Home Schooling Attacked Falsely

Insecurity Coupled With Ignorance

How Does a Harvard Professor Think It’s ‘Authoritarian’ to Allow Parents to Teach Their Kids?

Katherine Timpf
National Review


A Harvard University law professor has called for a “presumptive ban” on homeschooling — claiming that the freedom to do so under our current laws is “authoritarian.” 

“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,” Elizabeth Bartholet said in an interview with Harvard Magazine.  “I think it’s always dangerous to put powerful people in charge of the powerless, and to give the powerful ones total authority.”

Bartholet stated that there is “an essentially unregulated regime in the area of homeschooling,” with “very few requirements that parents do anything.  [P]eople can homeschool who’ve never gone to school themselves, who don’t read or write themselves,” she said.

Bartholet also stated that homeschooling can make it easier for parents to get away with abusing their children and/or indoctrinating them with white supremacy and misogyny: 

[I]t’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.

I do not, of course, want to minimize the absolute horror of child abuse. It’s disgusting; it’s heartbreaking; and anyone who isn’t a sociopath agrees that it’s necessary to protect our children.

Unfortunately, however, it’s also true that abuse is hardly something that can occur only in a child’s home. In fact, as Harvard grad and homeschooler Kerry McDonald pointed out in a letter to Harvard Magazine in response to its article, “many parents choose to homeschool their children to remove them from abuse at school, whether it’s widespread bullying by peers or, tragically, rampant abuse by teachers and school administrators themselves.”  [Emphasis, ours.]

Harvard Law Professor Goes Rogue

Ban Homeschooling Because Christians Do It!

It’s very difficult to argue you’re just trying to protect the kids when the biggest worry you can conjure is that some students may still need to interact with religious folk

Kelly Marcum
The Federalist

Elizabeth Bartholet, a professor at Harvard Law School, managed to break through the endless COVID-19 news cycle when she was quoted extensively by Harvard Magazine, citing her recently published article: “Homeschooling: Parents Rights Absolutism vs. Child Rights to Education & Protection.”

Tragically, Bartholet’s concern for children, which she is using as a bludgeon to attack conservative Christians, is authentic but horribly corrupted. Bartholet is a woman who by all accounts truly cares about children ahead of politics or agendas, yet has fallen prey to the left’s manic need to substitute the state for the parent, or more accurately, for the traditional Christian parent.

Masking her disdain for conservatives behind a veneer of concern for children’s welfare, Bartholet’s argument concludes that homeschooling threatens not just children, but society, because the majority of homeschoolers are conservative Christians, and thus indoctrinate their children with religious ideology and antidemocratic notions.

“[I]t’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,” Bartholet asserts, before arguing for a presumptive ban on homeschooling parents, specifically those guilty of not agreeing with tolerant progressives.

It’s Clear Bartholet’s Biggest Concern Is Ideology

Bartholet has a long career of advocating for child welfare policies, so her alleged concerns for child safety are almost convincing. However, she gives the game away when she lists the potential costs of her proposed restrictions on homeschooling.

Bartholet’s only real concern is not that children may be subjugated to failing school systems or become victims of bullying, reasons commonly cited by homeschooling parents as their motives for pulling their children out of school. These concerns she dismisses out of hand.

No, Bartholet’s largest worry is that since some public schools may reflect the conservative regions in which they are located, students may still be forced to attend “Some schools that teach views and values that mirror those of conservative Christian homeschoolers.” It’s very difficult to argue you’re just trying to protect the kids when the biggest worry you can conjure is that some students may still need to interact with religious folk.

Ugly Elitism, Born of Ignorance and Fear

The War on Homeschooling

By Kevin Williamson
National Review Online

[Elizabeth Bartholet is a "Liberal Tyrant" according to Timothy P. Carney, writing in Washington Examiner.  She teaches at the Harvard Law School.  To put the matter succinctly, she is "liberal tyrant", wanting to ban home schooling in America.]

About Elizabeth Bartholet and homeschooling, Alexandra de Sanctis writes: “Though she doesn’t acknowledge it, the result of her ban on homeschooling would be that wealthy parents can continue to avoid public schools by sending their children to expensive private institutions while a dearth of school-choice policies and a lack of financial resources leave lower-income parents with no options at all.”

