The COVID-19 Era has produced a temporary revolution in American education.
Call it universal homeschooling. Just about everyone from kindergarten through grad school is studying at home. Unlike usual homeschooling, where parents are teachers, Covid coursework is led by schools’ regular teachers online, though parents often manage matters.
Right at this odd moment, normal homeschooling has come under a major attack that provokes vigorous reactions. The coronavirus news hook offers an ideal moment to take a substantial look at the pros and cons of this growing phenomenon that involves some 3% of American children and young people. The story fits the education and religion beats alike, since the majority of homeschool families are religious.
The big new development here is an 80-page anti-homeschool blast in the current issue of the Arizona Law Review by Harvard University Professor Elizabeth Bartholet (click for .pdf), who directs the law school’s Child Advocacy Program. She also makes her case in an interview with Harvard magazine.
The bottom line: Bartholet wants courts and legislatures to ban homeschooling, for the most part, as Germany and Sweden do.
She thinks government should permit exceptions case by case, for instance to accommodate the regimens of talented young athletes or artists. Such permission would be reviewed annually.
Less drastically, Bartholet thinks states are far too lax and should require home schools and public schools to meet similar standards. States would set qualifications for parents to teach (she favors college degrees for high school teachers and high school diplomas for the lower grades), ensure that the curriculum meets minimum state standards, check up via home visits, and require annual standardized tests. If home schools don’t measure up, states would transfer children to public schools.
Policy-makers might see those as common-sense proposals well worth debating. But her advocacy of virtual prohibition signals a strong aversion to the whole idea of homeschooling and a particular hostility toward religious subcultures. Yet she does pose significant issues that journalists will want to explore with homeschool foes and defenders.
For one thing, Bartholet says we really don’t know track record of homeschooled youths in educational attainment and life outcomes, contending that reports of superior performance are marketing tools rather than solid empirical studies. As she reads Cardus Education Survey results, homeschoolers fall somewhat short. Much there for reporters to pursue.
Bartholet is candidly tendentious, depicting homeschooling as a horror show of ignorance, narrow-mindedness, ”serious risk” of child abuse and alienation from society that represents a threat to democracy. She cites the story of Tara Westover, whose 2018 best-seller “Educated” tells of her bizarre upbringing without ordinary schooling. But for every Westover there’s a Francis Collins, a key figure in the coronavirus fight as National Institutes of Health director, who was homeschooled by non-religious parents.
Which gets at this huge societal question. Bartholet opposes parents’ absolute authority over their children’s education and outlook, believing it’s “essential for children to grow up to exercise meaningful choices about their own future views, religions, lifestyles and work.” She particularly fears “fundamentalism” and “extreme religious ideologues.”
That echoes Cindy Wang Brand, the ex-evangelical author of “Parenting Forward” and proprietor of the “Raising Children Unfundamentalist” Facebook site. She drew thousands of “likes” with this January tweet: “Do not evangelize a child. Do not colonize a child’s spirituality. Do not threaten a child with religious control. Your religion does not have a right to stake claim to a child’s allegiance.”
“New atheist” writers have argued that religious training of children should be halted. But should we likewise bar parents from transmitting religious skepticism or moral relativism to their children?
Fact is, normal parents naturally pass on their viewpoints. Do today’s public schools teach contested values? Just why have so many religious and non-religious parents opted for homeschooling? Big stuff.
Reporters will want to tap the pro- and anti-homeschooling organizations Bartholet cites. In addition to her article and interview, they’ll need to read responses from the other side by a homeschool graduate, Crossway Books’ Samuel James, in The Wall Street Journal and freelancer Fred Bauer, who argues for school tolerance and “diversity” at National Review.