A little about me: I was born in Reunion Island, a French state off the coast of Africa. I became an American citizen after meeting my now husband and moving to the USA 22 years ago. I have a bachelor’s degree in German Linguistics and History and I have lived in Germany, the South of mainland France, Los Angeles, and now Hawaii. I speak 5 languages (learning my 6th now). English is my 4th language (please forgive any grammatical errors I might have missed). I have been married 22 years and we have a 10 yo daughter who has always been homeschooled. Read my full bio here.
This is not a case about homeschool vs public school. This about parental rights.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic had spread to the USA, the Homeschooling Summit: Problems, Politics, and Prospects for Reform was scheduled to be held at Harvard Law School June 18-19, 2020 (as of this writing the event is still on.) The title of the summit is misleading. This event – which is private and by invitation only- is not designed for homeschoolers, public educators, and legislators to meet in order to propose constructive feedback about homeschooling. The agenda is clearly spelled out and frankly scary, even if you don’t homeschool. If you’re a parent, or ever plan to become one, read on to see what our so called “elite” thinks about individuals’ rights and freedom.
This article written by The Home School Legal Defense Association does a great job at presenting each speaker. I highly recommend a thorough reading.
Today, I want to respond to Elizabeth Bartholet, organizer of the summit I reference above, Wasserstein public interest professor of law and faculty director of the Law School’s Child Advocacy Program, who recently was heavily quoted in this article: The Risks of Homeschooling by Erin O-Donnell.
I first present the exact excerpt from the article. (The use of “she” in those excerpts refers to Mrs Bartholet. The narrating voice is author Erin O-Donnell.)
My responses are in the grey boxes.
Homeschooling, she (Mrs Bartholet) 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.
What is the definition of a “meaningful education”?
Who has the authority to make that determination? Only people who agree with Mrs Bartholet? (She didn’t invite anyone from the “other side” to the summit) The Government?
I am all for protecting children. The fact is that too many children who go to public school also suffer from abuse (perpetrated by parents, teachers, coaches, etc…) yet she is not recommending a “presumptive ban on the practice” of public schooling. Why the double standard?
“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.”
What is the percentage of homeschooling families in which one or both parents cannot read or write? Just because something is possible, does not mean it is happening.
I am challenging Mrs Bartholet’s belief that, in order to provide a stellar education to a child, one must master each and every subject the child is learning. I contend that, even a parent who cannot read or write but who has come to understand the value of academics and instruction can find ways to homeschool their child effectively.
The role of a homeschooling parent is to facilitate an education. I don’t have to master Algebra in order to find a suitable tutor, course, online program for my child to learn Algebra. I don’t have to speak Japanese fluently in order to download Duolingo, Rosetta Stone, and hire a native Japanese tutor to converse with my child via Zoom. As a matter of fact, I can model life long learning by studying Japanese alongside my child, which is exactly what we are doing in our homeschool.
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.
Mrs Bartholet doesn’t only want to ban homeschooling, she wants public school to become mandatory at an earlier age. School is not currently required until age 5 in most states (in some states it is later). Essentially, whether a parent chooses to homeschool or public school, children are equally at risk of abuse in the first 5 years of their lives.
“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.’”
If a parent has prior reports of child abuse, CPS is already involved. It’s logical that there should be ongoing follow ups from Child Protective Services. If a parent who has prior reports of child abuse files a letter of intent to homeschool, CPS has the right to schedule a visit and interview to ensure the child’s safety and well being.
If homeschooling parents are required to be background checked, then all parents should be subjected to the same rules. With that kind of logic, soon parents will need to request permission from the government BEFORE they can conceive a child and certainly BEFORE they can bring their child home from the hospital delivery ward. (I bet Mr James Dwyer, famous for claiming that “The reason parent-child relationships exist is because the State confers legal parenthood …” would love it if that were true!)
As an example, she points to the memoir Educated, by Tara Westover, the daughter of Idaho survivalists who never sent their children to school.
Tara Westover is an irrelevant example to the subject of homeschooling. Her parents did not homeschool her. They were extremists, who lived off the grid and did not abide by our legal system nor ascribe to our common way of life. (no birth certificate, no hospitals. etc…)
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.
