Tocqueville Among the Homeschoolers

I was flattered to be invited earlier this summer to deliver a commencement address for a small group of homeschool graduates and their families not far from where I live in upstate New York. Preparing the speech forced me to wrestle with a tension that has long shaped my own thinking about education.

I’ve spent much of my career arguing for educational choice. At the same time, I consider myself an unabashed institutionalist. Healthy institutions—from schools and churches to libraries and Little League—form the indispensable infrastructure of society.

To some, those commitments might appear to be in conflict. School choice, and homeschooling in particular, is often portrayed as abandoning institutions, specifically public schools. But preparing my remarks underscored for me how incomplete that framing is.

For years, school choice advocates have tended to make what are essentially economic arguments: Empower parents to become consumers of education; fund students, not systems; and raise school quality through choice, competition, and allowing new suppliers to enter the market—just like in every other sector of the economy. Moreover, choice allows families to seek schools whose curricula, culture, and mission align with their values and aspirations for their children, whether that be classical schools, religious schools, Montessori schools, Core Knowledge schools, or career and technical schools. Innovative district schools and other models can also learn from one another in productive ways.

Those arguments for choice are still sound. But they miss something essential. They explain why families seek choices, but they don’t fully explain what they do next.

In my speech, I tried to see homeschooling not through the familiar lens and language of consumers, markets, and competition, but through the eyes of Alexis de Tocqueville, the French political philosopher who toured America in the 1830s and chronicled our young republic in Democracy in America. People often describe homeschooling as opting out. I suggested something different:

Your parents may have exited one educational institution. But they didn’t stop there. For just a moment, they were consumers. They looked at the educational marketplace and concluded, “This school is not the right place for our child.” Then something remarkable happened. They stopped consuming. They became producers. They didn’t merely purchase an education. They built one.

That last line surprised even me as I wrote it. Because it occurred to me that the most diligent homeschooling families are performing a profoundly American act of strengthening civil society. Tocqueville famously observed that Americans possessed a remarkable habit of association. Faced with problems, they didn’t simply petition the state. They gathered their neighbors, formed organizations, accepted responsibility, and built institutions together.

I wanted the graduates to leave with something more than pride in their accomplishment. I wanted them to understand what their parents had really given them. An education, yes, but also a brilliant example of citizenship. Their parents saw something they believed needed doing and, instead of waiting for someone else to do it, accepted the responsibility themselves. Whether the graduates someday homeschool their own children is beside the point. What I hoped they would inherit was that instinct: When something important isn’t being done well enough, don’t complain or blame others. Build.

Seen in this light, homeschooling is not simply an act of exit. It’s an act of institution-building. Parents organize co-ops, recruit teachers, and share curricula. They arrange music ensembles, debate clubs, athletic leagues, field trips, service projects, and opportunities for their children to cultivate and maintain friendships.

This Tocquevillian lens suggests that those of us who advocate for educational choice have perhaps unintentionally undersold our own cause. Too often, we make the case for choice simply by cataloging the failures of public schools. We point to bureaucracy, ideology, declining achievement, parental frustration, or the inability of large systems to meet every child’s needs.

Those concerns are real; I’ve made some of those arguments myself. But they cast school choice primarily as an escape hatch. And while that’s a valid argument, it’s also an impoverished one. If all school choice produces is empowered educational consumers, it will have accomplished far less than its supporters hope—and its critics fear.

The purpose of educational freedom is not simply to help families find better schools. Nor is it only to create competition, or even to maximize parental choice. Its highest purpose is to cultivate citizens who are willing to accept responsibility for building institutions worthy of a free society.

The first generation of school choice arguments focused on liberty and markets: Parents deserve options, and schools will almost certainly operate better under competitive pressure. A more sophisticated second-generation argument emphasized pluralism: A free society should make room for many different educational visions to flourish. Both remain true and valid. But they point toward something even more important: Educational freedom should not merely empower consumers or make room for diversity. It should inspire institution builders.

This should also give critics of school choice pause. Too often, they portray homeschoolers and other choice families as mere separatists, abandoning the common good. Many are doing the opposite and attempting something considerably more demanding. They are accepting responsibility for one of society’s most important roles—educating our children—rather than delegating it to someone else.

To be clear, none of this diminishes the importance of public education. A healthy republic still requires excellent public schools. Nor does it suggest that every family should homeschool. The lesson is larger than homeschooling. It’s stewardship. Consumers merely choose among available institutions. Responsible citizens create, sustain, or repair them. Nor is one morally superior to another. Taking responsibility can mean leaving an institution that no longer serves its purpose and building something better. Other times it means staying, serving, and doing the patient work of renewal.

Near the end of my commencement address, I challenged the graduates not to spend their lives looking for perfect institutions—a family, a business, a congregation, a civic organization, or even a school. “Perfect institutions don’t exist,” I told them. “Don’t begin by asking, ‘Who is responsible?’ Begin by asking whether the answer might be: ‘Me. I am. I am responsible!’”

I ended with a simple charge: “America has plenty of consumers. We need builders.”

I was speaking to a room full of homeschool graduates and their families. In retrospect, I realize I was also speaking to those of us who have spent years defending school choice and educational freedom. We’ve become very good at explaining why families leave schools. We should spend an equal amount of time explaining what educational freedom is ultimately for. Its purpose is not only to expand choice. It is to form citizens who are prepared to inherit, build, sustain, and renew the institutions upon which a free society ultimately depends.