Loyalty to the State
POSTED BY: canttakesky
UPDATED: Monday, March 31, 2008 03:34
VIEWED: 19263
PAGE 6 of 27
Quote:I would call educational neglect a type of abuse. So no I would not consider them two separate issue.
Originally posted by canttakesky:Quote:These are two separate and distinct issues. First is the concern that kids to be "checked on" by the public to rule out physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. Second is the concern that kids need to receive a minimum education; they need to be protected from educational neglect, as it were. The ruling of the appellate court in this case concerns the second issue, not the first. The requirement to have a credentialed teacher has no bearing on the first issue.
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
Public and private schools don’t shelter children away so that they can’t be evaulated and treated for potential abuse. ...Quote:...to provide that some mechanism exists to assure that homeschooled children are receiving minimal education
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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Quote:Thus I said:
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
I would call educational neglect a type of abuse. So no I would not consider them two separate issue.
Quote:Since you seem to have trouble understanding what I wrote, I will restate it differently. The two issues are 1) to monitor for physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, and 2) to prevent educational neglect/abuse. Having a credentialed teacher addresses the 2nd issue, not the first. But it is an unfair solution. We do not disband most of schooling because *some* teachers engage in educational neglect. Similarly, we should not disband most of homeschooling because *some* homeschooling parents engage in educational neglect.
The "abuse" I was referring to (and thought you were referring to when you said "abusing homeschooling") is educational neglect. School teachers engage in this type of abuse all the time.
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Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect.
--Mark Twain
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Quote:If a child must take his or her parents to court in order to seek regress for poor education, I think it's fair to say that there's a good chance no provision exists to monitor for educational neglect. That is not the case in public or private schools which are monitored for their degree of education by the state or a redundancy within a private system. A single parental household that receive neither monitoring by the state or some form of guidance or redundancy from an independence educational institutional has the potential be very damaging to a child's education without anyone ever knowing. Now I know you want to chalk this up to statistics, but I'm not as comfortable as you seem to be with hiding behind statistics, and so I say that the issue might need to be reviewed by the California legislators.
Originally posted by canttakesky:
Since you seem to have trouble understanding what I wrote, I will restate it differently. The two issues are 1) to monitor for physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, and 2) to prevent educational neglect/abuse. Having a credentialed teacher addresses the 2nd issue, not the first. But it is an unfair solution. We do not disband most of schooling because *some* teachers engage in educational neglect. Similarly, we should not disband most of homeschooling because *some* homeschooling parents engage in educational neglect.
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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Quote:This child was in court because of allegations of physical abuse, not educational neglect.
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
If a child must take his or her parents to court in order to seek regress for poor education...
Quote:Yes, and yet the failure rate in the public and private school systems is equal to or higher than in homeschools. Which means all that monitoring doesn't do jack squat.
... I think it's fair to say that there's a good chance no provision exists to monitor for educational neglect. That is not the case in public or private schools which are monitored for their degree of education by the state or a redundancy within a private system.
Besides, what does that mean, "redundancy in the private system"? Private schools can do whatever they want, evaluate however they want, and set whatever criteria they want for "success." Where is the monitoring there? In fact, I know that homeschools in CA and TX, for example, *are* private schools.
Quote:Sure, but schools ARE actually damaging to a child's education EVEN WITH all that monitoring and everyone knowing. In broad daylight, and under scrutiny--it still happens! You can't penalize an entire educational system because *some* abuses happen. This is not "statistics." It is logic--it's the principle of the thing.
A single parental household that receive neither monitoring by the state or some form of guidance or redundancy from an independence educational institutional has the potential be very damaging to a child's education without anyone ever knowing.
It comes down to this. Educational neglect does not happen because no one caught it. Catching it, likewise, is not the solution. Educational neglect happens when the teacher DOESN'T CARE. The solution is to match students to teachers that CARE. Pay teachers a salary commensurate with being responsible for our children's MINDS, give them the societal respect that doctor's now get, and hire plenty so they don't get overworked. Recognize that no one cares more about their kids than parents who have decided to take on that responsibility themselves. Let people who CARE about kids do the job they WANT to do, without badgering them with suspicion.
I know there are some very rotten parents out there. There are also some very rotten teachers out there. However, by and large, parents and teachers are good folk who want what is good for their kids. Let them do their jobs and support them, not tie them to some bureaucratic criteria. Cause we all know the bureaucratic criteria don't work and turn kids into drones.
Quote:I have no idea what this "hiding behind statistics" is that you keep talking about.
Now I know you want to chalk this up to statistics, but I'm not as comfortable as you seem to be with hiding behind statistics,
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There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.
--Bertrand Russell
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Quote:It means using error in the system to ignore responsibility, which is kind of what you're doing. You're making up a lot of excuses, which aren't necessarily invalid, but they don't justify writing off children as some sort of acceptable loss without first making every effort to prevent that loss. Basically, you seem more interested in coming up with excuses to do nothing, then you are with improving the education system. Which is fine if that's your shtick, but it's not mine.
Originally posted by canttakesky:
I have no idea what this "hiding behind statistics" is that you keep talking about.
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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Quote:
Originally posted by SergeantX:
I believe you are inappropriately framing this issue was one of property rights. The real issue is that children, by their very nature, are dependent and incapable of making decisions for themselves. The 'fight' is over who has the right to make decisions on their behalf. I believe that decision should be heavily weighted in favor of the biological parents, to the point that, unless outright abuse can be proven, there is no decision to be made. The parents win.
Hey Serg, you asked me to come over from the Serenity board and contribute, didn't you?
I can only talk about what the situation is here where I live (Australia) so don't know how relevant it is to US.
