OPINION (CP) – A Harvard Law School professor is calling for a presumptive ban on homeschooling, arguing that it poses harmful risks to children. In an article titled “The Risks of Homeschooling” featured in the latest edition of Harvard magazine, Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Bartholet stressed in an interview
that children have a right to a “meaningful education” and that the state is obligated to intervene to protect them from abuse, which is sometimes interwoven within homeschool environments. Bartholet is also the faculty director of the Law School’s Child Advocacy Program.
Bartholet cites as an example of this abuse the case of Tara Westover, whose story is captured in a memoir called Educated and recounts how she was raised by survivalists in Idaho and was never sent to a school and received no formal education, despite learning how to read.
Westover spent her youth working in her father’s scrap business where bodily injuries were common and her older brother abused her. Under the current legal regime in most of the United States, Bartholet says, this is what can happen. She does not believe Westover’s case is an outlier. READ MORE
