or lack of provision for pupils with special needs (Bhopal and Myers 2018). Homeschooling practice is similarly diverse with evidence that some children receive exceptional opportunities from homeschooling whilst others remain effectively uneducated (Neuman and Guterman 2016). Legislation and regulation of homeschooling is notoriously variable depending on national and regional variations. Significantly regulation may also be shaped by wider political discourse e.g. UK Muslim homeschoolers identified as potentially radicalising their children by Ofsted (Myers and Bhopal 2018).

This paper presents a discursive, theoretical analysis of ethics and home schooling. It draws upon a wide range of research conducted by the author in the past: this has included work exploring home schooling in relation to risk; social inequalities associated with race, class and religion; and media and political discourses (Bhopal and Myers 2016, 2018; Myers and Bhopal 2018). However, the main purpose of the paper is to contribute to a debate about ethics and home schooling that acknowledges the diversity and complexity of the subject matter.

Drawing upon previous research (Bhopal & Myers 2016, 2018; Myers & Bhopal 2018) the paper argues the need for a new understanding of ethics and homeschooling that understands its complexities, but situates these within the practice of homeschooling and not within the broader discourses of interest groups or policy-makers. An ethics of home schooling would be useful on several levels. It would be a means to understand its significance as an educational choice situated amongst other forms of education and within wider debates about education. It would also provide a means of evaluating its effectiveness outside of debates about the sanctity or intimacy of private domestic family spaces. And finally it would provide a space in which to focus policy, legislative and regulatory processes upon the practice of home schooling rather than within political and media discourses.

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