Most wealthy families do not avoid public schools by sending their children to expensive private schools. They segregate themselves geographically in affluent neighborhoods, where the high cost of entry and heavy tax burden perform the role of tuition and private-school entry requirements — exclusion. You can pay for exclusivity through tuition or you can finance it through your mortgage, but the result is the same.

Bartholet is pretty open about her program, which has less to do with ensuring equal educational opportunity across socioeconomic groups (ho, ho!) and more to do with extending the surveillance state, lest unsupervised proles make child-rearing decisions at odds with the priorities Bartholet would prefer to see enforced.

The conception of the public schools as a coercive and homogenizing moral force is fundamental to the mandatory-education project — our very first public-education law (known by the wonderfully evocative title “Old Deluder Satan Act”) was explicitly anti-Catholic in its intent, as were many of the public-education laws (Blaine amendments, etc.). Like our Puritan forebears, contemporary progressives believe that what keeps the infidels from the One True Faith is mostly ignorance, which can be cured through coercive indoctrination.

Leaving poor families with no choice in educational matters is, from that point of view, the great selling point of abolishing homeschooling and other alternatives — not a regrettable tradeoff.

We talk about the “separation of church and state,” but the Left is very much interested in evangelism and in using the apparatus of the state to that end. Homeschooling is one of the few authentically radical movements of any consequence in contemporary American life, and the desire of powerful people such as Elizabeth Bartholet to inhibit it is very strong.

I’d like to see more separation between the schools and the criminal-justice system. Instead, we will continue to use the education system as an instrument of surveillance and coercion to bully poor people into uniformity with the cultural and aesthetic preferences of Harvard professors, one more on-ramp to child-protective services, family court, jail, etc.

German Courts Show Some Common Sense--At Last

Christian Homeschooling Family Wins Back Custody of Children


By Eno Adeogun
Wed 03 Jul 2019



A German court has granted a Christian couple custody of their children after years of legal conflict over the parents' right to homeschool the youngsters. The state kept legal custody of Dirk and Petra Wunderlich's two youngest children after it came to light that the couple were breaking German law by educating their four children at home.   More than 30 police officers and social workers raided their home and forcefully removed the children in August 2013 but they were later returned.

The family however lost custody of the two minors to prevent them from fleeing Germany with the children.  The court's recent decision comes just months after the European Court of Human Rights ruled against the family in January. An appeal before the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights is still pending.

A new judge ruled in the family's favour after the previous judge who was involved in the removal of the children was replaced on grounds of bias.

Home Schools In Secularists' Sights

UK Government Eviscerates Parental Rights

Virginia Hale
Breitbart UK

Fresh from making LGBT lessons mandatory for every school in the country, the UK government is set to force parents who homeschool their children to sign a register it says will protect against “dangerous influences”.

Parents who homeschool their children would be made to sign a compulsory register or else face possible prosecution, under Department for Education (DfE) plans designed supposedly to counter fears of “missing” children dropping off the state’s radar. 

Education Secretary Damian Hinds said: “The term ‘home education’ has now acquired a much broader meaning than it used to. It is now a catch-all phrase, used to refer to all children not in a registered school.

“So while this does include those actually getting a really good education at home, it also includes children who are not getting an education at all, or being educated in illegal schools where they are vulnerable to dangerous influences – the truth is, we just don’t know.”

Schools watchdog head Amanda Spielman commented that “Ofsted has long had concerns about the increasing numbers of school-age children not attending a registered school, many of whom may not be receiving a high-quality education or being kept safe.” 

She recently spoke out to denounce protests against a curriculum which Muslim parents in Birmingham complained was “promoting homosexuality”, claiming that lessons introducing young children to transexual and LGBT lifestyles were necessary to prepare pupils for life in a “diverse, modern, progressive country”.

German Throwback to Nazi Laws

‘Major Blow to Parental Rights’

Court Rules Against German Homeschoolers 

Thomas D. Williams
Breitbart London


A recent ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) found that German authorities had not violated a family’s rights when they stormed their home and carried away their four children to prevent them from receiving homeschooling, a decision condemned by human rights advocates as “a major blow to parental rights.”

The case goes back to August 2013, when more than 30 police officers and social workers burst into the home of Dirk and Petra Wunderlich, just as they were beginning their first homeschooling lesson of the year, a practice that is illegal in Germany, and seized their children.

