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Author Topic: I am vindicated! (Homeschooling is legal in CA)
MightyCow
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There's no need to be punitive, simply expect reasonable levels of advancement. Every child doesn't need to be a genius, but every child deserves a good education.

How much more successful might Thomas Edison have been later in life, had he received a better education earlier?

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The Rabbit
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quote:
Originally posted by Boon:
[QB] Why should the cutoff be 8 for every child?

No one is talking about a cut off. Eight years has been shown to be a critical age for nearly all children. That makes it a good point to do evaluations and to decide if intervention is warranted.

quote:
Why do you* get to decide what standard to use in evaluating my children?
Your child is a member of my community. Its important to the community as a whole that your child grow up to be a contributing member of the community. The child isn't your property, he/she is your responsibility. Why should you get to decide what standard to use for evaluating your child when you won't be the one to decide whether or not he gets in to college, whether or not she can get a job, whether or not her art or music will be heard or listen to by others, whether he will have a rewarding career, close friends and so on. Your child will be evaluated by the community for all of his life whether you think its just or not.

quote:
If there are different approaches to learning, why must you* assume my approaches are deficient simply because I don't have a teaching degree?
No one has even suggested that in this discussion. What has been suggested is that your child should be evaluated to determine whether or not he is learning to read at a point early enough that there is still something that can be done to correct the problem. Why wouldn't you want that done. This is the same standard applied in public schools. It is the same standard to which we hold teachers with degrees and licenses. No one is presuming a priori that your teaching is deficient.

I have absolutely never said that if a child isn't reading by age eight, he should no longer be home schooled. What I have suggested is that if a child isn't reading by age eight, that its time to evaluate the situation. Maybe the child isn't reading because of a learning disability and can be helped using specialized teaching methods. Maybe the child has other developmental issues. Maybe your teaching style simply doesn't math the child's learning style and he would benefit from professional reading tutor. Maybe you are an incompetent teacher and you shouldn't be home schooling. But I AM NOT presuming that just because you don't have a degree or even just because your child isn't reading by age 8. I am saying that if your child isn't reading by age eight, it is time to find out why.

quote:
What if 8 is simply too early for my child? What happens then?
Your child gets evaluate by professionals who might be able to determing if he has a disability. You meet with reading professionals who suggest alternative pedagogies that might help. Perhaps you get a tutor to help. Maybe its decided that your child would learn better in a more structured environment offered in a traditional school. And if it turns out that he is an exceptional child who's brain just happens to mature in a different way, then in a year or so he will be reading fine and all he will have lost is a bit of freedom for that period of time.

On the other, what if your child isn't an exception but is one of the majority of kids whose window for learning reading is starting to close at age eight? What if no intervention is taken and he/she misses her chance to ever master reading? That is the majority case and the consequences of it are so severe that I can't imagine any responsible parent thinking it preferable to the alternatives.

Seriously, if someone is so committed to a particular home schooling style that they aren't anxious to consider other options when their 8 year old isn't reading -- they aren't a responsible parent.

[ August 13, 2008, 03:53 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]

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Boon
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I guess maybe I'm hypersensitive, especially to the reading late thing, because of personal experience. Maybe it was a mistake for me to jump into this thread at all. *bowing out before I get too emotional to respond at all.
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BannaOj
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I understand Boon.

Rabbit, I don't think you truly have the authority to judge responsible homeschooling-parenting, any more than Glenn Arnold can judge the issue of keeping kosher.

Pretty much everything you are saying makes me thank all possible Deities that may or may not exist, that you aren't the one making the determination of whether or not a homeschooler's education is deficient.

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scifibum
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So ensuring that kids get the appropriate opportunity to learn to read before it's too late is harmful how?
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lobo
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I have found that most home schoolers are harmess, but socially backwards. Most want car-seat laws and no-smoking in car laws, but don't want anyone telling them that they can't teach their kids very well. There are certainly exceptions, but not many... I am all for some standard tests to force them to give their kids a basic education.
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BannaOj
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You are accepting a premise of "too late". There are very valid reasons for rejecting that premise. (There are valid reasons for accepting that premise also, but I'm ok with a considered rejection of this premise.)
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katharina
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What are the valid reasons for rejecting "too late"?

Most of the arguments usually consist of "My child is super special."

I worry about attitudes like one where looking for outside help is a personal slight against teaching ability because it sets up a situation where if the child WOULD be better off in a public school, the parent would feel like a failure. That greatly lowers the likelihood that the parent is being objective of what the kid needs and is instead using the kid's education to fulfill their own personal ambitions.

Sure, other parents do that, too - stage mothers and the like. I even believe in the right to use your children to fulfill your own ambitions if that's what you want to do and the kid lets you. But the ability to read and write is too important to a person to let that fall apart so the parent doesn't have to feel like a failure.

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scifibum
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quote:
Originally posted by BannaOj:
You are accepting a premise of "too late". There are very valid reasons for rejecting that premise. (There are valid reasons for accepting that premise also, but I'm ok with a considered rejection of this premise.)

Let me rephrase.

How is it harmful to ensure that home schooled kids have an opportunity to be assessed to ensure that they don't pass the generally accepted threshold for learning to read before it likely will be too late?

