On the Square Today

In today’s On the Square column , David Mills responds to those who praised homeschooling when it was a counter-cultural alternative but are wary of it now that it is an option for politically, culturally, and religiously conservative parents:

This new criticism is, to someone like me, a very strange reversal. homeschooling is an act of the kind of freedom I was taught our country provided, a freedom of self-determination that was one of its great glories. Even leaving out the idea I was also taught, that removing oneself from the system was a laudable act of counter-cultural liberation, with which I still have some sympathy, to teach one’s children oneself, being able to choose curricula and readings and custom the teaching to every child’s needs and gifts, is the kind of thing I was taught, by teachers of impeccable liberalism, to praise. It is, as it was once understood to be, an expression of liberalism and liberality in public affairs.