🚀 go-pugleaf

Bradley Richards wrote:
> 
> In article <328D4204.1B2B@rmii.com>, sockeye@rmii.com wrote:
> >Andrew Dashiell wrote:
> >
> >> As regards home
> >> schooling, why shouldn't the home curriculum be state approved - 

[ ... ]

> >
> >3) Beg the same authorities who accredit the private schools, and run
> >the public schools, for the "privilege"(NOT "right"!) of educating your
> >own child in your own home. 

[ ... ]

> While I don't disagree with your statements, I think that it is entirely proper
> that home-schooling is allowed only under supervision. However much one may
> like to vilify the public school system in the US, one thing remains true:
> teachers have training in how to educate children. And, with older children,
> teachers have training in the specialty fields that they teach.

[ .. ] 

	Sigh ... look, this is a simple and symmetric issue, really. It is a
given that children need guidance and education, and that if that
education is poorly provided the kids suffer; if it is well-provided
they prosper. It is implicitly assumed that school is a good environment
for kids, and that homeschooling is suspect. Those who wish to
homeschool must prove their fitness to the school; but schools need not
prove fitness to the parents. Have you ever heard of a public high
school being shut down because the quality of the education was too low?
I haven't. If you send Junior to school on Monday, and he is beaten into
unconsciousness for his lunch money by other "students", he had better
be back in the SAME school on Tuesday or his parents will answer to the
authorities. Sure, if the assailants are caught, they might be punished,
but even if such assaults occur in the same school on a daily basis, the
public school authorities will not conclude that the school is an
unhealthy place and send the students home. This is not a hypothetical
situation; many thousands of kids are trapped in public schools that are
not healthy places, and often not even safe. Never, ever, do the
authorities proclaim their own schools unfit, no matter how bad they
are. 
	It is true that not every home would make a good homeschool, and that
few parents know everything they need to teach their kids. Not every
SCHOOL makes a good school, either. The fact is that ALL parents know
SOME of what their kids need, and MOST homes could homeschool at least
SOME of the time. I can easily see a situation where a parent works,
say, Wednesday - Sunday. Why not have the kids at home on Monday and
Tuesday? Most school systems will dismiss this arrangement out of hand,
and leave the parents with no option but to put the kids in school for 5
days a week and with a sitter the other 2, leaving almost no time
together. Shouldn't the parents have the right to say no? Why not let
the parents do all the teaching they are willing and able to do, then
let the government pitch in to help? 
	Again, it is clear that a child is a dependent, and if his/her
guardians exercise poor judgement *he will suffer. The supporters of
institutional education want us to assume that their judgement is always
sound, even when it clearly is not, and to force all others to prove
they are not incompetent or deranged in order to raise their own
children. I am not at all convinced that the schools are any better than
the parents. Why is institutional schooling the default? If you need a
default position, why not assume the parents are competent adults who
love their kids and *offer* them help on that basis? Why is the school
taken to be a valid judge of the parent's fitness, but the parents are
not assumed to be valid judges of the school? 

=Eric