If homeschooling is about what's best for the child?

Question

Then how come the parents are against putting protections in place to make sure the childs educational needs are being met and that the parent isn't a nutcase?I'm sure even some of the homeschooling parents realize not all home schoolers are capable of doing it. Plus what makes home schooling any different then any other form of child abuse when it's not done properly?

Answer 1

No; what you're proposing is paternalism.

And, if you lived in a society that was mired in the unplanned consequences of other people's (outsiders') well-meaning paternalism, there is no way you you would be suggesting it.

Yes, there probably are parents who use 'homeschooling' as a convenient excuse for their own shortcomings but stepping in and doing their job for them is not the answer. You can't treat them as irresponsible pseudo-kids on one hand and expect them to be responsible parents and adults on the other.

"Well, if a child has to die before the parents learn to take it seriously, then so be it"**

(**said by our local Chief Medical Officer on learning that, locally, nurses have, for years, been taking the responsibility themselves for medicating indigenous children because 'indigenous parents can't manage it'. His opinion being that, sink or swim, it's high-time the parents learned to take responsibility for their own children's medication).  

Okay that isn't quite the same circumstances but it still demonstrates that parents have to be allowed to be parents and accept responsibility for their own offspring no matter how useless they might actually be at the job.

You can't expect parents to be responsible and raise responsible children if the state is always going to be willing to step in and save them/their families from the consequences of their own mistakes/own stupidity.

Either homeschooling parents are adults; fully capable of educating their own children in their own way (even if you/society don't agree with 'their way')...or they're really pseudo-children who can't be expected to accept responsibility for/the consequences of their own actions, let alone those of their families.  

A better answer might be to make homeschooling parents financially liable for any remedial courses their child needs to take post-18.

That and the many practical issues including:

i) Who would be responsible for determining the 'educational needs' of each and every homeschooler? (Education rather than school?). And how would they assess those needs?

and

ii) What about the 'educational needs' of those kids in the USA who attend democratic (or free) schools?

In such democratic/free schools, the kids are under no obligation to turn up to a single class or pick up a book at any time between their first day of Nursery and their final day of High School, 16 years later, if they decide they don't want to. How would your proposition handle the inevitable claims of discrimination and victimisation of homeschooling parents in comparison to those parents who choose to send their kids to just such a democratic/free school?

Still the thought of ever having to adequately finance a viable alternative to home-education (no matter how poor or non-existent that home-education might be) would send our government running for the hills. That prospect alone would kill your proposition stone-dead here before it had ever had a chance to draw breath!

Answer 2

This is  difficult question to answer as there are many factors involved. It's not just black and white, as are most things in life. That said, the only problem I see with home schooling is the lack of social skills for the child. Also, too many times, really smart kids need to be "dumbed down" in public schools. I am an advocate of homeschooling, obviously :) Another factor against public schools are encountering bullies. I speak from experience on this. Now as to the checking on parents to see if maybe they are mentally ill, they need to do that in regards to children whether or not they are being home schooled.

Abe

Answer 3

Alright, so what other parts of parenting need to be overseen, standardized and put under government control to be certain that parents are not "nutcases"?

   I always curious as to why certain people are so adamant about protecting children from their own parents? If the child's welfare is not the concern of the parent, but rather the state, why raise kids at home at all? Let's place them all in specialized government facilities to be certain these nasty old parents never harm them. 1984 much?

Since you saw fit to get personal with me, let's go there:

... aren't you a public school drop out? How do you explain your amazing success through the school system? Where were your parents when you were floundering? Oh, I'm sorry, you were "too smart" for school. So you had to drop out. Sure, you could have chosen homeschool or virtual school and received a diploma and gone on to a University. But, you find that a substandard, sheltered and potentially abusive education. If your parents liked, they might have sent you to a school for the gifted or a local private school.  Am I honestly supposed to believe the route you went is superior to the route I've taken with my family? Tell me: Is this lashing out at involved parents some sort of backhanded revenge against your family for abandoning you to a system that failed you so miserably that a GED and military enlistment as a teenage grunt were the best options available to you? Because from here, it sure looks that way.

