Homeschooling: Because there's no teacher to report the abuse to.

This is a genuine question - I have no preconceived biases.

Should home schooling be banned? Why? Why not?

@2

I would say it should have clearer and more rigorous standards and it should have a lot more oversight.

I hope the writer and his sisters are at a safe place now. How long ago was all of this.

^And a minimal curriculum.

It's probably for the best that the Guest Editorial (below) does not allow comments, but anyway, "nice job."

The lack of oversight, standards and "mandatory reporters" are features of homeschooling that I have huge problems with. Unfortunately, to proponents, those are features, not bugs.

I finished the last year and a half of high school in a sort of "home school". It was an online high school taken from home, with real teachers I had to report to, real assignments and tests and deadlines, and I graduated with a real diploma. It was great for me because I have numerous health issues and was no longer able to attend school on a day to day basis. It was actually created with people like me in mind: folks too sick to go to school, or pregnant teens/teen moms who didn't want to drop out and get their GED. If people are going to be homeschooling their kids, there needs to be a lot of oversight it in, and perhaps use the model that my high school did, so you make sure the kids actually LEARN something. Also, the school lent us our own computers which were for school use only, so if shit was going on at home, you could have a way to contact your teacher about it. And since teachers are mandated reporters, it could give these kids a little bit of help in abuse situations.

I was homeschooled from 2nd grade through high school. There was a decent amount of oversight. My parents are liberal, non-religious, and relatively normal. Most of my friends also had normal, loving families.

Shitty homeschoolers are like shitty Christians: they're a vocal minority that causes real harm, but aren't representative of the entire community.

(And just to prove that I turned our normal: I now have a master's degree, I'm gainfully employed, and I have a healthy social life.)

How about a headline like "Survivor of Abuse Moved By Joel's Story?" Commenting as a progressive, non-abusing parent who happens to homeschool as part of a big, diverse, secular urban community. There is a huge difference between those who use homeschooling to isolate their families and those who - like us and many others - who use the opportunity to expose our kids to a variety of experiences that include other homeschoolers and non-homeschoolers as well. For us, the world is a WIDE OPEN CAMPUS, filed with an amazing combination of structured learning and intellectual rabbitholes to follow.

My 10-year-old currently identifies as agender and we have given him the space to explore his identity without bullying and judgement, but with full support. Please don't lump all of us as bigoted.

I am a licensed foster parent. That means I am a mandatory reporter and trained on how to prevent sexual abuse. Foster kids are extra vulnerable to abuse by others in their life even after they are removed form their dangerous homes. The number one way to prevent abuse is education for the children on what it is, what touch is not OK, who does it and real concrete actions of what the child should do if in a situation that makes them uncomfortable. In my opinion that education needs to be given to every child in America. Home schooled or not and should not be able to be opted out of. At some schools it isn't given or needs parental consent, private schools have different views on this, and of course home schools either don't give it or give wrong information. For anyone reading this who can enact change organizations like Planned Parenthood have programs where they would come out to your youth group, girl scout, boy scout, etc meeting and give this education. Another reason to love Planned Parenthood.

I am a pretty strong proponent of home school at early levels, if only because at the really early stages (say, where a child is learning to read) individual instruction is far more effective than a single adult trying to corral the teeming mass of chaos that is a room full of five-year-olds.

The LW's experience is sadly common, but not representative of all home-schoolers.

@2 - just to add to what others have said, homeschooling can be done very well, I went to a college that didn't require a high school diploma for admission and a fair number of the students were homeschooled. Like nojellybeans, they were largely from liberal, non-religious backgrounds with parents who wanted to foster an environment of creativity and curiosity for their child's education. It can be done well, if the intention is education and not indoctrination.

I think there is an abusive fundamentalist movement who have co-opted homeschooling.

It would be fine to do, I think, with state-wide curriculum standards, testing, and someone overseeing homeschooled families (let's say they get visits once a year, etc.). I am a classical musician and know many kids who homeschooled just so they could get their academic work done faster to have more time to practice. School has many advantages, but it is slow and wastes time, and can be boring for a bright child.

I'm fine with outside standards . . . I have to file an annual intention to homeschool with school district and am required to have an annual assessment that is signed off on by a certified teacher. I choose to opt out of standardized testing but have a checklist assessment that is used (for grade level) that I supplement with a written report of classes taken, books read via LibraryThing, and a link to daily Evernote files that detail our daily adventures. We do use math curriculum . . . and I run a monthly literary salon for kids and their families and a twice a month maker club. He takes classes via parks and rec and private piano lessons and we volunteer in our community (environmental stewardship and for an aquarium research project). I am fully supportive of outside standards and oversight, but we are talking about two things . . .one is educational oversight and standards, which is tricky to figure out - ultimately, I'd like to see every child - schooled in whatever setting - fully able and capable of independently LEARNING HOW TO LEARN. It's measuring that that is tricky, in any setting. And of course, there must be active oversight by adults and social services to ensure that all children have adequate resources to look for signs of sexual, emotional, and physical abuse and to provide prevention and education for kids . . . I would love to see DOH include this as part of well-child visit recommendations. All of us also need to do a better job as members of society in treating kids in our communities like actual people and making sure that we notice and follow up when specific things just don't feel right to us. If there is a suspected case of abuse or neglect, call 1-866-ENDHARM.

Homeschooling is kind of like polygamy: there is no real reason why it has to be abusive or detrimental to kids, but when you let it run itself, it too often ends with grown men screwing around with children.

Generic homeschooling good. Xtian homeschooling bad. Seems pretty black and white to me.

Our son is listed as a home-schooled student by the local district and takes band at the local brick&mortar and competes on the local HS Nordic ski team. Which would seem to make him one of the VERY many local home-schooled students (a scary high number like 23%). But he's enrolled online at an accredited California online high school which offers academic courses more rigorous and more advanced than available locally (he'd finished all HS math before going to HS). And we're liberal, highly-educated parents who appreciate what classroom teachers can do, and the value of face time with age peers. We were pleased with the local offerings through middle school.

