this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2023
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I concede. Your plan does seem better with one exception - don't illegalize homeschooling. I had trouble dealing with social interaction (I'm mildly autistic) for the few years I was in a (Christian) school, and struggle with some subjects but excell in others. Public school would never have been an option for me. I also gained a lot from learning to research and educate myself. It's the only reason I caught on to their bullcrap doctrine, learned Nietzschean philosophy ( which helped me make sense of a world without "god"), etc.
I propose an alternative:
Homeschool curriculums must be state approved, including the individual books - not just the subject branch.
No religious text, textbooks based on religious doctrine, etc, may be included in the curriculum.
The child has the right to reject a curriculum choice, and defer to the subject curriculum used by public schools in their district (this will likely only work for highschool of course, hence state approval also being required)
How do you think this would work as an alternative?
I think properly funded schools with properly paid special needs instructors would leave far fewer students behind than allowing homeschooling.
Good special needs instruction includes teaching non neurotypical people like you and me coping mechanisms for situations like social interaction. Allowing homeschooling creates one more situation where people who are typically not trained or prepared are suddenly the sole source of education for a child. And schools are an important safety net for abused children. Homeschooling is abused far more than it is helpful. And in any case that it is helpful that is only due to a failure that should be remedied elsewhere.
At least that is currently my view and living somewhere that homeschooling is illegal but the schools are better funded has certainly not changed my mind. Evidence to the contrary would though.
True, but what if that's not the choice being prevented? What if the choice is between not between individually sought resources and state provided resources, but between individually sought resources and none at all? Should we really deny people without access to decent school systems the right to pursue other options?
I believe good public schooling is better than home schooling. But the solution isn't to ban homeschooling. It's to make the public schooling better. In many places, public schooling is very very bad, and it isn't going to get any better any time soon.
And I don't think we should be so quick to deny people their rights just because they believe things that are different from what we believe.