People, people, this is the pit. No serious discussions are allowed here. Take it to GD.
And yes, the OP is an Ahole of the 7th magnitude in the Richter scale who needs to get a clue desperately.
Indeed there are, and I’ve never denied this. My point is the majority of these do not REMEDY the situation. Absolutely none of them PREVENT the possibility of unfair treatment of homeschoolers at the hands of officials. Those which CAN remedy the situation place the burden of proof on the victim and require the victim to plead their case before other parties who may or may not be sympathetic/inclined to help. At least one of those “checks”(the legal system) would likely cost the family a good deal of money to exercise. Is this fair?
This arguement has been made in the other thread as well. Homeschooling families can still be reported for abuse, and there is a category of abuse called “educational neglect” which would apply to parents who park their kids in front of TV all day, and CPS will investigate abuse reports. You’ve really got to make the case that adding education to the list of parental responsibilities is a big enough change to warrant more intrusive oversight. In the US, oversight into the home is NOT something done lightly.
The oversight advocates are trying to set up pro-active monitoring of children’s educations in the home to ensure minimal abuses by xenophobic, psychotic parents. I am advocating pro-active monitoring of the overseers to ensure minimal abuses by corrupt, psychotic officials. Why is this unreasonable? Are you going to stick to your guns that the current checks are adequate? If so I can make the same case due to the fact that all the reports of educational neglect by homeschoolers have been anecdotal and citing the “checks” of the Child Protective Services, other parents, neighbors, everyone homeschoolers may come in contact with. I gave cites for homeschoolers social interaction in the other thread, the studies indicate that 98% of homeschoolers are involved in two or more extracurricular activities outside the home. I think it’s safe to say that the xenophobic, psychotic parents are an incredibly small minority, probably much smaller than 2%. Are you so afraid of that < 2% that you’d mandate intrusive oversight for 100% of homeschoolers? If the answer is yes(as it seems to be), and you reject my claims that the checks on such parents are inadequate(as you seem to**), then how can you dismiss my fear of unfair treatment at the hands of some small percentage of officials or continue to insist my opinion of the adequacy of the checks on such officials is unfounded? I don’t understand.
Indeed, and such an association does exist. Still the question remains. Why are oversight advocates insisting we NEED to put pro-active checks on homeschoolers yet seem to resist pro-active checks on officials?
Why should homeschoolers be forced into forming such organizations? Wouldn’t we love to live in a country where organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union(ACLU) were not necessary because the legal frameworks were designed to be fair, and self-policing, from the ground up? Because homeschooling is a rapidly growing movement, many states are just now beginning to set such policies. Why not take this opportunity when we have it?
[whine]But they don’t wanna go :([/whine]
Enjoy,
Steven
but Steven, who will see abuses etc in the home schooled population in order to report them?
in addition, it’s only in a perfect system that oversite will prevent any problems. Oversite is always needed to address issues as they come up, so the fact that current oversite in public systems doesn’t prevent all problems from occuring shouldn’t be held against them.
that’s why I have an independent auditor that comes in and checks our books annually, not to prevent things from occuring (tho they can and do make recomondations if they see a potential problem area), but to catch up, correct it if problems do occur.
re: ‘some of the means cost familes $$’ So? some don’t. the only one that I know that costs actual dollars is a lawsuit, which, if successful, recoups the $$.
you’re asking for a perfect system from the public arena but resisitent to any system for the private areana - that strikes me as more inherently unfair than the issues you’re complaining about.
Did you miss my cite where I said 98% of homeschooled students are involved in TWO or MORE extracurricular activities OUTSIDE the home. The average was FIVE extracurricular activities PER STUDENT. TONS of people could see abuses or spot kids who couldn’t do simple arithmetic when they damn well should be able to. Every single one of those people can call CPS who WILL investigate reports of educational neglect. What more will it take to kill the urban legend of homeschoolers as some kind of shut-ins?
So there’s nothing wrong with saying victims of unfair treatment at the hands of state officials should have to outlay costs for a CHANCE at remedying the injustice and recouping thier outlay? Where’s Libertarian when I need him!?!
I’ll address the point of different types of checks for homeschoolers versus overseers when I get back from my meeting(in a nutshell it’s because of the differences in their activities). I simply have to run now.
Enjoy,
Steven
KellyM. Thank you for bringing the asshole in that thread to our attention.
With any luck, she’ll learn from it.
Ace, please tell me you’re fucking kidding?
I think Ace was being ironic. I don’t know how anyone could read that thread and peg doreen as the asshole.
He didn’t say Doreen was the asshole.
