ABSTRACT
There are now large numbers of children in the world’s democracies, particularly in English-speaking nations, who are not receiving education through schooling. In the United States, most notably, some partisan estimates place the figure as high as two million-and rising-though, as I will point out, lower official estimates also confirm that the numbers are very large and steadily growing. A substantial body of empirical evidence is now available and it demonstrates pretty conclusively that these children acquire a useful education in precisely the kind of terms that have been formally identified as such from society’s point of view. This has been achieved in a remarkably straightforward way: by the individual decisions of citizens to assert their democratic rights and liberties. Disenchanted with official educational provision, significant numbers of parents have taken their children out of school-or have decided not to send them there in the first placeand educate them at home. Whether or not the justifications for doing this are logically coherent cannot easily be determined because, as one would expect, they vary from family to family. But if the arguments I have rehearsed in previous chapters are cogent, it should be no great surprise that knowledge and understanding can be acquired successfully in the absence of assessment-driven, preplanned curricula, delivered to passive audiences by the obedient servants of hierarchical educational bureaucracies. Children can learn, and learn very well, in non-custodial surroundings, in an atmosphere of free inquiry and dialogue.
