Homeschooling?
Don’t Knock it if You Haven’t Tried It
Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 5/30/20
Elizabeth Bartholet is
a law professor at Harvard University. She is also the faculty director of
Harvard Law School’s Child Advocacy Program. Nice. This means Bartholet
advocates for children. And advocate means to plead in favor of.
Unfortunately
Professor Bartholet’s advocacy has taken the form of an outrageous attack on
homeschooling. She recently stated that homeschooling violates a child’s right
to a meaningful education. To the professor, who has long been advocating a
limited ban on homeschooling, Christian conservatives who homeschool their
children may be “extreme religious ideologues” who are “crippling their
students’ capacities.” She so stated in an article titled “The Risks of
Homeschooling,” published last month in Harvard Magazine.
After
the nation’s homeschoolers erupted, the professor doubled down, this time in an
interview with The Harvard Gazette. In the Gazette article she blames (my word
not hers, but it fits the text and tone of her article) conservative Christians
for the rapid growth of the homeschooling movement. Noting that other countries
have far more restrictions on homeschooling, Bartholet asserted that the government
should step in.
Her
language is not guarded: “Homeschoolers are committed to raising their children
within their belief system, isolated from any societal influences.” Well, yeah!
So are Catholics, Jews, the Amish, Quakers and others, though “isolated” is the
wrong word. Such groups simply have certain beliefs, practices, and
intellectual levels which they believe they can better transmit or reach than
can public education. More than protect, they wish to advance. One would think
the professor just recently learned about homeschooling, unmindful that it is
as old as America.
The
professor continued, “Society may not have the chance to teach homeschooled
children the values that are important to the larger community such as
tolerance of other people’s views.”
Dear
Lord! Could the Harvard professor not see that with her very own words she was
showing her intolerance of homeschoolers?
My
wife Nancy and I have had experience with homeschooling and are more than
pleased with its effectiveness and possibilities. For his first four grades our
son Reagan attended a private school where Nancy was teaching high school
English. When Nancy left the school, making Reagan’s transportation there less
convenient, we decided to homeschool him since he had only one more year of
elementary school left.
I
might never have walked into the childhood home of Martin Luther King, had we
not become homeschoolers and taken Reagan there. Or learned of the effective
networking that homeschoolers benefit from, whether it’s an engineer dad
teaching math to 20 or so students on Saturday morning, or a mom who offers
homemaking classes in the evening. I
know. Bad word, homemaking. But homeschoolers care more about reality and
honest language than political correctness.
Except for Reagan’s first 5 years our 4
children attended public schools. For her own children our oldest daughter
Christy has combined public education, private education, and homeschooling.
Although her 4 children went to a strong public high school, in their childhood
years they attended a private school that required students be homeschooled at
least two days a week. All 4 of them
were well educated.
Our
other daughter Wendy who has a degree in elementary education has homeschooled
her 3 children ages 10, 12, and14 from day one, even while working in their
restaurant. Years ago just after Wendy graduated from North Cobb High School, I
asked her what she had enjoyed most about high school. “My teachers” was her
quick reply. “What least?” I asked. “The cigarette smoke in the girls’ restrooms,”
she replied. Her answer is no doubt emblematic of many homeschoolers who desire
a school setting where influences are positive and discipline problems of a few
don’t hold back the progress of everybody else.
Our
son Jeff has a 13 year old daughter. Why have he and his wife chosen to
privately educate her? “It’s just more serious and not as many problems as
regular schools,” he said awhile back. Our youngest child Reagan has 2
preschool children. I’m guessing he and his wife will opt to homeschool and/or
privately educate their children as well.
And
how does old Dad feel about their choices since he spent 37 years in public
school teaching? He feels grateful for the opportunity to teach public school
students and work with outstanding public school teachers. He’s appreciative of
public school board members, and school staffs.
More
importantly he feels that homeschooling does not remove children from
mainstream culture, that government has no business telling citizens how to
educate their children, and that Professor Bartholet should stick to teaching
law and try to be a bit more tolerant.
Roger Hines
5/28/20
Another great one, Roger.
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