By Jarrett Stepman:
An Ivy League professor says we need to end homeschooling, because parents who homeschool their children are “authoritarian.”
In an article in Harvard Magazine‘s latest issue, Harvard law professor Elizabeth Bartholet, faculty director of the Law School’s Child Advocacy Program, blasts homeschooling as “dangerous” and appealing to those who seek “authoritarian control over their kids.”
The article by Erin O’Donnell is part of the lead-up to a Harvard summit on homeschooling scheduled for June.
O’Donnell’s article and interview with Bartholet have garnered a good deal of attention, some say unduly. It is an important window into a mindset perhaps more common at our nation’s elite institutions than many would like to believe.
In the interview, Bartholet says that parents of homeschooled children tend to be “extreme religious ideologues” who don’t believe in science, keep women subservient, and believe in white supremacy.
Bartholet is doing little more than perpetuating a malicious and lazy stereotype.
As Mike McShane, the director of national research at the nonprofit EdChoice, writes:
In 2019, the National Center for Education Statistics published results from a survey of homeschoolers who found that the number one reason for homeschooling was not ‘a desire to provide religious instruction’ (that came in third) or even ‘a desire to provide moral instruction’ (that came in seventh), but rather ‘a concern about school environment, such as safety, drugs, or negative peer pressure.’ Number two was ‘dissatisfaction with the academic instruction at other schools.’
It’s true that many homeschooling families tend to be religious, but this absurd and, frankly, bigoted view of who they are reveals exactly what Bartholet wants when she calls for ending homeschooling.
What Bartholet clearly worries about is that homeschooling undermines Tolerance, with a capital “T.”
Read more: The Daily Signal
Image credit: NRO.