EDIT: So you dropped out because you were too smart and you enlisted soon after out of your intense sense of patriotism? Do you think I fell off the turnip truck yesterday? Do people ever actually buy that line? LOL

         I have friends in the military that completed their college degrees before or during their service. I know two students who were offered a scholarship to West Point because their scores on the ASVAB were so high.  Only one went though. If you were indeed such a bright girl, too brilliant to finish school,  I assume the same would have been offered to you. I grew up with a boy who knew from the time he was twelve that he wanted to be a Navy Seal. He worked hard toward that goal. He could not have been happier when that dream became a reality. I am so proud of those people I could bust. I also know people who had no other option, so they took the only job they could get straight out of high school that didn't include saying, "Would you like fries with that".  I'm not saying I would not want my child to serve. I am saying I want it to be an honestly patriotic choice, not an act of desperation. Now, how's about you answer my questions?

Answer 4

first of all the school system says that once you child turns 5 it is NOT your responsibility to raise your child and the parents should butt out of what the school is doing. example s*x ed, the schools want to teach the child about this subject that should be up to the parent to decide when the talk should occur.

And secondly where did you hear home schooling was a for of child abuse because I have been homeschooled for most of my life and I have not been abused in any way shape or form.

Answer 5

That's my main question right there.  There are very few standards when it comes to homeschooling, and that's what makes it a time bomb.  Standardization of education is what makes it compatible with the real world.

Answer 6

Darling, homeschooling a child vs Public Schools I have to say that homeschooling is 100% better!

Answer 7

I would say so...

But yet they wont be able to face the REAL world alone and face those problems..

And probably will get a real culture shock once he is out of school

Answer 8

I do not know what your qualifications are for making these bold assertions other than your previous post stating that you are a high school drop out / GED / military.

Here are some opinions from others about education.

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Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.  - Isaac Asimov

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For the UK crowd:

It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that some portion of the neglect of science in England, may be attributed to the system of education we pursue.  - Charles Babbage

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When the state or federal government control the education of all of our children, they have the dangerous and illegitimate monopoly to control and influence the thought process of our citizens. - Michael Badnarik

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Our school education ignores, in a thousand ways, the rules of healthy development. - Elizabeth Blackwell

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It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.

- Albert Einstein

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***UPDATE:

You said:

***The difference is I don't believe that most parents are truly capable of achieving that outcome.

All the data and serious research proves that your belief is wrong.

*** Remember many parents didn't become parents because they past[sic] s*x ed but instead because they failed it.

Define "many", show me statistics. Who says homeschooled children are not taught the facts of life?  Some may not agree with the way it is taught in the public schools but that is much different that what you assert.

To quote, for the fourth time in as many days, Martin Luther King, Jr.:

"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." - MLK, Jr

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What is your motivation with all this anyway?  Are you just super altruistic in your concern over OTHER people's children? Are you pushing your views based on your politics? Do you want everyone to share your worldview and only your worldview?  Do you public school your own children?

Answer 9

What makes you think a child's educational needs are met at a public school? My public school classes had 35-40 students each, and only one teacher. How is that the best for learning? 1 teacher divided among 40 students?

Conventional school teaches what is easiest for the teacher to teach to 40 students at once, not what is best for the child. I'm curious as to what makes you qualified to make this assertion - ALL of the homeschooled students I've met have a MUCH better grasp on things like maths (using a calculator to "learn" math is what conventional schools do) and English compared to those of us who weren't as lucky.

Answer 10

Most parents are capable. They have the best interest of the child and as an onlooker it is hard to judge whether the child who hasn't 'graduated' would have if he had been in 'school'. There are all sorts of abuses, children in school tend to get hardened to that way of life and unfortunately just accept it. Isn't it abuse to be smacked around the head or body in the name of a joke? These sort of customs are rife in our schools and yet when parents try and protect their child from this emotional and physical abuse we worry about their 'education!!' Generally speaking, most home educated children grow up to be more sociable and have the ability to work without being told to.

