1129943

research-article2022
SOC0010.1177/00380385221129943SociologyMyers

Article

Sociology

The Unhomely of
2023, Vol. 57(5) 1101­–1117
© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/00380385221129943
https://doi.org/10.1177/00380385221129943
journals.sagepub.com/home/soc

Martin Myers
University of Nottingham, UK

Abstract
Despite increasing global popularity perceptions of homeschooling remain problematic. It resists
trends towards mass compulsory education and the promotion of children’s rights; it challenges
the state’s authority to educate citizens; and raises concerns about child protection issues and
educational outcomes. Contemporaneously many homeschoolers identify their fears of risks
and failings in mainstream schooling as the reason they homeschool. This article explores how
discomfort and fear is ingrained within meanings associated with homeschooling often related to
its domestic practice. It develops Freud’s account of unheimlich (the unhomely) as a useful addition
to the sociological analysis of the multiple renditions of meaning attached to homeschooling.
These include the conflation of homely and unhomely accounts; the significance of anecdotal
accounts as a means of restating class biases and racisms; and the ambiguous relationship between
family and state. It argues both policymakers and homeschoolers need to acknowledge these
ambiguities.

Keywords
Freud, home education, homeschooling, risk, unheimlich, unhomely

Introduction
Homeschooling is often identified as a problematic form of education because it ‘goes
against the grain’ (Myers, 2020: 211, emphasis in original) of mainstream, global trends
towards compulsory mass schooling (European Commission, 2018; Meyer et al., 1992;
UNESCO, 2021). This problematic status has been theorised in relation to pedagogic
practice including the structuring of schooldays and educational outcomes (Martin-
Chang et al., 2011; Neuman and Guterman, 2016); and sociological perspectives situat-
ing homeschooling within broader patterns of inequality, understandings of risk and
socio-economic trends including educational privatisation and neoliberalism (Apple,

Corresponding author:
Martin Myers, School of Education, University of Nottingham, C76 Dearing Building, Nottingham, NG8
1BB, UK.
Email: [email protected]
1102 Sociology 57(5)

2000; Bhopal and Myers, 2018; Musumunu and Mazama, 2015). This article draws upon
my research since 2008 (Bhopal and Myers, 2008, 2009, 2016, 2018; Myers, 2015, 2020;
Myers and Bhopal, 2018) with a range of different homeschooling families in the UK
and the USA including elective homeschoolers, children excluded from schools, affluent
and less affluent families, families from different ethnic backgrounds, religious and non-
religious families, families with children who have disabilities and children identified as
gifted and talented. It argues that while sociological, educational and pedagogical analy-
sis remain valid, they overlook a key feature of homeschooling, which is the sense of
discomfort it engenders within public, social and media discourse (Bartholet, 2020;
Bhopal and Myers, 2016; Dwyer and Peters, 2019; Ross, 2009; Yuracko, 2008). It draws
upon Freud’s 1919 essay Das Unheimliche (‘The unhomely’), to suggest his interest in
‘the qualities of our feelings’ (Freud, 2003: 123) adds to educational and sociological
insights. It provides a useful means of unpacking the types of discomfort surrounding
homeschooling, which often appear inflated. Freud explains his interest in distinguishing
unheimlich as a particular type of frightening sensation from other general understand-
ings of fear. Its distinctive aspects include ambiguous and unsettling feelings of discom-
fort that are difficult to define but readily recognisable. I argue such ambiguous fears or
discomfort resonate with perceptions of homeschooling.
Sociology and psychology have maintained their disciplinary differences since the
early 20th century despite initial identification of potential alignment and similarities
(e.g. Burgess, 1939; Groves, 1916, 1917); and, despite notable sociologists, including
Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse and Talcott Parsons, making links with Freud, leading
Bocock (1976: 20) to conclude, ‘Freud has remained peripheral to mainstream sociol-
ogy.’ Discussing potential interdisciplinary approaches to understanding Weltanschauung
(worldview), Freud (1973) highlights the need for more significant sociological insight
in terms of the relations between individuals and groups, between races and between
classes. However, he concludes that sociology, ‘dealing as it does with the behaviour of
people in society, cannot be anything but applied psychology’ (Freud, 1973: 216)!
Identifying 21st-century challenges for sociology, Wallerstein (1999) argued Freud’s
concepts were collectively well understood and used by sociologists but a remaining
challenge of Freud’s ‘sociology’ was the framing of an understanding of rationality in the
light of Freudian diagnosis in which irrational behaviours are understood as rational.
Homeschooling is an educational practice in which understandings of rationality and
irrationality are ambiguously held by different actors (Bhopal and Myers, 2018).
Policymakers and educationalists often identify homeschooling as an irrational choice
that disrupts children’s life chances, while homeschoolers often identify homeschooling
as their most rational strategy and consider policymakers as intrusive and driven by irra-
tional beliefs about their family life.
This article develops Freud’s account of unheimlich (Freud, [1919] 2003) to consider
the unsettling role the home plays in homeschooling. Freud acknowledges Das
Unheimliche falls outside of mainstream psychological approaches; it is not directed at
individual diagnosis but rather an ‘aesthetic investigation[s]’ to explore collectively held
‘emotional impulses’ (Freud, 2003: 123). His essay unfolds in a convoluted, slightly
disjointed fashion to classify what is meant by unheimlich as a specific type of frighten-
ing emotion using approaches readily recognisable to sociolinguists (a discussion of
Myers 1103

