This doesn't seem to be so self-evident. Why do I care about the education of those around me?
...generates more economic activity
...understands basic civics and government
The public school system isn't doing that for our fellow citizens already. I fail to see why it would be worse if the failure happens at home rather than in a government building.
And that's a fair criticism of some public schools. And some home-schoolers. And probably some private schools.
That's also why you care about the state of the public school system, even if you have no kids (or they don't attend public school).
It’s just odd that so many people here seem to be so in favor of the “sit down and shut up” style of schooling. Isn’t it pretty widely agreed upon that US public schools suck? Don’t you think there are some parents who are homeschooling their children explicitly because they feel their public school would not prepare them to be good members of society?
Regular interaction with non-custodial adults provides more opportunities for child abuse to be uncovered and stopped. You can go on youtube and hear myriad testimonials from former homeschooled kids that were abused for years on end. And nobody knew. Nobody even had a chance to know.
Varies a lot by states. Some states have no assessment requirement for honeschooled students at all, some have a requirement to keep a portfolio which may or may not be reviewed, some have an standardized testing requirement with more flexibility and lower frequency than public schools, and some have homeschool students take the same standardized tests as everyone else.
https://education.uslegal.com/homeschooling/homeschooling-la...
No that’s literally the main benefit. People actually get to teach their own kids without state indoctrination (either left or right.)
https://www.deccanherald.com/india/scientists-flag-ncerts-mi...
I definitely wouldn't want this kind of "regulated" education for children.
I'd bet a lot on parents caring more about their kids welfare than regulators.
[0] https://phys.org/news/2018-03-high-adults-unable-basic-mathe...
[1] https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp
[2] https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/measure.asp?section=1&sub_...
I didn't need your permission to give birth to my children, why do I need your permission when deciding how I educate them?
> Only dad is allowed to talk to anyone and when he does it's extraordinarily weird.
If you feel these children are legitimately being abused in some way, I'm guessing there are plenty of state resources to address that challenge.
Do you actually feel there's abuse happening? Or, is it that you just find them unusual?
One legal theory that may be relevant was brought up long ago for a case on banned books in school: you have the right to raise your kid according to your beliefs, but many states guarantee children the right to education. So the state could regulate homeschooling to ensure all children have access to an actual education.
>If you feel these children are legitimately being abused in some way, I'm guessing there are plenty of state resources to address that challenge.
A lot of those resources rely on processes that come after reports from teachers and caregivers. If nobody outside the home ever sees or talks to the kids, there's not much the state can do to even start an investigation. Children who go to daycare or public school are seen by professionals trained to spot abuse.
We allow anyone to have children, because otherwise we're on a very slippery and short slope towards eugenics. But those children are entitled to the same rights and protections as their parents. It's hard to strike a good balance between a family's freedom and a child's freedom.
Edited out some unnecessary detours in my ramblings
They guarantee the right to /access/ education. This is not at all the same as guaranteeing that all children "must be educated at a state approved school."
> If nobody outside the home ever sees or talks to the kids, there's not much the state can do to even start an investigation.
I read an incredible number of police reports. There's a lot of abuse that gets detected outside of daycare and schools. Unless the children are literally locked into a basement, I doubt that the parents can continually exercise enough total control to keep whatever other abuse their committing hidden.
To the extent that if it is happening, it's an exceptionally rare case, and I doubt that simply forcing all parents to send their children to a third party for education is going to have any impact on these particularly pernicious cases.
I understand the instinct, but I think the solution is wrong, and it's an inappropriate case to use to defend schooling in general.
That's oversimplifying. You're right about the "at a state approved school", but the right is to access education to a set standard that will equip them for life.
You can't just say "well, they have access to -my- education, so we're good". There should be caveats around quality and deliverability of education.
Because if you (the generic 'you', not singling you out individually) have low/zero value educational material, and no desire to provide it for your children, then that is /not/ them accessing education in any meaninful sense of the concept.
The homeschoolers get a free pass to do literally whatever... don't you see a dichotomy with what you're preaching?
Why can't you just do anything you want, regardless of the effect it has on your dependents?
Second, I do all those things because it's my responsibility, not because the state will come after me if I don't.
> I didn't need your permission to give birth to my children, why do I need your permission when deciding how I educate them?
Because your children are not your property, they are your responsibility and we as society have decided that we want to make sure that the education is to a certain standard.
As a side note I find it fascinating how people who feel strongly about individual freedom, believe they should have ultimate authority (sometimes it feels more like ownership) over their children. Why do you believe that the freedoms do not apply to children?
I am their _guardian_.
> and we as society have decided that we want to make sure that the education is to a certain standard.
And what is that standard? Passing standardized tests? How do you account for the poor performance of American schools in general? How do you account for the differential performance across the country, let alone, wild performance differences across a single city? If a child goes to school but fails to become educated, can the sue the school district? Does the school owe them continued education until they meet the standard?
