Harvard Anti-Homeschool Summit

Get Off My Lawn

Artist formerly known as Pink Vapor
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Them’s fighting words. We home-schooled our sons, looking back there was NO BETTER choice for us..
Harvard pin heads believe the State loves and has your precious one’s best interest at heart, more than you do.
Feature Speaker Who Believes ‘The State Confers Parenthood’
This is patently ignorant. https://www.dailywire.com/news/wals...the-state-confers-parenthood?utm_source=knewz


https://www.nationalreview.com/2020...parents-to-teach-their-kids/?utm_source=knewz A Harvard University law professor has called for a “presumptive ban” on homeschooling — claiming that the freedom to do so under our current laws is “authoritarian.”

“The issue is, do we think that parents should have 24/7, essentially authoritarian control over their children from ages zero to 18? I think that’s dangerous,” Elizabeth Bartholet said in an interview with Harvard Magazine.
“I think it’s always dangerous t
“I think it’s always dangerous to put powerful people in charge of the powerless, and to give the powerful ones total authority.”

Bartholet stated that there is “an essentially unregulated regime in the area of homeschooling,” with “very few requirements that parents do anything.”

“[P]eople can homeschool who’ve never gone to school themselves, who don’t read or write themselves,” she said.

Bartholet also stated that homeschooling can make it easier for parents to get away with abusing their children and/or indoctrinating them with white supremacy and misogyny:

t’s also important that children grow up exposed to community values, social values, democratic values, ideas about nondiscrimination and tolerance of other people’s viewpoints.

I do not, of course, want to minimize the absolute horror of child abuse. It’s disgusting; it’s heartbreaking; and anyone who isn’t a sociopath agrees that it’s necessary to protect our children.

Unfortunately, however, it’s also true that abuse is hardly something that can occur only in a child’s home. In fact, as Harvard grad and homeschooler Kerry McDonald pointed out in a letter to Harvard Magazine in response to its article, “many parents choose to homeschool their children to remove them from abuse at school, whether it’s widespread bullying by peers or, tragically, rampant abuse by teachers and school administrators themselves.”

“Banning homeschooling, or adding burdensome regulations on homeschooling families, who in many instances are fleeing a system of education that they find harmful to their children, are unnecessary attacks on law-abiding families,” McDonald continues.

What’s more, another of Bartholet’s suggestions — that the freedom to homeschool equals masses of children being painfully undereducated by illiterate parents — is as offensive as it is inaccurate. In fact, many, many children don’t simply receive an adequate education through homeschooling but an exemplary one that sets them up for greater success than any traditional school could have. As McDonald pointed out in her letter, although “there may always be outliers and more research is needed, most peer-reviewed studies on homeschooling outcomes find that homeschoolers generally outperform their schooled peers academically, and have positive life experiences.”

In any case, and even apart from all of this, Bartholet’s characterization of the freedom to homeschool as “authoritarian” is nothing short of absurd. A government allowing its citizens the freedom to educate their own children is not only not authoritarian, it is also the exact opposite of authoritarian. That’s a fact, and you don’t even need to know the first thing about homeschooling to understand that — really, you just need to know what the word means.

In terms of knowing about homeschooling, though, I can also say that I personally do know more than the average person. I was homeschooled for fourth and fifth grade, and can confidently say that the two years I spent with my father as my teacher were responsible for countless positive outcomes in my life — ones that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. For example: Before I was homeschooled, I was struggling to learn math the way that the public school had been teaching it, and getting the chance to learn some fundamentals in a way that worked for my own particular brain was instrumental in making the subject much easier for me in the future.

But that wasn’t all. See, unlike math, I loved reading and writing. Those subjects had always
come easily to me, and I enjoyed them. Homeschooling provided an advantage for me in this area, too. It allowed me to learn advanced aspects of grammar. I had the liberty to read works of literature that I wouldn’t have studied in a traditional school because they would have been “above” the designated level for my classroom. I wrote poetry and short stories about subjects of my own choosing. When I returned to public school in the sixth grade, the English lessons were things that I’d already learned — but fortunately, having had the opportunity to develop a love of writing and curiosity about books is something that kept me reading and writing what I wanted in my own time. Hell, I’m still doing it now.

Finally, it’s also patently ignorant how Bartholet aims to use the fact that children must be exposed to varying viewpoints and people while they’re growing up as some kind of argument against homeschooling. McDonald states that “research on homeschoolers finds that they are tightly connected with their larger community and may have more community involvement and participation in extracurricular and volunteer activities than schooled children due to their more flexible schedules and interaction with a wide assortment of community members,” and I’m not surprised. In fact, this was my experience exactly.

I mean, does Bartholet think not attending a traditional school somehow means that I never left the house at all? Because honestly, that couldn’t have been less true. I was quite active in my community, even participating in activities such as Girl Scouts with my friends from public school. I didn’t miss out on any of that.

