A professor at Harvard University is calling for a “presumptive ban” on home schooling because the practice infringes on the rights of children.
“We have an essentially unregulated regime in the area of homeschooling,” Elizabeth Bartholet, a Wasserstein public interest professor of law and faculty director of the Law School’s Child Advocacy Program, told Harvard Magazine. “If you look at the legal regime governing homeschooling, there are very few requirements that parents do anything.”
Bartholet said the lack of oversight for people parenting their children leads to an increased risk of students not getting a proper education.
“That means, effectively, that people can homeschool who’ve never gone to school themselves, who don’t read or write themselves,” she said.
Several states do not require parents to register their children with the state as “home-schooled” and can simply keep their children home, the magazine reported.
The article comes as millions of children across the country have had in-person classes canceled as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. With nearly every state in the country implementing some sort of stay-at-home order, parents have been left to help their children with online lessons with teachers or teach their children themselves.
Thus, children are missing out on participation in society, Bartholet argues.
“From the beginning of compulsory education in this country, we have thought of the government as having some right to educate children so that they become active, productive participants in the larger society,” she said. “But it’s also important that children grow up exposed to community values, social values, democratic values, ideas about nondiscrimination and tolerance of other people’s viewpoints.”
Bartholet also called it “dangerous” to allow parents to have total control of their children and education.
“The issue is, do we think that parents should have 24/7, essentially authoritarian control over their children from ages zero to 18? I think that’s dangerous,” she said. “I think it’s always dangerous to put powerful people in charge of the powerless, and to give the powerful ones total authority.”
