[TownHall] - Every year, I tell my students that one of Shakespeare’s triumphs was imbuing his plays with moral complexity—ethically ambiguous protagonists stumbling through an equally ambiguous world. In a recent campaign, Harvard has returned to myths good versus evil. A recent onslaught of advocacy masquerading as academic work has pitted the supposed crusaders of public schools against devilish parents. The crime of these demonic parents? Homeschooling.
A short review of dame Bartholet rant
...On average, homeschooled students perform better on standardized tests. Bartholet admits this reality but casts it off as irrelevant. She complains that conservative groups like The Heritage Institution fund such research and rely upon bad data. However, even a professor writing for the Brookings Institute, a definitively non-partisan institution, admits that it’s "unwarranted to argue that homeschoolers are doing badly. The available evidence certainly seems to indicate otherwise."
IMO, if one is NOT autodidact, one should learn a trade.
...The more powerful argument against homeschooling comes by way of mandatory reporting laws. As a teacher, I have to report to CPS any signs I see of child abuse like bruises or drastic behavioral changes. Discussing the absence of mandatory reporting in homeschools, Bartholet casts an unseemly picture through anecdotes—children chained to beds, beaten, neglected, and raped. By her telling, every home is a dystopian landscape and public schools an eden of safety.
Don't know about USA, but in Israel every homeschooler meets with Dept. Edu. rep every two weeks. The flip side, IMO*, Ritalin - practiced widely in our wonderful educational system - IS child-abuse.
*I've taught kids on Ritalin. When they come in the morning, after taking their "medicine" - they're virtual zombies, as time passes by they recover into normal children - some pretty bright.
In response to her anecdotes, I have my own: one student confessing his desire to commit suicide because of school bullies, another hacking from a likely bruised trachea after an uninstigated brawl, bathroom drugs, and vapes in classes. I could go on with more stories of a scatological-bent but I’ll spare you the details.
...Parents pull their kids because of bullying, academics, personal interests, and safety. Any system cannot possibly cover all externalities and even now students in neglectful or abusive homes go unrecognized despite attending public schools. Homeschooling poses a risk but public schools are not necessarily the best protection.
Of course if home schooling/internet learning become common, hundred of thousands (mostly female & mostly incompetent) teachers will have to go back to being housewives - and we can't have that, can we?
Coronavirus can be a savior of Civilization!
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