Home Schooling: Dimensions of Controversy, 1970-1984

Abstract

Criticism of the public schools and alienation of parents from the public schools are among the most fundamental rea sons why home schooling has gained growing public support since the late seventies. Gallup polls generally show a steady decline in public confidence in the public schools from 1969 to 1978. Declining discipline, busing for purposes of racial integra tion, and declining test scores have been cited by George Gallup as important alienating factors.1 United States Supreme Court, in Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), upheld the rights of parents to use private schools to educate their children.2 How ever, many parents who were alienated from the public schools during the seventies and eighties could not afford to pay for a traditional private school while paying taxes to support the pub lic school. As attorney Gerrit H. Wourmhoudt observed, The Pierce decision was handed down ... at a time when a great many Americans could afford to pay the price of both public and private education for their children ... today relatively few par ents can afford to shoulder the costs.3