Elizabeth Bartholet: ignorant attack on homeschooling
This text is part of: "Problem of Schooling" by Piotr Wozniak (2017-2024)
Elizabeth Bartholet goes viral
Elizabeth Bartholet spent her whole life doing a lot of good things for children. Today she is an object of hate and mud-slinging. The rapid descent into disgrace was caused by a single blunder that hit a raw nerve and went viral. When a Harvard professor attacks values that are cherished by millions, the only chance of survival is to stay in obscurity. In the age of social media, however, trampling freedoms and sensitive feelings can hardly stay unnoticed.
From the point of view of the public, Arizona Law Review is not much more than an obscure law journal with little content of general interest. However, Bartholet's paper about the risks of homeschooling went viral after a short review showed up in Harvard Magazine. The review received massive and overwhelmingly negative attention. Inevitably, it landed in my Inbox just a day later.
Harvard Magazine website was cracking up under the load of readers. However, it was not a load of admirers. Never have I seen so much hate spilled over a venerable older lady and a largely well-intentioned law professor. She has spent her whole life working for the good of children and family. She researched, published on, and advocated for adoption, welfare, vulnerability, well-being, discrimination, etc. She is a leading rational voice in the area of international adoptions.
However, one inadvertent step, one blunder, can make someone enter retirement in infamy with her opus vitae possibly overshadowed and forgotten. The professor will be known to the public for her Stalinist inclination to impose the state on the family. Like Stalin who set up quota on the supply of human bodies to the gulag system in the name of the glorious communist system, she excuses her freedom-limiting ideas with the good of abused children. Stalin was right: a tiny fraction of gulag "students" were a true threat to the well-being of a communist society. However, Stalin had spent his whole life in fear while elaborating the fine system of mass enslavement. Prof. Bartholet probably stepped into a new field by accident as testified by her utter ignorance of the problems of homeschooling and unschooling. In many aspects, her paper is hardly original. Beyond the concept of a "presumptive ban on homeschooling", I see very little original contribution beyond a nearly identical 2016 paper by another feminist professor with very similar roots: Martha Fineman-Albertson. I might now write reams of text pointing to all aspects of ignorance, misrepresentation or falsehood in Bartholet's paper. However, I have done exactly that in reference to Fineman's paper that Bartholet refers to and draws richly from (see: Ban on homeschooling). The similarity is eerie, down to tangential and heavily biased references. Martha Fineman-Albertson has already called for an unconditional ban on homeschooling. Her paper remained largely unnoticed thus far. I suspect it might change. Both ladies will enter a free student's hall of shame.
Free learning stands in full compliance with the best of learning theory. Homeschooling makes it possible for parents to discover or confirm this fact. The right to unschooling is essential for high quality learning and intelligence. Elizabeth Bartholet does not seem to want to consider expert opinion.
Freedom for children
Instead of contributing to the poisonous discourse, let's look for a chance to stay positive. Perhaps the whole uproar can benefit children in the end. Bartholet's important concern is child abuse in the guise of homeschooling. Her solution is Stalinist and unacceptable. However, the concern is real, and should not be overlooked. I am no expert on child abuse, but I am sure there are good solutions that do not necessitate enslaving all children in the walls of the compulsory education system. The cases of child abuse are equally rich in the school system. The system itself is abusive by design. It violates child's freedom. Dozens of negative ramifications for mental health, intelligence and knowledge are described in: Problem of schooling.
Bartholet speaks of what children are entitled too, and this is a central positive of her text:
Homeschooling is a realm of near-absolute parental power. This power is inconsistent with important rights supposedly guaranteed to children under state constitutions and state legislation throughout the land. And it is inconsistent with a proper understanding of the human rights of children, one recognizing children as full human beings with interests entitled to the same value as adult interests
We can stop now. I agree with the part in bold. For a child to decide what she wants to learn, she needs to be free. This necessitates the right to free learning. QED. You can skip the rest of Bartholet's text. It has been rendered null, void and moot on the ground of simple logic. A child who wants to be unschooled has the basic human right of her wish to be protected by the adult world.
