I previously published this piece on Medium, I am re-publishing it here.
Section I. Harvard’s Summit Reflects its Agenda of White Supremacy
Let’s call a spade a spade, shall we?
Elizabeth Bartholet, the Morris Wasserstein Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, recently published a paper in the Arizona Law Review entitled, “Homeschooling: Parent Rights Absolutism vs. Child Rights to Education & Protection.” You can find her paper here. It is scheduled to be discussed at Harvard Law School’s “Homeschooling Summit: Problems, Politics, and Prospects for Reform.”¹
Bartholet’s article puts a bullseye on the back of Conservative Christian homeschoolers. A group that she asserts repeatedly, and without supporting data, makes up some 90% of homeschoolers in America. Her conclusion that policymakers should, therefore, enact a presumptive ban on all homeschooling skirts the fact that a similar call against only Conservative Christian homeschoolers would violate the First Amendment. Freedom of religion being so important to the founders that it was listed in the very first amendment to the Constitution.
You see, if the government were to go around passing laws saying that Christians couldn’t homeschool their children, that would be establishing a preference for one (or in this case no) religion over another, contrary to the Establishment Clause. Of course the Free Exercise clause is also hugely implicated throughout her article, but that’s beside the present point.
The bigger issue here, the glaring issue, if I may, is the fact that Ms. Bartholet’s analysis focuses exclusively on white Christian homeschoolers, by implication and by citation. Furthermore, the entire Summit Harvard Law School is set to host is an obvious exercise in white supremacy.²
A vast majority of, if not all, the speakers are, you guessed it, white.
All of the materials listed for reading are written by white authors.
All of the perspectives on the agenda, deal with white concerns.
There is no trace of racial or ethnic or cultural diversity in Harvard Law School’s homeschooling summit at all. Almost as though they intentionally excluded anyone that wasn’t white because they didn’t care to hear what they might have to say. And yet, this white on white summit is intending to set educational policy for our entire country.
Or, perhaps, Harvard Law School believes that their hatred of Christians legally exercising their constitutionally protected rights is so important that it should justify the banning of homeschooling for the largest emerging groups in the homeschooling community: Black and Hispanic Americans.
You would have to try very hard to miss the fact that Black, Latino, and Hispanic families are the worst served by our public education system.³⁴
Funny thing, because if you examine the agenda for the Summit, you’ll notice that the Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) gets its own special reserved spot (to be deconstructed for its lobbying methods). HSLDA, however, at least recognizes the emerging trend of Black homeschooling families. In fact, their president, Mike Smith, interviewed the director of the National Black Home Educator Association, and HSLDA recently sent out a promotional video of a Black homeschooling family to the thousands of members on its email list.⁵ But shhhh, it’s HSLDA that’s homogenous and close-minded.
You can read about the Black Homeschooling Movement here:
The Radical Self-Reliance of Black Homeschooling, The Atlantic 2018
Fed up with racism, more Black parents are homeschooling their children, The Grio 2019
Black families increasingly choose to homeschool kids, “In the last 15 years, the number of black children in homeschool has doubled from 103,000 to about 220,000.” PBS 2018
The Ultimate Guide to Homeschooling Black Children
Professor’s Q&A: Why more black families are homeschooling their kids, LA School Report 2017
See also, this excellent rebuttal to the write up of Professor Bartholet’s paper in Harvard Magazine (who censored comments after just 9 entries, by the way) hosted on Project 21 Black Leadership Network. The piece features a Black homeschooling father.
Update (4/24/20) A friend sent me this excellently argued response from African American Conservatives.
Black Students Are Disproportionately Disciplined, Regardless of School Type
It should come as no surprise that Black families are increasingly turning to homeschooling, considering that black boys (and girls) are disproportionately disciplined at every grade level (K-12) across every kind of school in America. This is according to a study conducted by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
Additionally, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission wrote a report entitled, Beyond Suspensions: Examining School Discipline Policies and Connections to the School-to-Prison Pipeline for Students of Color with Disabilities. It was published in July of 2019, less than one year ago. In a letter to the President outlining the findings, the committee stated it found that:
Students of color as a whole, as well as by individual racial group, do not commit more disciplinable offenses than their white peers — but black students, Latino students, and Native American students in the aggregate receive substantially more school discipline than their white peers and receive harsher and longer punishments than their white peers receive for like offenses.⁶
This explains why Hispanic & Latino families are also among the fastest growing contingency of the homeschooling community. In fact, an organization co-sponsoring the Summit, the Coalition for Responsible Home Education is well aware of this fact. Their website cite data collected by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) through its National Household Education Surveys Program (NHES).
The Coalition for Responsible Home Education’s website says that:
“According to NHES estimates, the number of Hispanic children being homeschooled rose from just over 250,000 to just under 450,000 between 2012 and 2016.”
