Posted on 04/18/2020 10:38:37 PM PDT by DeweyCA
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 a “meaningful education” and their right to be protected from potential child abuse, but may keep them from contributing positively to a democratic society.
“We have an essentially unregulated regime in the area of homeschooling,” Bartholet asserts. All 50 states have laws that make education compulsory, and state constitutions ensure a right to education, “but if you look at the legal regime governing homeschooling, there are very few requirements that parents do anything.” Even apparent requirements such as submitting curricula, or providing evidence that teaching and learning are taking place, she says, aren’t necessarily enforced. Only about a dozen states have rules about the level of education needed by parents who homeschool, she adds. “That means, effectively, that people can homeschool who’ve never gone to school themselves, who don’t read or write themselves.” In another handful of states, parents are not required to register their children as homeschooled; they can simply keep their kids at home.
This practice, Bartholet says, can isolate children. She argues that one benefit of sending children to school at age four or five is that teachers are “mandated reporters,” required to alert authorities to evidence of child abuse or neglect. “Teachers and other school personnel constitute the largest percentage of people who report to Child Protective Services,” she explains, whereas not one of the 50 states requires that homeschooling parents be checked for prior reports of child abuse. Even those convicted of child abuse, she adds, could “still just decide, ‘I’m going to take my kids out of school and keep them at home.’”
As an example, she points to the memoir Educated, by Tara Westover, the daughter of Idaho survivalists who never sent their children to school. Although Westover learned to read, she writes that she received no other formal education at home, but instead spent her teenage years working in her father’s scrap business, where severe injuries were common, and endured abuse by an older brother. Bartholet doesn’t see the book as an isolated case of a family that slipped through the cracks: “That’s what can happen under the system in effect in most of the nation.”
In a paper published recently in the Arizona Law Review, she notes that parents choose homeschooling for an array of reasons. Some find local schools lacking or want to protect their child from bullying. Others do it to give their children the flexibility to pursue sports or other activities at a high level. But surveys of homeschoolers show that a majority of such families (by some estimates, up to 90 percent) are driven by conservative Christian beliefs, and seek to remove their children from mainstream culture. Bartholet notes that some of these parents are “extreme religious ideologues” who question science and promote female subservience and white supremacy.
She views the absence of regulations ensuring that homeschooled children receive a meaningful education equivalent to that required in public schools as a threat to U.S. democracy. “From the beginning of compulsory education in this country, we have thought of the government as having some right to educate children so that they become active, productive participants in the larger society,” she says. This involves in part giving children the knowledge to eventually get jobs and support themselves. “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,” she says, noting that European countries such as Germany ban homeschooling entirely and that countries such as France require home visits and annual tests.
In the United States, Bartholet says, state legislators have been hesitant to restrict the practice because of the Home Schooling Legal Defense Association, a conservative Christian homeschool advocacy group, which she describes as small, well-organized, and “overwhelmingly powerful politically.” During the last 30 years, activists have worked to dismantle many states’ homeschooling restrictions and have opposed new regulatory efforts. “There’s really no organized political opposition, so they basically get their way,” Bartholet says. A central tenet of this lobby is that parents have absolute rights that prevent the state from intervening to try to safeguard the child’s right to education and protection.
Bartholet maintains that parents should have “very significant rights to raise their children with the beliefs and religious convictions that the parents hold.” But requiring children to attend schools outside the home for six or seven hours a day, she argues, does not unduly limit parents’ influence on a child’s views and ideas. “The issue is, do we think that parents should have 24/7, essentially authoritarian control over their children from ages zero to 18? I think that’s dangerous,” Bartholet says. “I think it’s always dangerous to put powerful people in charge of the powerless, and to give the powerful ones total authority.”
She concedes that in some situations, homeschooling may be justified and effective. “No doubt there are 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,” she says. But Bartholet believes that if parents want permission to opt out of schools, the burden of proving that their case is justified should fall on parents.
“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.”
She forgets to mention home schoolers get into college way ahead of govt schoolers percentage wise.
One of my daughters was in a college class with two of her homeschool friends. She said each of them was placed in charge of the three small groups because they were the only ones that engaged with the other students.
Congratulations on a job very well done.
The most normal, well adjusted, successful and healthy young adults I know were home schooled.
There is something to be said for not having your brains pumped full of social deviancy and sexual perversity at a young age.
I’ll give you the flipside. For the vast majority of our homeschooling time, we were in Michigan where there were no government oversight programs.
We were pretty heavily involved with homeschool families. I only recall a couple who were super genius types. The vast majority were pretty normal kids. None “slipped between the cracks.”
Several joined the military, one works at FEMA and I suspect he’s pretty busy right now. One of my kids is responsible for a few billion dollars worth of satellites at NASA.
We moved to Maryland where we need to belong to an umbrella school where we need to be overseen and do some reporting. Since at the time my wife had 15 years as a homeschool educator, she usually knew way more than her reviewers so it wasn’t a real big deal for us, but it is a huge impediment for newer home educators.
So? LGBT's are about the same percentage, and the Establishment has turned the entire nation upside down and inside out on their behalf.
Suck it up, lady. Maybe now that more people are trying it, homeschooling will become a "thing."
“We Socialists and Cultural Marxists are very angry that we will not get the chance to indoctrinate some children. Yes, we get to indoctrinate most of them but we think we should have the power to indoctrinate ALL of them.”
No.
About 98%.
The rest are wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of most people.
Fidel Castro was one of the twenty wealthiest people in the world when he died.
Does not seem to bother them when it comes to public schools.
You are correct, of course, but I was not including the ‘criminal governing class’ in my rant. ;>0
Do something about THIS first; then maybe you'll get an audience!
My daughter was failing due to the3ir insane teaching methods, especially reading.
That is one of the primary reasons why we homeschooled.
We tried "doing something" about the public schools with a small amount of success.
The main problem is the insane "education" most of the teachers get.
It is an overwhelming task wo attempt without the use of many guillotines on many college professors, administrators and executives of publishing companies.
Do something about THIS first; then maybe you'll get an audience!
My daughter was failing due to the3ir insane teaching methods, especially reading.
That is one of the primary reasons why we homeschooled.
We tried "doing something" about the public schools with a small amount of success.
The main problem is the insane "education" most of the teachers get.
It is an overwhelming task wo attempt without the use of many guillotines on many college professors, administrators and executives of publishing companies.
Think about that for a moment.
We wanted to have our kids checked to ensure were keeping them "up to speed".
What REALLY made (makes) me mad is paying taxes to pay for the dismal mess.
Some I don't mind, as there are some excellent teachers, and some excellent programs in our schools.
Then there's the rest...….
Quick! Look At The Cover Artwork Of Her Book!
Arithmetic Is Spelled Wrong!
LOL!
One of my ancestors gave five hundred bushels of “corn” to set up Harvard (when its main purpose was the train preachers). I don’t think he would be happy with how his gift ended up.
The ruling class is extra ordinarily wealthy and they are not producing ANYTHING of value. In other words communism is built on the back of the worker who owns nothing, not even his own labor. Communism is a classic case of projection. Every sin they accuse the free market of causing is actually what does happen under communism.
Someone once told me that the "North Koreans choose equality and the South Koreans choose freedom". Putting aside that the north Koreans did not have a chance to choose anything as they were directly from being under the thumb of Japan to being under the thumb of the USSR to being under the thumb of China, there is no equality in North Korea. Zip and zilch.
I wish we had him with us today.
Yup. I’m perfectly OK with going back to property-owning males only.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.