EKIP– Expert Club for Economics and Politics A Different Opinion
If someone had told me in 2000 that in just 15 years the Bulgarian parliament would pass a law that, albeit in an imperfect and unclear and unfinished form, would legalize and recognize homeschooling, I would have laughed at him. Well, come on, not to laugh, but at least to smile indulgently at his crazy optimism.
Now, however, the fact is a fact: after several strong citizen campaigns in support of home education over the past 3-4 years, Bulgaria already has such a law. It is not perfect: the perfect law on education would be very short and would read as follows: “The state withdraws from the field of education, terminates all state support for interested groups (such as schools and teachers’ unions) at the expense of taxpayers, returns tax money to families, and gives parents complete freedom to determine where, when, and how to educate their children, without regulations, taxes, or subsidies.” We may need another 15 years before even the most ardent defenders of interventionism mature for the truth that no area of life has prospered due to state intervention. But until then, at least we have something: children can choose an individual or independent form of education at the request of the student or the parents.
Forcing the state to give up some power over society is harder than pulling a fresh deer leg out of the teeth of a hungry wolf in the middle of a whole pack. For me personally, this achievement of Bulgarian civil society is of great importance: my children have always been homeschooled, even when we lived in Bulgaria. They have never been to school and have never seen a classroom – at least not until they entered college. And they are doing well. My son is a senior at Texas A&M (studying computer engineering) and is a member of the student council at the university. My older daughter has been accepted to Georgia Tech (a prestigious university), industrial engineering (a prestigious discipline).
But the personal successes of my family are not so important. What is more important is that freedom in Bulgaria has received a serious historical opportunity to prove its superiority. More precisely, the supporters of freedom in Bulgaria have received this serious historical opportunity. And every historical opportunity is also a historical challenge. And the libertarian community in Bulgaria must show that it can seize the opportunity and respond to the challenge.
The challenge
No realistically thinking libertarian can afford to assume that even a small step in favor of more freedom in some area of society cannot be jeopardized. Even this small breakthrough in the monolithic wall of the state monopoly is already a threat to various private groups with vested interests in this monopoly. Teachers' unions, for example; textbook publishers, too; and who knows how many companies and organizations related to the technical support of schools or to some other side of the state educational process. Even if a very small part of Bulgarian parents takes advantage of the freedom granted in the law, this small part will be active enough to be a thorn in the side of the educational status quo and to show that education outside of state schools is generally cheaper and of better quality. The gradual realization of this truth will deprive these groups of political influence and therefore reduce their economic influence in society. It is no coincidence that trade unionist Yanka Takeva makes false accusations against home education: its political and economic survival depends on maintaining the state monopoly and trampling on parents' rights in education.
To the political-economic factors we must add ideological factors. No education is morally or ideologically neutral; all education is always geared to serve the purposes of some ideology. Of course, many will object that there can be no ideology in the teaching of mathematics or physics – they are mathematics and physics, whether taught by a libertarian or a statist. But education is not only mathematics and physics; it is also literature, history and philosophy. These subjects are inevitably taught with some bias towards a particular ideology: and, of course, state schools will always teach them with a bias towards the imagined positive role of the state in society and according to the dominant state views. Moreover, education is not just the transmission of information; it is also a methodology of learning, of testing knowledge, of relationships between students, of socialization. All these factors have an indirect influence on the formation of children’s attitudes and worldviews. A child who has been educated as an individual with his own individual pace of development, his own individual interests and talents in a healthy family environment, with balance in his relationships with people of all age groups, will have very different attitudes, views and reactions from a child who has been educated in the collective environment of the classroom, where all children of the same age are forced to have the same pace of development, where personal achievements are evaluated not according to the individual child, but according to the fantasies of some supposed “experts”, and where relationships are limited to the same age group between three walls and a blackboard. While the difference is sometimes not easily visible to those of us who have graduated from public schools, I have had repeated opportunities to observe it in my own family over the past 15 years. And the results are not at all favorable to public schools and their false “socialization”.
Therefore, it is natural to expect that those who have invested in public education will use every opportunity to lobby for the repeal of this point in the law. They have an interest in this repeal – both political and economic, and ideological. My prediction is that they expect no development in the field of private and home education. After a certain period of time, they will point to this lack of development and say: “It may be a good idea, but since no one is interested or has any developed programs anyway, it would not do any harm if this point were removed from the law and the state monopoly was restored.” It is possible that in the absence of development and public interest, regional education inspectorates will begin to draw up their own rules that will effectively nullify the meaning of the law.
The possibilities
Even with the limited freedom it allows, the law opens the door to a counter-challenge against the state education system: quite formally, legally, and legitimately, advocates of freedom of education can offer educational programs on the market that compete with the state ones and show that private initiative can produce better educated students than those in public schools. Even if at first not many parents take advantage of their rights under the new law, private initiative on the market can create the necessary psychological, legal, intellectual, and economic atmosphere to make freedom of education an established public practice, instead of a marginal whim of legislators and individual parents. The constant offering of private alternatives – both of complete curricula and of curricula for individual subjects – will not only encourage many parents to take the step towards giving their children a better education; it could also put pressure on the state education system itself to rethink its methods and principles of operation. Competition is always a good thing, and if public schools cannot compete, this can only become clear against the backdrop of private alternatives.
If the small but active and intelligent liberal and libertarian community in Bulgaria is truly dedicated to educating Bulgarians about the benefits of freedom, this historic opportunity – along with the challenge above – imposes certain obligations on us: we must begin to produce and market curricula. Not one curriculum, but many. And not necessarily complete curricula – some might be complete, others limited to certain subjects. Even offering separate curriculum materials in specific areas of interest would be a serious advance for the cause of freedom in Bulgaria. And it is not necessary to seek some uniformity in curricula nor to speak of a “program” for home or independent education; what is needed is the creation of an atmosphere conducive to the separation of parents and students from the monopoly of the public school, conducive to individual and autonomous initiative, and conducive to the creation and nurturing of a spirit of discovery and initiative even in the very process of searching for curriculum materials. Such an atmosphere can be created not through a uniform program, but through a variety of different educational materials from which conscientious parents can choose those appropriate for their child and the views of their family.
Creating such an atmosphere will take away public initiative from state officials. Public attention is naturally directed to those areas where there is visible dynamics, where something is changing and developing, and where there are visible successes. The existence of such a positive dynamic alternative to the state education system will be a good response to the attempts of interested groups to restore the state monopoly.
In the long run, such a market atmosphere will facilitate decision-making by more parents. While today homeschooling and independent education rely on the courage of individual parents, the goal of private programs should be to make the decision easier for a larger number of parents who would not otherwise take this step. This means that the programs must be consciously tailored to the Bulgarian consumer. The current several dozen families with homeschoolers in Bulgaria either use American programs or create their own programs by selecting textbooks and books from various sources. Bulgarian homeschool programs – whether comprehensive or for individual subjects – must be tailored to Bulgarian children and parents, while simultaneously taking into account the peculiarities of Bulgarian culture and history and avoiding the characteristic hyper-patrioticism of public education. For homeschooling to demonstrate superior results, it must aim at both facilitating the work of Bulgarian parents and the realization of their children in global labor markets.
