{"id":72202,"date":"2020-05-22T00:07:18","date_gmt":"2020-05-22T04:07:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thecollegefix.com\/?p=72202"},"modified":"2020-05-21T22:34:32","modified_gmt":"2020-05-22T02:34:32","slug":"in-defense-of-homeschooling-harvards-attack-on-homeschooling-and-christian-parents-is-maliciously-false","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thecollegefix.com\/in-defense-of-homeschooling-harvards-attack-on-homeschooling-and-christian-parents-is-maliciously-false\/","title":{"rendered":"Harvard\u2019s attack on homeschooling (and Christian parents) is maliciously false"},"content":{"rendered":"

OPINION: The anti-homeschooling crusade is filled with <\/strong><\/em>disinformation<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

From the age of five to the age of 18, I never set foot in a classroom as part of my education, and last year, I graduated from college.<\/p>\n

My story is one of hundreds of thousands shared by homeschool graduates across the country, and every year there are more and more.<\/p>\n

Each of us have a different story, but we are just as accomplished as our brick and mortar school peers, if not more so.<\/p>\n

We are not unsociable weirdos with psychotic views on society. We are hard working, intellectually curious people with a strong desire to learn that doesn\u2019t disappear after going to college.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, we are able to learn in an environment free of the distractions faced by our counterparts in public schools.<\/p>\n

I cannot thank my parents enough for keeping me out of the public school fray. Instead of being in an environment full of drug use and promiscuity, I was in an environment that allowed me to focus on my studies, even if it occasionally required a regular nudge.<\/p>\n

But a growing number of so-called experts are insisting that students like me shouldn\u2019t exist. All students should be subjected to the social influences synonymous with going to a brick and mortar school.<\/p>\n

That is what Harvard law school professor Elizabeth Bartholet is doing, as she has set out on a one woman crusade to destroy what she says is \u201ca threat to children and society\u201d — homeschooling.<\/p>\n

As a homeschooling graduate, I took great offense to this on many levels. But the full depth of Bartholet\u2019s deceptive misinformation campaign has led to Harvard Law School, one of the most prestigious institutions in the nation, to host a summit<\/a> on the supposed dangers of homeschooling and the need to regulate it. The event has since been \u201cpostponed\u201d from its original June date due to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.<\/p>\n

Bartholet started her crusade with a 2019 Arizona Law Review article titled: \u201cHomeschooling: Parent Rights Absolutism vs. Child Rights to Education & Protection.<\/a>\u201d Now, she has followed it up with an interview with The Harvard Gazette, in addition to the planned \u201cHomeschooling Summit: Problems, Politics, and Prospects for Reform<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The way I see it, Bartholet is a liar with a political agenda. It does not appear to me that she has ever once actually interacted with the homeschool community. I tried to ask, but her email address has been removed from her faculty website and my attempts to reach Bartholet through Harvard officials were ignored.<\/p>\n

In her Arizona Law Review article, Bartholet begins with a summary statement accusing parents of wanting to \u201cisolate their children from ideas and values central to our democracy, determined to keep their children from exposure to views that might enable autonomous choice about their future lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

She goes on to baselessly accuse homeschooling parents of promoting \u201cracial segregation and female subserviance\u201d and questioning science. In the Gazette interview, she writes the reason homeschooling in the United States has experienced a boom is because of \u201cthe growth in the conservative evangelical movement.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cConservative Christians wanted the chance to bring their children up with their values and belief systems and saw homeschooling as a way to escape from the secular education in public schools,\u201d she said. \u201cThey had fought the battle with public school systems to have their children exempted from exposure to alternative values in the schools and lost.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yes.<\/p>\n

The issue of a child\u2019s education is not surprisingly a very controversial topic. How a child is taught during his or her formative years will have profound lasting implications on how that child interacts with society at large upon reaching adulthood.<\/p>\n

Thus, when a rather vociferous minority abandons the controlled realm of government education, it creates a threat against groupthink.<\/p>\n

Now, I must confess that I am not an evangelical. I am a Roman Catholic, another religious community with a widespread homeschool base. But Bartholet\u2019s comments apply to homeschoolers of all religious backgrounds, and are rather telling about her personal beliefs.<\/p>\n

The first is how she references \u201csecular education.\u201d There is no attempt to hide her belief that \u201csecular education\u201d is the most perfect education and should be followed by all. It\u2019s almost like she treats it as a religious belief, one that cannot and should not be challenged. Furthermore, her comments reveal that she expects the reader to feel the same way.<\/p>\n

While worth noting, this is not Bartholet\u2019s deception.<\/p>\n

Her deception comes in the form of numerous declarations about homeschooling families supporting segregation and overly patriarchal family structures. These two statements are blatantly untrue and rely on a fringe website as the only source of evidence.<\/p>\n

If Bartholet had spoken to actual homeschool communities she would know this. But such an action would run contrary to the real purpose of her \u201cexpert\u201d opinion, which is to push for a \u201cpresumptive ban on homeschooling,\u201d with the unsaid goal of protecting the sacrosanct institution of secular, government education.<\/p>\n

The trojan horse (besides her comments about segregation) to justify such a ban, amounts to a false concern about how well parents are equipped to instruct their own children, again reflecting a complete and utter disregard for how homeschooling is traditionally done.<\/p>\n

If Bartholet had spoken to a large number of homeschool families, she would know that the vast majority of them rely on pre-made curriculums by homeschool-focused education institutions, making the homeschooler actually accountable to a real institution.<\/p>\n

While I was homeschooled, I am actually considered a high school graduate of Kolbe Academy<\/a> in Napa, California, which provided the curriculum and would certify all grades. Numerous other homeschool curriculums exist in this way, ensuring that homeschooled students do in fact receive a high quality education. It\u2019s an education that often includes original texts that non homeschooled students usually don\u2019t read until college, if ever.<\/p>\n

Bartholet doesn\u2019t want to protect children from a poor and incomplete education. Parents are the primary educators of their children, and she wants the public school to replace them. If they did, there would be no purpose for the family. And that\u2019s her real goal — to replace parents with the all-knowing secular state, the altar at which she worships.<\/p>\n

MORE: Homeschoolers slam Harvard prof who wants to clamp down on homeschooling\u00a0<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

IMAGE: Shutterstock<\/p>\n

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