Article written by Paula Bolyard in "PJMedia":
It's ironic at a time when 56 million children in the U.S. are being homeschooled as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic that Harvard Magazine would publish an article calling for a ban on homeschooling.
The article by Erin O'Donnell, headlined "The Risks of Homeschooling,"
sets up one straw man after another to make the case that the
government must step in to protect children from their own parents—who
are presumed guilty and ill-qualified to care for their own children.
Elizabeth
Bartholet, faculty director of Harvard Law School’s Child Advocacy
Program, told the magazine that homeschooling deprives children of their
right to a "meaningful education." She cites no law that requires a
child to receive a "meaningful" education (because there is no such law
in the U.S.) but defines it thusly: "But it’s also important that
children grow up exposed to community values, social values, democratic
values, ideas about nondiscrimination and tolerance of other people’s
viewpoints." (Nothing about reading, writing, and 'rithmetic in her
formula, it ought to be noted.)
In
other words, she knows that homeschooled children are being taught to
think for themselves, and she won't stand for it. Bartholet is no doubt
keenly aware that government indoctrination centers have been wildly
successful in their quest to force-feed vulnerable children progressive
values. One need only spend a short time on a college campus to
understand the extent of their success. Abraham Lincoln famously said
that "The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the
philosophy of government in the next." Social and moral revolutionaries
understand that society and culture are shaped in the classroom and
they've spent the last 100 years working tirelessly to ensure that the
"correct" (read: progressive) values are being imposed on children.
This
is not to say that all teachers are hell-bent on brainwashing children
to accept left-wing values. Most are not. The vast majority love their
students and are passionate about teaching and give no thought to
indoctrinating children. But education thought-leaders like Bartholet
and the national teacher's unions are determined to ensure that children
adopt their liberal values, and that's where the problem lies because
they've managed to leverage federal funding to amass an immense amount
of control over local education decision-making.
Out
of one side of her mouth, Bartholet says that parents have “very
significant rights to raise their children with the beliefs and
religious convictions that the parents hold. Out of the other side, she
says there should be limits to the influence parents have over their
children.
"The issue is, do
we think that parents should have 24/7, essentially authoritarian
control over their children from ages zero to 18?" she asks. "I think
that’s dangerous,” she answers. “I think it’s always dangerous to put
powerful people in charge of the powerless, and to give the powerful
ones total authority.”
Left
unsaid, but clearly implied, is that it's ok to put powerful government
bureaucrats in charge of powerless children because, obviously, they
know better than the parents what a child needs. It takes a village to
raise a child, we've been lectured for decades.
Never mind that according to government statistics,
"During the 2017–18 school year, an estimated 962,300 violent incidents
and 476,100 nonviolent incidents occurred in U.S. public schools
nationwide. Seventy-one percent of schools reported having at least one
violent incident, and 65 percent reported having at least one nonviolent
incident."
But loving parents who sacrifice to teach their kids at home are the problem.
As
most critics of homeschooling do, the article trots out an anecdotal
story of a child taught at home not receiving a proper education
(whatever that means anymore). What they never seem to mention is that
in the vast majority of the tragic cases used to "prove" how dangerous
homeschooling is, the victims were a) truant rather than being legally
homeschooled and/or b) were known to child protective services who
ignored the abuse and neglect in the home. This is not to say that there
is no abuse in the homeschooling community — child abuse crosses all
demographic categories involving families enrolled in every form of
education. But one study found that legally homeschooled students are 40% less likely to die by child abuse or neglect than the average student nationally.
But let's not let the facts get in the way of The Narrative.
Bartholet
went on to say that while "some parents who are motivated and capable
of giving an education that’s of a higher quality and as broad in scope
as what’s happening in the public school,” parents should be required to
prove to the government that they are qualified to teach their own
children.
“I think an
overwhelming majority of legislators and American people, if they looked
at the situation,” Bartholet says, “would conclude that something ought
to be done.”
- Typically score 15 to 30 percentile points above public-school students on standardized academic achievement tests
- Score above average on achievement tests regardless of their parents’ level of formal education or their family’s household income
- Typically score above average on the SAT and ACT tests
- Typically score above average, on measures of social, emotional, and psychological development including peer interaction, self-concept, leadership skills, family cohesion, participation in community service, and self-esteem
- Go to and succeed at college at an equal or higher rate than the general population
- Participate in local community service more frequently than does the general population, vote and attend public meetings more frequently than the general population
- Internalize the values and beliefs of their parents at a high rate
That last one, by the way, is what the moral revolutionaries in the education establishment fear most. Bartholet laments in the Harvard Magazine article that some homeschoolers are “extreme religious ideologues."
Bartholet slanderously claims in a recent Arizona Law Review
paper that "Many homeschool because they want to isolate their children
from ideas and values central to our democracy, determined to keep
their children from exposure to views that might enable autonomous
choice about their future lives." Make no mistake: by "values central to
our democracy" she means her enlightened (ahem) values. If your
family's values come into conflict with hers, Bartholet's must prevail.
Therefore,
she argues, there must be a "radical transformation in the
homeschooling regime and a related rethinking of child rights" that
"recommends a presumptive ban on homeschooling, with the burden on
parents to demonstrate justification for permission to homeschool." In
the view of Bartholet and others of her illiberal ilk, parents should be
presumed guilty and must prove to the government that they're not a
danger to their own children. Many homeschoolers, after all, "promote
racial segregation and female subservience," says Bartholet.
Setting
aside the fact that in the quarter-century I've traveled in
homeschooling circles I've never met a segregationist, the pejorative
descriptor "extreme religious ideologies" has come to mean anything to
the right of the post-Christian liberal Episcopal Church (if one can
even call that a church anymore). If you're a conservative Christian who
believes that marriage is between one man and one woman, or if you
believe, as Jesus did, that God created the earth in seven days and He
created man and woman as distinct, immutable categories, Bartholet and
others like her think you're incapable of providing your children a
"meaningful" education. More than that, they fear your kids will grow up
to be free-thinkers who don't look to the government for answers to
life's moral questions. Religion and homeschooling pose existential
threats to the moral revolutionaries, and the stakes for them are high.
The more kids they can get in government schools for 1080 hours a year,
the faster their goal of a progressive utopia will be realized and the
fewer thoughtcrimes we'll have in the U.S.
Bartholet's
interest in regulating home education is more than academic, by the
way. She's heading up a June summit at Harvard to discuss regulating
homeschooling. Featured speakers, according to an article at the Home School Legal Defense Association, include a who's who of anti-homeschooling zealots.
President
Reagan warned in 1986 (when homeschooling didn't even have legal status
in most states) that "the nine most terrifying words in the English
language are: 'I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.'" The idea
that "something ought to be done" has been used as an excuse to ram an
incalculable number of godless, immoral policies down the throats of
American families.
Here's a
prediction: Anti-school choice activists are going to use the
coronavirus pandemic to call on lawmakers to ban homeschooling or,
failing that, to demand inspections of homeschooled children by
government agents. When kids finally get back to school, whether it's
this year or next, the activists will no doubt be able to point to
academic regression as proof that homeschooling doesn't work. They won't
mention that the vast majority of parents currently forced to
homeschool never chose to do that, had it thrown in their laps with zero
time to prepare, and are more often than not juggling their own
full-time jobs while they're trying to manage their children's
education.
Now, more than
ever, we must push back against government nannies who think they know
what's best for our kids. Tell them to leave our families alone.