In the wake of anti-homeschooling rumblings at Harvard, the university’s Kennedy School of Government will host an online conference to discuss recent “dishonest attacks on homeschooling.”
Ideological Diversity, a student organization at the Kennedy School, is holding “The Disinformation Campaign Against Homeschooling” online conference May 1st, according to The Daily Caller.
The conference will “address the hostility in academia and the media towards children learning outside of the schoolhouse,” as well as “the failures of public education” according to a press release from the group.
This event serves as something of a counter-event to the “Homeschooling Summit: Problems, Politics, and Prospects for Reform,” to be hosted in June by Harvard Law School.
The anti-homeschooling event’s organizers include Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Bartholet, who declared homeschooling a “threat” to “children and society.” and that homeschool parents “female subservience and white supremacy.”
Bartholet was also heavily quoted in a recent article in Harvard Magazine, which ironically and inaccurately depicted homeschoolers as being caged and oppressed.
Cevin Soling, president of Ideological Diversity, called the Law School’s event “intellectually dishonest.”
“The problem is not just Harvard,” Soling continued. “Many journalists and public figures are also deliberately ignoring data.”
Soling added that “one of the happy consequences I am certain we will see as a consequence of kids not being in school is that the adolescent suicide rate will decline in 2020 not to mention the number of sexual assaults on students that are rampant in public schools as documented by the AP.”
“Not one of the invited speakers is expected to honestly address alternatives to compulsory schooling or accurately assess the existing model of schooling,” Soling said. “Instead, the organizers have already made it clear that they are attacking a strawman in order to promote an agenda.”
The conference speakers will include Soling himself, Reason Foundation director of school choice Corey DeAngelis, Cato scholar and homeschooling mom Kerry McDonald, author Patrick Farenga, and Alliance for Self-Directed Education president Peter Gray.
To watch the conference online for free, visit the event page.
Folks, the attacks on homeschooling are only going to get worse. How incredibly ironic it is, however, that the Harvard article and anti-homeschooling summit would come at a time when the vast majority of Americans are “coronavirus homeschooling?”
We applaud the Kennedy School for bringing balance and fair representation to the table. Don’t miss what is sure to be an enlightening and empowering event for all homeschoolers.
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