More garbage reporting from CBS!

[Poly]

The title of the story is "A dark side to homeschooling".
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/13/eveningnews/main577817.shtml

Of course they couldn't title it something like "Tragedy in a Small Town". They had to make referrence to the homeschooling as if IT were the cause of all this. Right! The parents were good. It was just the homeschooling that was bad and caused this tragedy.

And their insinuation that parents want to "homeschool" in order to keep people from seeing bruises. After all, we all know that's why we really homeschool. I mean what other reasons would there be other than wanting to beat and abuse your kids, right? :doh: :nono:

 

[Crow]

Gee, I wasn't homeschooled, and except for the trailer and the animal feces on the floor, it pretty much sounds like what I grew up with.

 

[frugalmom]

Good grief. :kookoo: Did you see under the article it said "In part 2 of Vince Gonzales' report: how children nationwide have been put in danger, even killed, while home schooling." I predict his next brilliant report will be on how the gun forced the kid to kill his siblings and himself.

 

[taoist]

What Crow said.

(Btw, if my mom had home-schooled, I wouldn't be here to write about it. Being public schooled literally saved my life, and the lives of my two sisters.)

Poly, I know how much you advocate home schooling, and yes, it can be a positive experience, but not every "mom" is going to use the freedom appropriately. This was a story that needed to be told. All moms aren't wonderful. All homeschoolers aren't saints.

Frugalmom, it's attitudes like yours that put kids at risk. By all means, let's pillory CBS for reporting on child abuse, maybe it'll just go away.

:disgusted:

 

[frugalmom]

How do you figure that taoist? My point was that liberals lay blame on the wrong thing. The purpose of that article was to make homeschooling look bad. It goes along with the idea that guns are bad instead of the people who commit crimes with them. Obviously that family is a dysfunctional mess. Now I wouldn't be surprised if he layed the blame on the gun for the shooting instead of terrible parenting. Was that not clear to you or do you have something against homeschooling too? (Homeschooling is not what caused that family to be dysfunctional BTW) If the journalist wanted to bring attention to the dysfunctional family, he wouldn't have titled it what he did.

 

[taoist]

Sorry, frugalmom, I'm especially sensitive to child abuse for the same reasons as Crow, personal experience. This was not my usual, more measured, response.

Homeschooling?

Well, my sister-in-law could be a poster child for what home-schooling can be. Three bright, polite youngsters who know enough about learning to be able to work almost independent of mom's lessons.

That said, I don't think it's for everyone. There are too many dysfunctional families. This one in particular took up homeschooling to avoid publicly showing what was going on in the home.

Now, I'm going to say something that might make you react strongly. I see no moral difference between everyday muslims' refusal to condemn their extremists and everyday homeschoolers refusal to condemn their failures. These kids would not have suffered if they had been in public schools. They would quite likely still be alive today except for the unregulated freedom to homeschool.

Frankly, dragging gun issues into your remarks seems no more than a red herring. It distracts from the real issue of child abusers hiding their abuse behind homeschooling. If you really support homeschool and abhor child abuse, I think it would be more appropriate to clean house than to stifle criticism.

In peace.

 

[frugalmom]

Originally posted by taoist
Sorry, frugalmom, I'm especially sensitive to child abuse for the same reasons as Crow, personal experience. This was not my usual, more measured, response.

These kids would not have suffered if they had been in public schools. They would quite likely still be alive today except for the unregulated freedom to homeschool.

You just admitted you were abused and that you went to public school. Public school did not save you from abuse. How would public school have saved them if it didn't save you? The fault is with the parents.

 

[taoist]

Check your PMs.

 

[Christine]

Edit.

 

[Christine]

Last year for a home-school assignment, I used an article that was similar to this one;This is the article. The article was quite poor, the author had at least four fallacies in it.

 

[Nineveh]

***To Christine,***

The pop up ad worked but it seems the article is gone


***To the topic***
What I have noticed is about :think: 4 or 5 recent stories of folks who live in squalor because of animals. This one happened to be a homeschooling home. It seems the parents had no business with pets let alone kids.

It would appear to me the "parents" didn't have their children's best interest at heart. So comparing them to fed school would be an almost even trade.

 

[PureX]

Re: More garbage reporting from CBS!

Originally posted by Poly
The title of the story is "A dark side to homeschooling".
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/13/eveningnews/main577817.shtml

Of course they couldn't title it something like "Tragedy in a Small Town". They had to make referrence to the homeschooling as if IT were the cause of all this. Right! The parents were good. It was just the homeschooling that was bad and caused this tragedy.

And their insinuation that parents want to "homeschool" in order to keep people from seeing bruises. After all, we all know that's why we really homeschool. I mean what other reasons would there be other than wanting to beat and abuse your kids, right? :doh: :nono:

Well, the title seems appropriate to me. Most every situation does have a negative side, including home-schooling. And the two most obvious negative sides of it are that parents can hide both abuse and neglect much better when their kids don't interact with the rest of society. And that what some parents would consider an "education" would be nothing short of mental cruelty and mind control to the rest of us.

Most home-schooling gives kids an excellent education, but there are some very sick abusive parents out there who will use home-schooling to hide their abusive behavior. That IS one of the down sides ("dark side") of home-schooling.