I'd rather see 5 kids put in unnecessary intervention (I'm not talking about a military school, here, just some help from tutors or something) for every 1 kid that really needed it, than see that 1 kid grow up illiterate because of a mistaken belief that the kid was the exception to the rule.

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BannaOj
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I think it comes down to an even greater gulf. The U.S. is not a socalized democracy. I don't necessarily think socialism is the answer, although it could improve things in the medical field.

The arguments for mandatory testing of children (including NCLB) are socialist arguments. In one sense a homeschooler *is* rejecting socialism, although one could say the same thing about anyone who puts their child in a private school too.

I am ok with "minimum standards in order to do X". I'm ok with "you must score so high on this test to get into college". But all of those tests are *optional*. If you don't want to go to college, nobody forces you to take the SAT. If you have initiative, you can do just fine without a college degree. Look at Tom Davidson.

You don't have to graduate from high school to work at McDonald's or Walmart. And in this day and age, you don't even have to know how to make change since the cash register tells you. Plenty of people graduate from high school, only to work at McDonalds or Walmart for most of their lives. I have no problem with a homeschooler doing this, any more than I have a problem with a high school graduate doing this. The lower end of the playing field is completely level, so why are people getting so bent out of shape about homeschoolers. What's wrong with those kids ending up at the lower end of the playing field, if is all they are capable of with their education? It isn't hurting anyone else and society needs bodies to fill those jobs as much as they need college graduates, maybe more.

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BannaOj
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quote:
Originally posted by scifibum:
quote:
Originally posted by BannaOj:
You are accepting a premise of "too late". There are very valid reasons for rejecting that premise. (There are valid reasons for accepting that premise also, but I'm ok with a considered rejection of this premise.)

Let me rephrase.

How is it harmful to ensure that home schooled kids have an opportunity to be assessed to ensure that they don't pass the generally accepted threshold for learning to read before it likely will be too late?

I'd rather see 5 kids put in unnecessary intervention (I'm not talking about a military school, here, just some help from tutors or something) for every 1 kid that really needed it, than see that 1 kid grow up illiterate because of a mistaken belief that the kid was the exception to the rule.

Ok, so to go to the criminal justice argument: Better to let 5 murderers go free, than to convict one innocent person. Right?

What you don't understand is that right now "intervention" generally happens under the auspicies of family protective services removing the kids from their parents.

I don't want any homeschooling family, that feeds and clothes and loves their children, to have their children removed, regardless of whether the child can read or not. No parent should be *forced* to have their child evaluated for disablities if they don't want their child to be. No kid should be compelled to go through that testing without their parents' permission. It truly is a parents rights issue, the slope is already slippery, and it gets steeper, the more boundary lines you try to draw.

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Jhai
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Typically, we (as a community) strive to give our (as a community) kids more than the bare minimum to survive or otherwise eek out an existence. I mean, if I give my child just enough calories to keep body & soul together, is that perfectly okay?

You don't need all that many calories to survive to adulthood. And in this day and age, you don't even have to feed the kids anything at home since the school gives out free lunches. Plenty of people in the world grow into adults living on meager rations. I have no problem with a rich American child growing up this way, anymore than I do for a poor African child. The lower end of the body weight & height playing field is completely level (when you're above starvation & below good levels of nutrition) so why are people getting so upset about rich American parents doing it? It isn't hurting anyone else, and society needs to have some shorter and skinner people as much as they need taller and fatter people (and maybe more because of the obesity problem!!).

Edited to make the absurdity even more obvious.

[ August 13, 2008, 04:45 PM: Message edited by: Jhai ]

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scifibum
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BannaOj, you seem to be arguing against more than one strawman here. Nobody said your child should be taken away by the state if they can't read by eight years old. And nobody said that there's anything wrong with home schooled kids not being top achievers.
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BannaOj
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Jhai for me it really is about the society/community/family/individual deliniations. The question really truly is, how much right the society has to infringe on the authority of the family unit. Different societies come up with different answers.

I think the population of hatrack as a whole tends to lean towards the "good of the community" side of things rather than the "rights of the individual" side of things.

But your argument about giving your child "just enough calories to keep body and soul together" depends on your definition of "body and soul together" I don't really think there is much wrong with having a child on the lower end of the body weight and height percentiles, as long as there isn't a major failure to thrive.

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BannaOj
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scifi, what do you think the "intervention" with the non-literate 8-year old is going to entail? If you are going to justify it as "child abuse" than the child is probably going to be taken away from his parents, and placed in foster care. It has already happened.
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Jhai
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How about if you feed 'em just enough to keep 'em alive, but not enough to promote good brain development? You know, like how failing to teach a child to read at a certain age also decreases proper brain development.

Really, I'm not sure if I'm more disgusted with your current argument or with the homeschooling/planning to homeschooling parents here who were unable to keep their cool when people are critically examining their views - how are they going to teach their kids good critical thinking skills if they can't handle relatively polite discussion on an important societal topic?

And, just to make it clear, you aren't the only one on this thread with libertarian leanings. I'm pretty firmly in libertarian camp, but some things need to be regulated to protect the rights and interests of those who can't protect it themselves. Like children.

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BannaOj
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Jhai... I actually don't think what you are saying is absurd. There are lots of overweight kids here in the U.S. that are malnourished. It has very little to do with the standard height and weight percentile tables.

