Conference Program

Parents have the primary responsibility to provide their children's education. In Italy this parents’ right and duty is guaranteed by the Constitution. At the same time, a welfare state has the duty to ensure that all children have access to (a possibly good) education. The boundary between state’s authority and family rights in education is a contentious, evolving legal and ethical space. When children are unschooled the parental (and children’s) range of choice is much wider and includes the places and times of learning, the approaches, the social groups, the learning context, the contents, the curriculum, the learning language(s) and even more. Might this mean that the state’s supervisory power about education is less wide in unschooling than in schooling? Where is the "border line” between state’s authority and parents’ rights in unschooling? If some of the state's and parents' competences overlap, how can this overlap create synergy and cooperation in the child's best interests instead of friction? In recent years state pressure on parental choices and the consequent friction between state’s authority and unschooling families have both increased. The investigation into this interplay between family autonomy and state intervention highlights how most state interventions in the educational field, at least in Italy, especially towards unschooling families, are inspired less by democratic principles or solidarity, support and a spirit of collaboration than by the need to control, to influence and interfere, as if unschooling were a kind of insubordination.