unheimlich’s etymology), cultural sociologists (analysis of folk-tales) and auto-ethnog-

raphers (an account of personal experience). Freud’s account of unheimlich sits within
recognisable sociological endeavours even while maintaining his own disciplinary
attachments and writing style.
Unheimlich has often been translated as ‘uncanny’, but more precisely means
‘unhomely’, as in the antonym of heimlich or ‘homely’. By exploring semantic links
between unheimlich and heimlich Freud demonstrates how these fold into one another;
the feeling of unheimlich goes beyond an oppositional relation to homeliness and is
rather a repetition, or distorted expression, of the homely. The essay then explores aes-
thetic examples of unheimlich including folktales and anecdotal accounts. These often
mirror repetitions of events or subject matter in which the anticipated homely example is
projected upon an unhomely equivalent, consequently generating a sensation of being
unsettling and frightening. Examples of mismatched repetitions or doubling resonate
within accounts of homeschooling as simultaneously both positive and problematic
depending on homeschoolers’ characteristics and identity. So, for example, affluent,
White, Christian families who homeschool are likely to be regarded positively, while a
less affluent, Muslim family is more likely to be identified as problematic or dangerous
(Bhopal and Myers, 2016; Myers and Bhopal, 2018).
While it might appear the homely:unhomely binary is a too neat, or too obvious, lin-
guistic trapping to map on homeschooling; this binary reflects an overlooked feature of
homeschooling, that it is formed and shaped within the intimate geographies of domestic
life (Kraftl, 2013). This domesticity conflated with educational practice that usually
occurs outside of the home in schools, potentially materialising within discourse sug-
gesting homeschooling is an unsettling or troubling practice. This resonance with Freud’s
account is further apparent within the prevalence of anecdotal accounts about home-
schooling that often provide the backdrop to potentially ambiguous understandings of
‘risk’ (Beck, 1992; Douglas and Wildavsky, 1982; Lupton, 2013). This article uses
Freud’s unheimlich as a concept that maps beyond psychological analysis as a sociologi-
cal tool to provide new insights around social understandings of homeschoolers.
Following a discussion of the practice of homeschooling, it first explores unheimlich in
relation to the domestic spaces of homeschoolers’ homes and then turns attention to its
relevance to broader trends within education.

Homeschooling
There is no universal definition of homeschooling. Murphy (2013: 346) suggests a ‘pure
version of homeschooling’ would be parental funding and regulation of teaching within
the home, but notes all these elements may fall within a spectrum of behaviours and loca-
tions. This article adopts a broad understanding of, ‘the practice of families choosing to
wholly or partly educate their children in settings other than schools’ (Myers, 2020: 212).
Homeschooling is characterised by the heterogeneity of families and a diversity of peda-
gogic practice; such differences are compounded by differences in the legal status and
requirements for homeschoolers in different countries (Bhopal and Myers, 2018; Dwyer
and Peters, 2019; Jolly and Matthews, 2020).
1104 Sociology 57(5)

Types of homeschoolers include parents making ideological choices from both left/
liberal/progressive and right-wing/conservative poles (Stevens, 2001); Christian
Evangelical families in the USA who are also often conservatives (Apple, 2000); parents
with children with disabilities or special educational needs who feel public schools are
under-resourced and not meeting their needs (Maxwell et al., 2018); families who experi-
ence bullying, racism or marginalisation within schools (Bhopal and Myers, 2018;
Musumunu and Mazama 2015), this includes groups with specific or exceptional experi-
ences such as Gypsies and Travellers1 who experience racism and marginalisation within
schools and have also historically chosen to homeschool in order to pass on social, cul-
tural and economic skills and traditions (D’Arcy, 2014); parents who believe their chil-
dren are gifted and talented (Jolly and Matthews, 2018); and, more recently, in the UK,
families have become homeschoolers as a consequence of schools off-rolling pupils they
consider problematic (Children’s Commissioner, 2019). This list is not exhaustive but
indicates the major schism between homeschooling chosen for ethical or ideological
reasons and homeschooling as a consequence of the breakdown of relations between
families and schools. Finally, since the impact of global lockdowns during the COVID-
19 pandemic, educational practices consequent on school closures have been labelled as
‘homeschooling’ (ONS, 2020; Wakefield, 2021).
Legislation specifically affecting homeschoolers tends to fall within three often inter-
linked domains of legality, practice and regulation (Bhopal and Myers, 2018; Dwyer and
Peters, 2019). In Europe homeschooling has always been a legal choice in the UK,
Republic of Ireland, France and Scandinavia; while in Germany, Spain and Portugal, it is
not allowed except in exceptional cases. In the United States homeschooling is deter-
mined by state legislation and remained illegal in most states until 1980, with a gradual
easing of restrictions until 1993, when it became legal countrywide (Basham et al.,
2007). In the UK there is no requirement for parents to follow the national curriculum or
a comparable structured approach to learning, while other European countries such as
Denmark and Austria insist parents mirror state education more closely (Petrie, 2001).
There are also wide variations in the regulation of homeschoolers. The UK has a notori-
ously light touch approach to regulation as evidenced by the Department for Education’s
(DfE) inability to provide an accurate number of homeschooled children (Children’s
Commissioner, 2019; DfE, 2019). In the United States different states are free to require
varying types of practice, which is monitored to a greater or lesser extent. Lips and
Feinberg (2008) identified 10 states in which there was no monitoring and 25 states
where parents were simply required to notify they were homeschooling.
Demographic data on homeschooled children are often incomplete or inaccurate
reflecting the decision of some countries (such as the UK) not to collect data, confusion
over which activities constitute homeschooling and the unwillingness of some home-
schoolers to identify themselves (Kunzman and Gaither, 2020). In the USA, the National
Center for Education Statistics (NCES, 2016) suggests that 1.7 million children, about
3% of the total school population are homeschooled, mostly from affluent White fami-
lies. The NCES census identified the reasons for choosing homeschooling were often
related to dissatisfaction with schools, safety concerns and religious beliefs. The National
Home Education Research Institute (NHERI), a homeschooling research advocacy
group, suggests around 2.5 million children are currently homeschooled in the USA
Myers 1105

