A São Paulo judge convicted a homeschooling family not because their daughters were failing, but because they were thriving without state-approved ideology.
Audato and Ieda Denardi are a Brazilian couple who began homeschooling their two daughters in 2020. Their girls are accomplished pianists who speak multiple languages. They were thriving academically, socially, and personally.
A São Paulo criminal court sentenced their parents to 50 days in prison anyway.
The charge was intellectual neglect. The crime? The Denardis had not included state-mandated programs on gender and sex education and tolerance and diversity in their homeschool curriculum. One judge also took issue with the fact that the girls preferred sacred and classical music over popular trap music.
The state of Brazil is prepared to imprison parents because their daughters love classical music and their family's curriculum reflects their faith.
Even the prosecutors did not believe the parents were guilty. After reviewing more than 3,000 pages of evidence and an independent evaluation of the girls, the state's own legal team recommended acquittal.
A judge accused parents of ideological manipulation for raising their children according to their own values. Meanwhile, the court demanding that those same children be exposed to state-prescribed content on gender and sexuality apparently sees no ideology in that requirement at all.
This is what ideological capture of an educational system looks like when it reaches its logical conclusion.
As a university president and someone who has spent decades studying the relationship between education, government, and human flourishing, I am alarmed by this story. Because what happened to the Denardi family in Brazil is not an isolated occurrence from a distant country. It is a warning.
The underlying assumption driving this court's ruling is one that education bureaucracies around the world are quietly adopting. That government-approved content is education, and anything else is neglect. That a child raised with strong religious convictions and classical sensibilities is somehow a child who has been failed.
This assumption is wrong. It is dangerous. And versions of it are already taking root here in America.
We have watched school boards fight parents who object to curriculum content. We have heard educators and officials argue that children belong to the community rather than their parents. The language is softer than what we see in Brazil. The direction is the same.
Genuine education has never been the exclusive property of the state. It belongs to families, to communities, to faith traditions, and to the institutions those families choose to trust with their children.
The Denardi girls are not victims of their parents' education. They are its product. They are, by every independent measure, flourishing. The only thing they lacked was exposure to content their parents, in the exercise of their God-given responsibility, had chosen not to include.
That is not neglect. That is parenting.
What the Brazilian court has done is redefine neglect to mean disagreement with the state's ideological agenda. It has weaponized the language of child welfare to punish parents who refused to comply. And it has done so while overriding the recommendation of its own prosecutors, based on its own independent expert evaluation.
This should terrify every parent who believes they have the right to raise their children according to their own values.
But rights undefended erode. The Brazil case is a reminder that the distance between bureaucratic overreach and criminal prosecution is shorter than most people assume. When the state decides that its vision of a properly educated child supersedes a family's, it eventually reaches for enforcement.
Audato Denardi and his family wake up every day knowing they could be sent to prison. His biggest worry is not himself. It is his daughters. Who will care for them if he and his wife are taken away?
That is the human cost of a government that has forgotten its limits.
America must learn from it before we face our own version of it. That means protecting homeschooling families from bureaucratic harassment, ensuring that curriculum decisions remain with parents, and defending the principle that a child raised in faith, in excellence, and in love is not a child who has been neglected.
The Denardi daughters are accomplished, thriving young women who prefer Beethoven to trap music. The only thing wrong with that picture is that a court in Brazil decided it was a crime.
We must never let that happen here.
Dr. Kent Ingle is President of Southeastern University, a networked university headquartered in Lakeland, Florida.
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