And further:
“Analysis: The NHES 2016 was the first to find a decline in the homeschooling rate among white children. According to NHES estimates, the number of white children being homeschooled fell from 1,200,000 to 1,000,000 between 2012 and 2016. “
Later, on the same page, the CRHE presents the following juxtaposition:
“What factors are prompting an increasing number of Hispanic parents to homeschool their children? The NHES 2016 found that 11% of homeschooled students do not have a parent or guardian who speaks English.”
Not to state the obvious but placing the increase in Hispanic homeschoolers next to a statement about homeschooled students not having a guardian who speaks English is pretty racist guys. It literally implies that only those who speak English are qualified to educate their children. If a child is capable of reading and understanding Don Quixote in Spanish, does that mean their education was inadequate? Newsflash: only 20% of the world speaks English. I mean…
I don’t think I need to ask whether it would make any difference at all whether parents only taught their children any language other than English (such as Russian, Chinese, Latin, German, Japanese, Tagalog, etc.), in order to make the same point. English language fluency is not interchangeable with a quality education, and to make that assertion is not only incorrect but also racist and white supremacist.⁷
You can read more about the rise in “Hispanic” homeschoolers here:
Hispanic Homeschoolers on the Rise, RedefinED 2020
The New Face of U.S. Homeschooling is Hispanic, OZY 2018
Another rising group in the homeschooling community is Muslim families. Muslims are rarely treated with the respect and humanity that they deserve, especially as a minority group in the United States. You can read a bit about some of the reasons why Muslim families homeschool here:
Many Muslims Turn to Home Schooling, New York Times, 3/26/08⁸
Muslim Home Schooling on the Rise, ABC News, 1/6/2006
Muslim families turn to home-schooling, The Washington Times, 2/21/2012⁹
Pepper and Pine, a Muslim Waldorf homeschooler, @pepperandpine has 14K followers on Instagram & her youtube channel has 59.3K subscribers
@amuslimhomeschool has 23.8K followers on Instagram
Asian parents are also increasingly choosing to homeschool. Here is one blog dedicated to a Chinese mom that is attempting to “untiger,” a reference to the book by Yale Law Professor Amy Chua.¹⁰ Here’s another great take about homeschooling & race, and here’s another excellent take about teaching children in a language other than English — Chinese, to be exact.
Indigenous families, I see you.
I couldn’t find any satisfactory links to reflect my experience in seeing an increase of Indian families homeschooling in the U.S., but I did find a link to an Indian Homeschooling group, which has nearly 30,000 members on facebook.
Lastly, in one of the best takes I have seen in response to the Harvard Magazine article, Mike McShane reported that, “In [an] NCES survey, almost 11 percent of homeschooling parents say that they do so primarily because their child has special need of some sort.”¹¹ Anyone with a special needs child knows that the IDEA is more of an idea than an actual practice.
Part II. Harvard Law Professor’s Article Lacks Objectivity
I notice, too, that in describing “The Reality” of homeschooling, on page 8 of the article, Professor Bartholet makes several citations to another speaker at the upcoming Summit, but not to any other sources. I found a lack of citations to authors outside of the Summit or alumni of Harvard Law School severely lacking. (In addition to the lack of any data supporting claims about Conservative Christians, infra.)
Another one of the article’s footnotes cites an article that claims, (“[R]esearchers estimate that between two-thirds and three-fourths are fundamentalists.”). What research? I am curious. I attempt to verify the information. I looked up the title “The Homeschool Apostates,” by Kathryn Joyce, and I find: a magazine article from 2014. The featured image is a child barb wired to a chair, presumably one of the “three fourths’’ of fundamentalists that make up “The Reality” of homeschooling.
I scrolled through the article, looking for the data to support the claim, but found a handful of anecdotal stories about white Christian children instead. Their legitimately disturbing stories all occurred decades in the past, I’m guessing in many cases homeschooling wasn’t even legal when they were children. All of which presents additional qualms with the basis for this Harvard Law School professor’s call to “ban all homeschooling.”
To tell the truth, I couldn’t find any data, at all. I saw a link to another speaker at the Harvard Summit, and several digs at HSLDA. I am still waiting for the data points to support the initial claim, that either 90% of homeschoolers are Conservative Christian, or that homeschooling children are more likely to be abused or neglected than their public school counterparts. I am wondering whether this Harvard Law Professor engaged in any objective research from folks outside of the Harvard Summit at all.¹²
Here is the absolute problem with Professor Bartholet’s article, in sum. The entire article contains one accurate characterization of homeschooling, and this is it:
“Today’s homeschooling population reflects this politically mixed background but has become even more complicated. Some parents choose homeschooling because they feel that their children will be discriminated against in the public schools, denied disability accommodations, or bullied. Some choose homeschooling because they want their children to have the flexibility to pursue demanding commitments in dance, sports, or theater, or because they live in remote areas with no nearby schools, falling into a category characterized as “practical” or “convenience” homeschooling. Some choose homeschooling, as did the original progressive wing, because of the flaws they see in traditional education, such as an overemphasis on rote learning and testing. Some believe that they can provide their children a superior education because of the limitations of their local schools or because of the parents’ advanced qualifications, ability to engage superior tutors, or access to online learning opportunities. Homeschool charters take advantage of the charter school movement to escape traditional school requirements while gaining access to state education funding. Many homeschooling parents work cooperatively with each other both to provide a quality education and to ensure that their children have significant contact with other children. Many make efforts to enable their children to participate in certain school programs such as sports.”¹³
Immediately following this paragraph, the author attempts to pull us back into the same rhetorical trap when she reiterates the inaccurate and once again unsubstantiated claim that:, “The majority are, however, descendants of the original conservative Christian wing. Estimates range, as discussed above, from a majority up to 90%.”