Under law in Australia, parents have no rights, they only have responsibilities. And those responsibilities are to ensure the care and welfare of their children, unless it can be proven they are unable/unwilling to do so. As part of providing for the welfare of children, parents must ensure they have access to a reasonable education, which is a child's right under the UN Conventions on the Rights of the Child.
What this means is that parents have parental authority over children, who as Serg rightly points out are unable to fully care and make decisions for themselves. It doesn't mean that parents can deprive children of the right to a reasonable education, to socialising with other, to harming them in anyway, even if in it is the parents belief that these are all good ideas.
Homeschooling does not mean children will be denied education, but it might mean that if parents are incapable/or unwilling to provide an education that is comparable to a state education.
I think forcing all parents who homeschool to have a teaching qual is extreme, but I'm not against some checks and balances for those that choose do so.
I think what is often forgotten in all of this, before people went to school compulsorily, many parents didn't educate them because they couldn't afford it, couldn't afford them not to be working on the farm in the factory and basically most of the population was illiterate and trapped in poverty and ignorance for generations.
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Quote:Control, eh? How much do you intend to control your child's television viewing, friendships, reading, computer use, casual contacts, education, diet etc? And at what point does social isolation become a cult? BTW- the Amish, who are viewed with nostalgia, have a rather horrific pattern of sexual abuse. http://modern-parables.blogspot.com/2007/01/sexual-abuse-amongst-amish
Several years ago, I was talking with a co-worker about a grade-school shooting that had occurred in Chicago, I proposed the apparently outrageous notion that the child's parents should be held accountable, even to the point of criminal culpability. Of course he disagreed and, after some discussion, he settled on his principal objection to the idea: he didn't think parents could be held responsible because "you just can't control your kids". His view was, essentially, that "the village" was the responsible party. He cited the influence of the schools, the child's peers, even the television, as contributing factors outside his control. It didn't even dawn on him that he could, in fact, control these influences.
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I know that you're going to say that I'm purposefully misunderstanding you. I'm not. I think you have warm and fuzzy feeling about parental control because your personal experience is with a child whose major deviation from society is being precocious, and you're able to exert your "contnol" in a way that is benevolent to the child and which satisfies your anti-government stance.
But what could you do if your child's lack of "fit" was more serious? I know a mom quite well whose daughter is a habitual runaway. Now, the mom has fought just about everyone... the neighbors who were harboring her child, the man who sexually enticed her (or was it vice versa?), the sheriff's department that was apparently too busy to return a 14-year-old runaway home, the courts systems that allowed the girls' 40-year-old lover to file suit against the mom for slander... She has exerted more parental "control" than twenty parents put together. At this point, mom is happy that her daughter is locked up in Juvie. But everyone expects the girls to be back on the streets when she's 18, because she's run away during every furlough already. CLEARLY, "control" isn't working! What about the brain damaged kids whose parents "taser" them into compliance? At some point, "control" isn't the answer. In some cases, there is no answer.
Exceptional children aside, even in the case where I were raising my daughter in a hostile society (current Afghanistan, the USA) I cannot in good conscience isolate my child from that society. I have a responsibility to make sure that my child can function as an adult, and in order to do that you HAVE to give up some "control".
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Let's party like it's 1929.
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There is a magic quill in Hogwarts that records the birth of a magical child, and McGonagall checks it every year and sends owls to those magical children who are turning 11. So I believe that all children must attend either a magic school or a muggle school by age 11
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See, CTS, maybe what your missing is the dodge he keeps hiding behing - he adores The State, it's a freakin religion to him, so no amount of facts is gonna make a dent in his "faith" in The State and it's systems, thus leading to the "hiding behind statistics" commentary when you count off the facts.
What we're lookin at here, is a court system being pushed into deciding whether the Public School system is "broken", or Homeschooling is "broken" or whether their interpretation of what those terms ACTUALLY MEAN is screwed up.
Logically, the latter would seem to be the issue needing to be addressed, but once you get people in there who have that overriding faith in the State to do a better job of anything than even a childs own family, and they start pushing their agenda, that is where and when it gets messed up.
The fact that this whole issue was, without apparent cause or justification, dragged into an investigation of purely physical abuse, absolutely smacks of an agenda being present somewhere, and the conduct of the agents of the State since the introduction of that issue tells me exactly what it is - if the rat is missing and the snake has a bulge in it, I don't look under the bed for the rat, you understand ?
The idea of minimum standards is kinda asinine as well, cause anyone who CAN read, write and do simple math can teach another to do so, and from that point education is prettymuch DIY.
And that's the cutting edge here - something folks seem to be missing...
You can't hold a kid down and FORCE them to learn, they either will or they won't, you can guide them, encourage them, but if they flat will not do it... what then ?
And to be honest, that could be what happened here, when you dismiss all the agendas and red tape and bullshit - the kid might have refused to play ball and the parents decided to make them, and as with all aversarial parenting, it escalated, leading to a finding of abuse.
Should that be the case, and I ain't sayin it is, what exactly would the school have done about it, eh ?
I want you to think good and long on that one, and see the damned obvious problem looming there without me having to point it out for once.
-Frem
It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it
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Quote:I have said absolutely NOTHING about "acceptable loss." I do not think the educational abuse / neglect is acceptable, nor have I ever said anything to that effect. I acknowledged the abuse in BOTH systems, and proposed a solution. Maybe you don't agree with my solution, but it could hardly be interpreted as accepting the problem and ignoring responsibility.
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
...but they don't justify writing off children as some sort of acceptable loss without first making every effort to prevent that loss.
For the record, NO abuse or loss is ever acceptable. Clear enough for you?
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There are three types of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
--Mark Twain
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