It all depends on the measuring stick, with both education and nutrition.

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scifibum
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Rabbit described intervention that involved assessment and possibly working with tutors and stipulated that this didn't necessarily mean the end of home schooling, I already postulated something similar. I suppose by refusing to cooperate with all such efforts a parent *MIGHT* conceivably force the state's hand to something like you said. I'll think about that some more.
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Jhai
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Actually, if you look at what I said above, I was referring to a low number of absolute calories, not proper amounts of vitamins and so forth. If you restrict calories enough, you certainly aren't going to get overweight kids.
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BannaOj
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I am not convinced that failing to teach a child to read decreases "proper brain development". There are too many societies throughout history that functioned as oral societies, not literate ones, to say that reading is absolutely necessary for proper brain development. Exposure to many and varied situations, is absolutely necessary for one's brain to develop, reading, not necessarily so. Literacy excercises one part of the brain, perhaps to the detriment of the development of other areas.
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katharina
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Banna, do you think that an illiterate adult in the USA today is a successful outcome of any education system?
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kmbboots
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quote:
Originally posted by lobo:
I have found that most home schoolers are harmess, but socially backwards.

Wow, Lobo, you know most homeschoolers? That's a lot of people!
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BannaOj
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Jhai, my "low-end" argument, is why I think socialist/utilitarian principles shouldn't apply to homeschoolers any more than I think they should apply to anyone else. But, if you are going to make the socialist/utilitarian argument (that others, not you in particular) were making with regards to education, you've got to have it hold throughout "society" both at the high and low ends. I don't like it, but if you are going to argue the "good of the society" bit, it is a logical outcome.

The true issue again, is that of parental rights. Homeschoolers believe they have the right to educate their children as they see fit. Many of them believe that they are mandated by God to educate their children that way.

I am NOT saying that I endorse the way many homeschoolers are educating their children, because I don't. But, I don't feel that I, nor anyone else, should be allowed to interfere with that very personal choice that those parents made. To infringe on it at all means infringing on the rights of those I agree with, as well as the ones I disagree with.

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Jhai
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BannaOj, I think that the point you're missing is that the ability to read requires certain brain development that doesn't happen if you don't learn to read. And that brain development, much like the brain development that is required to have the ability to speak a language, is best done by a certain age if you want (on average) to achieve fluency.

The few documented young children who lived without interaction with other humans before the age of 5 failed to gain a high level of fluency in human speech for the rest of their lives, because they missed that crucial time period where the brain develops for language. Now, this doesn't mean that there couldn't be a few children who miss the 5-year mark, but still develop fluency, but, thankfully, there haven't been a lot of cases of young children with no human interaction.

Sadly, there are way more children who make it past 8 without learning to read. And yes, there are some who can still pick up the skill fluently. Most, however, are not so lucky, and are forced to live the rest of their lives in a society where reading is a crucial skill. As kat says, that's not an acceptable outcome in an education system in our current literate society.

(cross-posted with your latest post)

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BannaOj
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Kat, let me mull that over. I can concieve of scenarios where it might be possible.

I'm not anti-literacy by any means. I think literacy is a good thing in general. I'm not convinced that it is anywhere near a "one-shot-in-life" educational/developmental deal as being expressed here.

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neo-dragon
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quote:
Originally posted by Belle:


Waiting until 10th grade to test is virtually useless - what do you do at that point if the child cannot read well enough to earn a high school diploma? Send them back for remedial reading instruction in the 10th grade? Send them to adult literacy classes? Your options are very limited at that point.

No, there needs to be evaluation much earlier so proper intervention can take place.

Here's what I can tell you about the literacy test in Ontario secondary schools. First of all, it wasn't implemented with home schoolers in mind. In fact, having just done some quick google research it seems that home schoolers do not have to write it at all. Actually, it doesn't seem like home schoolers here really have to do anything in the way of proving the standard of their education. [Dont Know]

So why aren't public school kids tested before the 10th grade and what can be done if they fail? Well, I'm a science teacher, and a new one at that, so I don't have all the answers. Some more googling tells me that of those who fail the test, about 50% are successful on their second attempt. Those who fail (more than once, I think) can take a remedial literacy course, successful completion of which eliminates the requirement of having to pass the test. So it is in fact possible to graduate without ever being successful on it. I don't know why the test isn't done earlier. But just because there's not a standardized test prior to grade 10 doesn't mean that there's no evaluation.

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katharina
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Whether or not you can think of a single exception, for the vast, vast majority of people, being illiterate is a horrible hindrance in life.
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Jhai
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BannaOj, the problem with your parental rights argument is that (I believe) we're all in agreement that parental rights are not absolute. They are limited by the community we live in.

You can't, for example take a whip to your child's body just because you want to. Heck, in this country you couldn't even do that to an animal if you wanted to. In both cases (child & animal), the community would decide that you're unfit to be responsible for that child/animal, and remove it from your care. The community does this for children & animals because, as a whole, we believe that the child & animals have certain rights - rights that they are unable to protect themselves. (Note that I think consenting mentally-competent adults should have the right to do so, if that's their thing.)

