The homeschooling or homeschooling it is an educational training process that is legal in several countries around the world such as the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, and Australia. Due to the covid-19 pandemic, which caused the widespread use of technology and stay at home, the number of parents who opt for this educational stream for their children increased significantly
In the United States, for example, home school children increased from 5.4% in 2020 to 11.1% in 2021, according to official data. The homeschooling it also rose 34% in the UK from 2020 to 2022, as reported by the BBC and The Guardian.
Although this alternative method it has fewer formal requirements than traditional education in an educational institution, in several countries parents are required to comply with a curriculum (including a specific plan for schooling at home), children or adolescents are tested annually and , for example, in the United Kingdom state inspections are carried out. The homeschooling trendThus, it is seen as a possibility of an education adapted to the particular needs of the child.
Then why is it not legal in uruguay? The General Law of Education of 2009 establishes the compulsory nature of initial education, primary education and basic secondary education and, likewise, indicates that “fathers, mothers, or legal guardians of children and adolescents, have the obligation to enroll them in a teaching center and observe their attendance and learning”.
In this same line it is expressed Robert Silvathe president of the National Administration of Public Education (ANEP): “In Uruguay, compulsory education is linked to attendance at the center”. And it then refers to article 16 of the Code for Children and Adolescents, which states that parents have the duty to “ensure regular attendance at study centers and participate in the educational process.”
Gonzalo Baroni, National Director of Education, adheres to Silva’s expressions and adds to El País that “Uruguay has no possibility of carrying out homeschooling even if the Constitution allows it, since there is no mechanism for validating knowledge without having passed through an institution formal compulsory education. And he maintains: “It is a possibility of education outside the educational concept of current Uruguay.”
Juan Pedro Mir, Director of Education in the last government of the Broad Front, president of Eduy21 and director of the José Pedro Varela School, also has a critical view of this model of education. “What homeschooling does is reinforce the circuits of fragmentation of the educational experiences of children and adolescents in any society, but particularly in ours”, which he already considers as “fragmented”.
He argues that education has two legs: the formation of the child and the formation of the citizen, and “a citizen must integrate society for the common benefit”. He also says that Uruguay has a “Varelian vision of the school as a public meeting space” and removing the student from this space means depriving him of the tools and skills to insert himself into the labor and political world. Lastly, he adds: “Behind homeschooling it can be associated that there is a revision of the Convention on the Rights of the Child because it is not fully accepted that it is a subject of law and is not the property of the family.”
Secondly, Rocio Schiappapietra, director of the Uruguayan Association of Psychopedagogy and professor at the Catholic University of Uruguay, tells El País that “all people have different educational needs” and that is why “we must be open to these proposals because there is no single answer.” The secretary of the board of directors of Eduy21 points out that this topic “invites us to think about the role of the family in the educational participation of formal learning”. However, this specialist has never thought about it for Uruguay.
A group of Uruguayan parents chose the home schooling for their children -despite the fact that they were later intimidated by the Justice- and they formed a project called “Amanecer”: they accommodated one of their houses in Valizas (Rocha) so that their children could be educated there. “It is a free space where comprehensive, experiential and practical learning takes place. We give them the possibility to choose what they want to learn and thus we can observe and know their tastes”, is expressed in a video recorded by these parents.
Da Silveira supported parents in their proposal
The Minister of Education and Culture, Pablo da Silveira, has years of worrying about this issue and reasoning about it. In fact, in 2014 she supported a couple who went to the National Administration of Public Education to express their desire to educate their son at home and not behind the doors of a traditional institution.
“For the first time in contemporary Uruguay, something common is happening in other parts of the world: a couple concerned about their son’s education decided to educate him at home instead of sending him to school,” he wrote in an opinion column in El País that published in those days, when da Silveira He was an academic and teacher at the Catholic University of Uruguay.
In that text, the current minister wrote that the couple “received a fierce response” from the authorities, since they threatened to take away their parental authority “for not complying with the duties inherent” to their condition.
The current member of the President’s cabinet Luis Lacalle Pou argued in that text that article 70 of the Constitution declares primary and secondary education compulsory, but article 68 affirms that “every parent or guardian has the right to choose, for the education of their children or pupils, the teachers or institutions that they wish. ”.