If Bartholet believes sincerely in child's rights, she should understand that every human being has the right to decide what, when and how to learn. This is necessitated by the Fundamental Law of Learning, which overrules any constitutional claims of any legal shyster.
Symmetry of viewpoints
An essential component of the social skill set is the ability to understand the opponent's point of view. Here I try to demonstrate that Elizabeth Bartholet fails the basic test on the ability to see her opinion from the perspective of unschoolers.
Bartholet writes:
[serious academics] make a range of arguments based on the importance, for both children and society, of an education that teaches core academic skills, as well as other capacities enabling productive participation as adults in society. They discuss the importance of an education that exposes children to a range of viewpoints and to fundamental democratic values
Children cannot learn democracy in a system where they cannot exercise their voice. Otherwise, I agree with the above statement. Bartholet's "presumptive ban on homeschooling" stands in opposition to the quest for exposure, and tolerance of diversity.
All individual brains build their own models of reality. As reality is one (we assume), those models converge. However, wherever we differ, we have a difference of opinion, and a potential for conflict, incl. social conflict, legal conflict, etc.
The Prussian model of schooling is based on a set of myths that have already been blasted by the science of learning. All great minds know that the school system is a horribly harmful construct. We survive in abysmal ignorance only by the fact that we all conform to the same method of schooling that inculcates the same set of false claims. In other words, we school ourselves into ignorance by preventing diversity of view due to the adherence to a rigid curriculum. Paradoxically, if the curriculum is rich, and the standards are high, it is harder to see the inefficiency of schooling:
Here comes the precious property of unschooling. When we let the child control her own learning and development, we end up with unpredictable outcomes. The preferences, interests, and the models of reality are diverse (see: Value of diversity). The main certainty of this uncertain process is that the end product is usually fantastic. Free learning leads to rich and coherent knowledge, high applicability of knowledge, and high intelligence. It also leads to the optimum adaptation to the set of environments the individual is exposed to with little dependence of the stability and diversity of those environments.
Here comes Professor Bartholet. She is word perfect on the law. She can regurgitate Meyer, Pierce, and Yoder word for word from memory. However, she has no idea about efficient learning aimed at high intelligence. This makes her impotent in making good judgements on optimum legal framework for education that would push the planet in the positive direction.
She speaks of the power of diversity and the "importance of an education that exposes children to a range of viewpoints". At the same time, she cannot see that the best formula for fostering tolerance and breeding a range of viewpoints is unschooling. If all kids are subject to the same curriculum, they know the same phone book, and there is no room for diversity. Secondly, if there is no school choice, there is no diversity in the educational method. Instead of a diverse society with a "range of viewpoints", and a range of intelligences, we have an assembly line where the viewpoint is pre-programmed in the curriculum, and intelligence is lost through limited autonomy.
Elizabeth Bartholet failed to see the value of indeterminism in building up world knowledge. After all, she is the product of the same system. With due respect, with its high standards, Harvard is also a product of a rush to knowledge, which tends to stifle creativity and differentiation. Bartholet's paper is a sad testimony to the fact.
The best person on the planet to make an educated statement in the subject is Peter Thiel. He was in a mad rush through the Stanford Law School. He was blindfolded. Until he made a minor slip, bumped his head an woke up. He co-founded PayPal and is now one of the most vocal opponents of the old-style college, of which Ivy League is notorious for mixing excellence with stifled creativity. Best colleges are a mill that produces a great deal of fantastic brains and a great deal of casualties.
