Mailbag Monday

Introducing Mailbag Monday!

On Mondays, I will be selecting 1 or 2 worthwhile reader comments and feature/respond to them. I read every comment that’s posted on the blog. The feedback from readers is very important to the discipline of blogging. Yet we’ve all seen cases in which the quality of dialogue descends into trolling or flame wars. I hope that featuring comments on Mailbag Mondays will give the proper kudos to thoughtful comments, and will afford me a chance to respond without diving into the often lamentable world of the comments section.

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RustbeltRick disagrees with my thoughts on Sandy Hook and homeschooling:

At first you say the state has oversight over homeschooling, then as you read closer the real issue is that the state is interested in a very specific subgroup; they want to know what homeschoolers are doing about students with behavioral and emotional problems. Of course, homeschoolers scream about it because Paul Revere and freedom and Ted Nugent. The state has rightly concluded that students with significant problems need additional resources, both for their own safety and for the safety of the public. I’m not sure why homeschoolers have fashioned themselves as above every law in the nation. The arrogance is appalling.

First of all, there’s no attempt to be “above the law” in this situation. Current Connecticut law does not compel homeschooled families to turn over mental health records and be screened for appropriateness. The debate is over whether such a law should be passed.

I’m not sure what’s so arrogant about wanting concrete clarity from lawmakers about what kind of “emotional and social” issues the school boards want to know about. That was my point: Hiding behind vague terminology could empower the state to moderate homeschoolers in a way that would violate basic privacy rights.

As I said in my post, the vast majority of school shooters were enrolled in public school, and in the case of the Sandy Hook killer, were mostly ignored by the state-certified psychiatrists. My question is: Why aren’t we seeing more accountability from public schools about their psychological evaluations? Why aren’t we debating legislation to hold schools accountable for how they handle potentially dangerous students? The fact that homeschooling is being propped up as a dangerous threat is ludicrous and not in accordance with the basic facts.