What I see much more often are parents who are afraid of the secular influence of public schooling. And/or it's easier to keep the kid at home with some workbooks than drive them to and from. And/or the kid(s) work at the family fish site. And/or the kid or an older child had one mis-step of drinking or sexting or whatever, and the parents clamped down with home schooling (those tend to be parents who were very wild youths themselves). The majority of the families doing homeschooling (and especially when they aren't utilizing established online / correspondence academic programs) seem to be the least qualified to do so. Note too, that there are religious-based "academic" materials available so the child may never hear a different perspective.

This LW brings up a topic I should be more alert to - that homeschooling may be motivated by and greatly facilitate an abusive situation at home. Made more extreme up here because people don't live on 50-foot-wide suburban lots where the neighbors might see or hear something, but on 5-acre forested parcels where health and safety issues could go unseen for years.

To get reimbursement for homeschooling expenses (up to $2300/year), you need to show up for two half days of testing and file an educational plan so that creates a tiny bit of oversight. But if you forego the reimbursement, you can just click your heels and say "we're homeschooling" and no one checks on the student's progress or does a home visit.

Libertarianism gone too far.

It's the fundamentalism that is so toxic. I went to public school, but after age 13 (the year my parents became "born again" pentecostal fanatics) life got harder and harder. I'm so glad I wasn't homeschooled. For me, school wasn't torture, it was a secular wonderland! Once my teachers and the administration caught wind of how crazy my parents were, when I got in trouble sometimes (for minor stuff) they would talk with me, and explain why they weren't telling my parents. Everyone at school seemed so normal compared to my parents, even the hick assholes. Complaining about and making fun of the craziness of my parents kept me sane. I tried to tell them I wasn't sure I believed in Jesus at 15 and my Mom cried for two weeks straight and wouldn't talk to me. I lived in fear of them "finding out" all kinds of normal things about me. After high school they said it was my duty to go to missionary school, and though I'm a straight girl, it was two teenage lesbian friends that ultimately helped "save me" and get me out of the house. The guilt, fear and heartbreak was unreal. To be homeschooled and completely isolated and experiencing shame for your sexuality on top of the fundamentalism—the thought of it is beyond heartbreaking.

People are conflating two completely different things: child abuse and home schooling. Child abuse happens in regardless of whether kids are home schooled, and home schooling is greater a vector for child abuse than are various contexts within public or private schools.

Home schooling is one of those things where most people think they know what it is, forming their opinions based strictly on reports like Joel's with no other understanding of what is actually a major trend or push in education at the moment. Understanding these forces and philosophies and the rationales behind home schooling deserve more than flippant consideration.

While it is true that a lot of radical/fundamentalist Christians home school their kids, there are other secular groups of people who also turn to home schooling, in most cases out of necessity! The public schools are not a great fit for every kid, and in some cases public schools are an authentically crappy place for some kids. I'm thinking not just of, say, kids who are mercilessly bullied with zero response from the school and thus who will fare better out of school, but also of kids with special learning needs. We know all too well how understaffed special ed programs are in the Seattle Public Schools, for instance, and many parents decide that the best course of action is to take it on themselves to educate a child whose needs are not being met. There are also the cases of superintelligent kids whose needs are also not met by the schools (the Seattle Public Schools puts incredible obstacles in the way of such kids, for instance). Such kids do not always have good trajectories if they stay in public school because their boredom often results in lack of engagement and poor study and work habits so they "burn out" in high school. Parents of kids with such signs are right to home school, because public schools cannot meet those children's needs. Then there are so-called "2e" or twice-exceptional kids, perhaps superintelligent kids who have ADHD or dyslexia, whose needs are just beyond the scope of typical schools to meet. Home schooling makes supreme sense for all these cases, and more. Diana Starr is an LA writer and entrepreneur who ran into obstacles with her kids and reluctantly opted to home school; here is her book about that:
http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DX…

Private school would be an option for many such kids, but that costs $12,000 to $40,000 per year (assuming you can get into one). Seattle's private schools are full to capacity. Home schooling is also not free: a parent gives up a salary and incurs major expenses on materials, supplies, courses, etc., but it is cheaper than private school generally and is by definition tailored to what may be very unique needs a given child has.

There is also a long tradition of home schooling in this country. On the frontier, parents (mothers, generally) taught their children to read and write and do basic math, and kids from young ages assisted at their parents sides doing all manner of things, from building construction and animal husbandry to cooking, food preservation, and candle making. The upper classes have also always used things like live-in governesses and tutors, which are a form of home schooling. There is a huge market in test-prep and extracurricular tutoring even for young kids that parents increasingly resort to when their public schools aren't meeting their kids' needs; this is also a form of home schooling (even if the kids are in public school otherwise for "baby-sitting").

In recent years, people have (rightly, to my mind) also started to question to the applicability of formal education, and that has lead to an uptick in both home schooling and "unschooling."

David Guterson, the local author who was a public high school teacher, and his wife actually home schooled their own children. He is someone with a solid understanding of what's going in schools (and works there) but still home schooled: he wrote a book about it that is quite interesting:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/63309…

Anyway, the tragedy of abused kids is just that: a tragedy. But home schooling shouldn't be blamed by default for what the perpetrators of child abuse commit, whether in a home school or public school or other context. That doesn't do a lot to prevent child abuse, and it doesn't help kids who really need and benefit from home schooling.

Savage's virulent hatred of Christianity aside, and with the note that our children aren't home schooled-

What does schooling run by the state offer that home school doesn't?

Friends of mine home school. Their kids are bright, socially skilled appropriately for their ages, and they're at or significantly above their grade levels depending on topic. Yes unoticed abuse could happen. And any kid sexually or physically abused is one too many. But Savages bigotry doesn't establish whether unreported abuse happens more, at the same level or less among home schooling parents than with parents whose kids attend crowded public schools.

I know of kids public schooling has failed academically. And the possibility exists among home schooled students as well. But how do the approaches compare academically?

