Prof. Elizabeth Bartholet a law professor at Harvard has called for a “presumptive ban” on homeschooling saying it is “dangerous”.
“The issue is, do we think that parents should have 24/7, essentially authoritarian control over their children from ages zero to 18?” Bartholet asked. “I think that’s dangerous. I think it’s always dangerous to put powerful people in charge of the powerless, and to give the powerful ones total authority.”
Batholet also went on to argue that homeschooling was a “ticking bomb”, a breeding ground for white supremacy. She argued that the removal from the public school system was against the human rights of the child and a threat to democracy.
“Many homeschool precisely because they want to isolate their children from ideas and values central to public education and to our democracy. Many promote racial segregation and female subservience. Many question science. Many are determined to keep their children from exposure to views that might enable autonomous choice about their future lives,” she claims.
She is also concerned about the majority of homeschooling families being religious.
“[S]urveys 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,” Harvard Magazine warns. “Bartholet notes that some of these parents are ‘extreme religious ideologues’ who question science and promote female subservience and white supremacy.”
Her essay fails to consider the many studies into the educational and social benefit of homeschooling. And provides no proof that homeschooling leads to an increased risk of child abuse, racism or white supremacy.
Read More: The Daily Wire