Moreover, since children are often unable to complain to the community at large about their rights being trampled, we, as a community, have decided that in certain cases some interference is acceptable in each others' lives to make sure that children's rights are being upheld. Sometimes this interference goes too far, IMO, but I do believe that some interference is required and just.

Obviously striking the right balance between protecting children's general rights and parent's rights to privacy is difficult - but still necessary. Thus, as a society we've decided that random health checks on children via home raids hurts the parent's right to privacy too much to be allowed - but checks on houses when a community member has raised a legitimate concern about a child's well-being is an acceptable imposition on the parent's privacy in order to protect the child's rights.

Now, let's consider education. Children, in this country, have a right to education. This is for their own good, and for the good of the community - a literate, well-educated populace is required in a developed economy such as the one we have. It also helps keep our political system running smoothly, as the voters are able to read and understand complex political positions.

Parents do not have the right to deny education to children. At the very minimum, this education needs to include the three R's. If parents do not choose to have their children attend the free schools the state provides to facilitate this education, they are required to provide alternative means.

But how are we to make sure that the parent is not ignoring a child's right to this basic level of education? Unlike a child's physical well-being, it is extremely difficult for a community member to casually observe whether the child's rights to a minimum level of education are being respected or not. But I don't think it's fair to any child to simply hope that parents will respect that right - especially when there's plenty of evidence that parents don't always do so.

So, then we're faced with the question of how to make sure the child is getting the education he has a right to, without interfering too much with the parents' rights. Some people have suggested one-time or occasional mandatory testing to make sure that the child is gaining the basic skills he has a right to. Some people prefer having a qualified community member (i.e. teacher) evaluate a child's work. In either case, it has been suggested that the checks must happen at a relatively young age (say 8) to make sure that the child will not be unduly disadvantaged by a parent who doesn't feel the need to fulfill that child's right to an education.

Do you think there's a better solution?

[ August 13, 2008, 06:14 PM: Message edited by: Jhai ]

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AvidReader
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I wonder how much of the homeschoolers' resentment to having to pass a test is based on the fact that public school kids really don't. Sure, they have to take tests, but what really happens if they fail and their parents still don't get involved? Not a whole lot.

Either the parent is involved and the kid is getting a comparable education, or the parent isn't and they're still probably getting one.

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MightyCow
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What's so unfathomable to me, is that some people seem to be arguing for the right of parents to only hold their own children to the absolute minimum standard.

When I was growing up, my parents fought tooth and nail to make sure that I had the most opportunities, the best education, and the greatest chances to do whatever I wanted to later in life.

It's a complete mystery to me why any parent would want to hold back their child by making an effort to insure that they have the right to an inferior education.

If you aren't giving your child a superior education to the public school system, why for all that's good and holy would you want to homeschool them?

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Shigosei
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I was formulating something similar to what Jhai just said -- this isn't a conflict between the rights of society or government versus the rights of the parents. It is a question of what rights children have and what the state may do to protect those rights.

So the question is, do children have a right to learn certain skills by a certain age? If we are relatively certain that failing to learn to read by a certain age will cause a person to be at a disadvantage for life, should we step in? Should we prevent deaf parents from homeschooling if we know their hearing children won't be exposed to spoken language at all?

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AvidReader
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quote:
If you aren't giving your child a superior education to the public school system, why for all that's good and holy would you want to homeschool them?
Depends entirely on who gets to define superior. My idea of the ultimate education is probably different from yours, theirs, and certainly from my old school district's. If one feels a child should be sheltered from the evil influences of the world to save their soul, the ability to read might be a secondary concern. If the idea is to empower them as an individual to discover their own capacity for growth, the idea of certain benchmarks at certain times is the antithesis of what they're trying to achieve.

Now, since the research shows that reading is tied to brain development and only happens fluently when the brain is in a certain state of flux, I would think providing that information to homeschool and unschooling groups should be enough to help the parents who are going to help their children. However, folks in charge have to remember that when all their suggestions tend to be phrased as orders, no one takes them seriously when they have a real command. People are going to blow them off because they always say you have to do certain things by a certain time.

Personally, I feel that education as an arm of the government bureacracy has misused its authority for generations now. The fact that they're shocked that people would rather opt out and rediscover the entire process on their own should be a wake-up call. The fact that schools and teachers tend to just jump on the rebels instead tells me that they don't understand their concerns.

I don't feel that schools as a whole have even attempted to engage these parents in real two-way dialog about what they can and can't accomodate. I feel that the schools are saying that they shouldn't have to.

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scholarette
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A lot of the schools don't feel like they can attempt to accomodate anything because they don't have that freedom. For the very bad school my husband worked at, the district provided a set lesson plan that the teachers were required to follow. And it was like on April 15, you will cover this material using this handout, there activities and these examples. So, he would have very little ability to modify for a student. And his principal would not be able to approve that either, since this is coming down from the district. Blaming the teachers at this point is not very productive.

I think a few requirements for homeschooled kids are necessary to protect those children. I also think that there are numerous possible fixes for the public school system, but that is a whole other discussion.

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MightyCow
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I still don't see how knowing math, science, and reading by certain developmental landmarks will prevent any parents from teaching their children to fear the outside world, shun technology, live as a unique and beautiful flower, or whatever ideology they want to instill.

I suppose that if the parent really wants to shelter the child, so much that they don't want their child to be able to make her own choices later in life or learn on her own, then it would make sense to intentionally stunt her mental development.

