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Homeschooling Is Dangerous? Who Knew?
I’d like to hear what @bethanymandel thinks about this Harvard professor’s idea.
There’s one quote I’d like to pull from the article: “I think it’s always dangerous to put powerful people in charge of the powerless, and to give the powerful ones total authority.”
Putting powerful people in charge of the powerless is always dangerous? If I didn’t know any better, I’d think she was talking about abortion…
Published in Education
She must mean school administrators and teachers who have the power to hand out grades changing the course of a student’s life. Right?
The best part about the original piece was how the word “arithmetic” was misspelled in the illustration. I see it’s now been fixed. But originally they had it spelled “arithmatic.” Guaranteed a homeschooler didn’t create that.
Also, the image of the homeschooled kid locked inside while other kids get to play outside? Er, . . . that’s kind of the opposite thing that happens, lady.
Aside from that, the whole thing is hysterical nonsense. It amazes me how crazed the lefties get when they discover something that isn’t regulated. Also, the old straw about child abuse. Please convince me that abuse never happens in government schools. Oh, you can’t, because the sexual abuse of minors by their teachers is far too common.
The comments below the article are 100% opposed to the author’s views, (when I last looked) so at least there’s that. So that’s positive.
EDIT: Ha! They shut off comments to the article! Guess they didn’t like those uppity citizens expressing support for freedom.
Worst part about homeschooling my three children was that they turned out normal, without the social tics acquired from public school and now all have successful careers which do not depend on government largess. (And all three are currently employed, even during the Chicom Coronavirus shutdown.) More than I can say for some of my nieces and nephews.
Here’s a link to the stupid piece. https://harvardmagazine.com/2020/05/right-now-risks-homeschooling
I wish I’d been homeschooled. I might’ve turned out a well-adjusted and industrious member of society.
One thing homeschooling is, is threatening to the education system, especially when the population is flat and there are less students.
Never let your schooling get in the way of your education….. Mark Twain?
The other stupid thing was the allegation that homeschooled children are at higher risk of abuse. Baloney! If a parent is abusive, they’ll be abusive when the kid gets home from public school. However, she’s implying abuse of homeschoolers by parents is rampant, and that kids escape abuse by going to public school.
I’ll say the kids are at a higher risk of abuse at public school, be it from gang violence, bullying, or sexual abuse by teachers . . .
Well, you are on Ricochet . . .
Baby steps, I guess.
After reading the Harvard magazine article I conclude that the author’s primary problem with homeschooling is that it often involves Christians. And clearly the author finds Christians to be fundamentally objectionable people.
The author states (without source) a view of Christians that is often expressed by people who don’t know any actual Christians but form their views from media created by other people who don’t know any actual Christians.
I wonder what this prof thinks of parochial schools, or even secular private schools . . .
It is more than a little ironic that the article’s author complains about parental authoritarianism in a homeschool situation while apparently being completely oblivious to the authoritarian nature of government-run schools that have been seeking to regulate increasingly more of the students’ off-campus lives.
The author cites one example of the experience of a child who grew up in a “survivalist” family and who wrote a book. But it does not appear the author ever actually talked to any homeschooled children or at least not to a significant number. The author is obviously working from speculation based on her own pre-conceived views of worst-case scenarios. Well, I can do that too with respect to government-run schools and write many of the same conclusions about the dangers of government-run schools.
The homeschooled students I have met (granted not a large number, and maybe not even a representative sample) have tended to have regular interaction with a wider range of people than most students in government-run schools. The ones I have met have been able to have more intelligent conversations with me about a wider range of subjects than many of the students in government-run schools.
Homeschool students are not trapped in their homes. Their parents take them on trips to educational places; they form groups formal and informal for teaching different subjects; homeschool students participate in community social, cultural, civic, and charitable work; homeschool students sometimes help with a family business in which the students meet with customers, suppliers, and others from the broader community.
Anyway, the article displays more about the author’s ignorance than any actual information about homeschooling.
A famous Catholic theologian and scholar said, back in the 1990s if memory serves, that “the Christian homeschool is the monastery of the coming dark ages.”
As I watch the decay of American education at all levels, I want to agree. (And I would agree, if there were many times more homeschool families than there are.)
