HSLDA on those “Radically Atheistic” Public Schools

As my regular readers will know, I am in favor of allowing homeschooled students to play sports in their local public schools. Perhaps surprisingly, the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) has long remained neutral on sports access bills, declining to directly oppose them but refusing to support them. I’ve heard concern that allowing homeschooled children to participate in sports would require some form of academic oversight, but then that oversight would only apply to those who voluntarily chose to participate in public school athletics so that clearly isn’t the main issue here. What is?

In a 2013 article, Scott Woodruff of HSLDA explained their concern as follows:

The Cons: Arguments against Access to Sports

Possible Con 1: If a homeschool student develops many friends on a public school team, he might pressure his parents to go all the way and just enroll him in the public school. Putting a child in the radically atheistic public school system for sports could send the child a message that public schools are OK despite their hostility toward faith.

First of all, we see how Woodruff—and by extension HSLDA—views public schools, and not just some public schools, but all public schools. Woodruff describes the public school system (again, he’s generalizing across the entire nation here) as “radically atheistic” and says that public schools express “hostility toward faith.” This would have made sense to me as a child and adolescent, as I was homeschooled myself and this is what I was taught about public schools. And yet, today I simply shake my head in confusion. I have a daughter in public school now, after all, and her public school bears no resemblance to the public schools described here by Woodruff.

I do have to wonder—perhaps Woodruff is worried that if a homeschooled students participates in public school athletics the student, and perhaps the parents too, will see that public schools aren’t the anti-Christian hedonistic quagmire HSLDA makes them out to be?

Possible Con 2: The team and coach will influence the faith, morality, habits, and attitudes of the homeschool student. This influence will probably be in a direction different from the way his parents have been rearing him.

Woodruff is here endorsing homeschooling as a way shelter children and protect them from outside influences. I am not surprised to see it come up here, but you know what I’ve realized? I would rather my children have contact with other influences while they’re still in the home, so that we can talk through things with them as needed, than have them have no contact with other influences until they leave home. I realize that I don’t see outside influences as dangerous in the way that HSLDA’s followers likely do, but I don’t think their logic necessarily holds up even if you accept its premises.

Besides, if your teaching falls apart so easily if a child is exposed to other viewpoints, how strong is what you’re teaching?

Possible Con 3: Some sports programs designed just for homeschoolers in Wisconsin might collapse if students can opt for public school sports.

This concern may be the one I understand best. (Wisconsin is mentioned because Woodruff was addressing a bill in that state.) However, I would note that most states do not have an effective homeschool athletic system.

Possible Con 4: The simple happiness of enjoying meals and fellowship together as a family can be destroyed by the heavy time demands for practices, meetings, games, and tournaments. At least one parent will spend a lot of time on the road and away from their family hauling the student to all those mandatory events.

Wait wait wait. I thought HSLDA was all about parents’ right to make their own decisions for their children? Isn’t this HSLDA telling these parents how to raise their children? What if a family is willing to put in the time for the practice schedule and feels the necessary road trips are good family bonding? I thought homeschooling was supposed to allow for individuality—what is this one size fits all approach?

Of course, Woodruff does admit that there may be some pros to sports access:

The Pros: Arguments for Access to Sports

Possible Pro 1: For a few homeschool students, like Tim Tebow from Florida, being able to play on a public school sports team creates an open door to college and professional sports while being able to keep the benefits of homeschooling.

Possible Pro 2: Some families quit homeschooling every year because their kids want to play public school sports. Some of those families might continue homeschooling if they could have both. And some families might switch from public to homeschool if they knew their kids could still play sports.

Possible Pro 3: For some homeschool students, the reward of being able to play sports might motivate them to treat their homeschool studies very seriously.

Possible Pro 4: It gives public school coaches and students a chance to rub shoulders with awesome homeshooled kids. It spreads the message that homeschooling is a great option.

The benefits, in other words, are (1) college scholarships; (2) ensuring that parents don’t quit homeschooling over sports; (3) giving a student more motivation in their studies; and (4) exposing more public school students to homeschoolers.

Note that Woodruff lists exposing public school students to homeschoolers as a pro, but lists exposing homeschoolers to public school students as a con. I’m not entirely sure what this means. If you put a homeschooler and a public school student together in a room, what does Woodruff think would happen? If he thinks the homeschooler would influence the public schooler, why is he worried about homeschoolers being exposed to public school student? And if he thinks the public schooler would corrupt the homeschooler, why does he suggest that more exposure to homeschoolers would be a good thing for public school students?

I’m not sure Woodruff’s points are completely consistent. Of course, it’s also worth noting that Woodruff completely erases both secular homeschoolers and others homeschooling for nonreligious reasons, seeming to assume that all homeschoolers are concerned about their children’s Christian faith being eroded through involvement in the public schools.

If nothing else this article makes HSLDA’s view of the public schools fairly clear: They believe that public schools are “radically atheistic” and that they show “hostility toward faith.” As a public school parent myself, I have to wonder. The attorneys at HSLDA all appear to be homeschooling parents. Is it possible that they are so out of touch with what twenty-first century public schools actually look like that they actually believe their rhetoric?