Guess who she cites to? You guessed it! The same Harvard Summit speaker that was mentioned in the prior magazine article. She also cites a book written by: another Harvard Law School graduate. Unfortunately, I couldn’t access the book to verify the citation claiming the obviously inaccurate number.
I decided to click through the Homeschooling’s Invisible Children “database,” which is one project of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education (the founder of which is a speaker at the Summit and often cited to by Professor Bartholet, mentioned supra), thinking that I would find an aggregate data set statistical regression analysis. What I found, instead, was a blog with anecdotal blog posts, offered to prove the assertion that “the majority [of homeschoolers] are…conservative Christian.”
Contrast that with the sample provided by the National Home Educator Research Institute (a pro-homeschooling organization). Their study was based on data gathered by the U.S. Department of Justice. Here is a link to the DOJ report. It cites other data collected by governmental agencies as well, e.g. . Legal homeschooling is not found to be a contributing factor to child abuse, based on actual data, collected by the federal government.¹⁴
But don’t worry, according to professor’s Bartholet’s masterpiece, absolutely rife with anecdotal evidence and utterly lacking in statistical support to substantiate her claims,
“The new regime should deny the right to homeschool, subject to carefully delineated exceptions for situations in which homeschooling is needed and appropriate. Parents should have a significant burden of justification for a requested exception. There is no other way to ensure that children receive an education or protection against maltreatment at all comparable to that provided to public school children.”¹⁵
That’s just what American education needs, a new regime.
Who, exactly, is qualified to determine whether a school is racist enough? Or whether a child is talented enough?
I’m pretty sure that Billy Eilish wasn’t born a gifted musician, she became one, thanks to homeschooling.
There is a lot more that I could say. I could get into the weeds about Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972), Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398 (1963), Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296 (1940) etc. But I’m not going there because that’s not what I’m the most disappointed about.
A presumptive ban on homeschooling is going to disproportionately impact the Black Indigenous and People of Color in the United States. Those individuals who consistently receive the short end of the stick by every measure, and have the least access power, and that’s not ok.
Do better, Harvard Law School.
It’s going to be a hard pass from me.
…
Endnotes:
[2] “[A] sociopolitical economic system of domination based on racial categories that benefits those defined and perceived as white.” White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, Robin Diangelo, Beacon Press 2018
[3] What it Means to be Black in the American Educational System, The Conversation 2016; The Crisis in the Education of Latino Students, National Education Association (link accessed 4/20/2020).
[4] Other BIPOC children are also repeatedly left behind. See infra, discussion of Muslim, Asian, Indigenous, Pacific Islander, and children with disabilities. This list is meant to be representative, it is not exhaustive. I see how diverse all of you homeschoolers are, and I’m here for you.
[5] See also, Editorial: Homeschooling Grows in the Black Community, HSLDA 2003 (link accessed 4/20/2020).
[6] Emphasis added.
[7] Special thanks to Ms. Kiona for enlightening me about Colonialism and other white supremacist tendencies. See e.g., White People Asking Questions. See also, Little Koto’s Closet.
[8] This author believes the NY Times article misconstrues Muslim homeschoolers in a rather narrow way, again painting them as isolated, similar to the misconception about homeschoolers in general.
[9] “[A girl] vividly remembers her parents’ worries that she was suffering in public school because of her Muslim faith. Fellow students, she said, would mock her and tear off her hijab, the head scarf worn for modesty.”
[10] No hate for professor Chua, as a parent of a piano-playing-first-child & a violin-playing-second-child, her parenting tales made me laugh out loud and reconfirmed our choices to not parent in the same way.
[11] Harvard’s Lazy Attack On Homeschooling, Forbes.com, 4/21/20 (accessed 4/23/20). Gifted homeschoolers, I see you too. Schools are often unable to accommodate the diverse needs of advanced learners and twice exceptional students.
[12] In fairness to the author, eventually she does get to case law. I could not find any objective evidence to support her claims regarding homeschoolers as a group, eventhough this section took up the first 10% or so of her law review article.
[13] Original footnotes removed for readability. Id., Bartholet, 10.
[14] I invite you to click through to the NHEA article and read the full analysis and supporting data for yourself.
[15] Id. Bartholet, at 72–73. Emphasis added.
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