Some time ago, an acquaintance who volunteers at a local tourist attraction mentioned that they put on a special tour for a group of homeschooled kids whose parents pulled together to hire a bus for an excursion. How were they? I asked. Remarkably well-behaved and asked intelligent questions, he answered.
As I often urge Good Oil readers, if you have school-age children, homeschool them.
Just not if you’re in Brazil apparently.
A couple in Brazil have become the first parents in the country to be criminally convicted for homeschooling their children, sentenced to 50 days in prison after a judge ruled their curriculum failed to include state-approved content on gender, sexuality and cultural diversity.
While much of Latin America has been walking away from the failed left-wing experiments of the past two decades, Brazil went the other way. It elected a president who had been jailed for corruption and who has a habit of ranting about “the irrational behaviour of white people with blue eyes”. He has since used the courts to sideline his main political rival. In that climate, it should surprise no one that the state has now turned its guns on parents who dare to educate their own children outside the system.
Audato and Ieda Denardi were convicted of “intellectual neglect” by a lower court in São Paulo in April, according to the Christian legal advocacy group ADF International that is supporting the family’s appeal.
The sentencing judge found that the home education program for their daughters, aged 15 and 11, didn’t include instruction on “gender and sex education” or “tolerance and diversity.”
The court also cited the girls’ musical tastes as evidence of cultural neglect. Because neither daughter expressed a liking for “trap,” an American hip-hop sub-genre popular in Brazil, or “sertanejo,” a Brazilian folk genre, the judge concluded the parents had failed to provide adequate cultural education.
Well, they mightn’t know how many imaginary ‘micro genders’ there are (at present count), but they are accomplished pianists who speak multiple languages.
The judge, on the other hand, clearly does not have a even a prep-school gold star in self-awareness.
In his written decision, the judge accused the couple of “using their daughters as pawns in an ideological struggle, subjecting them to a form of unregulated education, the effectiveness and quality of which lack adequate metrics within the Brazilian legal system, while completely excluding the state’s involvement.”
The hypocrisy is almost impressive. The judge condemns the parents for supposedly using their children as pawns in an ideological struggle while the Brazilian state does exactly that: forcing families to submit to a curriculum heavy on gender ideology and ‘diversity’ training or face criminal punishment. The prosecutor had recommended acquittal after reviewing the evidence. An independent educational psychologist found no sign of neglect. The girls themselves described a rigorous daily education. The judge convicted anyway.
Ieda Denardi said she could not “conceive a more dictatorial state than the one that wants me in jail because I chose to exercise my right to direct the education and upbringing of my daughters.”
The Denardis began homeschooling in 2020 after watching the public system’s shortcomings during the pandemic. Their daughters’ academic performance improved. The family was also able to teach according to their own values and faith. For that offence against the state’s monopoly on indoctrination, they now face prison.
Julio Pohl, legal counsel for Latin America at ADF International, said […] “The judge convicted anyway – because a 15-year-old said she finds some music lyrics morally questionable, and because the curriculum didn’t include state-approved content on gender,” Pohl said, calling the outcome “a grotesque abuse of the criminal law.”
Brazil’s Supreme Court ruled years ago that homeschooling is not unconstitutional, but it demanded a federal law to regulate it. No such law has been passed. An estimated 70,000 homeschooled children and their parents now live in legal limbo. A bill to legalise the practice passed the lower house in 2022 but has stalled in the Senate.
The Denardi case shows what happens when the state decides that parental rights are subordinate to ideological conformity. The girls were not neglected. They were simply not being shaped into the state’s preferred model of citizen. In modern Brazil, that is apparently now a criminal offence.
Homeschool your kids if you can. Just understand that in some countries the cost of defying the state’s claim on your children’s minds can be measured in prison time.
