Abolish the Family to Save the Children?
Yes, says Tom Lindsay, Forbes Magazine contributor and former college administrator and professor of political science. He charges that Harvard Magazine took just such a position, without using those exact words, in its May-June 2020 issue when it ran an article urging a ban on homeschooling. (See also Erin Hawley's essay in the "Be Our Guest" section)
Lindsay notes that the phrase, "the abolition of the family" comes straight out of The Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. He says, "totalitarianism by any other name still destroys the family, and this appears to be the intent of the article."
Harvard extensively quotes Professor Elizabeth Bartholet, who laments that "homeschooled kids now account for roughly three percent to four percent of school-age children in the U.S., a number equivalent to those attending charter schools, and larger than the number currently in parochial schools."
Bartholet uses a common argument against homeschooling, parental abuse, and in the absence of science-based evidence, offers instead a frightening anecdote about a homeschooled child who "spent her teenage years working in her father's scrap business where severe injuries were common, and endured abuse by an older brother."
But Lindsay cites a 2018 study by Brian D. Ray, Ph.D. for the National Home Education Research Institute, which is "based on empirical evidence." Ray's research shows "a remarkable rate of abuse of U.S. schoolchildren by school personnel (e.g. teachers, coaches, bus drivers, administrators, custodians). He further found that "the multiple laws, regulations, and policies related to public and private schools result in a very small fraction of abuse incidents by school personnel ever being reported to law enforcement or child welfare personnel."
At the same time, empirical evidence (although limited) shows that "the rate of abuse of children in homeschool families is lower than in the general public."
Like Hawley, Lindsay observes that most homeschooling families "are driven by conservative Christian beliefs, and seek to remove their children from mainstream culture." Therein lies the rub for liberals and progressives.
Bartholet claims that parents should have "very significant rights to raise their children with the beliefs and religious convictions that the parents hold," yet she decries the lack of national oversight for such families. She believes that parents having "24/7, essentially authoritarian control over their children from ages zero to 18" is "dangerous."
Lindsay counters that homeschooling is an exercise in parental control, whereas a monopoly of "mandated reporters" (reporting on parents and their children) is not only "authoritarian" but smacks of the totalitarianism called for by Marx and flirted with by Bartholet. In the end, he says, "it is not parents teaching their children that I consider 'dangerous.' Instead, what I find truly dangerous is the anti-family ideology promulgated by the likes of Bartholet."
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