I just feel like interjecting a quote from Tremors 3: Return to Perfection, the straight-to-video movie I saw last night:
“Is your head up your ass for the warmth?”
Steven extracurricular activities /= seeing children every day, in a variety of settings (sitting, standing, walking, fully clothed in street clothes, in gym clothes etc.). and that’s just checking for physical abuses. for emotional abuses, it’s much dicier.
oh, and I believe that Ace was saying that the ‘obvious asshole’ in that thread wasn’t doreen.
Looks like KellyM is bright enough not to try to defend an indefensible position.
That’s got to be worth something.
Of course, it would be worth even more if she apologized for this ill-conceived thread.
And I admire doreen for her restraint in refusing to participate in this thread.
I’m not a vet, but I think this horse is dead.
wring are you saying children who go to public school and who have emotionally abusive parents would be identified and action taken significantly more frequently than children who are homeschooled by emotionally abusive parents who interact with a fair number of people outside the home two or more times a week?(if you look at the cite you’ll see that most of those activities are the type of activities which meet weekly) I guess we could split hairs and say it takes daily contact to make such a determination, but that sounds pretty unreasonable to me.
If so, do you believe this difference to be significant enough to warrant mandatory oversight of homeschoolers on these grounds? Because I’m about to ask for a cite on this ratio of emotionally abused children who attend public school and whose conditions are noticed and subsequently corrected when compared to the number of emotionally abused children who are homeschooled and the abuse subsequently noticed and corrected by non-family members the children interact with.
There will be families who emotionally abuse their children. There will be families who neglect their children. These are not exclusive province of homeschoolers. Why are people advocating special rules for homeschoolers? All the arguements I’ve seen boil down to “there is greater chance for abuse to go unnoticed”. All the evidence I’ve seen for this “greater chance” has been anecdotal. I’ve provided studies which seem to show homeschoolers ARE well socialized as well as above average in academic areas. All I’m met with is endless variations on the theme “I knew someone who…” type of scare story. I could probably tell eight or ten true, firsthand, scare stories of the products of public education for every true, firsthand, scare story someone could tell me involving homeschooled students. I’d rather not go there. Do any of the advocates for homeschool oversight have any concrete evidence of the increase in risk to a child’s emotional development as a result of being homeschooled as opposed to being publicly educated? I don’t know of any and I’d love for someone to fight my ignorance.
The thread in GD, which has apparently continued here, was to gather real suggestions which could form real proposals, something you could talk to a state lawmaker about, for legal frameworks for homeschoolers and states to work together for their mutual goal of educating the children. Is this not a worthy enough goal to engender real analysis instead of nebulous claims of increased risk of child abuse by homeschooling families?
Anyway, the response I promised. RE: Different types of checks are necessary for the two parties involved, the educational overseer, and the home educators, because their decisions are implemented differently.
Let’s take the case of an honest overseer and an abusive/neglectful home educator. The home educator starts brainwashing the child and teaching them silly things like “the sun rises in the West” intending to get jollies later by seeing the child’s embarassment when they use this particular factoid in the company of their fellows. Such intentional deformity of a child’s worldview is not instantanous and a yearly review could well catch this type of abuse before it becomes ingrained or irreversible. The check on the parent educator, the yearly review, is adequate to identify cases of such abuse because it is conducted by an expert in child development who can tell if the child is developing adequately. Since it takes time to warp a child to the point where they could not possibly function adequately as an adult, regardless of any re-education or therapy, occasional checks are ok. The parent educator gets to go ahead with their actions with only occasional checkpoints.
Now the case of a corrupt evaluator and an honest, capable parent educator. In a system with a minimum of checks a single report with a failing evaluation could result in the child being taken from the homeschool. An evaluator could use this power to elicit money, sexual favors(having a flashback to “Forrest Gump” all of a sudden), or any number of things from parents. If the parents tried to resist such treatment the official could deny ever making such demands. The official could probably find some tiny, borderline issue(ensuring a legal challenge would be long and expensive with no clear guarantee of success), or fabricate one entirely, upon which to base a negative report and have the children taken from the homeschool. To challenge such a report the parents would have to prove the issue was exaggerated, possibly prove malicious intent on the part of the official, and get someone to listen to them. Voting against the bastard next election would be a moral victory, but wouldn’t get their child back even if the official was voted out. It certainly wouldn’t be assurance the next official would be better.
These are two possible scenarios, they certainly aren’t the only possibilities, but they’re two of the worst and they’re certainly two we want to be sure the system designed for homeschooler accountability can handle fairly. The parent educators should be allowed free reign initially and have occasional checkpoints where they will not be able to go forward if they are failing to adequatley educate the child. The officials should have the opposite burden. They must prove their case beyond any reasonable doubt before they can pronounce someone unfit to homeschool.