Where are references to the surveys cited? In my experience, whether parents who homeschool are religious or not , they homeschool primarily because they want to:
spend more time with their children.
give their children a childhood with more play, downtime, and connection.
instill a love of learning and reading.
As to her statement about “extreme religious ideologues”, though I am not contesting they exist, I am certain they do not make the majority of homeschoolers. Is Mrs Bartholet familiar with widely popular secular homeschooling movements such as The Brave Writer or Be Wild and Free?
As to “mainstream culture”, you don’t have to be a “religious white supremacist” to agree that it has little to no value besides that of entertainment.
“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.
Compulsory education was never intended to give the government some right to educate children. Compulsory education was mandated to ensure children’s right to an education and put the expectation on parents to satisfy that obligation.
Parents may choose to take on the full responsibility of that education by homeschooling, or they may choose to delegate it to private schools, or public schools funded by tax payers’ money.
Though my own goals in educating my child include that she can support herself as an adult, I certainly hope that I am teaching her to do more than simply “get a job”. I do want her to be an “active, productive participant in the larger society”, not a drone trained to function only within the established system.
“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.
What Mrs Bartholet means is that it is important that children be exposed to HER values. She theoretically promotes “non discrimination and tolerance of other people’s viewpoints” while actively discriminating against a minority group (homeschoolers) and being intolerant of their beliefs and ideals.
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.
The HSLDA represents individual rights, ensures that the law is being enforced, and that new laws remain constitutional. The reason they’ve been “getting their way” when taking matters to court is that the law and constitution is on their side.
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.
Parents do have certain absolute and unalienable rights, as well as obligations and responsibilities. There are already laws in place to ensure the education and protection of children. There is no need to interfere with homeschooling laws.
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.
Mrs Bartholet contradicts herself. She says that a parent’s influence is not limited if the child is in school 6-7 hours/day when the whole reason why she wants all children to attend public school is so they are not under the tyrannical influences of their parents’ beliefs and ideology. Which is it Mrs 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,” 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.”
Here I actually agree with Mrs Bartholet. It IS “dangerous to put powerful people in charge of the powerless and to give the powerful ones total authority.” That is exactly why government should NOT gain yet more power over its citizens, in particular its most vulnerable ones: the youth. She’s advocating for government having complete authoritarian control over children from ages 0 to 18. She’s fighting for an ideal where adults get stripped off their rights and freedoms and hand them over to the government, where children are taught only what the government deems appropriate. In her perfect world, all citizens will have been brainwashed to do as they are told and to all think the same… preferably think like her.
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.
How nice of Mrs Bartholet to actually admit the truth. Most homeschooling “parents are motivated and capable of giving an education that’s of higher quality and as broad in scope as what’s happening in the public school system.”
But her parting idea goes against a fundamental principle of our constitution and Bill of Rights and conflicts with the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. One is always assumed innocent until proven guilty. The burden of proof thus falls on the government NOT the parent.
Please share this essay. Let’s make it go viral. Let’s make sure everyone is aware of the agenda when it comes to our parental rights. This is not a homeschool against public school post. They want to divide us so we spend our energy fighting against each other but this is about all citizens making sure the government doesn’t usurp our rights and freedoms by means of our children.
Essays I wrote on Homeschooling:
https://www.sarahbadatrichardson.com/why-i-homeschool/
https://www.sarahbadatrichardson.com/a-letter-to-my-daughter-why-we-homeschool/
https://www.sarahbadatrichardson.com/when-homeschooling-goes-well/
- From a Harvard alum, education researcher, and homeschooling mother of four, Kerry McDonald
https://fee.org/articles/harvard-magazine-calls-for-a-presumptive-ban-on-homeschooling-here-are-5-things-it-got-wrong/ - From Harvard graduate Melba Pearson who was homeschooled K-12.
https://medium.com/@melbapearson/a-response-to-the-risks-of-homeschooling-from-a-homeschooled-harvard-grad-67648f9a0d0f - From author, speaker, teacher, Peter Heck:
https://disrn.com/opinion/opinion-we-should-be-asking-homeschoolers-for-help-instead-we-attack-them
Strongly agree with you. I shared the article.
Thank you!
Also strongly agree!!!
💕 Thank you!