Summary:
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Tim Burchett, a Republican congressman from Tennessee, spoke with reporters later that day about the tragedy in his home state.
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Given the logic of this movement, the parent who has ultimate control over her rights and protects her children is the homeschooling parent.
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And, in Tennessee, she is permitted to do so with little more than a high-school diploma or G.E.D., as “anyone can teach” is a tenet of the parents’-rights movement.
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However, this respect for individual choice is at odds with what we know more generally about homeschooling: homeschooled children are at a higher risk for abuse and neglect, partly because they have less contact with mandated reporters like teachers and social workers.
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In this regard, despite our Christian zeal, Americans are a curiously faithless lot: we believe only in what we can see.
On Monday morning, a 28-year-old armed with three lawfully acquired firearms killed three adults and three children at the Nashville Covenant School. It was the 130th mass shooting in the United States this year. Tim Burchett, a Republican congressman from Tennessee, spoke with reporters later that day about the tragedy in his home state. After expressing sadness for the deaths, Burchett stated of gun violence in the United States, “We’re not going to repair it—crooks are going to be criminals.” He said there was nothing lawmakers could do: “I don’t see a meaningful role that we could play other than to mess things up, honestly.” . . . I believe a revival is essential in this country.”
Burchett’s shaggy nihilism is a standard Republican position in the aftermath of fatal shootings; it is a vaguely millenarian take on armed incompetence. The dialogue then took a surprising turn. A journalist noted that Burchett has a young daughter and asked the congressman what might be done to “protect students like your daughter” in school. Burchett said, somewhat dismissively, “Oh, we homeschool her.” “However, that is our decision. Some individuals lack this choice. . . . It simply met our needs far better,” and the conversation ended there.
Is homeschooling the best option for parents who wish to keep their children safe from school shootings? Does it suit their needs? Following the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, last year, the conservative outlet the Federalist published an op-ed entitled “Tragedies Like the Texas Shooting Make A Somber Case for Homeschooling”: “The same institutions that punish students for misgendering people and hide curriculum from parents are simply not equipped to safeguard your children from harm.” But even if children receiving a religious education are shielded from many of the dangers highlighted by parents’-rights advocates — indoctrination by critical race theory, mandated gender confusion, and reams of hardcore pornography filling school libraries — they still face the small but terrifying risk of their school becoming another Newtown, Parkland, or Uvalde; they still must participate in scary active-shooter drills. Indeed, such harm cannot reach a child behind a locked family home door.
School as a physical, social, political, or architectural concept—concepts that were tested by pandemic-era remote learning and that are perverted by school shootings—is predicated on people coming together in a shared space to receive a standard education, one that is suited for creating an informed citizenry that is prepared to participate in a democracy and contribute to the public good. Fear and attempts to control curricula, reading material, time spent with teachers and classmates with varied viewpoints, and even the prospect of exposure to Michelangelo’s David characterise the parents’-rights movement’s response to an unavoidably chaotic and unpredictable framework. Given the logic of this movement, the parent who has ultimate control over her rights and protects her children is the homeschooling parent. By retreating from the public good, she secures her autonomy. With her home acts, she upholds the conservative ideas of personal responsibility and freedom from government involvement. And, in Tennessee, she is permitted to do so with little more than a high-school diploma or G.E.D., as “anyone can teach” is a tenet of the parents’-rights movement. (Tennessee doesn’t even have particularly lax standards on homeschooling compared to the rest of the country. In several states, homeschooling parents are not required to demonstrate that they are fulfilling their child’s constitutional right to an appropriate education.)
It is easy to empathise with parents, regardless of their political or religious leanings, who may be tempted to escape from the outer world and hunker down in a country with more firearms than people. (And there are many good reasons for a family to homeschool: a school may not be supportive of a child with disabilities or of a child who faces bullying or discrimination.) However, this respect for individual choice is at odds with what we know more generally about homeschooling: homeschooled children are at a higher risk for abuse and neglect, partly because they have less contact with mandated reporters like teachers and social workers. Nor does this sympathy fit what we know about gun violence. Eighty-five per cent of children under twelve killed by a firearm are shot at home. About two-thirds of domestic violence-related child deaths are caused by guns. Most children inadvertently murdered by guns either shoot themselves or are attacked by a peer, sibling, or parent in their own house or a friend’s home. Over the previous decade, suicide deaths among children and adolescents, frequently involving a firearm kept at home, have climbed by 66%.
Children’s most significant exposure to firearms occurs at home, not in school. In contrast to school shootings, however, which occasionally stop us in our tracks, few of these stories will ever dominate a news cycle. They are too mundane. Like most homeschooled children, they are largely unseen, ignored, and unaccounted for. In this regard, despite our Christian zeal, Americans are a curiously faithless lot: we believe only in what we can see.
