Reply #159: I had no trouble understanding what LG said [View All]

I can't for the life of me figure out why you would.

What Liberal Guerrilla said was:

"There are no facts because there is no over sight. The only time that a problem is noticed is when it is to late. I shudder to think what kids will be subject to if home schooling truly becomes a wide spread trend. As it is, we will never know what percentage of the 850,000 home schooled kids are being abused, and we will never know."

And you respond:

"Refute the fact that 42 states require notification and 29 of those states have a good deal of regulations."

I'm sure that those states also have speed limits.

I can't think of how either speed limits or what you're talking about would address the fact, and potential problems inherent in that fact, that homeschooled children can be kept out of the public eye and away from public scrutiny virtually completely for most of their lives.

Let's assume that children are abused by homeschooling parents at the same rate as, no more or less frequently or seriously than, children who are in a school system.

Children who are in a school system are observed for several hours a day by teachers and other professionals who are trained to detect signs of abuse even where it isn't obvious -- and even other children who can and sometimes do convey information about abuse to the appropriate persons. They are also told about abuse, and about their right not to be subjected to it. They are instructed in ways to report abuse and escape abusive situations. And if they do report, they are offered protection.

Which of these are regularly available to homeschooled children? Especially homeschooled children who are abused?

How is a child who is never taught what abuse is, who never hears that s/he is entitled not to be subjected to it, who is never offered a conduit for reporting it, who has no notion that there is protection available from what is happening to him/her, likely to be able to avoid the abuse and the abuser?

Might I offer the totally subjective impression that it is more common among homeschooling parents to keep their children away from television, and that they are lauded for this resolve? Even frivolous entertainment programming on television is a source of information for an abused child about what is happening to him/her and how to make it stop. Is an abusive homeschooling parent being responsible by limiting his/her child's exposure to the noxious infuence of popular culture with its sex and violence, or protecting him/herself?

SOME homeschooling parents are abusive -- physically, emotionally, actively or by neglect. Just as some non-homeschooling parents are. But homeschooling undeniably provides better cover for an abusive parent, and less protection for the child.

Anecdotes are always such fun. My only personal experience with homeschooling (that sort of thing is just so not heard of in urban Canada) went like this. Five little girls under the age of ten lived with their educated, middle-class parents in a row house in the downtown of a large Canadian city -- with subsidized rent of course, since a couple that chooses to have five children and only one income (the father's civil service job) tends to need that sort of thing, and Canadian society tends to provide them with it. Of course, it was the mother who did the homeschooling. And most days, the homeschooling seemed to consist of five little girls under the age of ten running around naked and shrieking and unsupervised in the tiny shared backyard of the row of four houses, one door around the corner from a busy traffic artery and visible from the sidewalk on that busy street.

It isn't just parents, themselves, that some kids need protection from. It's the dangers that the moronic parents expose them to. If these little girls had been in school, they would not have been running around naked within sight and easy reach of anyone who walked by. And of course, I have no idea what went on behind the closed doors of the house, but I wouldn't actually be surprised at anything done by a parent who left a naked 10-year-old girl and her little sisters outside alone in the inner city. Just not quite normal, to my mind.

Anecdotes are actually a waste of time. But I'll put mine up against anybody else's, nonetheless.


Is there any substantive argument against, say, inspecting the homes in which children are schooled, or better, requiring the kind of regular physical check-ups and psychological/emotional check-ins (say, with guidance counsellors or in health classes or peer-group discussions of developmental issues) that occur in the public schools?

I mean, other than "liberty!!!"?

Sure it's a limitation on liberty, an infringement of privacy. Lots of things are. We do them when the objective is sufficiently important to justify doing them. Some of us think that child protection is sufficiently important. Some of us think that a really very technical and limited infringement of our liberty or privacy is more important than child protection.

Go figure.

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