As for ideological issues, you do realize parents have the right to guide their children according to their values, provided they aren't harming those children? You folks have the right to the values creating permanently delayed adolescents with no personal, financial or sexual integrity. My wife and I have the right to guide our kids into a responsible and rewarding maturity. Home schooling doesn't alter that right, nor does public schooling.

So, by what metric does home schooling fail kids that public schools don't also?

relevant: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/educa…

I want to add one voice to the crowd of normal, healthy, homeschooled children. I grew up in a small town, and as a fairly bright student, the public school system was in no way capable of addressing my needs. I dropped out and was homeschooled for a few years, and it was the best thing that could have happened to me. I think it's horrible that people use homeschooling as a chance to isolate and possibly abuse children, but let's not conflate the two: horrible people use all sorts of things to isolate and abuse other people.

I admit I was (and am!) very lucky to have wonderful, academically-inclined parents, who were well suited to homeschooling in a way that might be uncommon. But because it's uncommon doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

As for oversight, sure! But a recommended curriculum? Hell no. The whole point was that the curriculum recommended by the school/state was totally inappropriate. We did all sorts of things the years I was homeschooled, and the subjects were all over the place, and yes, I missed out on some things (e.g. biology) and got an excess of others (e.g. math, reading). And that in no way harmed me later.

Just my two cents.

@22: "What does schooling run by the state offer that home school doesn't?"

Romantic possibilities who aren't your parents or siblings.

And trained educators,
a wide variety of academic topics,
music, sports and theater which your parents may not be expert at,
a variety of adult role models,
making life-long friends among one's age peers.

Home-schooling can include all that, but it is more work for us to put it together on our own. And the families/children who most need it are least likely/able to provide it.

@22: I just want to be clear that I mean this with no sarcasm or intent to poke fun, but that was the most salient and decent comment I have ever seen you make on this site.

Since you did not personally attack Dan (well maybe a little, but it was light at best and directed at his ideology, not himself) or lean on your old list of hate speech and outdated stereotypes, you actually added to the conversation, and your comment will not be deleted. See, if you have something to say, just say it without the personal attacks. We will listen and consider your points.

In regards to the content, I think most people would agree that home schooling is fine as long as there is some kind of oversight and proof that schooling is actually happening. Children are in care of the society as a whole, so the society as a whole does have some say in how they are schooled, and the environment they are in. So just like we as a society outlaw child neglect, we can also have rules regarding schooling.

It is when home schooling becomes abusive or harmful to development that society using its powers in the form of the state can and should step in. But without any kind of oversight, how are we going to know what is going on?

Did this post make it on to some Homeschooling blog? The homeschooling defenders are rather numerous here. "The only moral homeschooling is my homeschooling!"

I brought up her Fundy homeschooling childhood when Rachel Dolezal's story came out, and was roundly told that it was irrelevant to her "crimes". In fact, it was inextricable. You can all apologize now.

I was home schooled off and on for about 6 years of my K-12. I got a solid education in a happy, healthy, and progressive home. The purpose was to get away from some pretty backwards shit going on in public echools in rural 80/90s West Virginia.

All that said, I have mixed feelings about homeschooling, I feel I could've been better socialized when I was a preteen, and we ran into some pretty weird families at various homeschool get-togethers. Sometimes they were laughably behind academically, and sometimes their parents and bizarre social/religious views. Since I value the interests of the child over the rights of the parents, I believe homeschooled children should have to pass rudimentary state testing standards, and that the state should send social workers for random checks on how the children are doing from time to time. There is simply too much abuse/neglect of children, particularly when they are isolated from outside adult scrutiny.

My family is a "success" at homeschooling under any definition of the word.

I would still support a far greater level of academic and personal oversight. Abuse is far too easy to hide in homeschooling families - all kinds of abuse, from sexual to physical to emotional to educational. That is not to say that all homeschooling families are abusive, but without oversight it becomes quite easy for abusive parents to 'hide' in the community.

I do think that there is a disconnect between parents who homeschool and their grown children who have been homeschooled. Even those, like me, who flourished in a homeschooling environment are aware of the possibilities for abuse, and are quite willing to discuss safeguards. Homeschooling parents, on the other hand, are often extremely defensive and will meet even eminently reasonable safeguards with outrage and exaggerated protests. Furthermore, I can't think of anything I could do that would disappoint my mother more than if I enrolled my future children in school.

@22

You say that "As for ideological issues, you do realize parents have the right to guide their children according to their values, provided they aren't harming those children?"

I would argue that many values held by the fundamentalist strain of homeschoolers do actively harm their children. Some of those values:

1) Sexual abuse is at least partly the victim's fault in 99% of cases. If she hadn't led him on/worn revealing clothes/flirted/etc. ....
2) Being LGBT is sinful and/or a mental illness. Children that persist in being LGBT may suffer conversion therapy, be kidnapped to delinquent camps, be ostracized in their church, and ultimately be disowned and thrown out of their home.
3) Teaching children about sex and LGBT issues is verboten. I knew children who didn't know a single thing about either until they were well into their teens. They literally did not know gay people existed.
4) Scarring your children in an attempt to make them more religious is completely allowed. Showing a 7-year-old Passion of the Christ? Go for it! Even if he has nightmares for years.
5) Learning about evolution is not allowed. You will learn your science from the Bible and Creationist textbooks. Even if you have a scientist's brain and would love to make that your career. It is quite simply not allowed.
6) Children are not allowed to have privacy. If you are caught masturbating, your door comes off. Parents can read their children's diaries at any time. You are not allowed to "isolate yourself" and spend any amount of time alone.
7) Lie to the police. Lie to the government. Lie to anyone in authority who attempts to get any information out of you that your parents do not want you to share. You know that your father spanked your five-year-old brother yesterday and left marks. You know that if you tell anyone, CPS will come and take all the children away and you will never see any member of your family ever again. Plus your new family will starve you.
8) A woman is not worth as much as a man. She cannot even have her own relationship with God - her father or husband is responsible for her. Her brothers are valued more than she is, and are taught from a young age that they are worth more and have authority over their sisters. Girls interested in "boy subjects" are discouraged.

