the homeschooled child is locked in a literal prison made of
books–including the Bible. (featured in Harvard Magazine)
“It is important to remember that there exist terrifying liberal authoritarians who think homeschooling is horrible and should be banned because it gives parents, particularly conservative Christians, too much control over their children’s education. Harvard Law School hosts a program called the ‘Child Advocacy Program,’ or CAP, which works on weakening ‘parent rights’ and diminishing the idea of ‘family preservation,’ done in the name of fighting abuse. Fighting abuse is good and important. Children often need protection from abusive parents. But the latest crusade by CAP’s director, Harvard law professor Elizabeth Bartholet, is basically to abolish homeschooling. Based on this second-hand anecdotal evidence of some horrific cases, Bartholet tries to create a presumption that homeschoolers are abusers. Much of her argument is standard, paranoid ‘what’s to stop x from y’ reasoning. She argues that under current state laws and enforcement, there are all sorts of bad things some parents could be doing. But her real worry isn’t children getting no education. It’s children getting the ‘wrong’ education. She grants there are legitimate reasons to pull your children from school. But she is really worried about religious parents who don’t like public schools teaching their children transgender ideology, moral relativism, or radical feminism. To drive that home, Harvard Magazine had an insane picture illustrating the story. Public school children are all running around freely, while the homeschooled child is locked in a literal prison made of books–including the Bible. This is Alice-in-Wonderland, truth-on-its-head stuff. The notion that public schools provide more meaningful education than the average homeschooler is also insane. The idea that homeschoolers are, de facto, not exposed to ‘community values, social values, democratic values’ is also totally unfounded. Unless, again, by ‘social values,’ she means the values of the secular Left. If you live in a state with a Democratic legislature, you need to worry about these people. They will craft an agenda to make it illegal to homeschool your children unless you can prove good reason. They will do this precisely because they don’t want conservative Jewish, Muslim, and Christian parents passing down their values. And while these activists will lead by focusing on the rare and horrific abuses, they clearly believe that religion and conservative values count as ‘maltreatment.’ These people have a dangerous agenda. We shouldn’t ignore their work.”
Timothy Carney’s response to the Harvard Magazine rant against homeschooling, from the Washington Examiner, Apr. 22, 2020