Answer 11

Because who decides what is best? I can't be sure that the people who decide don't have an agenda, and aren't making choices based on their own value system. In that case, their decision is no more valid than my own, and ultimately, I am responsible for my child. Why is it not considered child abuse by neglect when people just place their child in public schools without second thought, without ever being involved? I was homeroom mom five years running, head of PTA, and out of thirty kids in every classroom, at least twenty had parents who NEVER did more for their child than throw some dinner in front of them at night. Five perhaps had parents who read to them and encouraged them with schoolwork, and only five more, out of every classroom, had parents as involved as every single homeschooling family I know.

I will agree, that probably not all homeschoolers are the BEST at what they do. Done improperly, however, just leaves a child lacking in education (and who is to say what lacking is? Is someone who grows to be an automechanic less valuable than a doctor? Who do you want around when your car doesn't run?) Education can be attained at any age, and if someone reaches 18, it takes less than six months to finish a GED course. It is very obviously different from the physical and emotional scars that are left by child abuse, often perpetuated from generation to generation.

Answer 12

What do we do with the religious nuts, including Atheists, who are considered nuts by religious people.   Nut who think we were some type of monkey once! How about racists.  One family I know from India is very upset the girl married a WHITE BOY.  Should social services remove the younger kids from that, obviously, racist family!?  The parents are professionals, by the way.  Some of the sibblings are medical practioners!  But they don't like the girl married to a WHITE GUY.

Hard core Chinese and Japanese ALSO don't like their kids marrying outside the "species."  Neither do Orthodox Jews!

Where do we draw the line?

Atheists say it's wrong for Catholic Families to raise Catholic Kids.

Where do we draw the line?

Whose rules do we use in parenting!  George Bush's, he's a methodist who talks to God and thinks Iraq is a holy war!  Do we follow his views!  Obama, half Muslim.  African American.  Do we follow his views, some Africans are lesbians who mate arbitrarily with any man to make babies but are basically paired with a woman mate.  Like those views!  Want your daughter to shack up with a woman mate and then get pregant in one night stands and raise the kid with her female mate because some African culture says that's COOL!

WHOSE views do we follow, Catholics, Mormons, Atheists, Agnostics, Born Agains, Baptists and how de we enforce the rules with a gun and prison!?

Maybe YOU'LL be the first victim!  Because you don't follow the rules right!

Dr. Elizabeth Morgan, Board Certfied Surgeon, Columnist for Cosmopolitan Magazine, author of Two Best Selling Books was put in jail UNTIL FUTHER NOTICE by a judge for contempt of court for failing to tell where she hid her 5 year old daughter whom she felt (RIGHT OR WRONG) was being sexaully abused by her former husband.  Congress released her after 3 years of HARD TIME PRISON.

Is that how you want the world to run?!

Answer 13

But there are rules and laws to protect a child's educational needs, and they are in force in every state in the union.  As far as I know, every country in which homeschooling is legal has laws that must be followed.  They are different in every state, but they are there - and they are followed.  

However, I will not have my every move dictated by a school system that can't even police its own actions.  The high school next to my subdivision teaches much of the same information, at the same level, as I present to my 10 year old.

We don't all have to test, but quite frankly, shouldn't we be able to determine when our children are ready to take a standardized test?  My dyslexic son, for example - last year, he wouldn't have done well at all, even though he knew the material...he just plain wasn't ready, and the format of it didn't make sense.  This year, I've started pre-testing him without prepping him first, and he's gotten 100% on every test in the booklet.  He knows the material, and now it makes sense.  Waiting that one year made all the difference.  He has now figured out how to do the things in spelling, reading, and writing that were completely frustrating to him a year ago, and he's well above grade level in nearly everything.

We are required to teach our kids to a certain level each year.  Yes, there are those that don't take their jobs seriously...but honestly, the kids wouldn't be any better off in school.  They probably shouldn't be homeschooled in the first place, but those are the same parents that won't make them do their homework, study for tests, be respectful to their teachers, or come to class prepared.  We are fully aware that there are parents out there that are not capable of homeschooling, and often when we come across them, we encourage them to either clean up their act or send their kids back to school.