> believe they should have ultimate authority (sometimes it feels more like ownership) over their children.
If something happens to my children and I'm even just negligent then I will pay the ultimate price. You cannot ensconce in me this responsibility and then deny my authority to exercise control over them to maintain it.
> Why do you believe that the freedoms do not apply to children?
Why do you think children can't sign contracts or buy alcohol? They have _limited_ freedom, under my _guardianship_. This is more important than the States imputed idealism with respect to "education."
Actually, American schools do not do badly in international comparisons. They are the number one, sure, but they are still pretty good.
There's also some very unsurprising outcomes based on state policy there.
New test scores, known as MCAP (Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program), obtained by Project Baltimore, revealed that 23 schools, including elementary, middle, and high schools, had not one student that could do math at grade level.
Calverton school (https://www.niche.com/k12/calverton-elementary-middle-school...)
A Calverton educator, who reached out to Fox45, claims to have received that text. “[It instructed me to] go into my grade book, make sure no students are failing, and essentially change the grade if they are failing so they will pass with a 60 percent,” said the teacher, whose identity we are concealing upon request.
“I was frustrated as a teacher. We’re public servants. And when we see things like grade changing, that’s self-serving. That’s not helping the kids.”
After watching Fox45’s recent investigations into allegations of grade changing at Calverton, the City Schools employee contacted Project Baltimore to say a couple things. First, according to the teacher, grade changing at Calverton is “very common.”
Second, the educator told Fox45, changing grades is the easiest and fastest way to pass more students, which makes the school and its administrators look better. But, it does a huge disservice to not just the kids, but our entire community.
“Teaching a whole generation of kids that they don’t have to be accountable for their actions, or that hard work isn’t valued or valuable when they are in school, is so discouraging and damaging.”
“There were students on my roster all year that I had never met, had never seen. On paper they passed my class and passed onto the next year.”
“I love my job and I love my students,” concluded the teacher. “I want to see the students at Calverton and other schools across the city, get a fresh start. And it’s going to be hard because the students are used to this now. But the students deserve better and our city deserve better.”That's demonstrably false.
You can do plenty of neglectful or negligent things to your children and face zero consequences.
The state dictating and setting the rules is no more free than the parents setting the rules.
This basically comes down to an argument not of freedom, but if the children are property of the state or parents.
When you look at it this way, it makes perfect sense that libertairian minded folks would support homeschooling.
After all, the state isnt offering the freedom of choice and action to children, it is making legal requirements and demands.
Is the purpose of their lives to serve the interests of the state, or society at large? Or should they be live their lives based on their own interests and priorities.
the libertarian perspective is that if you grant the state and society the authority to control the child, it will use that authority to advance the interests of the state or society.
As if public schools provide kids any sort of freedom or autonomy? What is your point here?
Someone has to be in charge of a kid. Either the parent acts as the authority over their child, or the state does.
I couldn’t possibly agree more! They are MY responsibility. Not yours. Not the state’s. Not society’s. I will educate them the way that I see fit. It’s not my responsibility to educate your kids, and it’s not your responsibility to educate mine, no matter how righteous and justified it may feel.
If you are teaching your children to murder all Jews and that red traffic lights mean go, then you are clearly not capable of being responsible for another human being.
I agree, within reason is always necessary, and if those things were being taught then it's time for a visit from CPS, for sure. But it still feels like a potential slippery slope of "You're abusing this child by teaching them things that aren't approved by the state" in the extreme case. I know that may sound silly, but with as polarized as the country has been recently, and with authoritarianism on the rise worldwide (I saw a man get arrested in the UK yesterday because he criticized some protests on Facebook!), I don't see it being an entirely foreign idea.
I bet there's a correlation between this viewpoint and not having any children.
Your kid has a right to education, you don't get to deny them that right. It's funny how these arguments are all "don't tread on my right to tread on my kid."
Because quite frankly, they didn‘t have a say in the matter and rely upon you entirely to provide an adequate education
The issue is that when a kid's at school, there are many people who may notice something's wrong. From teachers, school nurses, school administrators, and even other kids. This is by no means perfect, and many, many cases of abuse slip through the cracks. But it is something, which is more then many home schooled kids have.
While I'd wager most home schooled kids aren't abused, the fact of the matter is it's much easier for an abusive parent to cover up their abuse if their child is home schooled. You may still feel home schooling is a net positive, but this aspect is very hard to deny.
Like the Satanism panics of the 1990s demonstrate, elaborate imaginings of complex sadistic rituals that are necessarily rare[0] bordering on nonexistent, tend to capture the public mind and suck oxygen away from treating the totally unattractive (not even in the capacity of making for a true crime special) real problems.
If you want to see this on TV, the last season of The Wire was about it.
[0] There were actually a spare of ritual killings in Liberia through the 1970s, proving humanity capable at least and making the issue to be one of reasonableness.