(Ray, 2020). Black, Latino and Muslim families are increasingly turning to homeschool-
ing (McKeon, 2007; Musumunu and Mazama, 2015). In the UK the DfE (2019) esti-
mated there are 57,600 homeschooled children but noted this figure was potentially
growing by as much as 20% per annum. The Children’s Commissioner suggested a simi-
lar figure of 60,000 children at any one time but possibly 80,000 homeschooled children
within a year. Both the DfE and Children’s Commissioner note their data are
incomplete.
Homeschooling is understood problematically for several reasons including privileg-
ing parental over children’s rights, a lack of reliable evidence it is an effective form of
education and undermining social or collective features of education such as fostering
citizenship (Apple, 2000; Bartholet, 2020; Bhopal and Myers, 2018; Dwyer and Peters,
2019). Educational policymakers have repeatedly expressed concern about the lack of
data on who homeschools, reasons for homeschooling, how many children are home-
schooled and their educational outcomes (Badman, 2009; DfE, 2019; House of Commons
Education Committee, 2021). Policymakers have also associated homeschooling indi-
rectly with other social issues including Islamic radicalisation, child abuse and maltreat-
ment (Badman, 2009; Bartholet, 2020; OFSTED, 2016). Both direct educational concerns
and broader social issues have informed media content portraying homeschoolers as
problematic (Bhopal and Myers, 2018). Often the ‘problem’ identified with homeschool-
ing partly emerges as unsettling or uncomfortable accounts associated with families’
home environment (Badman, 2009; Balls, 2010; Children’s Commissioner, 2019;
Forrester et al., 2017; Myers and Bhopal, 2018). The remainder of this article explores
such discomfort in the context of Freud’s account of unheimlich as a distinguishable
aesthetic form of unsettling fear grounded within the homely.

The Unhomely Home

In Das Unheimliche, Freud (1919: 124) argues that despite the divergent approaches he
adopts to understand unheimlich they, ‘lead to the same conclusion – that the uncanny is
that species of the frightening that goes back to what was once well known and had long
been familiar’. This conclusion is based on two distinct approaches; first, within the
semantic meanings of unheimlich/heimlich and second, within a discussion of folk-tales
and anecdotal accounts of the feeling of unheimlich.

Discordant Narratives in Which Homeliness and Safety Map onto the

Unhomely and Risk
In the initial examination of the semantic root and routes of unheimlich, Freud (2003: 134)
demonstrates an extensive evidence base across ancient and modern European languages,
in which unheimlich/unhomely is not just the antonym of heimlich/homely, but that the
meanings of the two words are subsumed in each other: ‘Heimlich thus becomes increas-
ingly ambivalent, until it finally merges with its antonym unheimlich. The uncanny (das
Unheimliche, “the unhomely”) is in some ways a species of the familiar (das Heimliche,
“the homely”).’ This strategy has a readily identifiable linguistic resonance for those inter-
ested in exploring feelings associated with the home of homeschooling. While many
1106 Sociology 57(5)

