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.”
Do something about THIS first; then maybe you'll get an audience!
One room school house and McGuffey's reader.
She’s sounding pretty desperate, worried that the WuFlu lockdown might lead to more home schooling. The lying leftist zealots who sold the extreme hype got what they wanted, i.e., to destroy Trump and the economy he brought. The unintended consequence might be that the teachers unions and public school head counts might be negatively impacted. So ha ha, Erin; you lose.
These are the people we should shoot first... right in their damn faces.
And there we have it, the whole reason the left opposes home schooling.
It sticks in their craw that people are doing something they can’t control.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
The most inept, dangerous, untruthful, overstated UNION in the country is the teacher’s union.
My sister has been teaching math to middle schoolers for 45 years and has seen the horrid disintegration of the public AND private schools. The disorder, the granting of authority to the kids over the teachers, administrations that have grown to gigantic sizes and blame the teachers for all the problems while enforcing zero discipline, the downward spiral of lowered expectations of the students, the staggering laxity for everything. In a misguided effort to arrest this, new educational fads are introduced every year and not one of them works. It is a completely failed industry.
THAT is the author of this piece of propaganda?????
The agents of the state are doing abysmally in fostering learning in government schools, yet they demand parents who home school demonstrate the learning of their children to agents of the state.
Think about that for a moment.
I checked.
That’s her.
Clearly public education does not teach someone personal hygiene.
Someone needs to teach her to comb her hair and make sure her clothes are neat.
I’ve seen more pulled together kindergarteners.
Congratulations on giving extra diligence to educating your children. Thank you also, for taking time to describe your experience in NH.
Good observation.
Honestly, I don’t think everyone has the time, resources, skill or inclination to homeschool their children. That’s just a fact.
But there are thousands of professional teachers who don’t have the time, resources, skill or inclination to teach children, and that is a fact as well.
I salute and admire any parent who attempts to make the effort to school their own children. I would think a parent might end up learning more about themselves in the process.
And I bristle as the “educators” who would deny them that opportunity because the educator holds the view that “only the professional can effectively teach”. That positively angers me.
We’ve homeschooled six from K through high school and all are either in college or have graduated college. This article seems like it could’ve been written 25 years ago. The horse has definitely left the barn on this subject. Interesting how a poorly researched argument the author makes...from Harvard, too.
“Yet Elizabeth Bartholet, Wasserstein public interest professor of law and faculty director of (Harvard) Law School’s Child Advocacy Program”
Keep in mind that these are VERY DANGEROUS people and need to be treated as such. If she were from some state college in Kansas, what she says wouldn’t matter - but this is Harvard, and people in power essentially take MARCHING ORDERS from these types of people.
Lies, lies, and more lies.
We homeschooled 8. Tested them every year, all were consistently in top 5% of standardized national tests.
One brilliant son we saw needed better math & science than we could provide. Talked to our public school. In spite of his 99th percentile testing, they insisted on putting him back a year (in 10th) for his 11th grade year.
Sorry, you are idiots. Top private school took him - he was #1 in class, valedictorian. Went on to get 5 year full ride to top university and graduate Summa Cum Laude with FOUR simultaneous degrees: B.S. in Math, B.S. in Computer Science, B.A. in Physics, B.A. in Greek.
Other kids got 4 other degrees; 1 other Summa Cum Laude, 2 - Phi Beta Kappa’s, 1 - Tau Beta Pi (engineering), 2- engineers, 2 - pilots, and much more.
All 8 have done exceptionally well in whatever work field they are in.
But I have to add - all this was by the incredible grace of God. Wife & I both former public school teachers........
Harvard Law, indeed.
I was homeschooled in PA, the law is absurdly burdensome. The superintendent of the school district had the power to compel us all to submit to a personal appearance before him, which didn’t go well for him...
The law requires the parent to submit a portfolio, keep detailed records of what’s taught, the hours spent, work samples in specific subjects. You need a certified examiner (whom you pay out of your pocket) to interview and test the student. Medical records, vaccinations, eye exam, all the results to be submitted to local school district, medical privacy be damned. Resistance leads swiftly to child protective services getting involved.
This goes on until the student is of an age no longer required to attend school, but after that, if you don’t continue to “cooperate,” the school district records you as a high school dropout.
I should add that the school district I tangled with had proficiency scores around 60 percent for reading and math. We were in a region where a teenager presenting normal intelligence was automatically assumed to be homeschooled. (Other evidence being, proper hygiene and respect for elders.)
This woman never got a high school diploma but did get a PhD from Cambridge.
I’m not convinced that was in her best interest. I could see having to work my way through the text of the video which was horribly done, the subtle or not so subtle changes brought on by the college experience which is just K-12 on steroids.
The only thing missing from this mug shot is the number.
One room school house and McGuffey’s reader coupled with a general Christian upbringing.
The recipe for winning a world war on two continents in three and a half years, and making the necessary sacrifices in saving millions of lives and their freedom, on our own dime.
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