Answer: It doesn’t. Lots of kids in public schools are abused. Maybe it is found out eventually. Maybe not.

The schools in our area are lousy. Don’t know if you’ve been in a school recently. Ours are full of bullying that isn’t really addressed by administrators who sweep it under the carpet because they don’t want the bad P.R. that comes from officially dealing with it. Standards sink lower and lower. Teachers aren’t allowed freedom to teach much of anything that doesn’t show up on the test.

The homeschoolers that I know are involved in homeschool support groups, scouts, 4-H, youth groups, religous groups, sports, and much more. They aren’t hiding in their homes and never coming out. They are seen more in the community than the school children who are hidden away in schools most of the day.
Homeschoolers tend to get better educations, are more polite and respectful, and are more curious than those who are dumped in public schools. hsfromthestart

Not all children thrive in the average school environment, so no, attending school is not in the best interest of every child.

How can we be sure any baby we send home from the hospital isn’t going to be abused for 5 years before they’re old enough to go to school?

If parents having their kids home is such a concern, shouldn’t parents all get checked out and investigated long before school age?

Going to school is no guarantee kids are learning…. Do you have any idea how many college students can’t pick out major countries on a map or calculate the area of a space?

The school system is doing okay– but not spectacular. Kids have a bigger chance of falling through the cracks at school than if they are homeschooled.

Kids who go to school can still learn to hate and be intolerant, from parents, neighbors, friends… sometimes even teachers.

Sorry but there is absolutely no evidence that schools are a solution to anything you are concerned about here. MSB

** I’m not even going to touch the whole accredited scenerio***

There are checks and balances for homeschool and each State has their own rules which can be seen at ( Homeschool Legal Defense Association ). Some states are so easy going it is truly sad, while other states make you want to pull your hair out at every turn.
Many times when a family homeschools, they have to go for an evalueation ( sorry can’t seem to spell that right), where the progress of the student is checked. The family has to provide all the work that the student(s) have done for the year and the student(s) answer questions relating to things that they did and learned throughout the year.
Now depending on the course of action you take for homeschooling, this can be vary. You have CyberSchool ( school done over the internet) which is still technically going to regular school and thus you have to follow set rules and courses and such; Distance Education ( work is sent to the student and they must return it within a set time for correction and credits ); Parent directed Homeschool ( the parent(s) choose a program from which to teach OR the parent can create their own program according to the needs and level of the student); Religious Homeschool ( this one can get tricky as it takes the family OFF the radar of the school district completely. This is how the Old Order Amish ( most Amish districts ) and most Conservative Christians along with many other groups do their schooling. It allows for the family to teach according to THEIR beliefs.)

In many cases, the students will need to sit for certain tests ( again varies by State rules), and the family is under the thumb of their local school district. The religious route is the only one that really has no checks and balances but again it is subject to State rules and not every State allows for religious homeschool.

The comment about children being ‘indoctrinated’ with hate and intolerance is something that you need to sit back and rethink. The public school system is NOT lily white by any means when it comes to the teaching of our children and children will more often than not get their ideas of hate and intolerance from both their peers and the teachers ( perhaps you have forgotten how colored children were not allowed in white schools?). Hatred and intolerance are ideas that are taught with even the smallest of comments or gestures at both home and school and public life.

For the record, if you are a parent then you ‘homeschool’ your child(ren) every day. Whether it is by ‘teaching’ little Johnny how to tie his shoes or showing little Susie how to bake her first cake, you are essentially HOMESCHOOLING. Every single thing that we teach our children to do on a day to day basis, everything that our parents taught us to do is homeschooling in its most basic form. HistoryMom

My kids were in public school and we had a situation with both of them. My oldest repeated second grade and half way through the second round we decided to start home schooling. Why? She still could not understand basic subtraction. Is she stupid? No! Just a visual learner. She doesn’t understand things as easily unless she can see it. Having the “teacher” talk at her doesn’t work.

My son was in preK, had just turned 4, was developmentally delayed, and had a speech delay, all of this caused by a birth defect. His teacher had him for 2 months before she decided he was ADHD and told me to have him put on meds. She also told me that they couldn’t have him tested for speech therapy until April. We ended up having him tested and starting therapy in 2 weeks at a private facility. Thank you Medicaid!

