[greenthrow]

I grew up in the US and I hated every single day of school. I don't have a favorite teacher I remember fondly, I don't have friends from school, etc. I absolutely hated it.

But I still am against home schooling. I still got social skills from going to public school that homeschooled kids lack. I still don't think your average parent is equipped to give their children a good education.

I have people I know who have homeschooled their kids. Without exception these people are narcissists with insane views who are using it as a way to indoctrinate their children into having the same worldview that they hold.

Homeschooling should be illegal. It is child abuse.

[dijit]

Because what I was literally forced by the state to endure, is not child abuse.

Come one.

[greenthrow]

Yes some kids face abusive situations in public schools. But all kids are by definition facing abuse when home schooled imho.

[dijit]

> by definition

My mum never punched me in my face, followed me around the playground trying to put dog shit in my backpack, steal my books and piss on them or make rumours about me to ensure I was ostracised by the other children. All the while the adults were helpless and continually told me to be a man- and worse, the adults leaning in on it being my problem. A true hopeless feeling.

You will never know how much I can despise you for your presumption that my home-life could possibly be correlated with my school life.

“by definition”. Honestly, go fuck yourself.

[greenthrow]

Lots of kids home lives are worse than your school life. But that's not the point I was making. You are letting your personal horrible experience define the whole discussion for you. But that is completely beside the point I was making. Yes some kids are physically abused even tortured at school, some kids are physically abused even tortured at home. You don't make policy decision based on outlier cases that are already illegal.

[dijit]

“all kids are facing abuse by definition when home schooled” is still ringing.

By your own words here you should be agreeing with me, that homeschooling should be a legal choice.

That making a policy decision based on an outlier (home abuse) that affects everyone is bad.

[greenthrow]

As I explained in my initial comment, the problem is average parents are not equipped to be good teachers and homeschooled kids are being denied the variety of experiences that kids going to an actual school are getting. That's why I said all homeschooled kids are being abused by definition. Not the same type of abuse you got at school or I got at home. But they are being denied a proper education. They are being denied the opportunity to learn to make friends and socialize with different people. When it's time for them to finally go out into the world they will be poorly equipped to do so.

If I thought home schooling was a sure fire way to avoid violent abuse for any kids, maybe it would be worth the trade off. But we both know if anything abusive parents are also going to abuse their kids via home schooling.

I honestly think on the whole homeschooling is doing more damage to the kids being put through it and should be illegal. Obviously before actually doing that we should do scientific studies and surveys of adults who went through it and make a decision based on that rather than just my opinion. But right now we let parents do it just because extremist parents insist on it. And I think we are failing those kids.

[DoubleGlazing]

If it weren't for homeschooling my autistic daughter would be spending her day in the headteachers office shaking and crying due to her cripping anxiety.

[greenthrow]

I'm glad that you have a way to help your daughter. But there are many kids with similar issues and homeschooling can't be our solution for all of them. Instead we need to figure out how to accomodate them at schools.

[nickd2001]

Not sure about USA, but here in UK there are special schools for people whose autism really makes it unviable for them to be in mainstream school (whether that's a failure of the mainstream school, or just level of anxiety etc of the student). Such special schools are often wonderful, with the most amazing, dedicated staff. Usually staff have specialist training (albeit not always to as high level as one might like, due to underfunding) and much experience of working with autistic people. So, able to provide things that parents with no prior knowledge of autism, and jobs to go to and bills to pay, are less able to provide.