In what has to be one of the most outrageous, misguided—frankly, garbage—pieces of elitist propaganda this year, Harvard Magazine and Harvard Law School have teamed up to attack homeschooling, of all things, in a clearly coordinated one-two punch.

Both attacks are baseless, stereotypical, and fundamentally flawed because they are rooted in the dangerous belief that the state has more authority over a mother’s child than she does.

In the May issue of Harvard Magazine is a piece by Erin O’Donnell headlined “The Risks of Homeschooling.” Sure, on its face, that sounds benign enough. I homeschooled my four children for six years, and I’d grant there are a few risks to that education model, just as there are to public and private schools.

Turns out, the article doesn’t weigh pros and cons to homeschooling, which now is being tried by countless Americans as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, the article lacks any nuance whatsoever and instead acts as a vehicle for a biased onslaught of secular statism against parental rights.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

O’Donnell launches her hit piece on homeschooling with the premise that children have rights equal to or greater than their parents, and the state actually has more rights than the homeschooled child’s parents do. She begins by quoting Elizabeth Bartholet, an authoritarian, radical professor of public interest law who says she “recommends a presumptive ban” on homeschooling.

Bartholet, also faculty director of  Harvard Law School’s Child Advocacy Program, says that “homeschooling violates children’s right to a meaningful education and their right to be protected from potential child abuse,” and that parents have “authoritarian control over their children.”

Bartholet observes, wrongly, that since there are so few regulations, parents may not teach their children anything, or in fact may be abusive.

Bartholet was one of several professors who organized an anti-homeschooling conference at Harvard Law School scheduled to take place in June. A description of the conference, which is invitation-only, says: “The focus will be on problems of educational deprivation and child maltreatment that too often occur under the guise of homeschooling.”

One solution offered on the conference site for the problems created by homeschooling is, again, simply to ban it altogether.

The problems with this Harvard Magazine piece and the scheduled conference at Harvard Law School are multifaceted.

O’Donnell’s article peddles stereotypes about parents using homeschooling as a guise for abuse, which is incredibly rare, and paints homeschool parents as incompetent and stupid, which is also incredibly flawed. Statistics show parents who homeschool actually tend to be more educated and wealthier than parents who don’t.

The magazine cover is my favorite part: The illustration shows a boy imprisoned in a “house” made of books as his public and private school friends frolic happily outside. The books are, of course, titled Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and—my personal favorite—the Bible.

Not only did the fantastic illustrators at Harvard Magazine spell “arithmetic” wrong (as “artithmetic”) and later correct it, but the insinuations are obvious: Homeschooled children are imprisoned by religious zealots who educate their kids at home because they fear the outside world, with all its secularization and happy children.

Again, few things could be further from the truth. Statistics show parents who homeschool actually do it so they can provide a more academically rigorous education than the one their kids would receive elsewhere. They don’t do it solely for religious reasons.

And as far as play and exercise: My 13-year-old, who was homeschooled until sixth grade, looked at it the illustration and laughed. He misses the days when he could get school done in four or five hours and play outside the rest of the day.

O’Donnell’s article also insinuates children who are homeschooled graduate dumber, which, again, statistics refute. Homeschooled kids end up with higher grade point averages, score higher on standardized tests, and get accepted into top schools—like Harvard.

In fact, parents homeschool for precisely the reason the article presents: They want to keep their children from progressive indoctrination that’s as biased as it is flawed.

Beyond all of this nonsense is the article’s single largest flaw, which is so obvious it’s hard to believe the thesis passed the inspection of a decent editor: These Harvard elitists don’t bother to hide their disdain for traditional family, parental rights, or the topic of homeschool education, which has increased in popularity in the United States over the past decade.

Despite this increase, by the way, fewer than 5% of children are homeschooled in the United States. From reading this article, though, you’d think homeschooling was the predominant model of education because it’s painted as such a pervasive threat.

Children do not belong to the state, at least not in America. Parents have the right, an inherent gift from God, to care for their little people until they are old enough to care for themselves.

It is the parents’ responsibility, nay, privilege, to teach their children everything from how to use the bathroom to how to do long division to how to process emotions and how to drive a car.

