{"id":1673,"date":"2014-10-01T10:50:30","date_gmt":"2014-10-01T14:50:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/inklingations\/?p=1673"},"modified":"2014-10-01T10:57:37","modified_gmt":"2014-10-01T14:57:37","slug":"sandy-hook-was-not-about-homeschooling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/inklingations\/2014\/10\/01\/sandy-hook-was-not-about-homeschooling\/","title":{"rendered":"Sandy Hook was not about homeschooling"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"
Connecticut governor Daniel Malloy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

I\u2019m grateful to World<\/em> Magazine and Andrew Branch for reporting yesterday on some troubling developments <\/a>in Connecticut. A task force created by Governor Daniel Malloy after the horror of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting has recommended that state authorities receive oversight powers on the state\u2019s homeschooling families. From the World<\/em> article<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Under the proposed recommendations, parents of homeschooled children with behavioral and emotional problems would have to submit individualized education plans to the special education director of the local school district. They could lose the right to homeschool if those plans weren\u2019t approved or if regular progress reports were deemed unsatisfactory. The commission hasn\u2019t said if or how homeschooled children would be assessed for behavioral and emotional problems, let alone what would qualify as a significant emotional or behavioral problem. It\u2019s also unclear if the commission\u2019s team of psychiatrists and professors consulted anyone in the homeschooling community.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe \u2026 that the actual facts leading up to [the Sandy Hook shooting] support the notion of the risk in not addressing social and emotional learning needs of children who may have significant needs in that area who are homeschooled,\u201d said Dr. Harold Schwartz, the psychiatrist-in-chief at Hartford Hospital.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

My concern here stems not from unprecedented oversight of homeschoolers (some states have a fair amount of oversight already). It\u2019s the\u00a0ephemeral, broad-brush language of \u201csocial and emotional learning needs\u201d that worries me. What the Governor\u2019s task force is recommending (assuming this report is accurate)\u00a0amounts to a 1) psychological evaluation of homeschooled students and 2) ability to control curriculum and approve\/disapprove homeschooled status based on said evaluation. Put that way, the danger is obvious: What will the state define as a \u201csocial and emotional learning\u201d issue?<\/p>\n

The task force\u2019s connection between Sandy Hook and homeschooling activity per se is frustrating on several levels. As someone who was homeschooled for 12+ grades, I know that the caricature of homeschooled families as gun-obsessed, anti-government bunker rednecks is grossly untrue.\u00a0I suppose those kinds of people exist, though I\u2019ve never met one (which makes logical sense). There\u2019s zero evidence to suggest that the Sandy Hook\u00a0killer was a consistent product of his homeschooled environment, or that more government knowledge of his psychological condition would have prevented his murders (see this story <\/a>from The New Yorker<\/em> which details how the killer was passed on by several state-certified psychiatrists).<\/p>\n

The suspicion that some in political culture heap on homeschooled families is driven mainly by ignorance and a misplaced faith in the virtues of mass public education. As I said above, my lifetime of homeschooling never led me to meet anyone whose violent tendencies or delusional ideas were being fostered by home education. \u201cJust because you\u2019ve never met them doesn\u2019t mean they don\u2019t exist,\u201d some might object. That\u2019s true, but if the issue is really about numbers, then consider: The killers responsible for Columbine, Red Lake, Virginia Tech, and Santa Monica were all enrolled in public high school. If the Sandy Hook murders warrant a doubling down in oversight of homeschoolers, what do the 50+ murders in the above cases warrant?<\/p>\n

In other words, it\u2019s not just the potential for political abuse these policies would create, it\u2019s the fact that such abuse seems to be the only real effect they would have. Rather than\u00a0preventing the fomenting of psychopaths, it\u2019s far more likely that the policies would enforce codified majority values\u00a0in subjects\u00a0like homosexuality and evolution on individual families.<\/p>\n

My prediction is that, as stories like this one <\/a>become more pervasive, more parents will consider removing their children from the public education system. Rather than use a\u00a0non-existent connection between Sandy Hook and homeschooling, lawmakers in Connecticut should consider\u00a0policy that strengthens families and marriages, things that\u00a0tend overwhelmingly\u00a0to be dysfunctional in the lives of mass killers. Homeschooling is not a threat, but broken homes very well might be.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m grateful to World Magazine and Andrew Branch for reporting yesterday on some troubling developments in Connecticut. A task force created by Governor Daniel Malloy after the horror of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting has recommended that state authorities receive oversight powers on the state\u2019s homeschooling families. From the World article: Under the proposed recommendations, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2058,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7,13],"tags":[243,241,166,242],"class_list":["post-1673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-ethics","category-politics","tag-connecticut","tag-homeschool","tag-religious-liberty","tag-sandy-hook"],"yoast_head":"\nSandy Hook was not about homeschooling<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I'm grateful to World Magazine and Andrew Branch for reporting yesterday on some troubling developments in Connecticut. 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