California Presumes Homeschooling Parents Are Child Abusers, Seeks Invasive New Restrictions
As California lawmakers continue their track-record of controversial decisions, one announcement in particular has caused an outcry for its overreaching presumption: that all homeschoolers must also be child abusers.
According to The Washington Examiner, the plan set out by lawmakers would be to force parents into proving to the government that they are, in fact, fit to be a parent.
The homeschooling parent — per legal requirement — would have to meet the government’s required checklist via home visits, interviews, and other oversights, effectively increasing the burden on the parent to prove themselves parentally fit.
And many have expressed concern over stripping away the legally protected option of homeschooling and deeming it as absurdly unconstitutional.
The decision seems to be in light of the horrifying case of David and Louise Turpin who were registered as homeschoolers to the 13 children that authorities found chained, malnourished and abused.
Setting logic aside, lawmakers have set their emotions to focus on the sole aspect of the couple being homeschooling parents, rather than the fact that there were psychological issues at play long before the couple even conceived.
It’s an extreme example to try and bolster the controversial plan to increase government regulations when it comes to children and their education, yet data about the benefits of homeschooling may work against them.
A recent piece by Chris Weller for Business Insider gives five strong reasons why kids in today’s world of technology, online classes and apps might actually be better-off than their publicly educated peers.
“Homeschooled kids have the same access to online learning, friendships, and extracurricular activities as the typical public school student,” Weller summarizes. “But without many of the drawbacks, like standardized lesson plans and bullying.”
Furthermore, there is little to no data that proves — or suggests — that homeschooled kids are abused by their parents or even at greater risk of being a victim of parental abuse, yet standardized lesson plans have routinely been called out by parents nationwide.
Lawmakers continue to use extreme cases like the Turpins and veiled data to prove their point, pushing out an agenda that criminalizes homeschooling — just one agenda among many which American citizens seem to be blind to.
“I’m routinely astounded by the degree to which Americans will be outraged by government abuses that take place in far-off lands, while remaining uninterested in similar abuses right here in their very midst,” wrote senior editorial writer Steven Greenhut for Foundation for Economic Education.
Greenhut’s article was one of many that chronicled the outrageous attempt at the liberal state to strip away fundamental basic rights, including that of every parent: to educate their own child as they see fit.
Though there are current laws that protect those parents, Greenhut cautioned America to take a closer look at just how far lawmakers will go to invade the privacy of a household, likening it to totalitarian countries where “anything not expressly allowed is forbidden.”
“Only someone with an ideological axe to grind could find illegality in the practice of homeschooling.”
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