A ridiculous liberal professor at Harvard is decrying homeschooling as dangerous because their parents have “authoritarian control” over them:
CBN NEWS – A Harvard Law professor raised eyebrows with comments critical of homeschooling in America, calling for a “presumptive ban” on the practice and taking it a step further, claiming it is “dangerous” for parents to have “authoritarian control over their children” from ages zero to 18.
Harvard’s Elizabeth Bartholet was extensively quoted in an article published on Harvard Magazine’s website titled “The Risks of Homeschooling.”
The article employs and appeals to many common anti-homeschooling tropes in lieu of relevant factual and statistical information. For starters, Bartholet demeans homeschooling as depriving children of a “meaningful education” while claiming it would keep them from “contributing positively to a democratic society.”
She provided no academic studies, statistics, or even anecdotal information to back up this assertion. She also claimed that homeschooled children are at risk of child abuse because teachers won’t be able to identify potential problems at home.
There was no information presented that supported this claim that left the impression that homeschooling parents are abusive to their children.
“We have an essentially unregulated regime in the area of homeschooling,” Bartholet says, piling on the imagery of abusive homes with a “regime” that’s taking over large swaths of the country. “If you look at the legal regime governing homeschooling, there are very few requirements that parents do anything,” she added.
Bartholet makes a clear push for massive oversight over homeschoolers, and it’s based on her belief that parents should not have complete autonomy over their own children.
According to Bartholet: “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. I think it’s always dangerous to put powerful people in charge of the powerless and to give the powerful ones total authority.”
This is such nonsense. Note that she says “We have an essentially unregulated regime in the area of homeschooling.” Most people would key off on the word ‘regime’ and I can understand why. But the more important word in her argument is ‘unregulated’.
Liberals hate homeschooling because they can’t control it. They want so desperately to control what kids learn, for the purposes of liberal indoctrination, that they make up dumb reasons like the ones listed above to disparage it. They want to control everything in education, which is why they also hate charter and private schools.
There are more reasons now than ever to homeschool your kids. Not only do homeschooled children perform better on average in all areas of testing, but they have a teacher who is very much invested in their learning and isn’t distracted by teaching 30 children. And I’d be willing to bet they, on average, end up contributing to society as much if not more so than children in public schools. Just a hunch based on what I hear from parents who homeschooled their children. Just ask Patrick Madrid.