Nathan F wrote:I'm not very educated on the home schooling system, but it sounds like you've hit the nail on the head. I've just got one question, are there any sorts of checks for home schooled kids? Do school officials visit the children being schooled to administer standardized tests or anything?
There obviously wasn't in this case. I know there are voluntary programs where you get together regularly (ie- weekly) with other homeschooling families for family trips, social interaction, etc., but I don't believe anyone is actually forced to participate in these programs, never mind periodically reporting to a government agent for inspection.
My proposed solution would therefore be simple: participation in these programs should be mandatory. There needs to be more public oversight over homeschooling parents, to prevent more cases like this. This sort of thing is simply unacceptable to say the least, and I believe that parental privacy rights end where child safety rights begin.
This got me thinking: what about a new branch of the education or law department charged with monitoring home-schooling households and day-care centres to look for any signs of abuse?
Even if there were 100 home-schools in a neighbourhood, even just one or two of these officers would be sufficient to make the rounds every week. Besides, when news of specially-trained child investigators began to get out, fear would keep a few of these sick fucks in line.
Incidentally, these two assholes were picked up in Utah. They are now in custody and will be extradited back to Florida to face five counts of felony child abuse. I'm surprised, professionally, that this is the case, since child abuse cases (and other crimes against children) are one of the things I investigate. Maybe the laws are slightly different in Florida, but in Virginia, we could put multiple charges for each child on them. This is great when the sentences for each count are served consecutively rather than concurrently.
Darth Wong wrote:That is one part of my objection to homeschooling. The other part (more relevant to this particular case) is that homeschooling allows abusive parents to hide their kids from scrutiny.
The argument I listed was the one I thought that would be the only one that would work in actually officially trying to ban it. Home-schooling parents would rise up in schitzoid bitch fests if you implied they had to ban home schooling to protect children against abusive parents.
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Darth Wong wrote:That is one part of my objection to homeschooling. The other part (more relevant to this particular case) is that homeschooling allows abusive parents to hide their kids from scrutiny.
The argument I listed was the one I thought that would be the only one that would work in actually officially trying to ban it. Home-schooling parents would rise up in schitzoid bitch fests if you implied they had to ban home schooling to protect children against abusive parents.
I don't think a homeschool ban would fly no matter what you did. A more realistic goal is to demand more public oversight of homeschooling activities. Homeschooling should not be used as an excuse to completely shield your child from public scrutiny.
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Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba wrote:This got me thinking: what about a new branch of the education or law department charged with monitoring home-schooling households and day-care centres to look for any signs of abuse?
Even if there were 100 home-schools in a neighbourhood, even just one or two of these officers would be sufficient to make the rounds every week. Besides, when news of specially-trained child investigators began to get out, fear would keep a few of these sick fucks in line.
Just a thought.
If you could do that, what would prevent you from expanding the law by one or two words to include all households with children once a month?
Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba wrote:This got me thinking: what about a new branch of the education or law department charged with monitoring home-schooling households and day-care centres to look for any signs of abuse?
Even if there were 100 home-schools in a neighbourhood, even just one or two of these officers would be sufficient to make the rounds every week. Besides, when news of specially-trained child investigators began to get out, fear would keep a few of these sick fucks in line.
Just a thought.
If you could do that, what would prevent you from expanding the law by one or two words to include all households with children once a month?
What's the point? The public schoolteacher sees these kids for 7 hours every weekday already. It's only the homeschooled kids who are currently being hidden away from public scrutiny.
"It's not evil for God to do it. Or for someone to do it at God's command."- Jonathan Boyd on baby-killing
"you guys are fascinated with the use of those "rules of logic" to the extent that you don't really want to discussus anything."- GC
"I do not believe Russian Roulette is a stupid act" - Embracer of Darkness
"Viagra commercials appear to save lives" - tharkûn on US health care.