Ellen Fantini, Executive Director of the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe, told Breitbart News on Monday that Germany is one of the only nations to criminally enforce its ban on homeschooling, and that the officials had “entered the Wunderlich home with a battering ram and taken the children by force.”

The January 10 ruling by the ECHR defending the police action sends the very clear message that “German officials know better than parents how to educate their children,” Ms. Fantini said.  “This ruling ignores the fact that Germany’s policy on homeschooling violates the rights of parents to educate their children and direct their upbringing. It is alarming to see that this was not recognized by the most influential human rights court in Europe,” said Paul Coleman, Executive Director of ADF International. “This ruling is a step in the wrong direction and should concern anyone who cares about freedom.”

After courts in Germany ruled in favor of the government, the Wunderlich family appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, which agreed to take up the case in August 2016.

A Couple of Notes from the Travel Diary, Part II

A Home School in Action

Yesterday we were discussing the thralldom to crystal methamphetamine as it is being experienced in provincial New Zealand.

A more positive experience on our travels was had when we stopped off at a small country town for coffee and some food.  Working in the cafe was a woman and a young girl whom we estimated to be about ten years old.  We were intrigued about the young girl.  This was a school day, and clearly the child was not at school.

It became obvious pretty quickly that the older woman (maybe the girl's mother or "auntie") was involved in training the younger girl in the disciplines of commerce: serving customers, operating the "machinery" in the shop, taking orders, and so forth.  What impressed us was the way the young attendant spoke to us.  She looked straight at us, greeted us, and asked how she might assist us.  There was an air of confidence about her that can only come when a child is exposed to the encouragement and loving support of adults, of whanau.

We looked at the menu, asked a couple of questions, and her older colleague helped her answer.  We placed our order, she entered it into the electronic cash register, then operated the card payment equipment, and delivered our receipt.  We then went outside in the sunshine to tables and chairs surrounded by a neat garden, growing all kinds of herbs and vegetables doubtless being used in the culinary creations inside.

In time the young girl delivered our coffee, then the snacks.

Authorities Assault A Child--Statism At Work

PETITION TO NORWAY'S EMBASSIES IN EUROPE

Homeschooled Boy Kidnapped by Police in Norway





By Home School Legal Defense Association


What should have been a happy homecoming to Norway for Leif and Terese Kristiansen turned into a parent’s worst nightmare when the Barnevernet (Norway’s child welfare agency) brutally removed their son, Kai, after they started homeschooling.

The family had been living in Canada, where Terese and Kai are citizens. They returned recently to Norway in search of new opportunities. But at the local public school, 12-year-old Kai became the victim of merciless bullying. School officials did not resolve the situation.

To protect Kai from further trauma, his parents did the responsible and loving thing: they removed him from the public school and immediately began to homeschool him. By choosing to homeschool their son, the Kristiansens did what the state or public school would not do . . . keep Kai safe and provide him with a healthy learning environment.

Re-Building Christendom--No Time to Lose

The Three-Fold Cord

The State's control over education in New Zealand has been with us since the 1880's.  At the time state funding and control was first put forward few realized that it was a very early manifestation of a doctrine that would come to dominate the country--and well nigh bring us to ruin.  Some have called this ideology"Socialism Without Doctrines".  

Migrants to New Zealand (mainly from the UK) in the late nineteenth century and on into the twentieth came from a civilization that had a long pedigree.  It also had well established institutions, such as hospitals and schools.  Migrants naturally wanted to see these things established in New Zealand--and the quickest way was to fund them out of the public purse.  So New Zealand became a socialist country by practice, rather than by dogma.

Churches were largely complicit in this development.  They were comfortable with supporting state schools, rather than establishing their own parochial schools.  After all, the state had the money (extracted through taxation) and churches did not.  It took a century for this model to fail badly. It has turned out that socialism in the education sector--with or without doctrines--would be no more successful than it has proved to be producing not fit-for-purpose, useless widgets.

On-Line Schools

Empowering Parents A Little Bit

The New Zealand government has thrown a monkey wrench into the vast state school engine.  At the drop of a hat, out of left field, the Ministry of Education has incorporated on-line schooling into the system.  If the media's reporting on this move reflects accurately the response of the educational establishment, it has been condemned swiftly, unequivocally, and universally.