homeschoolers readily identify their homes as ‘safe spaces’ compared with the unsafe
space of schools; the state often associates homeschooling with specific fears for chil-
dren’s physical safety because it happens behind closed doors, within the home (Badman,
2009; Forrester et al., 2017). The home is associated not with homely, domestic attributes,
but with potential dangers including physical risks and abuse, concerns about spiritual
well-being, of failing to engage with British Values and being victims of exclusionary
practices such as off-rolling (OFSTED, 2016; Spielman, 2018).
In my research (Bhopal and Myers, 2016; Myers, 2020; Myers et al., 2010), Gypsy
and Traveller families often identify schools as unsafe spaces both in terms of experienc-
ing racism and bullying, but also the negative impact that exposure to the dominant cul-
ture has on their children. These families often provide very homely accounts of the
safety engendered within the close communal spaces of Traveller sites, and in the inter-
ests of their children’s safety (which they identify in terms of physical, cultural and
spiritual safety), to be homeschooled (D’arcy, 2014; Myers et al., 2010). By contrast,
Local Authorities characterise homeschooling Gypsies and Travellers as potentially cre-
ating risks by failing to educate their children and raise safety concerns based on percep-
tions of physical dangers within Traveller sites. In these narratives Gypsy and Traveller
children are exposed to danger (also framed as physical, cultural and spiritual dangers),
because of their immersion within their homes.
These oppositional accounts, often framed in ambiguous language, begin to demon-
strate a conflation of meaning of the homely and unhomely in relation to domestic
arrangements much like the doubling processes described by Freud. Freud reinforces the
argument about language in his later analysis of folktales and anecdotes, in which repeti-
tions of similar but different events, often signal moments that trigger feelings on unhe-
imlich. These are discussed more fully in the following section, but it is worth noting
how historic racist stereotyping (including by state actors) of Gypsies and Travellers
draws upon recurrent folklore tropes that they are a dangerous, unsettling alien ‘other’
within local landscapes resembling Simmel’s figure of the Stranger (Myers, 2015;
Simmel, 1971). Freud’s account of unheimlich is useful to understand how the language
of policymakers ascribes a particular sense of risk and discomfort to the domestic lives
of Gypsy homeschoolers that mirrors longstanding folklore of Gypsies as dangerous and
alien. The domestic homeliness of the Gypsy homeschooler is reimagined as an unset-
tling, unsafe environment by drawing on these (racist) fears.

Safety and Risk: The Role of Anecdotal Discourse in Framing Narratives

of Homeschooling
Freud’s second strategy, the exploration of folk-tales and anecdotal accounts repeats the
argument of the linguistic conflation of heimlich and unheimlich; but in physical settings
such as unsettling accounts of confusions between animate and inanimate bodies and
doppelgangers. These repetitions or doublings constitute a similar ambiguous sense of
fear by layering discordant but seemingly related experiences into recognisable patterns
of discomfort. He establishes a counter-intuitive close relationship between the unhomely
and the homely within a range of feelings associated with being ‘local, native, domestic;
(feeling) at home’ (Freud, 2003: 159, note 2) and ‘belonging to the house, not strange,
familiar, tame, dear and intimate’ (Freud, 2003: 126). Understanding homeschooling as
Myers 1107

‘social action’ (Weber, 2009), as both practice and discourse, in which meanings about
homeschooling are moulded, conflates the homely ideal of parents bonding with and
loving their children with fears of an unhomely monstrous ‘other’ (readily signalled in
terms of race and class).
These conflated accounts or narratives in which both homeliness and unhomeli-
ness merge within homeschooling discourses, mirror Freud’s second strategy to iden-
tify specific discomforts and fears connotated by unheimlich. He collates a range of
examples of objects, persons and situations that evoke feelings of unheimlich in order
to identify hidden patterns or similarities. In particular he draws upon literary exam-
ples and personal anecdotes to emphasise the unsettling nature of fears that return to,
or are doubles of, the homely. The resonance of Freud’s essay rests on the credibility
the reader is willing to place in the anecdotal and literary accounts that support his
claims, which might otherwise appear as a rather academic account of the develop-
ment of language (Fisher, 2016).
The anecdotal nature of this approach resonates closely with accounts of homeschool-
ing on a number of counts. First, official and government accounts invariably highlight
the difficulties of evidencing reliable data because of issues of privacy and lack of regu-
lation (Children’s Commissioner, 2019; DfE, 2019). Similar concerns are widely identi-
fied in much academic work, which often relies on small-scale data-sets (Bhopal and
Myers, 2018; Kunzman and Gaither, 2020; Murphy, 2012). Finally, media accounts are
often either anecdotal ‘lifestyle’ stories or sensationalised accounts of individual trage-
dies (Bhopal and Myers, 2016).
Media accounts often link issues of safety to homes and homelife, often framed around
classed and racial stereotypes of homeschoolers. Impoverished or working-class home-
schoolers, characterised as inept or failing families, living ‘off-grid’ beyond the reach of
Local Authorities provide a focus for homeschooling tragedies (Forrester et al., 2017;
Morris, 2016). It is notable that the remit of the first serious review of homeschooling in the
UK, included ‘safeguarding’ and investigating, ‘suggestions that home education could be
used as a “cover” for child abuse’ (Badman, 2009: np). That review was triggered by a
high-profile tragedy in which a homeschooled child, Khyra Ishaq, was starved to death by
abusive parents (Bhopal and Myers, 2016). In Wales, the death of Dylan Seabridge, of the
preventable disease of scurvy, resulted in similar inquiry (Forrester et al., 2017). Charges
of wilful neglect against the parents were dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service on the
ground they were unfit to stand trial. Media coverage of the couple invariably included
photographs portraying them as outlandish, eccentrics and they were dubbed the ‘Scurvy
2’ by the Sun newspaper (Beal, 2013: 4). In the Welsh example, homeschooling was under-
stood as one element by which families with unusual lifestyles are able to remain off-grid
or ‘completely off the radar’ (Children’s Commissioner, 2019: 14). In the United States,
Raymond and Vanessa Jackson in New Jersey were identified as ‘monsters’ and their home
referred to as ‘Hell House’, after it emerged their adopted and homeschooled children were
severely malnourished. As in the Dylan Seabridge tragedy there appears to be evidence the
Jacksons were inadequate parents rather than malicious; but their narrative sits within a
discourse in which they are identified as monstrous and other. In all three examples the
narrative triggers both a substantial media outcry and also revaluations of safeguarding and
homeschooling practice by the state.
1108 Sociology 57(5)

