[sjmjax]

I confess to strong mixed emotions regarding home schooling.

With diligent and well intentioned parents, it could be the best thing that could happen regarding a child’s education.

However with some parents, it’s just another form of child abuse.

Government attempts to control and regulate “home schooling” is a slippery slope to even greater problems.

There’s no easy or universal solution.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

I confess to strong mixed emotions regarding home schooling.

Do you have mixed emotions about the United Nations dictating United States education policies?

[cyclotic]

You need to do more research then.

The government school system is designed o create failure. I postulate that doing nothin to “educate” children will provide a better outcome than most schools, especially urban ones.

[Señor Presidente]

“However with some parents, it’s just another form of child abuse.”

Many Public schools are just another form of child abuse, be it through indoctrination, bullying, arbitrary constraints on growth, herd learning, punishment of male energy, etc.

I think this has proven the real societal risk. But neither the UN, nor the teachers unions, nor most governments acknowledge or care about these harms.

[DoodleBob]

You’re not alone with your mixed emotions.

Other FReepers have articulated the same concern.

Indeed, many of us who HSed have fielded similar arguments and many, many more.

Here’s the bottom line on HSing: The rights of PARENTS and GUARDIANS, when it comes to educating our children, are plenary. End of discussion.

Now, to your point about abuses…that’s always the situation with rights and a free society. It is just like with the right to keep and bear arms; plenary rights cannot be watered down due to the behavior of bad actors.

This comes down to risk-minimization vs elimination. In investing, you lower your risk of loss or volatility by spreading your eggs across several baskets. However, one risk you cannot diversity away is the "systematic risk" or the risk inherent in the system...call it market risk or whatever, the basic reality is some baseline level of risk will ALWAYS exist, and you can't avoid it.

The same applies to America, her freedoms, and in this case the lnenary rights of parents to educate their kids and the few instances of insane acts of abuse.

Laws that support, life, liberty, and property are right and proper. Many laws act as a deterrent and will stop people on the margin from doing bad things...this is akin to diversifying away the non-systematic risk. Thus laws criminizing murder, and child abuse, are right and proper.

However, in a nation like America where freedom reigns and the individual trumps the collective, the risk of a maniac going on a killing spree - or a bad parent using HSing as a shield - is Nin-diversifable. It is idiosyncratic.

The adults in the room understand on some baseline level, in a relatively free society of 330MM people who are LARGELY civilized, you'll ALWAYS have a few pathological maniacs who will shoot up a club, derail a train, or abuse their kids. These modest and random acts of violence, are the Undiversifiable/systematic risk of a free society.

Sure, maybe some laws can help, like liberal application of the 2nd Amendment and concealed carry, and criminalizing child abuse. But uncivilized folks will act uncivilized.

The political class and purveyors of Authority Bias want you to think the idiosyncratic risk of a free sociey CAN be eliminated, via shredding civil liberties, e.g., we can eliminate child abused by imposing “reporting requirements” on HSing parents.

But even welding a GoPro to the heads of 330MM people with central monitoring in DC. won’t end abuse. After all, people in jail still get drugs and weapons.

I guarantee you, any control imposed on HSing to stop abuse won’t stop abuse, but it WILL succeed in crippling parental rights.

Which, after all, is the end game anyway. Indeed, the whole minors being mentally transitioned with the aid of teachers shutting out parents is a great example of this end-game.

[metmom]

Sending kids to public school does NOTHING to mitigate child abuse.

The argument that it MIGHT protect kids from abusive parents is very weak, as there are many kids who are not even homeschooled who are abused and aren’t sent to public schools. There are regular reports of a family that hid their kids so well that the neighbors had no idea they existed.

You’re absolutely correct that government oversight of homeschooling is a slippery slope.

The reality is government oversight or involvement of ANYTHING is a slippery slope.