I could go on. I am not saying that all homeschoolers - or even all fundamentalist homeschoolers - hold these values and practices. But as a homeschooled person, I have seen all of these many, many times over the years. To be taught those values in an isolated situation where you have no alternative sources of information - particularly when even your access to the Internet is highly controlled, as it is in many homeschooling families - is a scary situation. I don't think people realize how hard it is to shake values, however perverse, that are brainwashed into you as an isolated child. One of my best friends became highly suicidal; two of my male friends, now grown, struggle to see women as full people; every LGBT homeschooler I've known (including myself) has to deal with their own brain subconsciously thinking of them as dirty, sinful, and damned.

I've only known two homeschool parents who were fundamentalist Christians. And, of those two sets of parents, I believe only one of them is doing their children a disservice by homeschooling. However, I don't think that mom is abusing her kids - she's just not giving them any science curriculum besides "God created everything."

Most of the parents I know who homeschool either have special-needs kids who were falling through the cracks in the public school system or crazy travel schedules that didn't allow for good attendance in the public schools.

Just a comment in response to everyone who thinks homeschool families need "more oversight" - I don't know how it works in other states or regions, but when I was a kid, my homeschool program was a part of the public school district. Each family in the program had a teacher/advisor employed by the school district appointed to them, and they met with you every two weeks to see how everything was going. We also had to submit "work samples" for the district to have on file. So there is already a LOT of oversight of at least some homeschoolers.

The defensive liberal hobbyist homeschoolers need to back off a little here. Yes, yes, your children are too precious for the conformist and the ordinary, and you're lucky/rich enough to spend all manner of time and energy cultivating a Very Special Offspring. Your hobby is a bit on the precious side, but more or less harmless. But society's choice to tolerate your hobby can't really be done without empowering evil tyrants and bigots, enhancing their capacity to control and terrorize their children. If you're going to demand your hobby not only be tolerated but respected, you really need to come to terms with the fact that your hobby has a pretty gruesome externality. Your kids would almost certainly be fine either way The kids of the tyrannical bigots? The option you insist on deepens the level of hell they're stuck in, and cuts off some potential escape options.

I homeschooled my son because he was failing every single class in 6th grade, after being promoted to middle school. The school was set up in a honeycomb fashion, with no walls, just dividers. My son struggled to concentrate in this situation, and being in a small town, there was no other school to transfer him to, except a private school. Unfortunately, my son's academics were not up to standard for admittance to that private school. I talked to teachers, and administrators, and other faculty, before coming to the decision to homeschool. Best decision we ever made. My now grown son thanks me to this day. Pulling him out of school allowed him to pursue his interests and actually read interesting books. He became an avid reader where he had never shown an interest before. He excelled in math, and was allowed to take classes at the local community college. I organized all sorts of field trips for my son and other homeschooled kids. We went out often, to plays, orchestras, a radio station, to museums, the Renaissance Faire (during non-business hours, they provide classes), bird watching, hiking, feeding the homeless, volunteering, you name it.

And then, he picked up a guitar. This has been his only interest since since that fateful day. He's a professional jazz musician now, a starving artist, and a well-balanced, compassionate, hard-working, smart (and handsome) man. I'm proud of my son and all he's accomplished, and I hate to think about how things might have turned out if he had stayed in school.

@22: " What does schooling run by the state offer that home school doesn't?"

In a healthy family environment, not necessarily anything. But it offers a lot in terms of insurance against unhealthy family enviroments: the guaranteed opportunity to report abuse in the home, the guaranteed opportunity to develop independence and make some of their own decisions, the guaranteed opportunity to learn about the community they belong to, and the guaranteed opportunity to develop skills and qualifications that will give them some agency over their own future.

To elaborate a little, about abuse: I'm absolutely not saying that most homeschooling families are abusive, or that no public schooling (or even private schooling) families are abusive, but if a child goes to some kind of school, then in the worst case scenario where they do get abused, there is physically a person around who isn't connected first and foremost to the parents and who can be told about the abuse. This isn't perfect, since many abused children don't report the abuse, or feel like they can't, even when there's someone around, and plenty of homeschooling families give the kid access to authority figures who aren't in the family or affiliated with it. But unregulated homeschooling can lead to situations where a child never gets to be away from their family, ever, or where the only people they ever get to be away from their parents with are people who will never, ever take an abuse accusation seriously, or who themselves are abusers or accomplices. Abusive parents will sometimes intentionally homeschool so they're free to abuse their children without oversight.

About independence: A good public or private school will offer enough supervision that the kid won't make any terrible mistakes, but enough independence so that they can learn to make age-appropriate decisions for themselves - stuff like what they want to read or play or who they want to be friends with when they're young, stuff like electives and topics of study when they're older. Parents should definitely be part of these decisions, and have the final say! But it's horrible for kids to never get to practice making choices at all, because they'll grow into adults who don't know how to make their own decisions. A good homeschooling environment will do that, too. However, with unregulated homeschooling, it's entirely possible for a parent to control every aspect of the child's existence. And I don't mean "raising the child with a certain ideology in mind," I mean "literally no freedom."

About the community: I'm not disputing that parents can have their own views and raise their children with those views if they want, but if they're part of an extreme subculture (and I don't mean "they're conservative" or "they're liberal" but like, if you want to raise your children in the Quiverfull movement or in an anarchist commune farm) and they're teaching their children that the outside world is evil and this can never be questioned, that's a problem. Cults and cult-like groups exist, and school almost necessarily exposes kids to people with different beliefs. Even on a more mundane level... my own beliefs are not quite what my family's were, though on most issues, they're close, and I'm still really glad I got to go to school with people who had drastically different beliefs. I still believe conservatives are wrong, but after having some actual experience with them, it's easier to see them as people who believe things I disagree with than THE EVIL OTHER SIDE. We should not be dehumanizing each other, and having experience with people who are different from us is very important for that. Good homeschooling families will give the kids some opportunities to participate in the community, too, if possible (and it might not be possible in all situations) but again, without any oversight, it's possible to isolate your child so they only encounter an echo chamber.