The space of the home is consistently used to evidence the potential for harm for poorer
families because homeschooling happens behind closed doors and beyond the state’s nor-
mal regulation and surveillance of schools. However, contemporaneous to the narratives
of monstrous or failing poor families, the lifestyle sections of Sunday newspapers regu-
larly feature idealised accounts of successful White middle-class homeschoolers (Bhopal
and Myers, 2018; Myers, 2020). Their homes and domestic lives are portrayed as loving,
safe and secure spaces, in which families flourish and share in ‘bespoke’ educational
adventures (Odone, 2018: 23). Often the home is identified as an accessible form of capi-
tal, readily funding homeschooling that sounds suspiciously akin to an extended holiday
(Adamo, 2015). The contrasting portrayals of some homeschoolers’ homes as homely and
safe while others are unhomely and dangerous mirrors the discordant similarities in
Freud’s exemplars of unheimlich. They appear grounded within a homeschooling dis-
course in which White, middle-class people are associated with normative behaviours and
divergent characteristics are associated with being a problematic other (Hall, 2019).
Freud’s unheimlich provides a sociological tool to understand how anecdotal accounts
embrace social biases towards race and class by attaching to them recognisable but ill-
defined feelings of discomfort and fear about their practice. The nomenclature of ‘home-
schooling’ has to consolidate a wide range of divergent practice and also divergent meanings
of what is understood by homeschooling. My earlier definition adopted a broad brush
approach, useful in identifying lots of different individuals who self-identify or are identi-
fied as homeschoolers, but also conflating conflicting experiences of homeschooling.
Addressing dissimilar understandings of what constitutes homeschooling is made
more complicated because the conflicting accounts (from the perspectives of all con-
flicted parties) are often ambiguous. This is highlighted in families’ investment in the
privacy of their homes. That materialisation of privacy viewed by the state or an unsym-
pathetic media outlet equates to potential risks demanding action. The importance of
privacy for many homeschoolers often exceeds the value attached to that privacy by the
gaze of the state or the media. The state in particular identifies the home of homeschool-
ing in a narrow fashion; being out of sight means families potentially can cause a number
of harms it has an interest in preventing (e.g. child abuse or Islamic radicalisation). Calls
for homeschoolers to be more transparent and allow the state access to the home to moni-
tor educational practice have been robustly resisted by homeschoolers (Bartholet, 2020;
Bhopal and Myers, 2018; Dwyer and Peters, 2019; Huseman, 2015).

An ‘Evil Eye’: State Surveillance of Homeschooling

The relationship between the state as a regulator of education and anecdotal interest in
lifestyles also brings into play another of Freud’s motifs of unheimlich in the sense of the
surveillance or watchfulness experienced by homeschoolers. Freud (2003: 147) sug-
gests, ‘anyone who possesses something precious, but fragile, is afraid of the envy of
others, to the extent that he projects on to them the envy he would have felt in their place.
Such emotions are betrayed by looks.’ The intrusion, or potential for intrusion, of the
state as a regulator of homeschoolers’ family authority is not the effective, organisational
threat suggested by a Foucauldian (2012) all-seeing eye exerting disciplinary power; but
rather something more emotionally charged, an ‘evil eye’ (Freud, 2003: 146). While the
Myers 1109