Otherwise, I'm having a hard time seeing any logical reason to hold your own child back developmentally.

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BannaOj
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AvidReader, well said.

Jhai, I don't believe a child has many rights at all. The guardian of the child is the one that grants the child any or all rights they may have. Until you are 18, a parent can legally claim any money a child earns as their own. A parent is telling a child the truth when they say "you don't have anything but what I give you." While there is mandatory reporting for cases of physical abuse, that is really the limit of the law. Children aren't generally allowed to sue their parents, even after they are adults for "emotional pain and suffering".

Education is a privilege, not a right. We live in a privileged society for the most part. Is society benefited by the majority being functionally literate? Yes. But the opportunity for education, is *not* some self-evident truth, like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Obviously virtually all parents homeschooling or not, want their children to read. Parents realize that their children will probably be better able to pursue happiness if they are literate. But, there is nothing that says that literacy is truly intrinsic to that pursuit. I am completely happy to leave this ultimate responsibility with parents, even if it means that at the extreme there might be a few (and I believe Very Few) illiterate homeschoolers wandering around. I do not believe the state should intercede in this parental decision. I don't believe there will be negative societal change by leaving this decision with parents.

For the betterment of the community, resources are far better spent on dealing with the illiterate public schooled children instead, where the parents have ceded the responsibility for their children's literacy to the state, is where the "community" principle should first be applied. I do have serious reservations about the public schools that were mentioned on the first page that were encouraging "troublemaking" kids to be homeschooled just so that the public school didn't have to deal with them anymore. Coercing a reluctant parent to homeschool isn't to the benefit of the community whatsoever.


A footnote: If you are talking about religious Christian fundamentalists, while they may not necessarily be for higher education, most of them *do* believe pretty strongly in literacy, in order for the children to be able to read the Bible if nothing else.

A 2nd footnote: The U.S. and Somalia are the only two nations that haven't signed the UN Convention for the rights of the child. I'm pretty sure that we haven't signed it because we do allow minors to be tried as adults in some cases. I dislike much of the language throughout the document, and am glad we haven't signed it, but it might be an interesting reference point for this conversation.
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/crc.htm

[ August 14, 2008, 02:17 AM: Message edited by: BannaOj ]

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neo-dragon
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quote:
Originally posted by BannaOj:


Education is a privilege, not a right. We live in a privileged society for the most part. Is society benefited by the majority being functionally literate? Yes. But the opportunity for education, is *not* some self-evident truth, like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Obviously virtually all parents homeschooling or not, want their children to read. Parents realize that their children will probably be better able to pursue happiness if they are literate. But, there is nothing that says that literacy is truly intrinsic to that pursuit. I am completely happy to leave this ultimate responsibility with parents, even if it means that at the extreme there might be a few (and I believe Very Few) illiterate homeschoolers wandering around. I do not believe the state should intercede in this parental decision. I don't believe there will be negative societal change by leaving this decision with parents.


Hold on one second. I agree with much of what you've said previously, but you've lost me now. It sounds to me like you're saying that because parents have a right to decide how (if) their children are educated, and children don't actually have a "right" to receive eduction at all (it being a privilege), the lesser evil is to sacrifice some children's education rather than intrude upon their parent's right to give them a shoddy one?

Sometimes it seems to me like people are so concerned about protecting their rights that they forget what they're for in the first place. I can't think of education as just being a privilege in a developed country like the U.S. or Canada where it is well within our means to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to receive one. In Ontario we have truancy laws that require kids to be in an "educational setting" (which can mean public/private school, homeschool, or even an apprenticeship) until they are 18 years old or graduate. I think the government's still working on a bill that makes it impossible to be issued a driver's license if you do not hold or are working towards a high school diploma or some equivalent. So you'll understand that I'm used to thinking of education not just as a right but an obligation. As others have said, sooner or later society expects its members to contribute in some way, and that doesn't just mean having a job. It means being able to make informed decisions that affect yourself and others. Reading, writing, and even basic knowledge of math and science are necessary to meet that end. So I think it's perfectly reasonable and sensible for the government to require a few standardized tests just to ensure that homeschools are producing reasonable results.

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Samprimary
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quote:
Moreover, since children are often unable to complain to the community at large about their rights being trampled, we, as a community, have decided that in certain cases some interference is acceptable in each others' lives to make sure that children's rights are being upheld. Sometimes this interference goes too far, IMO, but I do believe that some interference is required and just.
Yup. Good choice of words for arguing for regulating a basic level of requirement that parents provide working education.
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The Rabbit
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quote:
The true issue again, is that of parental rights. Homeschoolers believe they have the right to educate their children as they see fit. Many of them believe that they are mandated by God to educate their children that way.
There isn't only one real issue, there are two: Parents rights and children's rights. The exact argument you are making about parents rights to educate their children as they see fit can be made about all child abuse issues. Some parents believe they have a right to choose how to discipline their children, even if that means beating the child until bones are broken or locking them in a closet for years on end. At least some of them believe that they are mandated by God to discipline their children this way. In fact, I know of at least one case where a parent killed his infant son believing that he had been commanded by god to sacrifice the child.