 

[Poly]

Taoist, PureX,

Do you really think that CBS is only interested in exposing those that are using their so called homeschooling in order to hide the abuse of their children? They are giving more focus on how bad it is that they homeschool to hide it rather than exposing them for the plain and simple fact that they are pathetic excuses for parents.

 

[taoist]

I'm sorry, Poly, but to be honest, I don't really watch any CBS News. I think watching big four network news damages your brain.

As far as television goes, I check Fox to see what the wacky conservatives are doing and NewsHour for news. NBC, CBS, ABC, and FOX are just worthless. I mean, really, the major stories get a 1:30 segment and the others get even less. Gee, thanks but no thanks.

News to me is mostly the major dailies and internet alternative media. When I want to follow a political issue, I read. National Review and the Weekly Standard for serious conservative opinion, Dissent and Mother Jones for the leftist side.

To answer your question, I don't know. Has CBS had some kind of homeschool series running or something? This particular story seemed pretty fair; they said right out that it's only one side of homeschooling.

More than that, if the story makes one kid safer, I say bully for them for running it. Child welfare is VERY important to me. Beating up on a kid will never fly around me.

As far as those folks being pathetic excuses for parents, I agree wholeheartedly. But I'll ask you in turn, how do you keep people like that from hiding their abusive behavior through homeschooling?

 

[LightSon]

There are exceptions to every rule.
The rule is that parents are responsible for their children and their training, and the state should butt out.

But when bona fide abuse is occuring, I do want the state to step in; this is the exception. I don't think public school should be the pretext to allow the state to "look into" what parents are up to. Frankly, I don't know what the answer is. Homeschooling is not the culprit. Many public school kids are abused, so that argument fails.

Where do we draw the line which allows the state to come in and take kids away? Maybe homeshoolers should have to check in with a state guidence counselor one or twice a year, so they can check for bruises.

 

[taoist]

Hmm, Lightson, I kind of like that last idea. Look, public school kids have to register, why not a registry of the homeschoolers? Considering the CBS story Poly posted, I think it should be a national registry. Dysfunctional families often live on the run. Hmm, I'm tempted to consider letting the list be sold for homeschool marketers. The program could pay for itself.

A quick inspection twice a year to make sure they've got a clean and quiet study area and look healthy? I don't even see why it couldn't be by pre-arranged appointment. You don't have to give a kid a physical to tell if they're being seriously abused. One look at the home is usually enough to tell if the kids are being treated right. The really dangerous parents aren't very neat about anything.

I subbed HS for a few months between the time I defended my dissertation and the time I got my diploma. Public school teachers are required by law to report cases of abuse, at least here in Illinois. Having someone check on the homeschool kids twice a year doesn't sound excessive to me.

 

[Crow]

Let's try this.

We're all grown enough to know that child abuse is out there, some of us from first hand experience.

It's pretty obvious that violence occurs in homeschool situations, as well as non-homeschool situations.

It's pretty clear to me personally that child abuse isn't always picked up on at school, so it's not the be-all-end-all protector of kids.

It's also pretty clear that sometimes child abuse occurs in homeschool situations.

Can we all scratch around and see if there are any stats out there that can give us some kind of sense of what the prevalance of child abuse is in homeschooled and public schooled kids?

I personally know that I went to public school with broken fingers many a day (my "mother" liked the little snap, crackle, and pops they made when you gave them a good twist, not to mention the reaction it got from me) When someone asked me what happened, I did what probably 90%+ of kids do--I lied. Think about it, if your "mother" is evil enough to break your fingers just for the joy of hurting you, what will she do if you rat her out? Of course, you could go into the "system" and get taken away, but there you have the choice between the devil you know and the devil you don't know.

taoist, I don't know how much you want to tell of your own background here, but if you want to throw it in for discussion, did the public school pick up on what was going on with you? It didn't whatsoever with me, and I went to school for weeks with an unset fractured ankle held together with duct tape. I don't consider the public school to be much of a saftey net there.

And I'm not trying to protect child abusers here. (BTW, I don't consider spanking child abuse) I think child abusers should be flogged, and executed in some cases--just my own thoughts there. I would just like to see if there's a significant difference in child abuse among homeschoolers and public schoolers. I don't see that the article we are discussing did much in the way of showing any difference.

 

[frugalmom]

Originally posted by taoist
Check your PMs.

taoist - don't send me nasty PMs. If you have something to say, say it in a forum to me. Anyone can copy and paste a PM so it might as well be public. If you don't like what I say or don't want to answer questions, feel free to put me on ignore.

The word "admitted" does not imply guilt. A synonym would be the word "acknowledged". Check dictionary.com on it. I asked you a simple question that you could not answer. I think you know that it is ridiculous of you to imply that public schools save kids from abuse. You say they helped in your case. Obviously they didn't completely save you from abuse, from what you have said.

Your attitude tells me either 1. You don't know how to debate civily or 2. You become angry when you can't answer a question or 3. You lack basic social skills.

 

[LightSon]

[crow]my "mother" liked the little snap, crackle, and pops they made when you gave them a good twist, not to mention te reaction it got from me"

Oh no! Crow. Please tell me this isn't true. Ug. I didn't realize you have this in your past. That's sad.

 

[taoist]

No, they didn't, not until I made them do it. It wasn't easy. I'm not handing out details, but you'll love the principal's last words to me and my sisters. "Understand, I'm not giving you to [DCFS], they're taking you."

Tankgirl said it best ... buttsmear.