state might more usually regulate in such a disciplinary fashion, this is not practical
because homeschoolers are not visible; their practice is not surveilled. With some irony,
the state’s weakness potentially creates greater discomfort for homeschoolers, becoming
afflicted by an imagined form of surveillance.
The state’s perception of risk and homeschooling is immediately compromised
because it cannot be mitigated by monitoring behaviours within the home (unlike in
schools). Risk is notably problematic because it relies on perceiving future possibili-
ties (Beck, 1992; Douglas and Wildavsky, 1982; Lupton, 2013) and consequently is
difficult to quantify. Even systematic approaches favoured by policymakers, such as
Cost Benefit Analysis are potentially skewed by a range of subjectivities (Fischhoff,
2015) including ethical judgements and assessments of other risks such as shifts in
public mood. It is a sphere in which individual choices may collide with collectively
held cultural values (Douglas and Wildavsky, 1982). For homeschoolers evidence of
their being perceived by the state as a risk is consistently evidenced in attempts to
legislate for the regulation of homeschooling that includes home inspections (DfE,
2019; Dwyer and Peters, 2019). Risk underpins discourse about the character and
practice of homeschooling: the risks of schooling identified by homeschoolers
(including poor educational outcomes, racism, bullying and inadequate resourcing),
as a reason for choosing homeschooling while the state identifies risk in relation to
the practice itself (Bhopal and Myers, 2018; Myers, 2020).
The space of the home is significant, not just because schools are the most common
spaces in which education occurs, but because schools are imbued with the authority of
the state to deliver forms of educational practice. Schools are largely obliged to follow
aspects of practice and curriculum as determined by the state. A noticeable feature of
homeschooling is it places less specific legislative demands on homeschoolers, despite
homeschoolers acting independently and contrary to educational practice in schools.
There is an ironic doubling in the semantics of homeschooling and schooling in which
two apparent opposites are merged: though only in the context of the family home.
Outside of the homeschooling home, schooling is both the practice of education in
municipal buildings and also the language of schooling. In effect the ambiguities created
by homeschooling include the production of activity that only one party considers to be
schooling; homeschoolers meanwhile adopt the language while simultaneously rejecting
the concept of schooling and its regulatory framing by the state.

Domesticity as Something Both ‘Special’ and ‘Strange’

The unsettling closeness of homeliness and the unhomely, echoes Simmel’s (1971) soci-
ological account of migrants characterised as the ‘stranger’. Simmel (1971) argues stran-
gers are unsettling because of their constant presence within local settings; their settled
proximity makes them disturbing to the natives rather than interesting representations of
a distant, exotic otherness. The revelation of their presence and their lack of belonging
echoes the revelation of discordant elements in homely settings characterised by Freud’s
unheimlich. More generally, the dislocation of finding ‘the strange within the familiar, an
intermingling of opposites which should not share the same space’ (Lipman, 2016: 8,
emphasis in original) highlights the home as a site in which such ambiguities can gener-
ate heightened discomfort.
1110 Sociology 57(5)

Homes are generally, empirically sited within spaces the state has authority over:
houses and apartments located on the municipal spaces of streets and estates and so
on. Homeschoolers however, despite their geographical location, invoke a different
form of authority in relation to their educational practice. Within the various regula-
tory regimes of homeschooling it is rare for the state to prescribe all aspects of cur-
riculum, timetables or pedagogical approach. Instead, the family is imbued with the
types of authority normally determined by the state to determine how their schooling
is organised. As an actual geographically delineated space, the home and its inhabit-
ants are, like Simmel’s strangers, permanent neighbours living on the same street but
as homeschoolers they are representative of a distinct, foreign form of authority.
Kraftl (2013: 437) notes the intimate emotional geographies of home life in which
the ‘specialness’ of domestic spaces ‘characterise[s] homeschoolers’ experiences,
where feelings of intimacy and love are, in large measure, constitutive of what makes
homeschooling an “alternative” space to mainstream schools’. Homeschooling mate-
rialises as a physically different space within the home as homeschoolers, ‘valorised
mess, clutter, stuff and disorganisation’ (Kraftl, 2013: 443). The presence of inti-
mate, domestic lives provides a focus to learning often within unexpected or
unplanned timeframes and a privileging of intimate learning around individual chil-
dren’s needs. Schools meanwhile are ‘regulated by routines, drills and detailed
organizations of time and space’ (Collins and Coleman, 2008: 284); they are institu-
tions that, in a Foucauldian sense, exert disciplinary power. This is significant in
terms of differences between the setting and ambience of home and school, but more
significantly in terms of pedagogic outcomes. Making the claim that, ‘(Social) space
is a (social) product’, Lefebvre (1991: 26, emphasis in original) notes that, ‘space
thus produced also serves as a tool of thought and of action; that in addition to being
a means of production it is also a means of control, and hence of domination, of
power’ (1991: 26). A shift from school to home is an inevitable rebalancing of power
away from the state towards the family. Apple (2000) demonstrates how this trend
mirrors broader political shifts of millennial neoliberals and neoconservatives to
actively challenge the state. The observable differences between home and school
include not just the spatial layout and clutter or the teaching methods but also a
political challenge to the status quo.
While sociological approaches, such as Simmel’s stranger, clearly illuminate
aspects of homeschoolers’ difference; Freud adds understandings of the emotional and
unsettling framing of that difference. The final section moves beyond purely domestic
settings to consider Freud’s usefulness in understanding homeschooling against
broader educational trends.