My child is years ahead of grade level in nearly every subject, and excels at most things that he puts his hand to, because he works hard and doesn't give up.  He loves learning, he loves the freedom to research and discover that homeschooling gives him.  He loves the fact that he can have responsibility for his own schedule, and that he can learn things that would never be presented in the schools near us.  At age 10, he's learning Greek, electronics, botany, and theatre arts - along with his core subjects and other electives - and he's loving it.  He's excelling.  What middle school would allow him to do all that?

Your question could be asked in a different way - what makes parenting any different than any other form of child abuse when it's not done properly?  Anyone past puberty can make a child...but not everyone can be a true parent.  Anyone can legally bring their kids home to educate them...but not everyone can homeschool.  This is a free country though, and I'll not give up my rights just because someone else can't be responsible with theirs.

Answer 14

Well my mom home schooled my sister     and my sister did get behind     Alot of kids try to skip it... Not all kids though   But just stay strong and confedent because there will be times they will try to skip

Answer 15

If we put protections in place to make sure the child's educational needs are being met, then we need to go to the public schools to give individual tutoring to all the children who are not on the same level as the person who scores the highest on the test in the class.    We need to make sure the public schools  individually analyze each child and make sure we teach them in their preferred style of learning.  

We have children in the public schools who have parents who are nutcases.   Shall we take these children away from their parents because of their influence on the children?  Should we give all perspective parents a test to see if they are qualified to be parents before we allow them to have children?

You see, I don't know where you are going to stop with  limiting freedoms.   The term used  a few years ago was "You cannot legislate morality".  I'll revise the statement to say "You cannot legislate parenting styles".

Answer 16

no cause then your kid will grow a a petafile cause he missed out on the youngens

Answer 17

well obviously if its done properly its perfectly fine. Just gotta make sure your child does he/she's work. I would usually saying going to an actual school is better because when your homeschooled your child can easily get lazy, and not do work, then fall way behind. Most homeschooler children however are very good at doing work. All depends on the child and parents.

Answer 18

Because the protections make it hard for good parents to home school their children and often take away from the freedom that homeschooling provides. For example, requiring homeschoolers to be tested every year would mean that the parent would have to focus on test materials and try to rush their child through things. A child learns much better when they can take their time. While some parents use homeschooling for abuse, I am convinced that the majority do not.

Not meeting educational requirements and abuse are two different things. Different people have different ideas of what should be learned, which is why there are many different types of homeschools. Different does not mean better or worse.

Answer 19

With your thinking, then teachers, principles and schools should be charged with child abuse if a child doesn't learn according to someone else's standards.

My son, who I pulled out of school at the end of grade 4, was not being taught properly.  He was way behind where he should have been.   Shall I charge his teacher with child abuse?  

It's amazing how many teachers out there are nutcases and shouldn't be teaching.  They need some sort of exam for them as well.

No, not all parents should be homeschooling.  However, we live in freedom.  We have the freedom and legal right to homeschool.

Answer 20

Uh, wait a second.

Homeschooling isn't what's best for every child. Most homeschooling parents choose homeschooling because they feel it's best for THEIR child.

Where I live, we do have some things in place, so I can't really comment too much on that. I find myself divided: on the one hand, I find it intrusive that the government should feel the need to keep such tabs on people and wonder how it goes against our own freedoms, but on the other, I know there are those who abuse the system and it's more for them that these things are in place than for me. However, the protections are not for "educational needs". We are trusted to raise our children as we see fit instead of having the government control us and our family.

By "not done properly", what do you mean? Not meeting your standards of academics or by actual negligence and abuse? There are private schools which allow kids total freedom in their education. If they can exist, then surely parents can choose as they wish how their children will be educated. That is not abuse. It's called respecting children as people.

(Just a note: I am actually not an unschooler, but I will defend those who are and the private school styles that essentially are as they really do respect the children as people and not little animals that need to be trained or learn only xyz.)