About agency over the future: Parents have the right to raise their children with their own views, but a child should never be put in a position where their life will be ruined if they want something different for themselves. I believe that Joel's parents behaved horribly, but in this case, I'm talking more about extreme fundamentalist families who make sure their daughters are only taught how to be homemakers, and deliberately deprived of a base to go pursue higher education. And I don't just mean parents that think it's best for women to be homemakers, or who pressure their daughters to become homemakers, or who won't provide financial support for a daughter who wants to go to college, I mean parents who will deliberately fuck up their daughter's education so she can't leave their lifestyle. This isn't just a hypothetical, this is something that people have done. Good homeschooling families won't do this, obviously. But if a daughter in that sort of family had to go to public school, or even was homeschooled somewhere homeschooling was regulated, this isn't something that could be done to her.

While it's not something I've ever heard of happening, unregulated homeschooling could also be used to abuse children for being religious, or male, or straight, if there was a homeschooling parent who wanted to abuse their child for those things. The law couldn't touch them.

@34 I think a lot of "liberal" homeschoolers would resent your characterization of them as wealthy people with a strange "hobby." I'm lucky enough to have somewhat comfortably middle class parents, but they are by no means rich. One reason my parents initially chose homeschooling was because they couldn't afford private school. Of course, we ended up liking homeschooling and sticking with it for lots of other reasons. And I can think of many other families I knew growing up who had even less money than mine did.

As for the "hobby" assertion - a lot of the parents in my homeschool "group" were teachers or ex-teachers. Their decision to homeschool their kids was based on their lived experience working in education. They knew what they were doing, and it was not a "hobby" chosen on a whim.

Another family I knew homeschooled because they had several kids with (minor) learning disabilities and (slightly less minor) health problems. Coordinating the unique health and educational needs of multiple children is a lot easier when you aren't dealing with a bureaucratic and unforgiving school system. I doubt that family saw taking care of their children as a "hobby."

Three of my sisters and I were homeschooled by my atheist mother. There were curriculum guidelines to follow, there was oversight and testing, evaluations. My older sister has a PhD, one younger sister is a nurse and the other just entered dental school. I'm the "loser" one of the bunch - I only have a BA from a respected liberal arts college, am gainfully employed, about to get married, own two dogs and I'm saving for a down payment, after I pay for my wedding myself.
Homeschooling isn't the problem. Just like public schools aren't the problem. And Catholics aren't the problem. And living in the city isn't the problem. And living in the middle of nowhere isn't the problem. The problem is and always will be: people who abuse the system. People who abuse children.
My two brothers and three of their friends got arrested once and all five boys swore up and down that they were the only kids setting off fireworks. There hadn't been a sixth boy, no sir. The cops knew there was a sixth but with all five arrested kids swearing that there hadn't there wasn't anything to be done. After they were home my mom demanded to know who the sixth was and why the boys hadn't turned him in. The answer? JS and we didn't turn him in because his dad already beats the shit out of him for nothing and he doesn't need the beating that an arrest would lead to. JS attended Catholic school with the other boys. Because, again, the problem is people. And you find people everywhere.

@34 I think a lot of "liberal" homeschoolers would resent your characterization of them as wealthy people with a strange "hobby."

I'm sure they would.

I'm one of those liberal non-religious homeschooling parents who pulled my daughter out of a small-town public school that was literally boring her to tears. She went from second-grade readers in school to Shakespeare and Socrates at home, and was exuberant about the change. We weren't wealthy, but could make ends meet with me working part-time. She had tons of kid-activities with neighbors and the chance to go to theater camps, sports activities, travel, and more. She ended up getting a scholarship to an independent private high school and going to an ivy league college.

I'm completely undecided about how to deal with abusive fundamentalist home-schooling parents. I LOVED the fact that there was no curriculum oversight on what we studied; it gave us both a sense of the most wonderful freedom. On the other hand, I'm infuriated by the power that tyrannical parents have, to isolate their children from society.

I want there to be a way for the public to protect the rights of those children of toxic fundamentalists, and I also want parents like me to still be able to design our own curricula. Having your child participate in choosing what to study is a deeply exhilarating experience. Maybe the idea of checking up on kids' social and emotional wellbeing would be good -- I would have been perfectly fine with having a social worker interview my daughter at intervals, or visit our house and check out the scene.

Wondering what the overlap is between liberal homeschoolers and anti-vaxx mindset. Any of the posters here care to comment on that?

There's a good analogy with gun owners, actually. Many of them are quite responsible, and exercise a sufficient degree of caution that the chances of a death occurring because of their gun are vanishingly low. But we can't have a society that allows them their stupid guns that also doesn't kill a lot of people, because most of the people who think owning a gun is a good idea are much more likely to do terrible things, or allow terrible to be done, with them.

Wondering what the overlap is between liberal homeschoolers and anti-vaxx mindset.

Huge. In both cases it's people who think they know better than trained professionals because they're very self-impressed and they read something on the internet.

Thank you LW for your words, painful as they must be to write.
If our parents, our blood parents, won't acknowledge who we are fully, we have to toss their opinion aside and parent ourselves.
I'm sorry your sisters went thru that and glad you protected them when you found out.

@38. . Exactly. I would underline and up vote your comment a thousand times. ...

@40: If you were allowed to plan your own curriculum but had to get approval for it, and there were minimum standards for a child to meet plus yearly testing to track a child's progress in meeting those standards (maybe with more personalized standards if the child had a disability that would affect their ability to meet the regular standards), then it wouldn't have any negative affect on good homeschooling families, apart from being a mild annoyance. Something like that wouldn't prevent you from doing what you did with your daughter at all, but it would prevent people from refusing to educate their daughters.

Has anyone made a serious unbiased study of violence against kids who are homeschooled vs those in public schools vs those in private schools? I really doubt it. Most modern academics are biased in favor of public schools.

