Harvard’s homeschool haters: Larry Sand

Posted on:April 29, 2020

No, the subheading is not a twisted thought of the late Joe Stalin or some other power-mad foreign dictator. It was uttered by visiting Harvard law professor James Dwyer, who also believes parent-child relationships exist because “the state confers legal parenthood.”

And it’s not only Dwyer who believes that parents are nothing more than lowly subjects of a totalitarian regime. Elizabeth Bartholet, another Harvard law professor, has a particular disdain for parents who homeschool, claiming that many promote racial segregation and female subservience, question science and “are determined to keep their children from exposure to views that might enable autonomous choice about their future lives.” She calls for “a radical transformation in the homeschooling regime, and a related rethinking of child rights and reframing of constitutional doctrine.” She also “recommends a presumptive ban on homeschooling, with the burden on parents to demonstrate justification for permission to homeschool.”

And most insanely, referring to parents, she says “I think it’s always dangerous to put powerful people in charge of the powerless, and to give the powerful ones total authority.”

All this fear and loathing of mom and dad will culminate in a conference at Harvard in June where serious intellectual types will try to figure out how to best liberate children from their knuckle-dragging progenitors, and force them to attend a government school.

Fortunately, homeschooling parents, who shun traditional schools for many reasons, are not going quietly into submission. Mark Tapson, a Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, homeschools his kids and intends to do so through college. He and his wife avoid public schools because “the leftist-dominated education system from top to bottom is a toxic mix of incompetence, political indoctrination, bureaucratic indifference, and increasing lawlessness among the students themselves as school authorities refuse to discipline certain demographic groups.”

To read the rest of this column at the California Policy Center, please click here.

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