- Presumptive ban on homeschooling? A bad idea for so many reasons, especially when the presumption should be of liberty [Erin O’Donnell, Harvard Magazine; Kerry McDonald, Cato] Harvard Law School is hosting a June conference on homeschooling and the law dominated by advocates of placing new legal restrictions on the practice [Corey DeAngelis] A recent HLS grad who was homeschooled weighs in [Alex J. Harris]
- Equity versus achievement: U.S. Department of Education urges schools working remotely to teach new content rather than just review the old [Andrew Ujifusa, Education Week, earlier on controversy; Hans Bader on Arlington, Va. schools]
- “A politically progressive caucus within the [teacher’s] union is calling on its leaders to push for ‘less academic work’ during the coming months, and to lobby for a moratorium on student grades and teacher evaluations.” [Dana Goldstein and Eliza Shapiro, New York Times] San Francisco school board to vote on plan that would give students in grades 6-12 a grade of A in all subjects [KGO; Alison Collins and commenters; related on mass social promotion, Andy Smarick, The Atlantic]
- Those copyright license issues that keep church congregations from incorporating music into their online services also complicate the lives of educators trying to carry out online instruction [Mike Masnick, TechDirt]
- Before, or at least separate from, the crisis: “Should Students Be Excused from School for Political Activism?” [Jim Geraghty, National Review] “Public Education as Public Indoctrination” [Ilya Somin] Group that wants regulatory stringency of federal school lunch program to be decided in courtroom rather than at ballot box ironically styles itself “Democracy Forward.” [Lola Fadulu, New York Times]
- Split Sixth Circuit panel rules that Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects a fundamental right to a “basic minimum education,” a holding that seems unlikely to survive Supreme Court review given such precedents as Rodriguez, Glucksberg, and DeShaney [Jonathan Adler, Josh Blackman]
Filed under: copyright, COVID-19 virus, disability & schools, school lunch, schools, Sixth Circuit
3 Comments
Elizabeth Bartholet public interest professor of law and faculty director of the Law School’s Child Advocacy Program, claims that ““I think it’s always dangerous to put powerful people in charge of the powerless, and to give the powerful ones total authority.”
Well, it’s surprising to hear a Harvardian admit to it.
Bartholet has favored litigation campaigns to lay the groundwork for an eventual national ban.”
A national ban on home schooling?
Harrison Bergeron: “Dad, can you help me with my homework?”
Mr. Bergeron: “Nope. It’s against the law.”
But opposition to home schooling from academia is not funny. It’s ignorant. And it’s pathetic.
Home-schooling primarily occurs in the lower grades with a relative few continuing into high school. To suggest that this level of home-schooling should be banned is ignorant because it’s bureaucrat-centered, not student-centered. It refuses to consider why parents remove their children from public schools in the first place. And worst of all, the suggestion is pathetic, coming from supposed intellectuals who damn well should know better.
The concept that parents shouldn’t be allowed to home school their own children is the sort of thing one would expect of Hitler or Stalin.