As for the rest of your questions they are ludicrous!

How can you be sure they are not being abused? Who in the public school was there to stop the 2 years of abuse my sister went through? No one! She suffered in silence for 2 YEARS until she finally told someone.

How can you be sure they are learning what they need to know? Well there is a wealth of information out there. Curricula designed by educators. The Internet has tons of information for the kids to search. More choices than we could consider. Most peoples problems when starting home school is where to start. There are simply too many choices.

How can you be sure they are not indoctrinated? Well let me explain to you the definition of indoctrination. Indoctrination is to imbue with a usually partisan or sectarian opinion, point of view, or principle (definition 2). If that is the definition of indoctrination our public schools are GUILTY. After all the only thing they teach is evolution. Is evolution a proven fact? No it’s a theory. If it is a theory then are there other viable theory’s?

What about Intelligent Design? Oh yeah separation of church and state. The state is not allowed to teach it because Atheists will have a fit. We can teach it, public schools legally can teach it no one said we had to name a creator, just allow that there might be one.

The schools are only teaching one side not both. If they are not indoctrinating our kids then why are they only teaching one side?

All in all it is none of your business how we choose to educate our kids? We have the Constitutional RIGHT to choose the education for our kids. We get to choose for our family not you.

ETA: 26 answers and only one person agrees with you. Maybe it says something about home schooling and parental rights! renee70466

How can we be sure that aren’t being abused? — Attending public or private school is no guarantee against abuse. If it was, the number of children abused in this country would be almost nonexistent (since the vast majority of children still go to mainstream schools) and the only cases of abuse would be coming out of homeschooling families (which we already know is not the case). Banning homeschooling would not end child abuse.

How can we be sure they are learning what is necessary? — Many children in mainstream school aren’t learning what is necessary (who decides what is and isn’t necessary, anyway). I spent two and a half years teaching college students of all ages, all of whom had attended mainstream schools, and I eventually lost count of the number of students who struggled with basic tasks like writing a standard 5-paragraph essay, understanding the importance of citations in their work, calculating their own approximate grades-to-date in the course (even when they had all the information they needed to do it), comprehending basic geography, and understanding that classroom rules applied to them too and not just their classmates. I have heard stories about similar situations from teaching assistants across the country and in a wide variety of disciplines, and I saw it with my classmates when I was an undergrad in college too. The mainstream school system serves a few students well, but too many others get through with a mediocre education or fall through the cracks completely. Some schools might be doing a good job, but overall the mainstream school system is not doing anything to ensure that children are learning.

Indoctrination and intolerance — As with the abuse issue, attending mainstream school is no guarantee that children will not be indoctrinated in bigotry and intolerance. In fact, I would argue that in many cases school can serve to solidify certain prejudices in children through behaviors like bullying, teasing, and ridiculing certain student who are thought to have certain uncool or unpopular traits (e.g. they’re fat, they wear glasses, they actually like studying, they prefer X subject or activity to Y, etc.). Homeschooling is not necessarily a way to escape such behaviors, but it’s certainly no guarantee a child will turn into an intolerant bigot either, any more than attending mainstream school ensures children will be paragons of tolerance. For an extreme example, look at the Phelps family that runs the Westboro Baptists Church. They’re some of the most hateful bigots in the world…and if my memory serves me right, every single one of Fred Phelps’ grandchildren attended mainstream school. I believe his children did too, but I’m not sure.

One factor that anti-homeschooling advocates often fail to understand is that the mainstream school environment is not the best learning or social environment for everyone. It doesn’t matter if a school is the best in the world, if it’s built and run like a mainstream school, many children will fail there because that is not their optimal learning environment. Until mainstream schools are actually able to handle and cater to a wide range of academic and social needs, and until they actually provide a good way of answering your questions, homeschooling should be a legal choice for every family. Shiori_hime

What is necessary to learn, out of all the millions of things a child can learn? The state certainly isn’t doing a good job deciding this.

If you look at the teasing and violence in schools, you can see that many children in school ARE being indoctrinated with hate and intolerance.

In short, what makes you think that the government can and should raise our children?

All the best. ozboz48