Elizabeth Bartholet's homeschooling article

Lately, every once in a while I read in some online homeschooling discussion group about Elizabeth Bartholet's 2019 article on homeschooling (which was published in the Arizona Law Review).

The article is 80 pages long -- a bit of a time commitment to read in full!

However, it looks to me that most online social media commentators are relying on much shorter reviews of the article, rather than reading the article for themselves.

Unfortunately, these reviews are of mixed quality, and some misrepresent what Bartholet actually says.

Therefore, I warmly encourage all those interested in homeschooling to take the time to read in full the original article.  Read the original; don't trust reviews (including this one)!

Here's the article.

Significant portions of the article are focused on the unique US situation.  But there's also a lot that is generally applicable to homeschoolers everywhere.

As I see it, this eloquently sets out the right starting attitude to take (page 23):

Subsets matter. Our child protection system operates on this principle. We could say that because most parents don’t abuse or neglect their children, we don’t need a system protecting children against abuse and neglect. We could say that because most people don’t commit murder we don’t need laws prohibiting murder. But we don’t. 

We say instead that we need systems designed to protect at-risk subsets. We should have a comparable system governing homeschooling, designed to ensure all children an adequate education and adequate protection, even if we believed that most homeschooling parents are capable of and interested in providing such an education and that few would abuse or neglect their children when free from any surveillance in the privacy of their homes.

In any discussion about homeschooling, I think we shouldn't lose sight of this essential point.  If what we are advocating doesn't help the weakest members of our society, then we're going down the wrong track.  If the homeschooloing system we are arguing for doesn't help those at-risk children, then we are doing it wrong.

I think too often homeschoolers start out with talk of freedom, or rights.  But overly focusing on freedom or rights is a mistake.  Yes, freedom is very important.  Yes, rights (or at least certain rights) are very important.  But far more important in this particular situation is making sure that the weakest, most vulnerable members of our society are well cared for and that they are not neglected or abused.

What I like about Bartholet's article is that she gets these priorities right.  She cares about the vulnerable children, and this article is about working out ways to minimise harms to them.

We may debate the details and final recommendations, but I think her starting approach is spot on.

For this reason, the facts matter.  In this article there are many pages overviewing both the statistics and the individual cases where US homeschooled children have been abused or neglected.  There are also many pages which set out the details of the legal and political situation which has allowed these tragedies to happen.  I don't know enough about this to comment on whether it is accurate, but the scholarship and referencing is extensive.

After 70 pages of explanation and evidence, Bartholet ends with the recommendation that children should be compulsorily required to attend school, except in cases where their parents/caregivers apply for and receive an exemption (pages 72-73):

The new regime should deny the right to homeschool, subject to carefully delineated exceptions for situations in which homeschooling is needed and appropriate.

The application for exemption should be strict enough such that it (a) discourages negligent or abusive parents from applying and (b) accurately identifies worthy and unworthy applicants:

Parents should have a significant burden of justification for a requested exception. There is no other way to ensure that children receive an education or protection against maltreatment at all comparable to that provided to public school children. 

Bartholet thinks that these exemptions should only be given on a case-by-case basis in situations where it has been clearly shown that homeschooling that child would be better than schooling at the local school:

Exceptions might include situations in which gifted artists or athletes want to pursue careers that demand flexibility inconsistent with normal schooling. They might include situations in which the local schools are seriously inadequate to serve children’s needs, as where children are at risk for bullying or racism, or where children with disabilities cannot receive needed services. They might include situations where parents can demonstrate they would provide a significantly superior education to that available at the public school.

Moreover, Bartholet thinks that homeschoolers should still attend school part-time, in some appropriate form:

When exceptions are granted, children should still be required to attend some courses and other programs at school including, for example, civic education, arts and physical education, and extra-curricular activities. 

This is because (besides physical abuse) one aspect of reported homeschool child abuse/neglect in the US is that of one-sided and partial education.  These abused children were not exposed to legitimate alternative points of view and values:

This is important to ensure exposure to alternative views and values, a broad range of activities, socialization, and contact with mandated reporters. 

This approach seems the only one that will ensure an adequate education for most children. The goal is not to indoctrinate children in one “majority culture” perspective, but to expose children to the wide range of views characteristic of our democracy and the wide range of abilities and learning needed to function in this democracy.

My main thought after reading this is that it is not overly strict; surely most parents who present a clear and sensible application for an exemption would pass:

(a) Bullying is common in most schools (as I wrote here, reports show that a quarter of school children are bullied on a weekly basis), and this is one of the reasons many choose to homeschool.

(b) Another common reason people homeschool is because of individual learning differences or disabilities, which don't work in a classroom setting.

And most importantly, (c) generally the teacher-student ratio for homeschoolers is much better than in schools, and so where homeschool parents can show that they are organised in their teaching it should be easy to show that they will provide a superior education.

If exemptions are given to all families who give reasonable explanations of their situation, it might turn out that Bartholet's suggested system is not much different to New Zealand's system!  The only added bonus would be what I have previously argued for -- better community interaction between homeschoolers and their local school.  It would be awesome if our local school allowed Mulan and Miya to join them for team sports!

But I say this slightly flippantly, and this is not the end of Bartholet's requirements.  On pages 75-76 Bartholet outlines some pretty strict yearly requirements for ongoing exemption.

From my armchair, to me most of these requirements look unnecessary for the protection of the children.  After all, the children are required to attend school part-time and would be getting checked by school teachers.  I wonder to what extent these requirements are practical protective checks as opposed to merely burdensome disincentives to reduce the number of homeschooling families.

But I don't know enough about the unique US situation to know if US homeschooler child abuse is so serious and prolific that more extensive yearly checks are required.

Regardless of this, as I see it, the main weakness of Bartholet's article is that she does not clearly link her specific recommendations with the empirical evidence of abuse/neglect.  That is, it is not clear why each recommended point is necessary to the aim of reducing abuse/neglect.  Why should those particular requirements be the right set, as opposed to some other set or some subset of her requirements?  Why does Bartholet not consider an alternative set of requirements?  This is a pity, because as I see it, the essential issue here is which specific set of requirements is the best one to protect children.  Merely stipulating one possible system, without argument or comparison, doesn't help solve the problem.

To return to Bartholet's starting thought above, we need to protect subsets.

But just as we need a system that protects the subset of children who are abused or neglected by homeschoolers, we also need a system that protects the subset of children who struggle to fit into traditional schools.

As I see it, Bartholet's proposed system goes too far the other way and makes it too burdensome for competent homeschooling families to get on with educating their children.

As unpopular from both sides as my position may be, in my opinion we need a middle ground that provides more checks and protections than is currently in place (definitely in the US, and also quite possibly in NZ), but not to the extent that Bartholet recommends.