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The Uniqueness of School

Proposition basically says that school is necessary because it (1) makes communication with diverse people necessary, as parents do not choose where their children go, (2) homeschooling and extra-curricular activities connected to it cannot bring that diversity, for the attending group is self-selecting rather than “unfiltered mixture”. We believe that none of the two assumptions is warranted nor true. Firstly, parents still select schools for their children on the basis of common values, cultures and achievements – and even go as far as to move closer to the school they want in order to fall into its catchment area [[http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/oct/25/chicken-run-city-schools]]. As such, public schools then offer blatant misrepresentations of the society, as exemplified by DC public schools, where less than 5 % of children are white, although whites account for 40.6 % of DC population [[http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/11000.html]]. Proposition policy bars no parent from sending their child to a religious or a predominantly white school; if anything, it strengthens incentives for doing so. This phenomenon of “rational racism” is well-accounted for in modern research, most recently by Tim Harford’s Logic of Life: no Proposition mechanism changes this. What stems therefrom is that a child’s environment is often only as diverse as parents allow it to be – and there is no change to that with homeschooling ban. Secondly, we think it rubbish that homeschooling should somehow eliminate diversity from socialization in sports teams or other clubs. What members of a basketball team or, indeed, a debate club share is not race, religion, nor income bracket: it is the desire to participate. We think that this volitional common goal is much more likely to bring tolerance and integration than forcing parents and children alike into one classroom; the latter is more likely to produce resentment to society in general and minorities in particular