ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the positioning of families who chose home education as a means of managing risk. Throughout late modernity risks are increasingly identified as being transnational, driven by global rather than local events. The rise in numbers of home educators should therefore be regarded both in terms of how families are responding to changing economic, social and political conditions, but also in terms of how society is being shaped by their practices. The positioning of education, schooling and homeschooling within democratic understandings of the public and common good is highly contentious and exposes fault-lines in how individuals understand their relationship to their communities. Baker and LeTendre note that 'mass schooling' is a revolutionary turn away from small-scale, local practices that existed within families and communities for centuries and typically ensured individuals learned a simple set of skills in order to survive within their communities.