Basically, it will involve education providers being allowed to instruct and teach kids via on-line media.  The providers will need to be registered with the State and doubtless their educational offering, processes, and disciplines will be subject to the Education Review Office--which currently inspects all registered schools.

The Minister of Education, Hekia Parata had this to say:

"This innovative way of delivering education offers a digital option to engage students, grow their digital fluency, and connect them even more to 21st century opportunities.  "There will be a rigorous accreditation process alongside ongoing monitoring to ensure quality education is being provided." [NZ Herald]

But it turns out that on-line learning is a very, very bad idea. It takes pupils away from the institution of the physical bricks and mortar school.  That, apparently, is terrible.

Cocoa Puffery

The Sophistry of The Intellectual Cadre

When it comes to the "educated elite" nothing is surprising.  Ignorance, prejudice, and superficiality know no bounds.  We came across this recently, which caused not a little chortling into the cornflakes.  The headline in BreitbartNews gave us a hint at what was to come:

The Big Question: How Silly Can a Philosopher Be?

Well now.  Let's see.  The appellation, "philosopher"  is usually taken to mean, at root, a lover of wisdom.  But when that wisdom is cocooned within the narrow confines of cotton wool, sometimes it degenerates into a "love of sophistry" which is an entirely different kettle of fish.  In this case, the sophist is one Daniel Dennett, who writes in Atlantic now and then.

Letter From the US (About Germany)

‘Brutal and Vicious’: Armed German Police Storm Homeschooling Family’s House and Forcibly Seize Children, Report Claims

Aug. 30, 2013 3:25pm
Billy Hallowell
TheBlaze

[Editor's note: Germany just cannot shake off its Nazi past.  It remains partially instituted in laws making home schooling verborten in that country--laws that were Nazi creations and which have never been repudiated or repealed by Germany.  Now the Reich is applying the Nazi anti-homeschooling tyranny with an energy worthy of the Gestapo itself.  JT ]

The Romeike family’s very public legal battle has brought to light the homeschooling community’s ongoing battle inside Germany. Educating children in this manner is illegal in the European nation, which led Uwe and Hannelore Romeike to inevitably seek refuge. While the family’s battle for asylum in the U.S. continues, there’s another story coming out of Germany that will likely send chills down the spines of homeschooling advocates.

US Homeschooling--A Quiet Revolution

Report: Homeschooling Growing Seven Times Faster than Public School Enrolment

by Dr. Susan Berry  

8 Jun 2013, 

The Blaze

As dissatisfaction with the U.S. public school system grows, apparently so has the appeal of homeschooling. Educational researchers, in fact, are expecting a surge in the number of students educated at home by their parents over the next ten years, as more parents reject public schools.

A recent report in Education News states that, since 1999, the number of children who are homeschooled has increased by 75%. Though homeschooled children represent only 4% of all school-age children nationwide, the number of children whose parents choose to educate them at home rather than a traditional academic setting is growing seven times faster than the number of children enrolling in grades K-12 every year.

As homeschooling has become increasingly popular, common myths that have long been associated with the practice of homeschooling have been debunked.

Letter From America (About Radicals)

The Last Radicals  
Homeschoolers occupy the curriculum  

By Kevin D. Williamson
National Review Online  
October 15, 2012, Issue

There is exactly one authentically radical social movement of any real significance in the United States, and it is not Occupy, the Tea Party, or the Ron Paul faction. It is homeschoolers, who, by the simple act of instructing their children at home, pose an intellectual, moral, and political challenge to the government-monopoly schools, which are one of our most fundamental institutions and one of our most dysfunctional. Like all radical movements, homeschoolers drive the establishment bats.

In the public imagination, homeschooling has a distinctly conservative and Evangelical odor about it, but it was not always so.

Reading List for Even Older Kids

Mining Hidden Treasures

Justin Taylor has been reproducing a reading list collated by Calvary Classical School.  He has kindly imbedded links to Amazon for all the recommended titles.   The list overall naturally contains a bias towards US history; however, for other countries this can be appropriately substituted by books dealing with one's own national history.  In New Zealand, for example, William Williams Christianity Among the New Zealanders would be appropriate for Year Eight.)

There is an additional benefit from studying a list such as this.  It provides a comparative measure for reading levels and standards in our own Christian schools.

