This Harvard professor wants to ban home schooling. She says it’s ‘authoritarian’

Harvard University law professor Elizabeth Bartholet told Harvard Magazine she wants to see a ban on home schooling.

What’s the news:

• Bartholet said home schooling can be problematic because it gives parents  “authoritarian” control over their children and their learning habits.
• Bartholet said it can expose people to white supremacy and misogyny, too.
• She said: “The issue is, do we think that parents should have 24/7, essentially authoritarian control over their children from ages 0 to 18? I think that’s dangerous. I think it’s always dangerous to put powerful people in charge of the powerless, and to give the powerful ones total authority.”
• She said parents should have “very significant rights to raise their children with the beliefs and religious convictions that the parents hold.” 

What was the response?

• According to the New York Post, home-schooling parents slammed Bartholet for stereotyping the idea of home schooling.
• Harvard graduate Kerry McDonald wrote in a letter to Harvard Magazine’s editor: “Aside from its biting, one-sided portrayal of home-schooling families that mischaracterizes the vast majority of today’s home-schoolers, it is filled with misinformation and incorrect data.”
• National outlets criticized her as well for generalizing the practice. For example, Education Next said her words were an “attack on home schooling is a flawed failure.” And the National Review said she was issuing an “assault on home schooling — and parenthood.”