Parents can and should do everything they can to instill their values and pass down their beliefs, whether they choose to send their kids to school, educate them at home, or a mix depending on the year and season of life.

Typically, I’m not surprised by leftist propaganda. But when it comes to Harvard University, I am surprised and disappointed. Harvard should know better. After all, the university accepts homeschool students and expects them to thrive.

It’s humanist garbage to peddle an article and a conference that presume children are the property of the state and that homeschooling is dangerous and must be banned. And the garbage is where this belongs.

Source: dailysignal.com

Billions of people around the world exercised their religious freedom during Holy Week, but a new United Nations report threatens to undermine both this freedom and women’s rights.

The report of Ahmed Shaheed, the U.N. expert responsible for protecting religious freedom, advances a “progressive” agenda of abortion and new “rights” based on membership in sexual identity groups.

It seems the U.N. is willing to trample the rights of the vulnerable and undermine the credibility of universal human rights to promote the values of a small number of wealthy countries—a travesty the Trump administration should oppose.

The report to the infamous U.N. Human Rights Council undermines the empowerment of women and girls by lumping their concerns together with novel claims based on sexual orientation and gender identity. It includes a controversial interpretation of “gender equality” that promotes acceptance of transgender ideology and the concept of multiple, fluid, “gender identities.”

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

At one time, “gender equality” referred exclusively to decreasing the many inequalities that women face. But the U.N. bureaucracy has begun attempting to redefine gender to include “gender identity,” referring both to women who identify as men and men who identify as women.

In some nations, the creation of new rights based on gender identity has reduced safety and privacy for women and girls in places like shelters, prisons, and public restrooms. It has also decreased their opportunities to excel in athletics by forcing them to compete against biological males.

By focusing on the promotion of abortion and LGBTQ rights, the U.N. report turns the focus away from serious and pressing issues facing women and girls worldwide. Women comprise 52% of the victims of human trafficking each year, but the report makes no mention of this or of the work that religious groups do to combat it.

Eighty percent of the global population faces high restrictions on religious freedom, and many of these victims are women. But the report pays only superficial attention to this issue.

Instead, much of the report focuses on religion as justification for human-rights violations. The report accurately describes a few instances where religion is cynically used to justify human rights abuses perpetrated against women of minority faiths, including rape, forced sterilization, and forced abortion.

But then the report shockingly conflates conservative religious beliefs about life, marriage, and biological sex with religious justifications for abhorrent human rights violations.

Many women, as well as men, hold conservative religious beliefs, but the report treats their freedom to live according to these beliefs as secondary to abortion and new claims to rights based on sexual orientation and gender identity. No international treaty recognizes a right to abortion, but the report simply asserts that one exists and that it trumps a medical provider’s right to conscientious objection.

The report goes so far as to suggest an expanded role for the state in doctrinal matters if a religious institution has “harmful discriminatory gender norms.” It goes as far as to criticize religious believers in Africa who oppose introducing school books that promote homosexuality.

All people have human rights because of human dignity, including those who identify as LGBT, but this report bypasses the treaty negotiation process to simply assert that beliefs about sexual orientation and gender should trump the internationally-recognized human right of religious freedom.

Where treaties are silent, the U.N. bureaucracy should respect member states’ sovereignty and freedom to make their own laws. When a new right is asserted, it should be scrutinized to determine if it violates fundamental human rights. The established process by which member states debate and vote should be followed.

Bypassing this process devalues the votes of member states, particularly those that are small or poor. It opens the door to criticism that human rights are just a pretext for imposing Western values. The Holy See pointed this out, calling the report “ideological colonization.”

The Trump administration has taken bold steps to protect human rights, including by elevating the voices of women who survived the Islamic State genocide, Boko Haram, and the Holocaust. By hosting two groundbreaking ministerial summits on protecting international religious freedom, the U.S. has also created important multilateral alliances.

These alliances can do a great deal of good to protect this fundamental human right, including for women and girls. The U.N. bureaucracy should be a partner in this effort, not an adversary.

But for this to happen, the United States and like-minded allies must hold U.N. bureaucrats accountable for protecting human rights according to the texts of treaties, rather than undermining their very purpose.

Originally published in The Washington Times

Source: dailysignal.com