Reading Lists for Kids

Things That Make a Difference

Arguably the most potent contribution parents can make to the education of their younger children is to read to them.  For the first eight years of schooling, reading to children every day is far, far more important than homework.  But what to read?

There are myriads of children's books and literature.  Some classic.  Some excellent.  Some inconsequential.  Reading lists to sort the wheat from the chaff can be very useful.  (Such lists are, of course, never final or definitive.)

Here is one such list, produced by a classical Christian School--courtesy of Justin Taylor:

Letter From Canada

“You can affirm the family’s ideology in your family life, you just can’t do it as part of your educational study and instruction,” a government spokesperson told LifeSiteNews.

Homeschooling families can’t teach homosexual acts sinful

by Patrick B. Craine

Thu Feb 23, 2012 15:29 EST
Tags: homeschool, homosexuality

EDMONTON, Alberta, February 23, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Under Alberta’s new Education Act, homeschoolers and faith-based schools will not be permitted to teach that homosexual acts are sinful as part of their academic program, says the spokesperson for Education Minister Thomas Lukaszuk.

“Whatever the nature of schooling – homeschool, private school, Catholic school – we do not tolerate disrespect for differences,” Donna McColl, Lukaszuk’s assistant director of communications, told LifeSiteNews on Wednesday evening.  “You can affirm the family’s ideology in your family life, you just can’t do it as part of your educational study and instruction,” she added.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

And I Have Left Behind the Spoiler

Taking a Stroll on the Links
Written by Douglas Wilson
Saturday, 25 February 2012


For various reasons, this promises to be very interesting indeed. On March 27th, it will be in 550 theaters. Glenn Beck has the first five minutes posted here.

In other (clearly related) news, the province of Alberta is interested in making it illegal for home schoolers to teach their kids, during the course of their formal education, that homosexual acts are a sin. Despotism, tyranny . . . what other words come to mind?

My Way, or the Highway

The End Game of Secular Humanism in Our Schools

When government schools, and the education system breaks down, guess what happens?  Parents--who can be expected to be far more concerned about their respective child's education than the local or national educrat--find alternatives.  More often than not the non-educrat controlled alternatives work far better. 

One of these alternatives is the rise of independent schools.  Another is home-schooling.  In the US, recent estimates have 2 million children being home-schooled.  And the number is rising.  A Canadian study purports to show that the educational outcomes are superior to government run schools.  No surprises there.

Fallacies and Those Who Glory in Them

Hyperbolic Bloviation

Our vastly superior and excessively sophisticated state education system regrettably does not teach its pupils how to think or reason.  Such antiquated nostrums as logic are seen as old fashioned or too restrictive for the free flights of fancy that can be attained by a spontaneously combusting intellect operating at the peak of the evolutionary chain of being.  

As a consequence there is a king tide of ignorance, particularly amongst the "educated". The poet e.e.cummings once "eulogized" the US President, Warren G. Harding as,  "The only man, woman, or child who wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors".  Nowadays, almost everyone it seems in the chattering classes and the intelligentsia cannot put forward the most simple argument without an equal number of logical errors.   

In the recent horror of a deranged or evil person (the jury is still out on which) who attempted murder on a US Congresswoman and in the course of the crime successfully murdered six others, the chattering classes have been trying to find a scapegoat.  In order to pin blame on others--Sarah Palin, right wing extremists, the Tea Party movement, etc.--they found themselves breaking even the most fundamental precepts of logic.  Needless to say, most likely they are ignorant of  their ignorance.  

Arguably the most basic logical fallacy of all is that of "affirming the consequent".  Would you trust or respect the argument of a person who reasoned as follows

"Dogs have four legs;
"That animal over there has four legs;
"Therefore that animal is a dog"?  

Yup.  That's compelling.  Beyond reasonable doubt.  Now try this for size:

"Right-wing people have assassinated politicians; 
"Jared Lee Loughner (the Tucson assassin) attempted to assassinate a politician;
"Therefore, Jared Lee Loughner is a right-winger."

There are lots of permutations on the fallacy:

"Some right-wingers favor the gold standard;
"Jared Lee Loughner favors the gold standard;
"Therefore, Jared Lee Loughner is a right-winger."
(Hat Tip: Patterico)

As they say, ever let the truth get in the way of a "good" story.  In this case, never let reason stand in the way of hyperbolic excess.