Peter Thiel explains that the rush to educational homogenization is the exact opposite of what Bartholet would like to achieve, i.e. "exposure to a range of viewpoints". He adds: "An individual cannot diversify his own life by keeping dozens of equally possible careers in ready reserve. Our schools teach the opposite" (source). The learn drive is a perfect optimizer of a good balance between specialization and diversity. If we then rely on the optimality of the learn drive, and employ free learning, we end up with a fantastic diversity at individual and societal level. This is a cornerstone of planetary strength.
For Bartholet, the Amish culture may be monofocal, boring, backward, and inept. In reality, it is the existence of those unique cultures that contributes to global wisdom and the thriving "tolerance to other people's viewpoints". The only real threat associated with subcultures is their natural resistance to being quashed. A healthy human brain will fiercely combat all attempts of enslavement. The claim that the Amish undermine social cohesion is no different than the claim that a solitary frog undermines the cohesion of a rich ecosystem. It is the monoculture that ruins the farm.
Bartholet's failure to see the symmetry of the opposing models was captured at a different angle by Fred Bauer of National Review. When Bartholet's logic is applied from a religious viewpoint, we arrive at a preposterous proposition:
A secular child raised by secular parents who then goes to a secular public school might not be that exposed to religious viewpoints. Should he be sent to a monastery for a few months each year in order to fully understand a worldview based on obedience to religious authority?
With free learning, we get a rich range of viewpoints. Nothing breeds tolerance to diversity better than that diversity itself. I regret to observe that Professor Bartholet is oblivious to this important social truth.
Failing grade on legal ABC
If we made a contest on the quality of education and the mental health outcomes, should public schools be banned once homeschooling wins?
Bartholet's frivolous substitution of laws of prohibition in place of systems of protection would probably get her a failing grade in a high school essay on the grounds of bad logic (the slander itself has its roots in schooling):
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
Note the use of the term at-risk subsets when discussing a law that affects all children.
My parallel is better. As much as we school children to protect them from abuse, we could say:
Because some husbands abuse their wives, we should send all wives to school
Bartholet wants to imprison all children for the potential crimes of a fraction of adults. It would make marginally more sense to school the parents in the art of parenting (i.e. imprison the potential abuser).
If Bartholet calls for a protective system, why not schedule a 1 hour interview with a child instead of wasting 7 hours of child's time every single day? All the wasteful school machinery should be required instead of a just an hour of professional time? Even that kind of intervention seems excessive to me. What if a child says "I fancy no meeting with some officials of dubious qualifications". Should we coerce a child at the cost of her trust in the benevolence of society?
I am no expert in murder, wife abuse, or child abuse. I agree we need systems for tackling all social pathology. School is too wasteful and too costly to play that role.
Perhaps a Harvard scholar was blinded by the difference between a theoretically noble idea of school and the penalty of prison. This is however my field of study, and I reassure all lawyers that from the psychological point of view, school is little better than prison, esp. that prisoners have the benefit of knowing their offence. Secondly, a Harvard scholar may claim that the adult brain differs from a child's brain. This is the core of my interests. If the school prison sentence was issued on the basis of insufficient knowledge, many 3rd graders would be set free, and a majority of adults would have to be thrown back to prison. They have long forgotten a great deal of primary school basics.
We cannot jail children for the offences of others.
Intellectual dishonesty
Cognitive biases represent a healthy property of the human brain. There is value to wrong models in science (see: Value of wrong models). However, intellectual honesty can be analyzed objectively. It can reveal the existence of falsity vectors. It separates truth-seekers from propagandist and ideologues.