Parents get free reign until proven unfit.
Officials have little power until they can prove their case.
This is the heart of my proposal, innocent until proven guilty. I feel confident of the wisdom of such a position.
Enjoy,
Steven
Ummm. Steven, shouldn’t this post be in Great Debates?
It’s reasoned, well written and compelling.
Just wondering, you stupid fuck.
just a quick answer to your first comment,
well, yes, I am saying that it’s much more likely that a child who is seen by outsiders routinely for a minium of 35 hours a week over a span of 5 days, will have potential emotional abuse/physical abuse noticed easier than a child who’s seen by outsiders a couple times a week for a couple of hours each time.
why on earth would you suppose otherwise?
And you’re prepared to show just how likely this is so we can weigh it against the restriction of family privacy and the rights of persons to be secure in their homes against unreasonable search?
Enjoy,
Steven
where on earth are you coming from?
all of this hijacking was from your statement about wanting some sort of equivalence in oversite. there’s two different kinds of oversite:
-
from the parents perspective - “I want what I think is best for my child” and of course, that’s much easier to do with home schooling, where the parent has complete control.
-
from society’s perspective - ‘we need to insure the best possible education for all children, that all children are safe, to the best of our abilities’.
Homeschooling will play up #1, but risk potential failure for #2, in that w/o oversite, there’d be no way for society to insure that all children are exposed to certain commonly expected/necessary etc concepts (simple arithmatic, reading, writing etc.); and there is also the potential for physical and emotional abuse to go unoticed (yes, of course, there’s potential anyhow, but at least if the kid is routinely being seen by others, there’s a better likliehood - and as you note even if most home schoolers attend extracurriculars, not all do, but virtually all of the public school attendees would be seen)
Public School offers a less than perfect #1, however does offer quite a few other options at remedying issues (as previously discussed), and a much better #2.
Bottom line for me is that all society has a stake in insuring that kids are educated. The only way to insure that home schoolers are included in the ‘all’ category, is to require a certain amount of hoop jumping for those who wish to home school.
I have no problem w/that.
I think Doreen, Get Your Head Out Of Your Ass would be a good title for a Tom Petty song.
wring – did you read what mtgman said at all? 98% of kids who are homeschooled are involved in numerous activities outside of the home, most on a weekly basis, where there are ample opportunities for various people to notice if the children are being abused or neglected in some way.
Annual, semi-annual or even monthly interviews or assessments by some educational official could not possibly rival the level of involvement and observation that can be given to kids by their sports coaches, music teachers, dance teachers, cooperative educational leaders, scouting leaders and religious instructors – people who would, indeed, see kids in your preferred modes of sitting, standing, moving and in various forms of dress.
The fact is that a lot of things can happen in the home. A lot of things can happen in the schools. Things can be overlooked, “signs” can be misinterpreted.
But parents can mistreat, neglect and/or abuse their preschoolers who are far less involved in activities outside the house than school-aged children who are educated at home. We do not advocate some special oversight into their homes because there aren’t ample opportunities for people outside the family to evaluate the wellbeing of the children, and that same standard needs to hold for homeschoolers. The sole concern of any oversight should be the basic educational progress of the students.
yes, I read it. 98% involved, ‘most’ on a weekly basis.
which means that ‘most’ are seen weekly. vs. daily.
and no, that does not mean that there’s ‘ample’ time in comparison. I find it difficult to believe that you’re arguing that point.
public school = five days a week, every week, for roughly 7 - 8 hours per day, seen by multiple adults, all of whom see this child on a regular basis.
vs. ‘weekly’ contacts of an hour or couple, seen by decidedly less adults who see this child on a ‘weekly’ basis.
even if it’s 3 activities, thats 6 hours weekly vs. 40.
In addition, depending on the type of activity, the levels of training and requirement to report can be radically different. For example, teachers and public school officials are legally mandated to report suspected abuse, and most get some training and experience in recognizing signs. A volunteer coach for a team, a volunteer parent running the girlscout meeting doesn’t necessarily.
besides, this is a side issue to me. Society’s need to insure a certain level of education for all the children routinely trumps parents personal desires. That’s why/how we have laws regarding children ‘must attend’ school, under certain ages cannot work at all, certain ages cannot be involved in more than x number of hours of school + work weekly etc.
The only way to insure that home schooled children receive the education that society needs them to have is to have the parents jump through the proverbial hoops to demonstrate this. That’s called ‘oversite’. The public schools all have it. Private schools have it. why shouldn’t home schooled?