Growing up, I heard a lot about the importance of checks and balances in our government. My parents explained that it was the checks and balances our government has that ensures that our country will not become a dictatorship. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, they explained time and again. But it was like all of this was erased from their brains when they started talking about their right to homeschool.
A thread for discussing and debating which homeschool regulations would be appropriate, which would be effective, and which would be too prone to problems.
HSLDA has now offered an official response to my post about their defense of child abusers. Their response actually confirms that I had my details correct in that post, and also cements the concerns and problems I have with them as an organization. In this post I will look at their statement and offer my response. In a nutshell? It’s not enough.
One commenter on my post on HSLDA’s defense of child abusers argued that HSLDA was simply defending its clients. Well yes, but who are HSLDA’s “clients”? The parents, not the children.
I recently wrote about what happens when abusive parents homeschool. In this post I want to look specifically at cases when abusive parents start homeschooling in an effort to hide their abuse. In other words, these aren’t parents who start homeschooling for religious or educational reasons, or even because they like the control it gives them. These are parents who start homeschooling because there are abuse reports being made against them by their children’s teachers.
Recently, I’ve been devoting some time to writing about homeschooling here on the blog. So, when I started thinking about what my next Forward Thinking prompt should be, I immediately thought about public education. In today’s atmosphere of school choice and concerns about the quality of public schools, I don’t think it hurts to step back and ask ourselves about the purpose of public education.
Remember how I wrote recently about how the belief that one’s virginity is of utmost importance can make women stay in abusive relationships they might otherwise leave? Well, it’s worse than that. Elizabeth Smart, a girl who was kidnapped at age 14 in 2002 and held captive for almost a year before she was rescued, recently explained that these exact ideas about sexual purity can aid and abet human trafficking.
In my recent series on HSLDA and child abuse, I revealed that HSLDA has lobbied against bills banning excessive corporal punishment and in favor of cutting down on the ways child abuse tips may be made, but at the time I wrote that series I hadn’t found hard evidence of HSLDA defending and praising known child abusers. Now I have. I have to warn you: this post is not going to be pleasant to read.
The Pearls and their followers argue that the rod is simply a tool to foster connection between parent and child, but the only thing I remember the rod teaching me is that when I didn’t obey I would pay for it, and that I should be afraid of my mother and father because if I stepped out of line I would end up with a spanking. The rod never made me feel connected to my parents. Ever. Actually, it made me feel afraid of them. And that’s sure as hell not the same thing.
A Guest Post by Anonymous. This is one of the not-so-good legacies HSLDA is leaving—convincing innocent families that the CPS is a bunch of marauding child snatchers. Convincing kids that their potential lifelines are the stuff from which nightmares are made. So thank you, Michael Farris, for inadvertently convincing my parents that me speaking out about my homeschooling struggles could get my brother taken away.
In this passage Debi looks at why Eve was deceived by Satan while Adam was not. In this discussion, the idea that both men and women might be able to cooperatively find a balance between the two, each with aspects of vulnerability and aspects of independence, eludes Debi completely, as does the increasing obviousness that her stereotypes about gender come not from the Bible or nature but rather from Victorian social norms.
In this post I want to look at what happens when abusive parents homeschool their children. Roger Canaaf, a legal expert and anti-violence advocate, puts it this way: “When the wrong parent or parents homeschool, the results can be far worse than ‘just’ a badly educated child. An abusive parent who homeschools has more than a captive audience; he or she also has essentially a caged one.” Let’s move on to some horrifying examples.
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