Do you think that society is wrong to intervene when parents physically abuse their children? If not, what do you see distinguishes this from the homeschooling issue. In both cases their is a wide range in what members of society consider acceptable. In both cases, there are gray areas.


Since you are arguing about what one group "believes" is their right, let me tell you what I believe. I believe that children have rights and that it is the moral obligation of society to protect the rights of children. That is hardly a socialist idea. Even most libertarians agree that protecting individual's rights is the legitimate prevue of government.

I believe that children have the right to be taught the skills they need to succeed in their society. In a hunter gather society, all children should have the right to be taught to hunt and to identify edible plants. In a modern society like ours, all children have the right to be taught to read, write and do basic math.

If your right to swing your fist, ends where my nose begins, then parents right to educate and discipline and feed their children as they see fit, ends where the child's rights begin.

As a member of a democratic free society, I have the right to try to persuade others that children have the right to learn to read and to lobby government to protect that right.

The problem is that even if we agree on the existence of "inalienable rights", we clearly do not agree on what those rights entail. Its an exercise in futility to keep yelling "parental rights" or "children rights".

Give me some sound logical reason why parental rights to decide for their children are more important than the child's right to be taught.

[ August 14, 2008, 06:34 AM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]

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The Rabbit
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quote:
Originally posted by BannaOj:
I'm not anti-literacy by any means. I think literacy is a good thing in general. I'm not convinced that it is anywhere near a "one-shot-in-life" educational/developmental deal as being expressed here.

BannaOj, What evidence would you need to be convinced. There is a large body of studies that support the idea that reading is a skill which must be learned in childhood to be mastered. Are you familiar with these studies? Have you looked at the research but determined that it is too early to draw a conclusions from it. Have you identified some critical flaw in this research that leads you to believe the conclusions can be rejected? Or is it just that these conclusions don't mesh with your world view.

As an engineer, you should have been trained to evaluate situations based on sound evidence and to be skeptical of both your intuition and anecdotal evidence when they conflict with well established principals.

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The Rabbit
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quote:
The few documented young children who lived without interaction with other humans before the age of 5 failed to gain a high level of fluency in human speech for the rest of their lives, because they missed that crucial time period where the brain develops for language. Now, this doesn't mean that there couldn't be a few children who miss the 5-year mark, but still develop fluency, but, thankfully, there haven't been a lot of cases of young children with no human interaction.
It occurred to me that deaf-blind children might be a good case study for this. Although they aren't without human interaction, they have historically been with out language interaction during their earliest childhood years.

The case of Helen Keller occurred to me so I looked up some stuff on her. She was 7 years old when Anne Sullivan began teaching her sign language but clearly developed a fluency. Evidently her case has been studied as part of at least one broader study on deaf-blind children. One aspect of the her story that is not often told is that following the illness that left her deaf and blind at 19 months, she had a 6 year old playmate, Martha Washington, with whom she developed a sign language. At the time Anne Sullivan came to teach her, Helen had over 60 signs she used to communicate with members of her household and likely many more she used to communicate with Martha.

So while initially it appears she might be an exception, further examination shows that she was not without language interaction with people prior to age 7. She had language interaction for the first 19 months of her life (one of the critical formative periods) and she had invented a form of sign language she used to communicate with her playmate and members of the household. I should also note, that Helen Keller is unquestionably and exceptional individual in many respects. She graduated magna cum laude from Radcliff, something very few seeing and hearing people are capable of doing.

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Samprimary
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quote:
There is a large body of studies that support the idea that reading is a skill which must be learned in childhood to be mastered.
Given both stuff I've seen and stuff I know from studies of early development and cognition and effects on rates of future literacy and comfortable mastery, yeah. It's true.
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dkw
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quote:
Originally posted by BannaOj:


Jhai, I don't believe a child has many rights at all. The guardian of the child is the one that grants the child any or all rights they may have. [/QB]

AJ, are you saying that you believe this is true under our current legal system or that you believe this is true (ie should be so) in the "endowed by [insert theistic or non-theistic cause here] with certain inalienable rights" sense?
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Rakeesh
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I agree with BannaOJ that education is a privilege, not a right. Calling it a right undervalues it while appearing to enshrine its importance.

Rabbit,

quote:
The exact argument you are making about parents rights to educate their children as they see fit can be made about all child abuse issues.
Stop right there. Talk about some loaded language!

quote:

Do you think that society is wrong to intervene when parents physically abuse their children? If not, what do you see distinguishes this from the homeschooling issue. In both cases their is a wide range in what members of society consider acceptable. In both cases, there are gray areas.

There's really not a true gray area in the case of the broken bones closet-locking parents. Those parents are universally* regarding with loathing and contempt. As for physically abusive parents, the gray area starts to come in only when we begin to discuss minor** physical abuse, such as spankings. Minor only when compared to other things, of course. When we start to go past that to things like punching, kicking, boiling water, slapping, etc., that gray area swiftly fades away like fog in the sunlight.

So what distinguishes the homeschooling issue from physical child abuse is simple: certainty. As a society, we are certain that punching and kicking a child is child abuse, and that the child should be removed immediately from such a household. As a society, we have no such certainty about homeschooling. Far from it.

