Anti-homeschool pundits are on the attack after a Washington, D.C., mother, Banita M. Jacks, brutally murdered her four children several months after pulling them out of public school. The children’s godmother claimed that they were to be “homeschooled,” but so far there has been no evidence that this ever happened.
While the horror of this terrible tragedy causes many of us to grieve, media and government bureaucrats have begun using the story to call for more state intrusion into the family home.
The New York Times editorialized that lax homeschool regulations afforded this mentally ill mother the power to keep her children from the “prying eyes of teachers, social workers and other professionals who otherwise might have detected signs of abuse and neglect of the girls.” But while it is important for adults to be aware and able to respond to any child in need, does a government school teacher’s job description include the use of “prying eyes”?
An associate professor at New York University, Mitchell L. Stevens, was quoted by the New York Times as saying that school officials are “society’s best watchdogs of how parents treat children.” Stevens stated that “home schooling removes children from a lot of that surveillance.”
Surveillance? Of families? By government school officials?
To his credit, Stevens spoke the truth in acknowledging that the majority of families home educating their children are “overwhelmingly trustworthy people who place a very high value on parental autonomy.” But he added that the Home School Legal Defense Association is largely responsible for “getting the law to favor parental rights.”
Responsible for “getting the law to favor parental rights?”
Since when did the Constitution not favor parental rights?
In response to Jacks’ murder of her children, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty of Washington vowed “to establish better tracking and monitoring of homeschool families.”
Is this a government official promising to secure “better tracking and monitoring of homeschool families?”
Is this America 2008? Or is it Germany 1936?
Constitutional ignorance aside, this tragic event and the succeeding media/academic/governmental pontificating bring up a valid point – Are home-educated children in greater danger of violence than public-schooled children? Let’s look at the evidence.
A National Center for Education Statistics, or NCES, report using data from the 2005-06 School Survey on Crime and Safety arrived at several disturbing conclusions:
- Students ages 12–18 were victims of about 1.5 million non-fatal crimes at school, including thefts and violent crimes.
- Six percent of students reported they had carried a weapon on school property during the previous 30 days.
- Ten percent of male students in grades 9–12 reported being threatened or injured with a weapon on school property in the past year, compared to 6 percent of female students.
- There were 14 homicides and 3 suicides of school-age youth (ages 5–18) at school.
- Twenty-four percent of students ages 12–18 reported that there were gangs at their schools.
And, sadly, there are countless news stories about teachers sexually preying on students, including some teachers who actually murder students or encourage them to murder others. For instance, last May, a high school teacher experienced in wrestling attempted to strangle student, Ashley Reeves, by using his forearm to break her neck. He left her in the woods to die before searchers thankfully found her alive 30 hours later.
Is your child’s public school teacher mentally sound?
An Alabama high school, enrolling only 110 students, experienced tragedy when a teacher, Sharon Rutherford, had sex with four high school students and enlisted one of them in a plot to murder her husband, also a school teacher.
Is your child’s small town school exempt from teacher madness?
And then in March, a man fatally shot 18-year-old student Sean Powell for having sex with his wife, who was a teacher at Powell’s school.
Is your child being sexually lured by a teacher and being placed in danger as a result?
Perhaps it’s time for American parents to do some “prying,” “surveillance” and “monitoring” of the public schools they so eagerly send their children to.
So is homeschooling a safer option than public schooling? Apparently, safety is an important reason most people choose home education.
According to another NCES report titled “Homeschooling in the United States: 2003,” “Eighty-five percent of homeschooled students were being homeschooled, in part, because of their parents’ concern about the environment of other schools … including safety, drugs (and) negative peer pressure.”
Perhaps the bureaucrats yearning to “pry, monitor and surveil” homeschool families by increasing state control and regulation could benefit from the extensive research conducted by Dr. Brian Ray, founder and president of the National Home Education Research Institute. The NHERI studies concluded that “the home-educated are doing well, typically above average, on measures of social, emotional and psychological development. Research measures include peer interaction, self-concept, leadership skills, family cohesion, participation in community service and self-esteem.”
In fact, the examination determined that the “degree of state control and regulation of homeschooling is not related to academic achievement.”
In other words, home education is highly effective without a government nanny at the door. Professor Stevens was correct when he said homeschoolers place “very high value on parental autonomy.”
So to all the bureaucrats interested in implementing ever-more intrusive and unnecessary state watchdog groups over homeschool families, I can speak for us all.
Bug off.
Related special offers:
Why homeschooling? New resource gives reasons parent education trumps all other options
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“The Harsh Truth About Public Schools”
“Whoever Controls the Schools Rules the World”
Olivia St. John is a freelance writer with almost 20 years of experience as a home educator. Her work has been featured in several online publications, and she is currently working on a book promoting home education.