It was a pain to read 50 pages of Fineman's paper with its awful system of infra and supra notes characteristic of legalese that older researchers keep using as if there were still people on the planet who read paper. The biases in Fineman's paper were glaring. Bartholet's text is even longer. It is 80 pages long and I did not look forward to testing each reference for its validity. Her claims on 90% Christian composition of homeschoolers was ridiculed all over the web. However, I decided to look into the claim that 42% of homeschoolers experience abuse. I instantly knew I would have some rich material to work with:
HARO, in consultation with CRHE, conducted a survey of 3,700 homeschool graduates and found a high percentage — 42% — reported experiencing abuse or neglect
Coalition for Responsible Home Education should rather be called a "Coalition Against Homeschooling" (see: Child abuse in the guise of homeschooling). It is an ideological advocacy group. It conducted a survey with SurveyMonkey, popularized on Facebook, and verified by self-certification: "I was homeschooled indeed". It found that 58% of the respondents came from fundamentalist Christian environments (i.e. vast over-representation). They reported emotional abuse (30%), educational neglect (17%), and physical abuse (16%). Incidentally, emotional abuse found in 30% of cases seem puny in comparison with the abuse children meet at school and in schooling households (see below).
Unrepresentative nature of the survey was plainly stated in the source analysis, but not in Bartholet's paper beyond a small-print footnote.
However, when Bartholet spoke of rich data collected by Dr Brian D. Ray, she said:
Ray’s research has been persuasively debunked by many reliable scholars, who have demonstrated its methodological issues and other problems
Ray's research is allegedly unrepresentative because:
Demographic information about Ray’s participants reveals that they are overwhelmingly white and Christian, come from wealthy, intact, well-educated families
In other words, the exactly same shortcomings in Ray's and CRHE research receive a very different treatment. While the CRHE poll is used as a well-referenced fact. Ray's research is labelled as allegedly "debunked". Needless to say, the efforts of Dr Brian D. Ray spanning decades are methodologically vastly superior to the survey spawned by CRHE. Ray's research became a target because it is invariably glowingly praiseful of homeschooling.
Not only does Bartholet drop a figure that has never been peer reviewed. She drops a figure from an on-line poll promoted via Facebook. To my eye, both Ray's and CRHE's efforts are informative, but their treatment by Bartholet is a case of intellectual dishonesty. The motto of the Harvard Law School is Veritas (truth).
If you think I am unjust, please let me know.
It is important to stress that metrics used by Dr Brian D. Ray are not the best to prove superiority of homeschooling. Test scores and college admissions are interesting, but the most important metric is mental health. If we look at addictions or suicide, esp. for kids who are unschooled, we will see the impact of freedom and free learning on development. Here is just one peer reviewed example: Are homeschooled adolescents less likely to use alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs?
Emotional abuse
If 30% of homeschoolers from largely fundamentalist households report emotional abuse, I venture the figure is no worse than that of an average household where school regimen is a norm.
If the dad screams in the morning "get in the car or I will break your neck" it is emotional abuse. It is not abuse because of the inevitable fake threat of breaking a child's neck. It is abuse because getting a sleepy kid form bed in the morning is a well-documented health risk. It happens in a majority of household. Only a fraction of kids wake up on their own. This is abuse in the name of early school time, which is determined by the requirements of a working population against the recommendations of the best sleep experts.
Equally bad are the threats "if you fail that test, say goodbye to your XBox for a month". Those abusive threats would be entirely unnecessary if we just gave up the tyranny of the curriculum. Kids would only learn more and learn better. But most of parents cannot see this opportunity because (1) compulsory schooling seems to give them no option, (2) a widely held myth says that free kids would never leave the world of computer games (see: Gaming disorder).
Last but not least, schools themselves often employ forms of coercion, threats and bribery that inflict long-term damage on child psychology.
Heart of ice
The deepest and truest cause for homeschooling is parental love. Some parents cannot even imagine parting with their 5-7 year olds at the very sensitive period of their lives. Others, in deep belief in the value of education, suffer a great deal until they cannot take the abuse any more. Dr Peter Gray might be the best known voice in favor of free learning. However, even he was once a believer in the education system and sent his son to school. The experience changed Gray's career and made him the staunchest advocate for the freedom of children these days. Always cool and always rational, Gray never hesitates to say that school is prison.
Most of parents follow the crowd and the never-questioned mantra: "school is important" and "school is good". Their maternal or paternal feelings get suppressed by the "higher cause" of education.
