The Left Fears Homeschoolers

A response to: “The Risks of Homeschooling” by Erin O’Donnell
https://harvardmagazine.com/2020/05/right-now-risks-homeschooling#28127

In the age of Corona, the Leftist academics and state functionaries that set education policy are more afraid than ever of homeschoolers.

They are afraid that more people will discover that most homeschool families get better results academically in a half to a third of the instructional time and at a tenth of the cost that the modern public school spends per pupil. They are afraid that more people will discover that the old canard about socialization is 180 degrees opposite of the truth, and that today's public school environment is really the one that is, by and large, socially stunted and toxic. Most of all they are afraid that they will lose their near monopoly on access to your children's prime waking hours, and with it their ability to shape their values and beliefs to reflect their own, rather than yours.

Case in point, this hit piece in Harvard Magazine about Elizabeth Bartholet, who is organizing an invitation-only summit of homeschool opponents. An excerpt:

In a paper published recently in the Arizona Law Review, she notes that parents choose homeschooling for an array of reasons. Some find local schools lacking or want to protect their child from bullying. Others do it to give their children the flexibility to pursue sports or other activities at a high level. But surveys of homeschoolers show that a majority of such families (by some estimates, up to 90 percent) are driven by conservative Christian beliefs, and seek to remove their children from mainstream culture. Bartholet notes that some of these parents are “extreme religious ideologues” who question science and promote female subservience and white supremacy."

The practitioners of evangelical secularism understand that education is a battleground, and that families that homeschool tend to win the battles. They hate you, they hate your kids, and they want you gone, so they can have the kids for themselves.

Notice the bigoted image used: homeschooling is a prison, a prison defined by education and God’s Word in which a young girl suffers.

The Fall Was Not A New Creation: Bavinck On Nature, Sex, And Socialism

“In all these issues Reformed theology was able to make such sound judgments because it was deeply imbued with the idea that Adam did not yet enjoy the highest level of blessedness. Sin undoubtedly has cosmic significance. As is evident from the phenomenon of death, sin also impacts our physical existence and has brought the entire earth under the curse. Without sin the development of humanity and the history of the earth would have been very different—though still unimaginable. Still, on the other hand, the state of integrity cannot be equated with the state of glory. We may not draw conclusions from the former for the conditions of the latter. Isaiah 11:6 and 65:25 can no more be applied to the state of human life before the fall than Mark 12:25; Luke 20:36; and 1 Corinthians 6:13 (etc.). Though the form (forma) has changed, the matter (materia) of humankind, plant, animal, nature, and earth is the same before and after the fall. All the essential components existing today were present also before the fall. The distinctions and dissimilarities between men and women, parents and children, brothers and sisters, relatives and friends; the numerous institutions and relations in the life of society such as marriage, family, child rearing, and so forth; the alternation of day and night, workdays and the day of rest, labor and leisure, months and years; man’s dominion over the earth through science and art, and so forth—while all these things have undoubtedly been modified by sin and changed in appearance, they nevertheless have their active principle and foundation in creation, in the ordinances of God, and not in sin. Socialism and communism, also the socialism and communism of many Christian sects, are right in combating the appalling consequences of sin, especially also in the sphere of society. But these systems do not stop there; they also come into conflict with the nature of things, the creation ordinances, and therefore consistently take on, not a reformational, but a revolutionary character.”

From Reformed Dogmatics, Vol 2. ch. 13 on Human Destiny