Any unbiased study would look at rates of violence agaist kids per say 100,000 students, and would also consider background noise of parental or sibling violence in public and private schools.

As in is a kid more likely to be beaten at all if homeschooled, not well the public school teacher did not beat him but the parents of the public school kid beat him.

The beatings by parents, teachers other kids and everyone should count. What system has the most risk to the kid, if you did not do a proper study, you do not know.

@46: It's not just about whether someone is beaten (or molested, or abused in some other way), it's also about what resources are available to help a child who's already being abused. It's also not just about the systems themselves, but how they're exploitable by people who want to abuse their children.

If you randomly pick a thousand kids and have them be homeschooled without state regulations, and then randomly pick a thousand kids and have them go to public school, you probably won't see much difference in whether these kids are abused. The homeschooled kids might even face lower rates of abuse, since every group will probably have about the same number of abusive parents (since it's random), and the homeschooled kids will probably be interacting with fewer people with the potential to abuse them.

But, let the parents self-sort, and you'll start to see different results. Neglectful parents are probably less likely to homeschool, so you'll see the rate of neglect in the public school group go up. Parents who take absolute control of their children through isolation are probably more likely to homeschool, so you'll see the rate of that sort of abuse in the homeschooling group go up. Parents who beat or molest their children and don't want to get in trouble with the law sometimes take their children out of school and homeschool expressly for the purpose of being able to do those things more privately, so you'll see the rates of those types of abuse in the homeschooling group go up. Parents who demonstrate extreme sexism in their childrearing practices are more likely to take their children out of school and homeschool so they can do that more privately, or in a subculture that's supportive of this, so you'll see the rate of that type of abuse in the homeschooling group go up.

Another dimension to this is, what can a child do if they're being abused? A child who goes to public school will have teachers around, and almost definitely a school counselor, and probably some friends. If they're being abused in any way, especially if it's illegal, there are going to be safe people they can can tell about it, and they'll be able to receive help. Many public schools also try to educate children about what abuse is, and how it isn't okay. Some homeschooled children also have access to safe people who they can tell about abuse, and some homeschooled children are educated about abuse, too. But it is possible for a homeschooled child to have zero safe people around who they can tell about abuse, often because the abusers have intentionally set up the child's situation that way. Some forms of abuse are also much, much easier to do in isolation.

It's not that homeschooling is bad, or that homeschooling families are bad, it's that if you're legally allowed to keep your kids away from anyone who they could safely report a crime to, some people are going to take that opportunity and use it to commit a bunch of crimes against their kids. If parents can have the ultimate authority over not only how their kids are educated, but if their kids are educated, some people are going to deliberately keep their children isolated and dependent on themselves or their community, especially if that community involves set unequal roles for some portions of the population (like if your community requires subservience from women, for example). This isn't a problem with homeschooling, it's a problem with giving abusers the license to do whatever the hell they want. Homeschooling with oversight and check-ins won't have this problem so much at all.

@47 - You act like you know that the results of the study would reflect badly on public schools and are making excuses.

We need to know the truth, that is important. Resources for ALL kids to help when they need it regardless of whether they are in public private or home schooling. Their should be no discrimination that way, and those resouces should absolutely not be controlled by the public school system or by members of the public school system unions.

@40

Got it.

You can pull your kid out of public school because you're a good liberal who dislikes religion.

People who are "fundamentalist" are also always "toxic." Probably they molest their kids, because you don't share their beliefs.
They're the problem with home schooling.

Look, it's certainly possible to use extreme misinterpretations of religion to justify nearly anything. Slavery, genocide, and yes antiquated notions of gender roles- all have been justified by one faith or another. Because in any given situation people want to believe they're acting reasonably or righteously they'll use the cultural tools available to support that belief, even if it requires irrational or unrighteous use of those tools. And far more rarely evil people will use those tools to support their evil. And in both cases this is true of the cultural tool of religion, but also of political ideas, left or right.

See there's a gray area here. Your right to raise a child with your values rests on your respect for that right in other parents. Whether you vehemently disagree with them or not. The boundary isn't them being whatever you mean by fundamentalist or toxic. It's demonstrable harm to the child by the parents whatever those parents believe.

And the gray area is what 'harm' means. To me, raising a child without a clear sense of healthy responsible sexual behavior harms a kid. It takes something capable of being special and sacred and makes it merely physical. It creates trousered apes where fully realized human beings could hsve been. But it doesn't violate any laws. The grown kid can be gainfully employed, raise what they understand a family to be, engage in semi meaningful relationships with others. So the state doesn't get to tell such parents how to raise their children. Likewise raising a kid in a faith which values monogamy, lifelong bonds to the spouse and offspring, celebrating the wonderful and balancing differences between men and women- you may dislike that but absent objective harm your dislike is irrelevant.

@42

So, you're a bigot? Good for you?

There's no point in discussion with someone whose mind is entirely made up. So I won't bother. Have a nice day.

So many good arguments, for and against. And to echo others, it's not the type of schooling, it's how people view and treat children. I absolutely believe that there should be oversight of homeschooling because it is easy to fail to properly educate children. Having them fall behind their peers, even if they are not abused, is a huge disservice to the child. And all kids need somewhere apart from their families to discover who they are. I am homeschooling my six year old after pulling her out of school in the middle of kindergarten. Treatment by her peers and teacher had her coming home saying she should run away and kill herself. Her teacher sent home a letter to the class without my knowledge informing the community that a male child in their class was transitioning. No one knew until they were told, and it resulted in her being bullied by parents and staff. She is in a homeschool program that allows us to choose curriculum but it must be approved. They have a lot of group classes that can be joined, and pay for tutoring or extra curricular activities. She is taking art classes, science classes and gymnastics, and meets monthly with a teacher. These programs are more the norm in my area for homeschooling. It is an easy thing for kids to be overlooked in a homeschool situation, but public schools aren't always better. Oversight by a district should absolutely be required though.