One friend’s mom wouldn’t teach him the curriculum for months, and then when she knew a test was coming up she would make him study with her for 14 hours a day to try to cram it in. Then when he naturally performed poorly on state exams he was punished (often physically) for not trying hard enough. She regularly woke him up for classes when she wanted to be awake at 2 or 3 am, then later after her afternoon nap at 6 or 8pm. He grew up constantly tired, without a regular schedule of meals, and never made it to the group outings because he felt sick all the time.
Another friend’s mom just couldn’t be bothered to teach and just took her out on “learning” hikes with other homeschooling moms, never taught her anything, and wound up sending her back to public school with severely (I mean severely) underdeveloped skills after being held back for several years.
Neither of these parents I’m sure “planned” to abuse their children in this way. They just weren’t up for the task of teaching in the way that a child requires, and their own personal issues turned that into a larger problem. But my friends suffered for it.
My honest sympathies to your friends.
> negatively associated with college degree attainment (RR = 0.77, 95% CI: 0.67, 0.88) and possibly with greater risk of posttraumatic stress disorder.
I’m sure I’m just unlucky and that the 3/4 abuse ratio doesn’t hold for the broader population. Higher rate of PTSD is suspect though.
As an anecdote I have close family member that teaches younger elementary school grades. They have told me about signs of possible abuse they've seen but no available recourse.
I'm also aware that school is a also an environment where abuse occurs. How can we say that we are not exposing public school children to more abuse per capita than homeschooled? There is a school in my neighbourhood that often has the police called in. Lockdowns over students bringing in knives and attacking each other.
It would be good to know these things if making an argument that pivots on abuse.
One last anecdote. All the experiences I can remember having that I'd consider abuse occurred in either: school, work or public transit. Some were bad interactions with strangers in passing, other were more chronic (generally at school).
While it is true terrible things can happen to kids at home, you need stats to compare this with the alternative before a stance should be taken.
It's natural to want to stay out of things, especially if one doesn't know the procedure and worries about messing up a family's lives. But it's better for the people in charge of investigating cops abuse to decide the appropriate course.
As for how reporting happens, it depends on the state. In mine (Pennsylvania), all school employees are made well aware they're considered "Mandated Reporters." They are legally required to report any suspicions of child abuse, either through the state's website, phone line, local police, or the county agency responsible for child abuse cases. The suspected abuse victim doesn't need to say they're being abused or anything at all, the reporter doesn't even have to guess who the abuser is. If the reporter thinks there may have been abuse because they saw or learned about physical (e.g. bruises) or behavioral (e.g. afraid to go home) signs, they have to report it. Not reporting can led to misdemeanor or felony charges for the Mandated Reporter. Somebody who reported their suspicion is immune from civil or criminal liability, and protected from retaliation from the institution they work at, for the report (unless it can be shown they're using reports maliciously). They're also tested as confidential informants in any investigation.
The law also encourages "Permissive Reporters" to report suspected child abuse, but without threatening charges for not reporting. These reporters can do so anonymously.
All this info comes from my wife, who was a daycare teacher, and DuckDuckGo-ing "Pennsylvania mandated reporters."
The number of substantiated (court ruling, protective order, etc) child abuse cases in 2022: around 5,000.
No other group, including doctors, police officers, and Child Protective Services themselves, made more reports. Only around 6% of the school employees' reports were substantiated, making their reports least likely to be substantiated. This leads me to believe school employees have a lower threshold for reporting a suspicion compared to other groups.
And they overlook 100x more students beating the shit out of each other. No, I won't cite it. I lived it, and I have relatives working in that system who say nothing has changed.
BTW there are more than 100k school teachers in Pennsylvania. 10k reports a year represents about 1 in 10 teachers making a single report a year. I retract my 100x remark, it's far worse than that.
If you adjust for scale, I would be utterly flabbergasted if home schooling had a higher per capita rate of abuse than actual public schools unless public schools have changed to the point of being utterly unrecognisable from the 80-90's when it was inflicted on me.
The 4th amendment of the Constitution protects all of us from warrantless searches. If you turn public schools into a method of warrantless searches to ferret out criminal activity, then public schools become unconstitutional.
The strange thing is that you can probably turn public schools into a method of warrantless searches without actually codifying that in statute, without making any major changes to school policy. All you have to do is assert that this is one of the major benefits of public education, and get some large fraction of other Americans to believe the same thing.
> You may still feel home schooling is a net positive,
It's a net positive to undermine fundamental human rights?
A lot of people seem to be implying that religious indoctrination is abuse, when it isn't legally, even if you think it should be. I'm personally in between a rock and a hard place here, since I don't want my kids exposed to either religion or LGBT stuff.
From what I can tell, homeschooled kids are given a curriculum with books/workbooks for both the student and the teacher. They are also tested by the state and must meet certain criteria.
so there seems to be guidance and verification.