Harvard Smears Homeschoolers and Pushes for Complete Ban
While doing a bit of research to dispute a false position involving the dominant beliefs of professors, I found troubling information: nearly 18% of all social science professors are self-identified Marxists. It seems Harvard has a few of those. One of which recently published an 80 page screed, that at its foundation operates under the presupposition that parental rights are not intrinsic, but granted by government. From that government-confers-parental-rights viewpoint, she argues that the government should deny the option to homeschool preemptively. She does allow exceptions, which she argues should only be granted for gifted artists and athletes, and would still include a requirement to have some classes in public school. All this is necessary, she claims, because homeschooling results in abuse and educational neglect. As supporting evidence, she touts a few studies that largely condemn homeschoolers simply for choosing it on religious grounds; and she mentions a few stories of children who suffered educational neglect at the hands of tyrannical fathers who really just used their children as cheap labor for their businesses.
She is correct in assuming that some parents abuse their children, but this is nowhere near the norm. If it was, then a comparative analysis of the academic results would readily show an advantage for public schoolers. It simply does not. The overwhelming data shows just the opposite: homeschooled children perform significantly better academically on standardized tests; earn higher GPAs once they move on to college; are more tolerant and accepting of others, other viewpoints, and differing political stances; and were even more found to be more mature socially, which is stereotypically assumed to be a natural handicap for homeschool. How does she handle this mountain of contradictory evidence? She doesn’t. She simply dismisses it as faulty. She even goes as far as casting all studies that show an academic advantage for homeschoolers as “not true social science”, which is a classic example of the no true Scotsman fallacy.
As for the abuse claims, she states that public schools protect children by serving as a parental watchdog. It’s true that school staff can and have reported abuses to CPS, but it’s also true that as a group they are a source of abuse. Studies have found that a full 1 in 10 public school students will be sexually abused by a public school faculty member. Expand potential perpetrators to include fellow students, and the number approaches 1 in 5, which is likely low due to underreporting. Expand the categories to include physical violence and bullying, and it’s practically a certainty.
To make matters worse, a case study found that only “5% of school employee sexual misconduct incidents known to school employees are reported to law enforcement or child welfare personnel.” A similar study conducted in New York state found only 1% were reported. The Government Accountability Office dug into this trend and found that blowback from parents and liability lawsuits disincentivized reporting. When this was coupled with collective bargaining agreement requirements that employee records were to be wiped if an employee went to work for another district, a trend called “passing the trash” emerged. This resulted in a school-employed sexual offender averaging 3 transfers and 73 victims before being reported to police. The professor wants to establish public schools as an overwatch for child abuse. I cannot imagine a worse organization for the job.
If we are keeping score to this point, the professor wants to eliminate the best performing and safest education system for children, all in the name of education and child welfare. Even a high school student that is fairly new to analytics could figure out this is counterproductive, so how did a Harvard professor arrive at such a conclusion?
Her article tells us that too. At several points, she identifies conservative Christians’ ideology as problematic, even going as far as to claim it promotes racism, sexism, and oppression. She also claims that conservative Christian parents actively suppress competing social viewpoints and science. These are classic anti-Christian talking points. And again, the data is not on her side. She’s going to have to show why “anti-science“ and “intolerant” Christian homeschool students test better in both categories than public school students. If she wants to claim the data is faulty, she’ll need to show how and why the multitude of her colleagues gathering and interpreting the data, failed. A simple, “it’s all junk except this bit here that agrees with my conclusion” does not cut it.
Philosophically it makes no sense either. She bases this entire premise under the belief that a children’s entitlement to education means that they are prohibited from experiencing anything but an institutional education. That’s a bit like saying that you have a right to food, but you must only eat at restaurants. She even goes farther than that, stating that many private institutions must also be changed:
“Some private schools pose problems of the same nature as homeschooling. Religious and other groups with views and values far outside the mainstream operate private schools with very little regulation ensuring that children receive adequate educations or exposure to alternative perspectives. Policymakers should impose greater restrictions on private schools for many of the same reasons that they should restrict homeschooling.” (page 78 of ref)
That’s a bit like saying you can only eat at restaurants which we will change to only serve our approved menu. Restricting children to receiving only a particular type of institutional education, one that is free from the conservative Christian ideology that she despises, is clearly the ideal for her. She knows that she cannot achieve this directly with that troublesome Constitution in the way (a good part of her article talks about legally circumventing the constitution via the Supreme Court). As a result, she settles for the next best thing: placing such instruction in an environment that her government allies can control, and legally must control through the statement that “alternate viewpoints” must be taught. Basically, this means that private schools can teach “Thou shalt not murder” as part of their Christian curriculum, but must then supplement with the majority culture’s caveat that no it is okay as long as a person is still in the womb and the mother explicitly states she wants that unborn child to die.
Towards the end of her article, the professor states that her goal is not to indoctrinate children into the majority culture. This assurance rings hollow. Throughout her article, there is a lack of reciprocation. Nowhere in her plan is an insistence that public schools teach Christian values as an “alternative viewpoint” to her ideology. Given her willingness to categorize us with truant parents and white supremacists, I am convinced that was the whole point. I am also convinced that if anyone tried to teach Christian values as an alternative, this professor and her allies would quickly use the full might of their legal prowess to squash it citing the Establishment Clause.
Thankfully, the Constitution is a formidable document to overcome. The professor admits as much, and expects her ideas to circumvent it to fail. Previous rulings on similar cases have established parental rights as a part of the protected liberty enshrined in the 14th amendment. Explicitly, they have denounced state moves to compel students to attend public schools and restrict teaching subjects. In those cases, the justices saw the bigotry of the Ku Klux Klan and the white nationalist groups as the major motivation in pushing those policies back then, and acted accordingly. I am certain they will see the bigotry fostered here. Especially if the legislation is as thinly veiled as this professor’s article is.
