Home-schooling has many functions

There's a lively discussion at Pandagon about home-schooling going on. It's interesting, because while the majority of home-schoolers are likely Christian fundamentalists and right-wingers, there are people who yank their kids out of public schools and home school them for other reasons, like the schools aren't good enough, etc. A handful of kids are extremely bright, too, and do much better outside of the plodding public school system.

Nonetheless, the majority of people who do it do so because their kids are in grave danger of not hearing Jesus evoked every 2 seconds and hearing about science. And though it gets less press, there are also protestations of historical education--the fear is that kids will learn about the long struggle for women's suffrage, the civil rights movement and things that made people distrust the government like Vietnam and Watergate. The facts hate America, the mythological America that was founded on Christian fundamentalism, everyone knowing their place, and unending trust in the (white, male) authorities, an America that never existed but is feverently believed in.

I grew up in a community where a good number of people took advantage of the right to home-school. A few did it for unique reasons, like they lived too far out to take their kids to school or because a pregnant daughter was an embarrassment. But most did it because of the standard Christian fundamentalist blah-di-blah. And what struck me then and sticks with me now is that the number one thing that home-schooling did, more than all the crap about keeping kids ignorant of science and history which was unlikely to stick long-term since they did learn to read, was that it kept women stuck at home for a couple of decades. It was a simple way to justify the existence of a housewife. And since most of the people in my town were dirt poor, keeping a housewife was a luxury indeed. But since hard work was one of the highest values, such a luxury still had to justify her existence by working her ass off. Therefore, the work of the school teacher was added to all her other duties as a housewife.

So yes, what I'm saying is that aside from all other factors, home-schooling is a way for poor people who value working their fingers their fingers to the bone to engage in a little conspicous consumption.