Free Republic

Should homeschooling be banned? Harvard Magazine and one of Harvard’s law professors, Elizabeth Bartholet, think so. This is despite the fact that Harvard University admits an appreciable number of homeschooled students to both its undergraduate and graduate programs every year. Readers are urged to conclude that there is an educational crisis at hand. Perhaps there is a crisis, but not in the homeschooling community but rather at Harvard. Let’s deal briefly with the elementary matter of spelling and proofreading. Harvard originally spelled “arithmetic” incorrectly in its illustration of a home-prison depicting an unhappy homeschooled child. It was rendered “arithmatic.” Ahem....

A rapidly increasing number of American families are opting out of sending their children to school, choosing instead to educate them at home. Homeschooled kids now account for roughly 3 percent to 4 percent of school-age children in the United States, a number equivalent to those attending charter schools, and larger than the number currently in parochial schools. Yet Elizabeth Bartholet, Wasserstein public interest professor of law and faculty director of the Law School’s Child Advocacy Program, sees risks for children—and society—in homeschooling, and recommends a presumptive ban on the practice. Homeschooling, she says, not only violates children’s right to...