I have to say that I think there are significant risks to unregulated homeschooling and I am very glad that we do have some checks and measures in place. I would hate to see it banned, but I do have concerns that there are homeschool children considerably at risk and am quite comfortable with the level of regulation we had in the more rigorous state.
I agree.
Reading those links, it looks like there is
one person who is advocating for a ban, and the rest are advocating for better oversight. Which I am 100% in favor of.
I was homeschooled and have known a lot of other people who were homeschooled, and the
best situation I personally witnessed in a homeschooling family was that all of the daughters were flagrantly educationally neglected, and all the children were given work from a very low quality fundamentalist curriculum. Many parents (including mine and my partner's) used homeschooling as a way to cover up abuse, because homeschooled children don't come into contact with many mandated reporters. (My parents would have told you that they were homeschooling me because I was PG and the schools wouldn't have given me a suitable education; in fact, they were sexually abusing me, and I would have received a much more thorough education in a public school. I had to teach
myself to write and to reason about abstract ideas, behind their backs.)
This site has a lot of stories from abused and neglected homeschooled children. I don't think what I've witnessed is out of the ordinary in any way.
