Oldsailor65 Loc: Iowa

Harvard professor who wants to ban homeschooling says it is used to indoctrinate children with 'extreme' ideologies, like Christianity

A Harvard University law professor is arguing that homeschooling is used to dangerously indoctrinate children with "extreme" ideologies, such as Christianity.

Last month, Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Bartholet made headlines calling for a "presumptive ban" on homeschooling in the United States. In an article, titled "The Risks of Homeschooling," she suggested that the practice is dangerous because it allows parents to have "authoritarian control" over their children.

Then on Friday, in a follow-up interview with the Harvard Gazette, Bartholet doubled down on her anti-homeschooling stance, specifically citing why she believes giving control of education to parents is such a terrible thing.

Bartholet credited the recent growth of homeschooling to "the growth in the conservative evangelical movement."

She added: "Conservative Christians wanted the chance to bring their children up with their values and belief systems and saw homeschooling as a way to escape from the secular education in public schools."

The fact that many Christians homeschool their children is detrimental, Bartholet reasoned, because "many homeschooling parents are extreme ideologues, committed to raising their children within their belief systems isolated from any societal influence."

Bartholet then went on to make sweeping stereotyped generalizations of conservative Christians, suggesting that "some believe that black people are inferior to white people and others that women should be subject to men and not educated for careers but instead raised to serve their fathers first and then their husbands."

"The danger is both to these children and to society," Bartholet concluded. "The children may not have the chance to choose for themselves whether to exit these ideological communities; society may not have the chance to teach them values important to the larger community, such as tolerance of other people's views and values."

Bartholet's concerns that homeschooling is primarily used to close off children from society and indoctrinate them with beliefs in female subservience and racial supremacy is unfounded, according to data from the Institute for Family Studies.

David Sikkink, a professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame, analyzed surveys of homeschooling families and found that the families "are not overwhelmingly Christian nor religious, and are not as universally closed-off to the outside world as Bartholet asserts," the Catholic News Agency reported.

Data from one of the large surveys showed that only about 16% cited religious beliefs as the most important reason for homeschooling and only 5% cited moral instruction. Rather, the most cited reason for choosing to homeschool was concern over the environment at other schools in the area.

https://www.theblaze.com/news/harvard-professor-homeschool-ban-christianity?utm_source=theblaze-dailyPM&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily-Newsletter__PM%202020-05-19&utm_term=TheBlaze%20Daily%20PM%20-%20last%20270%20days

********************************************************************
I hope that Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Bartholet doesen't have any kids.

saltwind78

Old, College professors have tenure, and can't be fired. They pretty much can teach any thing they want to in the classroom. Most are fine people, but there are always a few schmucks on every campus. I had a history teacher that was a convert to the Catholic faith. Queens College was a predominately a school with a very large Jewish student body. He used his classroom to try to convert kids to his religion. This was a course in Contemporary civilization ( modern world history.) When I complained to the administration, I was told that there was nothing they could do. They called it academic freedom. I called it academic abuse. I also had an
admitted Marxist teaching American government. I really enjoyed the course, but I seriously doubt if any student became a Marxist, and I told her so.

American Vet

I have never really understood why they have tenure......

saltwind78

American, Either do I. I was a teacher that taught for over 30 years. My county did away with tenure for the public schools. They replaced it with a system where if a teacher that was found not meeting standards, she or he was given an adviser for one year to help him or her. If after a year, the teacher was still not meeting standards after being reviewed by the county administration, they were let go. If you did your job, you had nothing to worry about. I guess at the college level, students were supposed to use critical judgement. They could always withdraw from the course.