Baloney Against Homeschooling From Harvard

by Lee Duigon

Harvard Looniversity’s annual endowment is $40.9 billion (!). It buys a lot of baloney.

Harvard Magazine’s latest load of baloney is an article on “The Risks of Homeschooling”. The primary source is a Harvard law professor who sounds like she was raised by insects.

The article calls for a government ban of homeschooling.

Just for the record, homeschooled students run rings around the publicly schooled, academically, to the frustration of the teachers’ unions and the Far Left crazies who staff our colleges. Yeahbut, yeahbut! What about the *risks* of homeschooling?

Children shouldn’t be homeschooled, babbles the prof, because it “may keep them from contributing positively to a democratic society.” It’s hard to fathom that depth of stupidity. The prof doesn’t bother to define any of her terms, so we don’t know what she would view as a “positive contribution,” nor can we be sure what she means by a “democratic society.” A society in which everyone votes Democrat?

Homeschooling, she says, tends to “isolate children” and expose them to child abuse—which never, never happens in a public school! Has she ever been inside a public school? Some of those schools are “Lord of the Flies.” Kids can be fantastically cruel to each other. Or your child can fall in with the wrong company and be led into delinquency.

Once upon a time in a public school, I sent a boy to the office because he kept disrupting the class. Soon the principal buzzed me: the boy’s father was coming in, and he wanted me to take part in the discussion. The man had to take time off from work because his son, egged on by his new friends, vandalized a teacher’s car. “He never did anything like that, before he started running with this crowd,” the father said. We believed him. So please, government school boosters—don’t waste our time with arguments that public school is great for “socialization.”

Another “risk” of homeschooling, the professor says, is homeschooling is “driven by conservative Christian beliefs,” many of which are “extreme.” You can’t find any “extreme” beliefs in public schools, can you? All the beliefs they teach in public school are wise and good. Like socialism, transgenderism, racial strife, etc., etc. Since when is it a problem, having “conservative Christian beliefs”? Who gave any Harvard pipsqueak the authority to decide that?

Homeschooling, we are told, gives parents too much “power” over children. The prof doesn’t seem to have much use for parents. Maybe she had an unhappy childhood. Therefor everybody’s parents are apt to abuse them: that’s how liberals think.

This all springs from a weird and perverse ideology: the perfectibility of man, by man. Everything ought to be ideal—and it would be, don’t you know, if *we* were in charge! Some parents are no good, so take all the kids away from their parents—this will “protect” them from abuse—and have them raised in institutions run by The Enlightened Ones.

Well, this is a fallen world and nothing in it is ideal and never will be, until Christ sets His throne upon the earth and Creation is restored. If anyone in Harvard believes that, he or she believes it very quietly. But the great hope of hyper-humanism is Education. Administered by themselves—can’t trust those parents, what do they know? Hey! If we weren’t The Smartest People In The World, would we have 40 billion dollars?

Yapping about the “risks” of homeschooling, while ignoring the uncountable multitude of problems inseparable from public education, displays a spectacular blend of ignorance and misdirected pride.

Speaking as a former teacher and a student, I have found the chief lesson taught by public schooling is conformity. Fit in with your age-group peers. After all, they’re the ones who will be doing most of your socialization. They will become the most important persons in your life—much cooler than your family.

It would take far too long even to list the shortcomings of our public schools—the most expensive failure in human history.

And how many Harvard law professors do *not* send their own kids to the public schools?

I have discussed these and other topics throughout the week on my blog, http://leeduigon.com/. Stop in for a visit; a single click will take you there. My articles can also be found at www.chalcedon.edu/.

E-Mail Lee Duigon: leeduigon@verizon.net