Small Worlds. Homeschooling and the Modern Family

Against sociological dogma, Niklas Luhmann famously described our global modern society as a loose, heterarchical ensemble of functionally differentiated systems, each assuming the primacy of its own function. In the context of this chapter homeschooling is discussed, not for its own sake, but rather as illustrative of the problems emerging from the tumultuous co-existence of these systems. The latter typically gives rise to reactions claiming and hoping to reorder society along lines that run against its functional differentiation: putting religion, love, the family, the nation, or whatever else, first as it were, or rather “above” other functions. To the extent that such movements react to highly advanced self-referential systems by ceasing to place their trust in their organizations (schools, hospitals, firms, courts, political parties, etc.), they will often take on the appearance of a retreat away from modernity and into small worlds. They should however not be taken as actual backward moves to non-modern or premodern forms of existence. Instead, the analysis shows that they are processes through which modernity reacts to itself, to its own, self-made, problems.