And, again, all you liberal homeschoolers: how do you feel about vaccinations? Maybe this is a dead thread, but your answers will give me some insight on the mindset that leads one to decide to homeschool one's kids.

@50: I literally have no idea how you could possibly have drawn that conclusion from that which is written in post #42. Your comment stinks of "I've got nothing to say, so I'll call them a bigot and ignore what they say". Say, isn't that what you're endlessly accusing liberals of doing?

@52: I was homeschooled until the 6th grade due to being extremely bad with people. I'm in favor of most vaccinations, but I dislike the chicken pox one (VZV is nothing more than an annoyance to most children, and the vaccine often wears off later in life, causing you to possibly suffer as an adulthood) and the influenza one (often ineffective, provides only a year's protection, and only really useful for people with respiratory problems or the immunocompromised).

@52. Liberal homeschool parent who is strongly in favor of vaccinations. My kid was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 3 and he also has asthma. Even relatively mild illnesses, like a GI bug or a bad cold, is a slippery slope towards a really sick child. So, my child is current on all of his vaccinations, including chickenpox and an annual flu shot. I wish that every person we come into contact with was as well, because herd immunity is a magical (actually, a scientifically sound) thing.

@34. That was perfectly put. Thank you.

Chicken pox kills around 200 children a year, and women who are exposed to it while pregnant (and thus with lowered immune response or pregnant women who can't be vaccinated at all) run the risk of catching it a second time, which causes severe and often fatal birth defects to the fetus. Chicken pox is also the route by which shingles occurs in older patients. Chicken pox/varicella vaccine is a very good idea on these bases alone, but it also causes millions in lost income nationally every year to parents who stay home for a week caring for a sick child--and in teenagers, chicken pox can be debilitating for two weeks or more. In adults it is often excruciating. Get your varicella vaccine, especially if you are ever around pregnant women.

Looks like these kids "survived" homeschooling, too:

http://www.oregonlive.com/education/inde…

And as for all the vaccine talk, my understanding is that Washington State has one of the highest opt-out rates for vaccinations among SCHOOLED kids. So all the finger-pointing at homeschoolers doesn't make much sense. All kids should be vaccinated, for sure, but at least homeschoolers aren't, daily, endangering an entire public school population of kids and their families, not to mention all the teachers/staff, by opting out.

I'm pretty blown away by the bigotry, ignorance, and vitriol in this thread (instigated by the titles of this and the other post) towards homeschoolers. So, because of isolated cases of abuse, homeschooling is evil and should be outlawed? Since when does an isolated case define an entire group of people? What about how gay kids (and any other kids who don't happen to fit in) have been treated in schools? What about all the teachers and coaches (and parents) who have abused schooled kids of all ages -- and gotten away with it, sometimes for years on end? What about the public schools in parts of the country insisting that "creationism" be taught alongside science? Should all schools/sports be outlawed? I'm a regular reader of The Stranger and Slog, so I've seen how bigotry (normally) isn't tolerated -- particularly by Dan Savage, the author of this post and the other post that it references. I was surprised and disappointed that he would be any part of this.

I know I shouldn't even bother saying anything here. It's the Internet, and the Internet can be a boiling cauldron of pointless arguing and hatred. But I just couldn't let this slide.

Argh, I could go on and on -- "there should be oversight..." you mean like all the "oversight" in public schools, which is doing such a great job of making sure we don't "fail to properly educate" anyone? And all homeschoolers are rich and just doing it for a "hobby"? Wow. The anger! Again: The Internet. Not sure why I'm bothering.

#38 said everything else so well.

UGH.

This is the most wrong thing I have ever read on this website. Schooling is complete shit and most schools don't care about teacher abuse or bullying. I was never fortunate enough to be homeschooled but for some kids it's their only way out of complete hell. Homeschooling should not be illegal but it must be regulated and watched. Forcing children to submit to the school systems abuse is a poor fucking substitute for enabling parental abuse.

Any institution with too much power is vulnerable to creating abuse. And, I know this is controversial to say around liberals, but schools have too much power. Disabled kids are regularly abused. Teenagers are shot by school police and it gets little media coverage. In some states homeschooling parents definitely have too much power and too little oversight as well.

@42 The strong argument against gun control is that governments are potentally far and away more dangerous than private criminals. Statistics back that up as the very worst private murder rates in any nation on earth are about 1/10 the average murder rate by governments of their own people in the 20th century. Look it up, search terms are democide and university of Hawaii. 262 million human beings murdered by government in the 20th century alone.

Private citizens owning guns makes mass murder by government more dangerous and risky to government officials, which is a very good idea.

@ Emma's Bee, re: vaccinations.
In our homeschooling group, there was one family who did not vaccinate. (They have since transitioned to public school.) There are 3 families who vaccinate, including ours. There was one family who vaccinated the first child as usual and the second via delayed/alternate schedule. (They have since transitioned to public school.) There are over 40 other families for which I do not know their vaccination status. Our hsing group is the non-religiously based group, which consists of a mix of liberals and conservatives, some of which are religious even though they participate in our group, but those families whose vaccination staus is known to me are liberal and not religious. There are at least three other local homeschooling groups, at least two of which are Christian, and there is some overlap between groups, including ours, but not much.
FWIW, our community (as in the wider community, not our group) offers classes specifically for homeschoolers, so for those families who choose it, there are a lot of "outside" teachers and much interaction with children from different backgrounds. I know a few of the "stay-homers", but most of our interactions are with the other "go-outers."
I don't really trust that oversight is possible. I'm in a rule-heavy state, so we aren't unaccustomed to reporting to our school district yearly and testing specific years, etc., but i think your oversight will only be as good as your overseer, and i don't know how to ensure a good overseer. I also don't know how good the oversight really is in public school, either. I would support abuse-prevention oversight more than educational oversight. There's too much room for reasonable disagreement over what's most important to teach for anything other than the most basic guidelines. I definitely don't support a required curriculum- homeschooling isn't "school at home" so much as it is a different way of educating entirely. (Some people "school at home", some don't, most mix it up depending on the need, interest, and parental energy.
Homeschooling for *us* (individual results may vary) provides better education, better socialization, more exposure to culture, and less exposure to bullying and fundamentalism.