For minority of parents, getting rid of the kids for the day is a relief. Angry feminists are richly represented in this group. I meet those parents from time to time and they are always pretty vocal about their unhappiness with my "corrupting" influence on their children. I do not fully understand the angry feminist mindset. Angry feminists refuse to talk to me. They slam the door. The call me a male chauvinist pig. They never answer my mail. They seem to hate my positions on breast-feeding, co-sleeping, daycare, early academic instruction, etc.
On the surface both Elizabeth Bartholet and Martha Fineman-Albertson fit the bill. They cannot see the role of parental love in choosing homeschooling. At first glance, their hearts seem made of ice. The hateful tsunami on social media indicates that thousands of people hastily took this interpretation. Both ladies have a lot in common. They both experienced a single-parent situation. They both have long and stellar career in law, which always involves a great deal of discrimination and sacrifice. They both received rich and graphic exposure to the problems of dysfunctional family by the nature of their professional work. They both battled Christian viewpoints (e.g. superiority of parental rights over child rights). It would be easy to get angry.
However, on closer examination, both ladies have their heart in the right place. Bartholet's "Where do black children belong?" is a clear case of fervent advocacy for the good of children. Both ladies treat their work as a mission to protect children.
My hasty reading made me put forward a couple of hypothetical sources of gravely wrong reasoning:
- both ladies live with the conviction that school serves the good of the children. They clearly have a romantic vision of schooling in which the system, which is wrong by design, can somehow become a good force (as intended)
- both ladies have an undying belief that the law can execute surgical cuts that can kill social pathologies. Prohibition seems the favorite tool even when it involves dramatic limits on freedom and autonomy
- both ladies have a distorted view of homeschooling, which they see as a safe harbor for religious extremism
Could they have also lost some of their belief in humanity by virtue of their research? Perhaps their stellar careers favor glorification of schooling? Perhaps there is some unspoken hate for fundemantalist Christians (e.g. for their interpretation of the superiority of parental rights)? They both richly refer to "The Homeschool Apostates" discussed in Ban on homeschooling (Bartholet makes 25 references). There must also be a dose of the sense of intellectual Ivy League superiority that justifies putting a jackboot over other people's lives?
In case of international adoptions, Bartholet knows it very well: institutions are bad, families are good. She knows that late adoptions are less successful, and early adoptions have usually fantastic outcomes independent of the race, or nationality. She knows that institution can inflict lasting damage and even make late adoptions intractable. Why does she believe the opposite in case of schooling by giving institutions a priority over families? From the point of view of brain science, the analogies are almost perfect. Concept networks thrive in rich loving environments. The same is true of adopted babies and homeschooled children. On the other hand, institutionalization is dangerous and fraught with pathologies. How would Bartholet react to another activist lawyer who would scream "Ban international adoptions! They are a cover for child abuse!"? All a cool mind needs in deciding such dilemmas is the ability to employ the symmetry of viewpoints.
In the matter of racial matching policies, Bartholet wrote:
It may well be that the only practicable way to prevent race from playing the kind of determinative role that it plays today is to prohibit its use as a factor altogether
To anyone familiar with the plot of "Losing Isaiah", the solution will instantly seem simplistic. In the movie, a complex legal case could be easily made black-and-white by a mere act of consultation with a child. Bartholet intent is good, but the solution is harmful.
The same problem we can see in Bartholet's solution to the "problem" of homeschooling. An excellent lawyer, cannot excel in law only. A bit of knowledge of brain science and a bit of empathy is absolutely essential for greatness. She keeps using the same hammer for very different nails.
Harvard's Reputation
Many Harvard alumni, including those who were homeschooled themselves, expressed dismay with Bartholet's views. Many wondered if she has ever met a real homeschooler. I am yet to meet a single text praising the excellence of Bartholet's stellar scholastic effort.