I think plenty of parents are discovering how much time is wasted during a typical day in “building school” as we called it. When we homeschooled our son he could do his daily math work in about 20 minutes or less. He got so far ahead in so many subjects, two grades ahead in English and math, for example. We were able to spend time doing other things or just nothing at all. He had far more interaction with other polite and respectful children through our Catholic homeschool group and various classes he took, such as drawing and art and sports teams. Parents are now discovering also that you can’t transfer the way things are taught in building school to the lockdown and call it homeschooling. Homeschooling provides autonomous opportunities for kids to learn; building school keeps the authority with the adults and the bureaucracy. And that’s the way Harvard likes it.
The real question that needs asking: how is a person who is so illinformed and clearly prejudiced, without any supporting evidence for her opinion, qualified to be writing on behalf of Harvard?
Her argument falls apart with embarrassing speed. If it is dangerous to allow people with power authority over the powerless, than we should shield the powerless children from ever being placed under the authority of government employees.
We homeschool, and this shutdown of everything has my kids considering whether they should start in on next year’s schooling already.
This idea is about on the same control-freak level as the one posted earlier this week at CNN that instead of easing the current COVID-19 restrictions, state and local governments should be looking at tightening them to the point of closing all supermarkets to the general public. It’s the idea that there should only one approved way of doing things, determined and maintained by the elites who know better than other people do how everyone should run their lives.
Why not? We did with ours when they wanted to move faster.
After taking a look at the article, I find myself wondering why anybody would ever read the Harvard Magazine. Such drivel. I am not sure who is more to blame, the author of the article or the whack-job law professor whose opinions serve as the basis for the article. Someone should ask the editors why they cut off comments. Are they embarrassed? They should be.
“How dare these parents indoctrinate their children. That’s our job!”
Nothing builds confidence for a kid like the knowledge that you are zooming ahead. You could also throw in some reading that they otherwise wouldn’t tackle.
The law professor is Elizabeth Bartholet. Check out this article about her extremist authoritarian views.
Well, they also enjoy their time off and hanging out with friends. But since they can’t hang out with their friends, they’re thinking, why not?
I thought it was a quote warning of the dangers of public schools.
The professor herself is a danger to the kids. She is ignorant about how local government works, and she wants centralization. The article states:
Those laws do exist, but like every other law in our country, they are enforced by the cities and towns. If you want to have some followup to parents’ desire to homeschool, there needs to be a structure for that relationship within the towns and cities. In our town, our local administrators and their staff looked in on homeschooling situations from time to time and provided help and learning materials and occasional testing services.
I’ve always wondered how Germany gets away with abolishing homeschooling. The sentence above probably expresses the legal and philosophical wedge they use to justify it. Good grief.
This could happen here. The U.S. Supreme Court ordered a family back to Germany. The family had fled here to homeschool their children claiming that the German government was persecuting them simply for homeschooling. To my shock and amazement, our own Supreme Court rejected their argument and ordered them back. However, I just found out (yay!) that they were allowed to stay ultimately. Before today, I had not followed up on this sad story. So that’s really great news. But don’t count on this protection. Especially when a professor at a prestigious graduate school of education becomes an activist against homeschooling.
I have seen our centralizing government overstep its authority many times when it comes to kids. That’s why I admire the Parental Rights organization, which is trying to get a constitutional amendment passed to protect the right of parents to direct their children’s healthcare and education.
This amendment needs to be passed.
Thanks for telling us about this case.
I wish there was more detail on just which agencies and persons were involved in these decisions. Here is the relevant quote:
That last paragraph uses the passive voice, so doesn’t explain who made the decision or how it came about. In pushing for a more permanent solution it might be useful to know these things.
I wish I could help. I followed it for a while (with great alarm), but I don’t have time today to get to the good articles about it. :-)
I didn’t read the whole article. But I have read Educated by Tara Westover, Bartholet’s example of “what can happen”. In fact, what happened to Westover was the literal opposite of homeschooling. She received next to no “schooling” at all, in her home or otherwise. Her story is harrowing and compelling, but not indicative of anything at all other than that her folks were basically nuts.
Try again, Professor.
Is it dangerous? It can be. This is another reason to open all the golf courses.
This is the most awesome thing I have read about this whole experience.