Harvard Professor Recommends Homeschooling Ban

“Like the golden retriever who breaks into the dog treat factory, where do I begin?” asks Mike McShane, a Forbes contributor in response to a recent Harvard article about “The Risks of Homeschooling.”

According to Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Bartholet, homeschooling violates children’s right to a meaningful education and can prevent them from contributing positively to society. Due to a lack of state requirements, as well as regulations about the level of education needed by parents who homeschool, she even recommends that homeschooling should be banned.

“Effectively…people can homeschool who’ve never gone to school themselves, who don’t read or write themselves,” said Bartholet.

For McShane though, the logic behind the article reeks of laziness and ignores the fastest-growing segments of homeschooling: families of children with special needs and minority families.

“It’s tough not to start with the image that Harvard Magazine chose to accompany the piece,” wrote McShane. “The child behind bars at home while other children frolic happily outside, the Bible used as part of the framework of the house, it’s like a royal flush of innuendo and lazy stereotypes. Hilariously, ‘arithmetic’ was also misspelled in the original.”

Homeschool champion and celebrity Sam Sorbo also weighed in on the article, noting that homeschool opponents are using COVID-19 education shortcomings from schools as a tool to support their cause.

“Just because tele-schooling is not performing to people’s expectations, what is right now?” Sorbo asked KTRH, a news radio station in Houston. “Schools certainly aren’t performing to people’s expectations. They’re shut down. They don’t want to lose children from the system because every child means money to the system.”

While McShane acknowledged that a few students are victims of abuse in homeschooling, he also offered the realistic reminder that a ban on homeschooling fails to ignore those victimized in traditional schools.

“Banning homeschooling would thrust thousands of children who left traditional schools to avoid maltreatment back into the very schools where they were victimized,” wrote McShane. “It will narrow the options available to families to find the environment that best meets their child’s needs, and it will undermine the very pluralism that our nation is founded upon.”