Repression of the Past: Homeschoolers Out of Step with

the World, Out of Line with History
Homeschooling causes concern for policymakers and educationalists who take for
granted the role of schooling as a fundamental element of children’s rights to an educa-
tion (Dwyer and Peters, 2019). This is widely understood as an unassailable progressive
feature of international human rights legislation such as Articles 28 and 29 of the United
Myers 1111

Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (United Nations, 1989). It is also a pub-
licly recognisable concern because the global massification of education, with more chil-
dren attending schools in more countries to a higher age, is largely regarded as a positive
indicator of progress (UNESCO, 2016, 2021).
Against this backdrop homeschooling seems retrogressive. It suggests a return to a
less progressive age and ill-suited to advanced western nations. That sense of a return to
a place or time that was once familiar resonates within Freud’s account of unheimlich; of
finding something strange, unwelcome perhaps, in a familiar, homely space. One starting
point for thinking about homeschooling as a return to the familiar is evident in the history
of American education. Public schooling only became the norm in the 1870s; previously
the predominant form of education was homeschooling (Basham et al., 2007) reflecting
the practicalities of early colonial life. In the 1970s the state’s monopolisation of educa-
tion provision was increasingly challenged by families characterised by divergent politi-
cal affiliations but sharing an allegiance to values of individual freedoms and collective
grassroots political networking (Stevens, 2001, 2003). Left-leaning, liberal ‘unschoolers’
felt their children’s individual interests were not met by the rigid institutional practices
of schools (Holt, 1969; Moore and Moore, 1994). Contemporaneously, right-wing,
Christian evangelical families felt it was the family’s duty and responsibility to educate
children (Arai, 2000; Cooper and Sureau, 2007). This long historical view slightly mis-
represents the direct comparability of the philosophy and practice of colonial and con-
temporary homeschoolers (Gaither, 2009; Murphy, 2013). However, for some
homeschoolers their choices reflect a deeply felt romanticisation and return to the experi-
ences of the first White European colonisers.
The historic account alone would be an unconvincing line of argument to relate home-
schooling to unheimlich, but as with Freud’s evidence base, it sits among a constellation
of potentially discomforting relationships that repeat and reconfigure specific, though
often ambiguous, lines of discomfort. It brings with it a new set of ambiguous doubles
delineated by political differences but sharing some fundamental values. Many American
homeschoolers regard the influence of the state as pernicious, and, harking back to the
pre-Independence era, regard the philosophical grounds for choosing homeschooling as
a conscious ethical decision to return power to the family and away from the state
(Murphy, 2013). The home in these accounts is a private family space in which a tradi-
tional, conservative patriarchal worldview embodies authority and responsibility for
educating children rests with the head of the household rather than the state.
The conservative/patriarchal investment in homeschooling creates another ambigu-
ous fault-line. A broad swathe of traditional conservatives consider schooling an uncon-
troversial feature of late-capitalist nations and an economic field ripe for profitable
development. Their discomfort might be evidenced in challenges to the overwhelming
marketisation of schooling within neoliberal economic strategies (Apple, 2012).
Homeschooling potentially challenges the orthodoxies of free market choices because of
its intent to return to educational practices more commonly seen prior to the introduction
of public schooling. There is a double irony as the neoliberal encroachment of private
corporations into public educational economies provokes concern education is no longer
a public good on the progressive left; while some traditional conservative families,
choose homeschooling to defray the intrusion of the state into their lives (Apple, 2000).
1112 Sociology 57(5)

Simultaneously the potential homeschooling might have to redraw relationships between

individuals, the state and market economies remains unsettling for many liberals. Instead
of signalling the re-emergence of democratic or state control of education, it returns the
processes of education into the hands of individuals. Such conservative homeschoolers
effectively flatten traditional educational power structures but only because they offer a
return to individualism rather than a shared belief in collectivised education.
The UK has witnessed a different development of educational policy with the
Education Act (1944) (superseded by the 1996 Education Act), a key element of post-war
policy designed to instate more egalitarian forms of citizenship within a reimagined wel-
fare state. For homeschoolers the Education Act (1996) is useful; it requires parents to
ensure their children receive a ‘suitable’ education rather than require they attend school
(Education Act, 1996). ‘Suitable’ in this context has been notoriously difficult to define
in a meaningful way. The Education Act is a source of discomfort for policymakers
because it grants a legal route to homeschool, despite being envisaged as the means to
deliver collective, egalitarian educational opportunities.
As a source of discomfort it only tends to materialise in public discourse around con-
cerns about particular types of homeschoolers. In particular peaking when the state
became aware of growing numbers of Muslim homeschoolers coinciding with concern
about the global ‘war on terror’ (Bhopal and Myers, 2018). Anecdotal accounts of fami-
lies using the legal path of homeschooling as ‘cover’ to radicalise their children as
Islamic fundamentalists (OFSTED, 2015, 2016) appeared to conflate the state’s fostering
of global fear about Muslims within the local experiences of schools characterised by
large Asian populations. Muslim homeschoolers noted their decision to homeschool was
often a response to children experiencing racism in which narratives of Islamic extrem-
ism were commonplace in playgrounds, classrooms and at the school gates (Bhopal and
Myers, 2018; Myers and Bhopal, 2018). Middle-class Muslim parents often adopted the
same practices as White middle-class homeschoolers dissatisfied with their experience
of schooling. The conflation of global and local narratives of radicalisation and decisions
to homeschool suggests parents were acting much like the reflexive global citizens envis-
aged by Beck (2006). Faced by what appeared to be insurmountable local risks at school
they looked beyond the local to manage risk as best they could. For Muslim homeschool-
ers risk emerges in their children experiencing racism in school, while for policymakers
these decisions confirm global risks (Islamic radicalisation) are heightened because nor-
mal routes towards citizenship (schooling) are rejected. It adopts a circular function
restating the fears of homeschoolers encountering increasingly hostile policy; while poli-
cymakers evidence their suspicions of radicalisation in the actions of Muslim home-
schoolers’ responses to their experience of racism in schools fostered by the policy itself.
Freud’s unheimlich, with its circulation of contrary ideas conflated in a sense of the
frightening associated with the home, is paralleled by the homely associations of home-
schooling within a global discourse in which Islam poses a threat to western security.
While sociological accounts can partially understand homeschoolers acting as reflexive
cosmopolitan individuals balancing the difficulties of making good choices in times of
global risks (Beck, 1992, 2006), Freud’s unheimlich is a tool that elucidates the excep-
tional fears and discontent that emerge around homeschooling.
Myers 1113

