Should Parents Be Free to Determine What Their Children Learn?

            The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday concerns the right of parents to determine where their child(ren) will go to school. Harvard law professor Elizabeth Bartholet directs the Child Advocacy Program at the Law School. She believes that homeschooling is “dangerous” because parents who choose to homeschool their child/children seek “authoritarian control over their kids.” Harvard will host a summit on homeschooling in June.

Since the coronavirus has taken education out of the hands of educators and put it in the hands of parents, there may be more parents who choose to homeschool their posterity. In fact, the coronavirus may be a blessing in disguise when it comes to education. 

In an article by Jarrett Stepman titled “The Left’s Long War on Parents Over Schooling Their Kids,” he quotes Bartholet as saying “that parents of homeschooled children tend to be ‘extreme religious ideologues” who don’t believe in science, keep women subservient, and believe in white supremacy.” Wow! She hit all the points in that statement. She did a take down on people who believe in religion, women who believe in being team players with their husbands, and white people. She even put scientists on notice. Stepman noted that Bartholet is merely “perpetuating a malicious and lazy stereotype” and then gives the following quote.

As Mike McShane, the director of national research at the nonprofit EdChoice, writes: “In 2019, the National Center for Education Statistics published results from a survey of homeschoolers who found that the number one reason for homeschooling was not ‘a desire to provide religious instruction’ (that came in third) or even ‘a desire to provide moral instruction’ (that came in seventh), but rather ‘a concern about school environment, such as safety, drugs, or negative peer pressure.’ Number two was ‘dissatisfaction with the academic instruction at other schools.’

It’s true that many homeschooling families tend to be religious, but this absurd and, frankly, bigoted view of who they are reveals exactly what Bartholet wants when she calls for ending homeschooling.

What Bartholet clearly worries about is that homeschooling undermines Tolerance, with a capital “T.”

Her mindset is that public schools are a vital component of the state to carry out vast, progressive social engineering. If even a small minority of young people don’t accept the left’s views on say, sexuality, transgenderism, religion, or American history, according to this way of thinking, then they need to be indoctrinated to embrace these views.

The public schools, at least in the way Bartholet portrays them, are simply a tool to “veto” any potentially troubling beliefs of parents.

                I hope that parents are paying attention. Do you want your children indoctrinated or educated? Elites like Bartholet fear that parental control over what their children learn is detrimental to the progressive agenda. Do you want your child attending a school that is a “tool” to pit your child against your teachings? Tolerance – with a little t – is one thing. Indoctrination is a completely different game, which none of us should be playing.