In fact, I was actually exposed to far more experiences and perspectives specifically because I was homeschooled. I was able to act in community theater plays at multiple venues, interacting with all kinds of interesting people from various walks of life, without having to worry that a late-night dress rehearsal would make me too exhausted to learn in the morning because my schedule revolved around me. For the same reason, my family was able to take a random trip to New York City to see my father’s friend’s play — and within hours of arrival, I decided I was definitely going to move here when I grew up and work either on a stage, in front of a camera, or both. I had the luxury of learning from truly transformative, unique experiences, ones that I certainly wouldn’t have had if I’d been forced to spend that time square dancing in a gymnasium.

Harvard Magazine points out that “rapidly increasing” numbers of Americans are choosing to homeschool their children. (By “choosing,” by the way, I mean that this was true before coronavirus essentially forced this lifestyle on everyone.) Bartholet apparently sees this as some kind of tragedy that will lead to a future generation full of sexist Nazis who don’t know how to read, but this simply isn’t fair. No, homeschooling isn’t perfect for everyone, but it can and has worked uniquely well for many people, myself included. We shouldn’t be taking that option away, and certainly not in the name of stopping authoritarianism. It isn’t hard to see how completely a**-backwards that “logic” is — after all, even a former homeschooler like me was able to figure it out.
 
Our oldest son was in a small rural public school. When he went to the fourth grade, there were only two fourth grade classes: one for the "average" kids, and a second one where a very good teacher got a class-full of kids where about half needed remediation to catch up, and the other half were the "smart kids" who were already pretty far ahead. Ours was one of the "smart ones". We got a letter the first week from the teacher (still have it somewhere) saying basically she would not have time for anything but the kids that needed remediation, and suggested that perhaps our son could "Teach English" to kids that needed help (in the hallway, no less ?!?!). A few weeks into this, our son (not a complainer, loves everybody) told us his math homework was "the same thing as last year". I asked him if that bothered him. He answered "it bothers me a lot". We pulled him out at Thanksgiving break. We've been a Homeschooling household ever since. He's a Junior in the business school of a State University now.
 
This lady is making points of views that I am trying really, really hard to understand...but I am just worried that my head cant fit that far up my backside to understand it and with the hospitals discouraging people from going due to the virus, I don't want to risk breaking something.

I'll be the first to admit that growing up, and up until the last few years, I had an extremely negative view on homeschooling. For various reasons both real and imagined. But what I find funny is that arguments like this lady is making is actually part of what has made me rethink my outlook on it. And we are, admittedly, one of those families who is learning through this covid experience that we too may keep our kids out next year and let them home school.

As the counter points stated, there will always be outliers. I know one parent who is homeschooling that I really question both her ability, and her dedication to it. But, she is an outlier to the far larger group of parents I know who are homeschooling and their kids are doing awesome. While some kids sit in a classroom and learn about pirates, these parents took their kids to the outer banks and went looking at museums and all sorts of stuff. So while I dont think homeschooling is for everyone due to each family having a different situation, I think the choice should always be there.

And if this woman >really< has such a problem with the wild west nature of homeschooling, perhaps the most effective method of dealing with it isnt outlawing it, but working to make sure structures are in place to prove these kids are performing and advancing. Some of the parents here that HS now could probably speak to what tests and evaluations are given annually or whatever to prove that a kid did, in fact, cover all the bases for passing a certain grade.
 
It's simple: this is how Marxism works. How communism works.

They need to indoctrinate children from an early age. See: Khymer Rouge, Vietnam, etc.
 
...working to make sure structures are in place to prove these kids are performing and advancing. Some of the parents here that HS now could probably speak to what tests and evaluations are given annually or whatever to prove that a kid did, in fact, cover all the bases for passing a certain grade.

The State of NC required attendance records and immunization records be turned in every year. We also did home-administrated CAT (California Achievement) and Woodcock-Johnson (independently administrated, we paid about $80 per year per student for that) tests at every year end. I'm not sure if one/both/either these are currently required, I think maybe? I am certain the "requirements" have changed over the years, but yes resources are available.
 
I'll add one more thing. In our case, sure all the normal downsides you usually think about with public school were there: leftist Indoctrination, bullies, thieves, head lice, drugs, bla, bla, bla. I'm not one who believes strongly in the "well they have to learn to deal with real life, get socialized" argument, the world's children have been doing without peer-based socialization for a long time, i.e. the "real world" is not a bunch of people the same age as you for starters... but that's not what drove us out of the public system.

The Public System was destroying our kids' LOVE OF LEARNING. That was the big deciding factor.
 
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This lady is making points of views that I am trying really, really hard to understand...but I am just worried that my head cant fit that far up my backside to understand it and with the hospitals discouraging people from going due to the virus, I don't want to risk breaking something.