It's quite simple to find the facts on this. Studies show homeschooled kids are generally better educated and more well adjusted. I understand taking a stance against Christian abuse. I have friends who were raising in stifling, extremely religious environments and it's fucked with their head. That doesn't mean restricting school to the standard only model will do more good than harm. Schooling is a serious issue and deserves real consideration.

The strong argument against gun control is that governments are potentally far and away more dangerous than private criminals.

What prevents that from being a "strong argument" is any evidence whatsoever that gun ownership levels provide any effective protection whatsoever against a modern state inclined toward genocide or some other great and violent evil directed at its citizenry. If you can come up with a good example of an evil state being abandoning of failing in an evil/genocidal scheme in the face of ordinary citizens with handguns, you'll be the first. There's really no logical or evidence-based reason to think that's a particularly likely outcome, given the state's superior killing capacity.

The most recent example on record of a people rose up and more or less successfully overthrew a tyrannical (but not genocidal) government, it was in the state with one of the lowest rates of private firearms ownership in the world (Tunisia).

Thanks for the responses on liberal homeschoolers and vaccinations. My experience in my state of residence (Ohio) is much like that of David @42: there is a large overlap. I'm not anti-homeschooling by any means. My troubled niece was homeschooled in a suburb of Mpls because that was the only way to keep her out of trouble with drug-dealing, etc. It didn't have much effect, positive or negative.

Oh, and Venomlash: you should get that varicella vax. Boosters are tremendously effective, and shingles are a bitch, as many of my family members and friends can attest.

I know people on both extremes.

I have a friend whose husband home-schooled their twin daughters because they were unhappy with the public schools in their area. They did a great job following a respected academic curriculum and made sure their kids weren't socially isolated by enrolling them in a variety of extracurricular athletic and artistic activities. Their kids were taught to prize intellectual curiosity, and were accepted into respected universities upon graduation. Similarly, several kids raised near me in a hippie environment even more extreme than my own were all homeschooled and all ended up going to Harvard.

On the other side of the equation, my friend's fundamental sister homeschooled her kids to keep them away from the evils of homosexuality and liberalism. (Having a lesbian sister and bisexual brother may have made her even more extreme.) They graduated barely literate, capable of only rudimentary arithmetic, with a "knowledge" of "history" that was more like "Jesus Christ Meets The Flintstones." They were incapable of being accepted even to one of those trade schools after high school, much less than an actual college. Was it their mother's right to do that? Seattleblues says yes. I say it shouldn't be.

The Duggars case helped expose some of the curriculum used by some of the fundamentalist homeschoolers. Absolutely appalling. There should be some sort of regulation and oversight.

I'm a pretty smart guy. Valedictorian of my 8th grade class, top 1% of my high school class, went on to one of the most respected universities in the country where I even taught a class my senior year. But even so, I wouldn't feel confident homeschooling my own kids in every subject all the way through high school.

I should add that in recent years we've also heard many stories about kids whose parents saved their lives by yanking their kids out of abusive, bullying schools. Home schooling can be the right situation, but I would advocate for more oversight, regulations, and testing standards.

@53 As someone who currently, right now, at this moment, has shingles, please vaccinate your kids against chicken pox. Yes, chicken pox was an annoyance when I was eight. But shingles is literally the worst I've ever felt. And, unlike when I was eight, I've got a family to support and a special-needs kid to look after. If I could go back in time and give myself the chicken pox vaccine, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

@63 Any evidence? Oh really? I guess it is true that none are so blind as those who will not see.

When has a government ever attempted to commit a democide or genocide without first at least attempting to disarm the intended victims? Here is a reference for your education.

https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.H…

Even in cases where some large fraction of the population was not deliberately disarmed, the intended victims were. See how nazi Germany disarmed jews and others considered unreliable/undesirable by the government, see the Armenian genocide.

Your assertions are just as wrong and absurd as a homeowner arguing with an insurance company about why my fire insurance rate should be lower than his because I have installed smoke detectors, and fire extinguishers in my home, and he has not.

Arms broadly distributed in the hands of all citizens, especially where the government has no records of who has those arms is a very effective deterrent to the politician who would be a dictator. His actual indulging in his dictatorial ambition can get him killed. Police and military officers under his command can also get killed trying to follow orders to disarm and/or mass murder citizens, and so will be more reluctant to participate in such for that reason, especially where that action can be reasonably construed as illegal, and the society has a strong tradition of rule of law.

I think perhaps the real reason many politicians favor gun control (consciously or otherwise) is they want to be such a dictator or be a crony of such a dictator, and want the government to be able kill their neighbors they don't like with impunity. Such as they don't agree with them on politics.

Oh, and yes, assassination of politicians and/or police or military officers morally trumps the hell out of mass murder of civilians as self-defense.

As to the "modern military can always ride roughshod over militia" argument, tell it to the Afghans, or Iraqis, or Vietnamese. While one can argue the US "won" in Iraq, over militias, the cost in terms of blood and treasure made it a famously Pyrrhic victory at best. In Afghanistan after a war lasting well over 10 years, and the expenditure of many hundreds of billions of US$ and thousands of American and coalition partner's lives, the Taliban militia still control a significant fraction of the country.

The idea that a modern military will automatically win against militia with small-arms and IEDs is proven rubbish.

@57 I agree. Hell it wasn't that long ago that Dan was recommending that parents of LGBT kids who were being bulled show view homeschooling as an alternative. And school is not some magical place where an abused child will have their wounds tended too and their abusers cast into the fire by the noble teachers. If anything schools will just add their own abuse to the abuse already being suffered and unless you cute or popular the teachers won't give a shit or will be helpless to actually DO anything.

Yeah shitty abusive parents will misuse homeschooling, but shitty abusive parents will misuse a LOT of things. Doesn't mean they should be outlawed.