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Progressive Fatwa Against Homeschooling

Dana Goldstein says that liberals have no business homeschooling. Why not? Because it is anti-egalitarian. Excerpt: Of course, no one wants to sacrifice his own child’s education in order to better serve someone else’s kid. But here’s the great thing about attending racially and socioeconomically integrated schools: It helps children become better grown-ups. Research by Columbia University sociologist […]

Dana Goldstein says that liberals have no business homeschooling. Why not? Because it is anti-egalitarian. Excerpt:

Of course, no one wants to sacrifice his own child’s education in order to better serve someone else’s kid. But here’s the great thing about attending racially and socioeconomically integrated schools: It helps children become better grown-ups. Research by Columbia University sociologist Amy Stuart Wells found that adult graduates of integrated high schools shared a commitment to diversity, to understanding and bridging cultural differences, and to appreciating “the humanness of individuals across racial lines.”

One hardly knows where to begin with this nonsense. This is a liberal shibboleth: the idea that “diversity” is a measure of quality. I have worked in offices in which lower-quality work performed by a minority was endorsed on the grounds that “diversity” and “inclusiveness” is a positive good. The idea that people should put their children into a school that they have reason to believe will poorly educate them because they will learn a commitment to “diversity” is therapeutic crackpottery.

I once lost a liberal friend over this issue, not long after we had our first child. When she found out that we planned to homeschool, she launched into a tirade about how unchristian we were for doing so. She didn’t listen to anything we had to say about our hopes for our child’s education, why we thought we could do better by him, or anything. To be sure, our reasons may have been mistaken, but she didn’t address them. She just went into hysterics — literally, she started crying — about what bad people we were to turn our back on Diversity. It was an entirely emotional reaction. By considering homeschooling, we had turned our back on the Community of the Righteous. I expected people to make rational cases against homeschooling, but I wasn’t prepared for that reaction.

 

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