Individuals taking personal responsibility for educational choices resonates with the
language of neoliberal states and marketised educational economies. However, home-
schoolers withdraw their economic engagement from these educational markets as well
as the cultural investment in the processes that bind states together. The loss of economic
investments is possibly insignificant, not least because in a free-market new ‘home-
schooling economies’ will emerge. However, for the state, the investment in marketised
educations presupposes consumers freely choosing within their economies and within
the cultural boundaries of their economies. Mass schooling is both a progressive advance
and an extension of the social structuring role of education. Marketised mass schooling
requires parental buy-in to the culture and identities of its economies, the emergence of
families who do not invest, or who disinvest, in such educational economies produces
discomforts for both the state and homeschoolers themselves. Reflecting the unheimlich
a cohort of engaged and committed educators emerge acting outside of the guiding prin-
ciples of state education; and at the same time, an unquantifiable cohort of disengaged
and uncommitted educators occupy an invisible cultural territory. The state is unable to
distinguish between the two because of widely held citizen beliefs in the sacrosanct pri-
vacy of the home. At the same time the state is potentially more threatened by the risks
of idealised rather than risky homeschoolers doing the best for their children and high-
lighting the state’s own failings.

Conclusions
There are clear resonances between Freud’s account of unheimlich and discourse that
emerges around homeschooling. Although it happens in different ways, this holds true
for homeschoolers and also for policymakers and media accounts. Primarily this reflects
the conflation of ambiguous understandings of a range of concepts including homeliness,
safety and risk at local, national and global levels. Problematically the ambiguities high-
lighted by Freud are difficult grounds on which to draw up effective education policy.
Placing discomfort or fear in a policy context, particularly ambiguous emotionally
charged unsettling fears, potentially creates ambiguous policy. It goes some way to
explaining the historic failings of policymakers to resolve identifiable concerns about
homeschooling. Freud seems a useful counter-point to broader sociological work in this
process to understand why this is such a difficult process.
A key argument of this article is the significance the domestic home contributes to
understandings of homeschooling. For families it is often the place of safety; however,
bounded by conventions of privacy it is also a space in which a heavily regulated, collec-
tive activity such as schooling is not anticipated to occur. This collision between state
and family is the unstable backdrop against which contradictory arguments about home-
schooling are destined to be debated against. This complicates the processes by which
other, real and specific problems identified around homeschooling can be understood,
including the evidence that many families would prefer their children attend school but
have been marginalised out of schooling for a multiplicity of reasons. Often the home-
schooler voices that are heard in discourse about homeschooling are those of affluent,
predominantly White families who hold greater influence with their politicians and
forms of governance. Freud’s account of unheimlich does not resolve these issues, but it
1114 Sociology 57(5)

helps explain the fear and discomfort that consistently underpin debates about home-
schooling. The need to hear more marginalised voices in these debates is clear enough;
however, it is often the perceptions held about the owners of such marginalised voices
that reinforce the processes by which discomfort and fear is created around homeschool-
ing. Too often the potential for understanding better the position of marginalised home-
schoolers, in particular homeschoolers who would prefer their children attend schools, is
lost among the strength of more privileged voices. One long view of this process is that
it is detrimental to all homeschoolers; it fosters the grounds on which unsettling fears of
homeschooling are readily mapped over the safe spaces of many families’ (rich and poor,
marginal and privileged) homes.
While it is arguable that any sociological approach could embrace an understanding
of homeschooling’s multiple accounts and positions, Freud’s reconciliation of the confla-
tion of homeliness and unhomeliness as a particular form of fear or discomfort is a valu-
able insight within homeschooling. It addresses many different facets of homeschooling
in which competing accounts of what is happening are not just contradictory and difficult
to explain but are difficult to explain because of the unsettling forms of fear that fill the
spaces in which they are understood.

Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this
article.

ORCID iD
Martin Myers https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4056-5412

Note
1. ‘Gypsy’ and ‘Traveller’ are ethnonyms for groups of people in Ireland and the UK (often
referred to as Roma in Europe), who are often marginalised and encounter extreme hostility
and racism.

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Martin Myers is a sociologist of education at the University of Nottingham. His main fields of
interest are educational inequalities, higher education economies and the lives and identities of
Traveller, Gypsy and Roma people.

Date submitted August 2021

Date accepted September 2022