CBS news this week ran a two-part report on home schooling, implying that parents who home-school commonly do so to perpetrate all kinds of abuse on their children. Never mind the most obvious explanation, that parents who home-school do so because they care about their children too much to turn them over to the state. Their solution? More regulation, natch.
Radley Balko says it better than I could, in a post aptly titled 'Home Schooling Hatchet Job':
The report then goes on to question why home schooling isn't more heavily regulated, and -- hold the friggin' phones on this one -- why home schooling parents aren't given criminal background checks...
If you're going to background-check home schoolers, shouldn't you background check all parents? And if Andrea Yates is indicative of the dangers of home schooling, might we say that Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris embody the dangers of public schooling?
Ugh. Background checks for parents. Anyone else have a problem with that?
I don't know anything about this particular report, but I do know that home schooled kids are often let loose on the world with absolutely no social skills. I've worked with people who were home schooled and had no concept of conflict resolution, or even basic conversation skills.
There are however a number of home schooling groups in which parents and kids can participate in order to provide the kids some group learning opportunities. These groups also allow the parents to pool their knowledge and draw from each other to more effectively teach the kids.
Not everyone doing home schooling participates in these types of groups however, and there is a significant number of home schooled people out there who carry the knowledge of an encyclopedia with no way to express it, or who are almost sociopathic--devoid of the ability to foresee the effect of what they say or do might have on other people.
Posted by: Michael Ditto at October 19, 2003 04:15 AMHmm, I haven't had that sort of experience, but I don't know that many home-schooled kids. Regardless, what I'm talking about is public policy. And public policy that mandates background checks for home-schooling parents looks horrible to me. I think there's a large group of people, many of whom are imployed in education and social services, who resent home-schooling and want to make it as difficult as possible.
Posted by: Walter at October 19, 2003 08:07 PMIt COULD come to that, you know. Anne McCaffrey suggested it in her "The Rowan" series of books.
Set in a harsh, overpopulated future, the goverment office that regulates population growth has the power to simply grab someone and sterilize them on the spot if they're even _suspected_ of having more than one child.
And some are sterilized just as "encouragement" to the rest. Talk too loudly about changing the goverment, and they'll "suddenly discover" that you have an "obscure genetic disease" that requires your sterilization (and that of your child) to prevent its spread.
Nasty.
Ed Becerra