Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Harvard hosting anti-homeschooling summit

Here's an article on homeschooling from a major newspaper:


The Dark Side of Home Schooling: Creating Soldiers for the Culture War



This is why they need to take those same tests that the public school kids take every year: millions of kids take those tests, and they provide a solid benchmark for comparing knowledge. Obviously, parents have a right to raise their kids as they see fit, but raising them in ignorance just doesn't seem right.

As to point 1...
Homeschooling doesn't exist to support parental rights to freedom of expression or freedom of religion, although many groups have interpreted homeschooling laws from this angle. These homeschoolers and taken increasingly anti-educational positions to further entrench a damaging, extreme form of libertarianism that only really forwards the agenda of the parent, at the expense of the child.

For fundamentalist homeschoolers, it's not so much a view of "I'm for freedom of education" so much as "I'm against THAT value system and reject any association with it." The children become an objectified extension of the parent's identity, not individuals with their own inalienable rights who ought to be recipients of an individually-appropriate education.

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.

I am sure it happens and I know it happens. But that makes people and parents and teachers. It does not mean homeschooling is bad. And it is about the parents choice as well. I choose not to deal with the rubbish that comes from my younger child attending. At this point even if he wanted to go back I would say no because in my judgement any benefits he saw in it would not outweigh the problems it would cause the whole family.

I share your painful aversion to the horrid impact that a difficult schooling arrangements have on our whole family, and especially me as a mother. At times I feel there have been school dramas have had more impact on me than the child (and they have all been damaged by schools, but sometimes an issue that is not that big for one child involves navigating three children's worth of baggage with school and is really hard work as parents).

But while I lacked aquinas' eloquence and clear insight, as soon as I read her points I thought "Yes, EXACTLY!". It IS about the rights of the child. I live in fear of dealing with school/s again, but if my homeschooled child wants to go back, and I am sure they will want to go back, I think that is their right, and part of what I signed up for as a parent: to pave the way for that to be as successful as possible. I just hope I get a bit more time to breath first... And hopefully find a situation that will suit my child and been less painful for us as parents to navigate and advocate through.

The vast majority of parents send their kids to school without thinking about what the child would prefer. In fact most of the time when kids complain it is pushed aside. People generally don't claim it is every child's right to homeschool if they choose no matter how difficult it is for everyone else.

But sometimes it is our job as parents to make decisions on behalf of their child. The vast majority of parents send their kids to school without thinking about what the child would prefer. In fact most of the time when kids complain it is pushed aside. People generally don't claim it is every child's right to homeschool if they choose no matter how difficult it is for everyone else.