Society should have the weight of certainty or something close to it before it decides to trample over the rights of parents.

quote:
Give me some sound logical reason why parental rights to decide for their children are more important than the child's right to be taught.
It's a nice academic (no pun intended) question you've got there, far removed from the realities of the discussion. But here's an answer for you: I don't believe the parental rights are more important, but I also don't blindly trust society's interpretation of events correctly.

Everywhere we read stories of how social work is understaffed and underfunded and generally undervalued by the government agencies responsible for its upkeep. Here's a question for you: why should I trust society in general to make that call?

quote:
As an engineer, you should have been trained to evaluate situations based on sound evidence and to be skeptical of both your intuition and anecdotal evidence when they conflict with well established principals.
This is needlessly dismissive.
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Belle
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quote:
I think the government's still working on a bill that makes it impossible to be issued a driver's license if you do not hold or are working towards a high school diploma or some equivalent.
That is already the case in many US states, mine included.

I think that some homeschool proponents are looking at the idea of mandatory testing as being punitive, and I for one certainly don't look at it that way. Rather, I see it as not "checking up on the homeschooling parent to make sure he/she isn't messing up his child" but rather "seeing if this homeschooling parent needs additional resources or help in order to ensure the child is receiving the best education possible."

Consider this - homeschool parents are rarely trained to recognize learning disabilities. An example - I have a friend who teaches in a private school that is really a quasi-homeschool. The kids all follow self-directed learning, and she is mainly present as a facilitator. The kids and their parents are responsible for the pace at which the child progresses and which subjects the child studies.

She told me the other night about a kid who is driving her crazy because she can't read his handwriting. When she checks his work, the handwriting is illegible. He tells her that he knows the answers, he just can't translate it from his brain into a written form. My friend, who has a college degree but no training in education whatsoever, simply believed it was laziness on the child's part - he could make the writing better and more legible if he tried.

So I said it sounded like dysgraphia and asked if the child had ever been evaluated by a professional. She looked at me oddly and said she never heard of dysgraphia.

Well, if it is indeed dsygraphia, then that child needs help and intervention. He can be successful in school if he gets the proper intervention. If he doesn't, and progresses through life without it, then the chances of him being academically successful in life are severely limited.

Testing or evaluating at certain age groups would allow people who ARE trained to spot such things to offer intervention. Special education services are available at public schools for all children, not just the ones who attend there. I know a homeschooling parent who takes her child to the public school for speech therapy. No one is talking about removing children from the home or throwing parents in jail for being "bad" parents but rather stepping in and offering help when it's needed, recognizing that most parents don't have the capabilities to recognize problems.

And, please keep in mind, I'm no expert in identifying learning disorders, I've received very little training in it, but I at least know that things like dysgraphia exist, and know how to refer children for evaluation by experts. All I'm saying is that maybe parents need an objective outsider to step in and take a look to offer the help and resources that are available.

To me it's like medicine. I know my child better than any doctor, of course, but I don't know medicine. So, I can't diagnose medical problems in my children because I lack the training. I might suspect she has an ear infection, but I need a professional to confirm it and to treat it for me because I can't legally write prescriptions. And a doctor, with training and experience I do not have, might spot signs of an ear infection that I miss.

The added wrinkles is that a homeschooling parent feels a layer of responsibility for the child's learning. That can make some people even less likely to be objective and to spot potential problems because they may assume it will reflect badly on their own job as the child's teacher. (Certainly not everyone would react that way, but I think it's safe to say some would.)

That makes the use of an objective evaluation that is done for all children even more important.

I realize that I'm probably just re-iterating what others have already said quite eloquently in this thread, I just wanted to be sure people knew my reasons and thought processes.

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Belle
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quote:
Everywhere we read stories of how social work is understaffed and underfunded and generally undervalued by the government agencies responsible for its upkeep. Here's a question for you: why should I trust society in general to make that call?

Who said social services would be making the call? We're not talking about investigating child abuse, for goodness sake. We're talking about evaluating education which would be done by people trained in education.

I would suspect that the vast majority of homeschool parents who don't already do testing at age 8 would find their children sail through the testing with flying colors were testing to become mandatory at that age. I would not be surprised to find that homeschool students tested even higher in literacy than public school students.

For those students, that would be the end of it. Have a nice time, enjoy homeschooling, see ya at the next benchmark evaluation.

For those that didn't test at or above the benchmark, someone who is trained to evaluate children of that age would meet with the child and parent and talk about the test results. Probably this person would be a teacher trained in early childhood/elementary education. If literacy is the problem, then the teacher may call in a reading specialist, someone with training in evaluating literacy and diagnosing reading problems. If that educator felt there was a need to refer the child for evaluation for learning disabilities or special needs, then that referral would take place.

There are laws in place that govern a parent's rights to refuse such an evaluation already. There's no reason why, at that point, the situation can't be handled just the same as a public school student whose parents have been told their child needs evaluation. My experience is that parents can refuse, and often do, and the school then has steps it can take, but it's all spelled out quite clearly. I can find the exact procedures that take place at that point if you wish - my textbook for my exceptional education class is upstairs.

Nowhere in this process is social services involved, that I'm aware of.

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BannaOj
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quote:
Originally posted by The Rabbit:
quote:
Originally posted by BannaOj:
I'm not anti-literacy by any means. I think literacy is a good thing in general. I'm not convinced that it is anywhere near a "one-shot-in-life" educational/developmental deal as being expressed here.

