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Over the last few days, my social media pages have blow up with comments and articles about Joe and Nicole Naugler, an \u201coff-grid\u201d couple\u00a0whose ten children were removed by CPS following the discovery that the family was living in tents and had inadequate heat, water, and sewage\u2014a discovery that followed a standoff between Joe and one of the neighbors, in which Joe trespassed on a neighbor\u2019s property in order to steal water, and then, when confronted,\u00a0threatened to shoot said\u00a0neighbor.<\/p>\n
News articles about the removal tend to have titles like this:<\/p>\n
Kentucky Police Seize Ten Children of Homeschooling Off-Grid Family, Arrest Pregnant Mother<\/a><\/p>\n
BREAKING: Police Seize 10 Children From Homeschool Family Because They\u2019re Off-Grid<\/a><\/p>\n
Pregnant Homeschool Mom Assaulted by Sheriff as CPS Kidnaps Her Kids in Kentucky<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Some homeschooling parents are posting article on the situation to HSLDA\u2019s facebook page to try to get them involved, and I\u2019ve seen scads of homeschooling parents defending the Nauglers as a good, honest, hard-working homeschooling family that just happens to have made different lifestyle choices from other families. If you want an honest\u00a0look at the situation and what all is involved, see Kathryn Elizabeth\u2019s post, Here Are 7 Surprising Things You Need to Know about Joe and Nicole Naugler<\/a>. But there\u2019s something slightly tangential that I want to touch on here.<\/p>\n
Technically, Joe and Nicole Naugler are not homeschooling.<\/strong><\/p>\n
Yes, you read that right.<\/p>\n
Kentucky does\u00a0not require homeschooling parents to submit academic assessments of their children\u2019s progress or keep portfolios of children\u2019s educational materials, but the state does require homeschooling parents to file paperwork\u00a0with the local school board<\/a>, and the Nauglers have not done so.<\/p>\n
<\/a>
Image from Blessed Little Homestead facebook page<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Technically, the Naugler children are not being homeschooled\u2014they\u2019re truant.<\/p>\n
Please don\u2019t think I\u2019m here to nitpick or to suggest that education cannot take place at home if the proper paperwork is not filed. I\u2019m not. Because the Naugler\u2019s self-identify as homeschoolers, I\u2019m inclined to think of them as homescholers even though they\u2019re not considered homeschoolers before the law. This blog post is absolutely not to say that we should reject the family\u2019s identification as homeschoolers (though we absolutely should<\/em>\u00a0support them filing the paperwork to homeschool legally).<\/p>\n
Why, then, am I bringing this up? Simply put, because it seems like every time a homeschooled child is horrifically abused or killed by his or her parents (such as the cases listed here<\/a>), anti-oversight homeschooling parents\u00a0disavow\u00a0the family as not actually homeschooling<\/em>. We saw this most recently after the deaths of Stoni Blair and Stephen Berry<\/a>,\u00a0who were in fact legally homeschooled\u00a0regardless of what anti-oversight homeschooling parents claimed. There are other cases of horrific abuse where the parents claimed they are\u00a0homeschooling but never\u00a0filed the proper paperwork. \u00a0In these cases, homeschooling parents are quick to distance themselves\u00a0and\u00a0denounce the family as not actually homeschooling. I would understand this if it was consistent, but as the response to the Naugler family makes clear, it\u2019s not.<\/p>\n
Homeschooling parents have not (that I\u2019ve seen) questioned Nicole Naugler\u2019s self-identification as a homeschooling mother\u00a0even though Nicole never filed the required paperwork and her children were therefore legally truant<\/em>. But it goes further than this. I\u2019ve been told that the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA)\u00a0accepts families as members even when they\u2019re not following their state\u2019s legal requirements for homeschooling<\/em>. In other words, HSLDA accepts as members families that are not considered homeschoolers before the law, and are instead legally truant. But\u00a0then, when horrific abuse\u00a0comes to light\u00a0in a family that claimed to be homeschooling but didn\u2019t\u00a0file the required paperwork, they\u2019re suddenly not actually homeschoolers<\/em>.<\/p>\n
How is it not obvious how inconsistent this is? You either need\u00a0to not consider\u00a0any<\/em>\u00a0families that are legally truant as homeschoolers, regardless of whether they claim to be homeschooling\u2014and that includes Nicole Naugler\u2014or you need to count all<\/em> families that are legally truant as homeschoolers if they claim to be so\u2014even if they are revealed to have brutalized or murdered their children.<\/p>\n
Here is how<\/a>\u00a0Homeschooling\u2019s Invisible Children<\/a>, run by the alumni-founded Coalition for Responsible Home Education<\/a>, determines which cases\u00a0to include in its database:<\/p>\n
\nWhat is your criteria for including a child in the HIC database?<\/strong><\/p>\n
We include all school aged children (ages 5 to 17) who were the victims of severe or fatal abuse or neglect who were legally homeschooled or whose parents, guardians, or captors claimed to be homeschooling them at the time an incident occurred.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
While not everyone may agree with their method of characterizing which children are and are\u00a0not homeschooled, they do at least have a\u00a0consistent standard. I\u2019d like to see homeschooling parents who oppose oversight demonstrate the same consistency.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Over the last few days, my social media pages have blow up with comments and articles about Joe and Nicole Naugler, an “off-grid” couple whose ten children were removed by CPS following the discovery that the family was living in tents and had inadequate heat, water, and sewage—a discovery that followed a standoff between Joe and one of the neighbors, in which Joe trespassed on a neighbor’s property in order to steal water, and then, when confronted, threatened to shoot said neighbor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-homeschool"],"yoast_head":"\n
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