100,000 Russian Children Now Homeschooled, Undercutting Impact of Conventional Education

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 2 – In many countries, public schools with their standardized curriculums, have played a key role in national building. In the US, for example, the spread of public schools and their widespread use of McGuffey readers in the 19^th century helped to tie the country together anddefine what it meant to be an American.

            Soviet leaders from Lenin to Gorbachev viewed the schools as a key means of shaping the ideas and views of the rising generation. But since 1991 and with increased incidences of bullying and other problems, Russian parents have been allowed to homeschool their children rather than being required to send them to public schools.

            Two months ago, the Novosti news agency reported that “more than 100,000” Russian children are now being homeschooled (ria.ru/20190909/1558468146.html), a relatively small share of the roughly 20 million children in public schools but a number now large enough to attract attention and raise questions about its consequences for Russia.

            In many countries, parents choose to homeschool their children for ideological reasons: they don’t like the secular messages they feel the schools are giving their children and believe they can do a better job transmitting their values to their offspring by reaching them at home.  But that is far from the only reason and it is certainly not the primary one in Russia.

            There, according to an article by Olga Bakurova on the MBK news portal, parents choose to homeschool because their children have special needs that local schools cannot support, because their children have been subjected to bullying in the schools, or simply because parents want to spent more time with them (mbk-news.appspot.com/suzhet/pobeg-iz-shkoly-kak-ustro/).

            Under Russian law, parents who homeschool are supposed to receive a subsidy equal to what it costs to teach them in the public schools; but in many places, these subsidies have been reduced or eliminated, one of the reasons that a public Center for the Support of Family Education has come into existence.

            That group also helps parents arrange with schools for the tests youngsters need to take to receive certification.  And it works with parents who want to use the basic curriculum the schools follow as well as those in a group called Classical Conversations to follow alternative ones, in that case one based on the classical Greek school (classical-conversations.ru/).

            In the US, a far higher percentage of children are homeschooled – more than 3.5 percent at present. Whether Russia will approach that number is uncertain especially given the country’s economic problems.  But there are at least two larger questions in the Russian case that are still open.

            Will the government tolerate having parents opt out of the public schools and thus not expose their children to a primary socialization arrangement, thus reducing the possibility that the  regime can ensure that the next generation will have not only the skills but also the social values that the powers that be prefer?

            And will the government stand by if, as seems entirely possible, parents choose to homeschool in order to provide their children with instruction in their native non-Russian languages at a time when the schools are one of the most powerful Russianizing institutions in the country?