Harvard Law Professor Wants to Ban Homeschooling

An article written by freelance writer Erin O’Donnell and published in Harvard Magazine has justifiably gone viral among the diverse homeschooling communities operating in the United States—for the moment the freest nation in the world. The article, titled “The Risks of Homeschooling,” is accompanied by a cartoon illustration of half a dozen children romping joyfully outside while one child locked behind the prison bars of her own home looks forlornly and longingly out at them. One of the exterior walls of her home depicts books with the words “Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, Bible” to ensure readers know that the prison guards are Christians.

O’Donnell’s article is far less important than the work of the woman about whom O’Donnell is writing: Harvard law professor Elizabeth Bartholet, a long-time opponent of home-schooling and proponent of feminism, abortion, and the near-absolute autonomy of children. Too few people, it seems, are reading Bartholet’s deeply troubling Arizona Law Review article “Homeschooling: Parent Rights Absolutism vs. Child Rights to Education & Protection” on which O’Donnell’s article is based and in which Bartholet lays bare her subversive plan to radically refashion American society according to the philosophical, political, and moral fever dreams of leftists everywhere. Bartholet issues an explicit call for a “presumptive ban” on homeschooling. While Bartholet claims to be concerned about homeschooling in general, it’s clear from her article that she has a particular antipathy for Christian homeschoolers.