BannaOj, What evidence would you need to be convinced. There is a large body of studies that support the idea that reading is a skill which must be learned in childhood to be mastered. Are you familiar with these studies? Have you looked at the research but determined that it is too early to draw a conclusions from it. Have you identified some critical flaw in this research that leads you to believe the conclusions can be rejected? Or is it just that these conclusions don't mesh with your world view.

As an engineer, you should have been trained to evaluate situations based on sound evidence and to be skeptical of both your intuition and anecdotal evidence when they conflict with well established principals.

Yes I have. I do not find the "expert opinions" and "expert science" to be as expert as you think they are. I have no desire to get into a competing "battle of experts". I can produce them, but you aren't going to believe them so what is the point? Unless you are going to criminalize the teaching of creation science, you can't criminalize someone for accepting one "expert" over another, even if you personally believe that expert to be profoundly wrong.

Let's just say I do not take the things as a given that you do, because I believe that many of the "experiments" were skewed by expecting a certain outcome, you could say the same about any expert I would produce, and the field of social sciences is far less exact than engineering. While the field of neuroscience is rapidly growing, I do not believe they have a handle on this either, it is still too new. The more they learn the more they know they don't know. I do not accept that this emerging field has the moral or legal authority to dictate how parents should raise their children.

For example, we all know that reading *to* children before they are school-age is a Very Good Thing. Are we going to criminialize "not reading to children"? Are we going to force parents to put their children in schools at earlier and earlier ages to ensure that those children get read to? We are already going down this slippery slope, and I'm not comfortable with the implications. Is not reading to one's children inherently "immoral"? And even if we call it "immoral" can we make it "illegal"? I'm not saying I like it. But I can't justify drawing the line any narrower than it currently is drawn.

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Belle
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quote:
For example, we all know that reading *to* children before they are school-age is a Very Good Thing. Are we going to criminialize "not reading to children"?
No, we shouldn't criminalize it, but we darn sure should make certain that every child has opportunities to be read to.

We offer story times at public libraries free of charge so parents can bring their children there to hear books being read. For parents that are unable to read to their children - we offer free adult literacy classes so they can learn how to read. We have library card drives and go out into the communities - like say, at large shopping centers - to make it easy and quick for people to get library cards. We have drives that give away books to parents.

Believe it or not, our public schools do some of this already - I know reading specialists who have promotions where they give free books and information on how important early reading is to new parents in hospitals. They use grant money and their community outreach budgets to accomplish it.

But if we're going to go to that much trouble to push early literacy, I think we also need to measure, in some way, the literacy of children so that we can offer even more help where it's needed.

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MrSquicky
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quote:
I can produce them
Are you talking about experts that disgree with the concept of cognitive windows/critical periods in general or about reading in specific? I'd love to see either, as it's not something I've ever come across. From what I've seen, this is extremely strongly established science. I don't really keep up on developmental neurology though and I am very interested in neural plasticity.
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BannaOj
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quote:
Originally posted by The Rabbit:
There isn't only one real issue, there are two: Parents rights and children's rights. The exact argument you are making about parents rights to educate their children as they see fit can be made about all child abuse issues. Some parents believe they have a right to choose how to discipline their children, even if that means beating the child until bones are broken or locking them in a closet for years on end. At least some of them believe that they are mandated by God to discipline their children this way. In fact, I know of at least one case where a parent killed his infant son believing that he had been commanded by god to sacrifice the child.

Do you think that society is wrong to intervene when parents physically abuse their children? If not, what do you see distinguishes this from the homeschooling issue. In both cases their is a wide range in what members of society consider acceptable. In both cases, there are gray areas.
...

Since you are arguing about what one group "believes" is their right, let me tell you what I believe. I believe that children have rights and that it is the moral obligation of society to protect the rights of children. That is hardly a socialist idea. Even most libertarians agree that protecting individual's rights is the legitimate prevue of government.


I believe that the limitations on the "free exercise of religion" with regards to a child' rights and child abuse, are *exactly* the same limitations that should be placed on homeschooling, precisely because many parents view homeschooling as a necessary part of their free exercise of religion. When society intervenes in such a matter it needs to be done with the same legal precision and care that happens when interfering in any other "free exercise of religion" action.

Now, not all homeschoolers, particularly the non-religious feel that they are exercising their religious freedom by homeschooling. I have read some interesting cases where a non-religious homeschoolers life would have been made much easier, if they justified their homeschooling under the "free-exercise" clause and they couldn't compell themselves ethically to do it.

There's a lot of irony there. This is why I do fall back to the "parental rights" concept because the standard should be the same whether religious or non-religious.

[Grumble] *curmudgeon* Homeschoolers today really do have it easier from a legal standpoint than they did in the old days. 25 years ago, parents *were* thrown in jail and lost custody of their kids, just for homeschooing, academic benchmarks be hanged.

edit: Or I agree with Rakeesh, like I should have done in the first place [Smile]

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MightyCow
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Some parents think having their children play with snakes is a free exercise of their religion too. I think all of us agree that when the exercise of religion harms a child, it should no longer fall under any kind of protection. As soon as religion becomes an evil, it needs to be stopped.
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