Kerry McDonald graduated from Harvard University with Master of Education (2001). As a homeschooling mom of four, and author of Unschooled, she expressed her shock with misinformation presented in the Harvard Magazine article that started the angry tsunami on the web.
McDonald called for future articles to correct the imbalance, and the misrepresentation. A correction is needed to save the reputation of the Harvard brand (source):
Given Harvard Magazine’s reputation for editorial excellence, I was disappointed to see this article’s emphasis on the potential risks of homeschooling without highlighting its benefits. Bartholet indicates that “tolerance of other people’s viewpoints” is a key civic value. I agree, and I hope future articles in this magazine demonstrate this tolerance
Recent honors graduate from Harvard, Melba Pearson, a homeschooler, was no less disappointed (source):
I graduated from Harvard with honors. In fact, Harvard was the very first school I ever set foot in. The first 12 years of my education, I was homeschooled. […] I was proud of my school, until last night, when I read Harvard Magazine's article on the so-called "risks of homeschooling". This article is an attack on the fundamental rights and freedoms that make our country (and until recently, institutions such as Harvard) what they are. […] Homeschooling, and the lessons I learned during the first 18 years of my life, prepared me to succeed — no, excel — at one of the most prestigious universities in the world. […] I excelled at Harvard because before I was even accepted, I was taught to love and value learning, community, ideas, and excellence. […] It is deeply disappointing that Harvard is choosing and promoting an intellectual totalitarian path that calls for a ban of the liberties that helped me and countless others succeed
Edifice of legal absurdity
The whole issue of homeschooling and educational laws in general verges on absurdity. Hundreds of legal dissertations pollute the history of human thought. Legal wrestling has already reached the Supreme Court a few times. This text is equally wasteful. In a perfectly rational world, it would never need to be written.
The core of absurdity is that learning is like sleep or feeding. It comes naturally. It needs no regulation. Why don't we ever come to the idea of mandatory force-feeding people on a mass scale? Or supervising their mandatory sleep in set hours? Obviously, we know that natural instincts suffice. If we need law, we may need to prevent the encroachment of modern technology and civilization into those natural processes. We consider the right to nutrition, sleep, and education as basic human rights.
The difference with learning is that it is unpredictable. As such it can be inconvenient and hard to control. When people eat, they grow, regenerate, and go strong. When they sleep, they rest and get smarter. But when they learn, they can go in a zillion of unexpected directions of which not all are universally desirable.
In free learning, the individual optimally adapts to his environment. On occasion, this is inconvenient for others, esp. for authorities. Education is somewhat directable, and the Prussian model of education was formed for that precise purpose. Instead of natural efficient learning, we achieve slow learning that is inversely proportional to intelligence. Intelligence is born from self-directed exploration, and it is the rebellious student that is most likely to achieve high intelligence. This is why, paradoxically, the intelligent student will be lagging in all areas where she do not wish to be educated. I was a horrible student of religion, and the key reason was that I did not want to be educated in catechism. I never learned any German, because German was imposed on me. I liked Esperanto though. So it took me just one day to learn enough to start writing my diary in it.
Education entered the realm of legal disputes only because some people want to rule over other people's minds.
By design and by definition, any education system that is not voluntary is authoritarian. It serves the authority rather than the individual. Compulsory schooling must end.
This fact will remain difficult to see as long as we disrespectfully override the learn drive and keep churning graduates that comply with the demands of the system. Elizabeth Bartholet is a child of this system. She is biased by her own valuable research on pathologies in families, esp. biological families. Her angle is skewed. She will keep attempting to remedy the problem with the only tool she knows: authoritarian mandatory education. The law is to break the spirit of the individual. She memorized the phone book, which imprisoned her mind. Blessedly, the power of collective intelligence keeps winning. Homeschooling has exploded. Unschooling is just about to explode and obliterate all prior forms of learning. By laws of intelligence, the legal constructs of a Harvard professor will be relegated to history.