I'll be the first to admit that growing up, and up until the last few years, I had an extremely negative view on homeschooling. For various reasons both real and imagined. But what I find funny is that arguments like this lady is making is actually part of what has made me rethink my outlook on it. And we are, admittedly, one of those families who is learning through this covid experience that we too may keep our kids out next year and let them home school.

As the counter points stated, there will always be outliers. I know one parent who is homeschooling that I really question both her ability, and her dedication to it. But, she is an outlier to the far larger group of parents I know who are homeschooling and their kids are doing awesome. While some kids sit in a classroom and learn about pirates, these parents took their kids to the outer banks and went looking at museums and all sorts of stuff. So while I dont think homeschooling is for everyone due to each family having a different situation, I think the choice should always be there.

And if this woman >really< has such a problem with the wild west nature of homeschooling, perhaps the most effective method of dealing with it isnt outlawing it, but working to make sure structures are in place to prove these kids are performing and advancing. Some of the parents here that HS now could probably speak to what tests and evaluations are given annually or whatever to prove that a kid did, in fact, cover all the bases for passing a certain grade.
We knew folks that didn’t home school, yet claimed they did. Their kids suffered.
When folks have me the list of home school pitfalls I always asked them to pick any of the boys and engage them on any subject. They found them socialized, engaging, inquisitive, confident and polite. Boortz frequently commented when he was on public tours he could spot the home schoolers right away, they were typically more engaging, confident, had better eye contact.
We had the kids tested yearly, NOT Common Core crap.
2 of the 3 boys were highly dyslexic, within 2 years it didn’t show up in testing. We doubled down on their reading, home school flexibility.
My eldest was the youngest to graduate as a NC State Mech Engineer at 19 years old.
My 2nd son started a health supplement company at 21, sources the ingredients, has a mfg assemble, bottle and ship the product to amazon.
My 3rd was hired to illustrate a book at the age of 12, he’s partnered with the artist that developed Shrek for another movie, he’s currently working on a Star Trek series.
My wife did an awesome job!
 
The first time I read this, I got mad, really pissed. Then I read it again and just laughed and laughed. She went full-retard. Her perception is so 'out there', even for the regular anti-homeschool crowd, it would never get traction.
 
The Government System was destroying our kids' LOVE OF LEARNING. That was the big deciding factor.
^^^ That’s why we got into home schooling more than anything else. My wife & I went to high school together, were very inquisitive and curious, and despised school.
I was treated in 6th grade overseas more like a college student, I chose the classes and schedule at the beginning of the year. The profs didn’t care if you showed up or not, your grade was up to you. After being there 3 years, I was an A/B student, I returned to Raleigh in 7th grade 3 years ahead of my classmates, bored and became a D/F student.
We wanted better for our kids. Our thoughts on education were to fuel their curiosity, passion, and to teach them how to learn.
 
A couple hours ago my wife submitted the first steps of our paperwork to establish a home school. My oldest son (7th grade) has simply shined beyond all expectation with the forced in-home schooling. It's been an amazing experience for him - none of the social pressures (he's on the autism spectrum), able to focus on the content, able to get help when he needs it...it's been terrific. So, next year he'll be home schooled with curriculum and support from Liberty University Online Academy .

We're very lucky that my wife and I can both work from home, have advanced degrees ourselves and motivated to make it work.

My youngest, on the other hand, is an absolute train wreck. He NEEDS to be in a brick and mortar school. Academics are not a problem, but this kid needs his squad. So, he'll stay in the public school.
 
A couple hours ago my wife submitted the first steps of our paperwork to establish a home school. My oldest son (7th grade) has simply shined beyond all expectation with the forced in-home schooling. It's been an amazing experience for him - none of the social pressures (he's on the autism spectrum), able to focus on the content, able to get help when he needs it...it's been terrific. So, next year he'll be home schooled with curriculum and support from Liberty University Online Academy .

We're very lucky that my wife and I can both work from home, have advanced degrees ourselves and motivated to make it work.

My youngest, on the other hand, is an absolute train wreck. He NEEDS to be in a brick and mortar school. Academics are not a problem, but this kid needs his squad. So, he'll stay in the public school.
You have to know what’s best for your kids, and your home.
Me and my eldest are on the spectrum. Classical music in the background can really be helpful for many kids. For the ADD/spectrum kids it can occupy the part of the brain that’s overactive.
 
Bartholet is quoted as saying, "“I think it’s always dangerous to put powerful people in charge of the powerless, and to give the powerful ones total authority.”

Am I the only one who finds that ironic, since she apparently wants to do exactly that? Or is it okay so long as the state is the "powerful people" and the parents are the "powerless"?
 
Leftest tool talking out her butt. Circular logic, self defeating. And the sheeple will eat it up as truth and gossple.
CF
Homeschooled both of ours. Attendance tracked, high school transscripts, oldest went to Montreat, youngest to Western Carolina University.
 
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