Browsing by Subject "personalismi"

Aims. This study examines the phenomenon of home school both philosophically and by analyzing interview data. After the introduction to the context of home school, internationally and in Finland, the whole idea is analyzed in the light of personalistic philosophy. The inter-view data is also analyzed by the same philosophical tradition. The aim is to find out to what extent parents’ reasoning, values and criticism of school system reveal traits of personalism. Methods. The concept of personalism in this study is based especially in the philosophical writings of Martin Buber, Emmanuel Mounier, Karol Wojtyla, Emmanuel Levinas and John MacMurray. All of them emphasized the importance of a human person and love as communion of persons. Out of their ideas, I have conducted the key values of personalism. Data consists of 12 interviews, each lasting around one hour. Data is divided up to the reasons why parents want to home school, what kind of criticism they give for the school system and what kind of values their ideas carry. Results and conclusions. From the perspective of personalism the person, who loves the child the most, should educate the child. The personalistic idea of love is contrary to using someone as means to end. Each child should be loved for his or her own sake. Personalism thus challenges the whole school system, which holds many instrumental characteristics. If parents choose to educate their children at home in order to create deeper relationships with them, this could be seen as a personalistic value decision. In this study, the parents were justifying their choice by arguments of problems in school, intimacy in the family, possibility of learning that is more authentic, child’s wish and their own wish to convey a certain worldview to their children. All the personalistic values were found in the data but particularly focus was on intimacy and authenticity. These could be seen as the charasteristics of personalism which emphasizes both love and autonomy of a person. From the personalistic horizon of significance, intimacy could be seen as justification for home school (see also Merry and Howell, 2009).