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Joined: Nov 2012
Posts: 2,513 Likes: 1
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Joined: Nov 2012
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Here's an article on homeschooling from a major newspaper: The Dark Side of Home Schooling: Creating Soldiers for the Culture War "I particularly remember my science curriculum," he says. "We used It Couldn't Just Happen, which wasn't really a science textbook. It was really just an apologetics textbook which taught students cliché refutations of evolutionism." 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. Agreed, and I do think there's a limit to parents being able to raise their children as they see fit. For example, teaching your children false information about the body in sex-ed (e.g. it is impossible to conceive from rape, so you will spontaneously abort; vaccines cause autism) is atrociously wrong and has no business masquerading as anything even three-degrees removed from education. IMO, intentional instruction of flagrantly wrong information such as this, which physically endangers a child, is tantamount to abuse.
What is to give light must endure burning.
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Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 3,299 Likes: 2
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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. Yes, exactly. Excellent way of stating the problem.
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Joined: Nov 2012
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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. I'm so sorry you experienced abuse at the hands of your family, pinewood, and the betrayal of a system that didn't protect you. Thanks for speaking up and sharing this sensitive personal story. I think you're right that homeschooling is a cover for abuse for a not insignificant group of fundamentalist families, and I worry about how many children are being hurt as a result.
What is to give light must endure burning.
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Joined: Nov 2012
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Thanks, Val. Good to see you.
What is to give light must endure burning.
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Joined: Dec 2012
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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.
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Joined: Apr 2011
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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.
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Joined: Dec 2012
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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. 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.
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Joined: Apr 2013
Posts: 5,261 Likes: 8
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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. Well said, puffin! I have concerns about items such as this, https://apadiv15.org/education-practice-briefs/, which obfuscate issues by conflating traditional homeschool (in which a parent exercises decision making and control of planning and scheduling, evaluating resources and curriculum, choosing lessons, and assessing their child's learning) and the current government-imposed student utilization of online curriculum in the home. In actual homeschooling, parents are in charge. The family is empowered. In the current circumstance, the government schools have inserted themselves into the family, between parents and children, and/or have placed themselves above the parents, in judging how well the parents are overseeing the students' learning of government school curriculum. The family is disempowered. Yet, in calling the second scenario "homeschooling" they can backfill, substitute, replace, switch-a-roo, what we have all long known as "homeschool" with the new model: expansion of government power and control.
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Joined: Apr 2011
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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. That is somewhat true, though in our case we are homeschooling one child because they begged, pleaded and insisted, and it was extremely worryingly difficult for us to agree to, for reasons mostly unrelated to the child or any beliefs about homeshcool vs school... As it turns out we've managed. But yes we do make all sorts of decisions for children, often without consulting them, and often not only with the one child's needs in mind, but the whole family. Hopefully parents do that carefully and with loving hearts. Most do I think.
Last edited by MumOfThree; 04/29/20 09:58 PM.
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Joined: Apr 2014
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And in response to requests for alternate perspectives, Harvard is hosting a Zoom conference tomorrow with invited speakers from the homeschooling advocacy community on anti-homeschooling bias in the media and academia: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/events/disinformation-campaign-against-homeschooling
...pronounced like the long vowel and first letter of the alphabet...
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