[eurleif]

>Just because they're largely minors doesn't, to me, mean that their parents have the right to deny them a future in favor of whatever their personal reasons may be. Yes, this is an infringement on the 'rights' of parents, but I don't think parents have the right to treat children like property in the first place.

So the issue is that the parents are forcing a decision on the child, in violation of the child's rights? What if the child wants to be homeschooled?

[MattHeard]

Let's suppose that children have a claim-right to high-quality education. This claim-right implies that someone else has a duty to provide a high-quality education for those children.

Generally, that duty falls upon the parents and/or upon the state. The state attempts to fulfill its duty by attempting to provide high-quality public education for all children. Parents attempt to fulfill their duties by (1) providing their children with access to high-quality, public education; (2) providing their children with access to high-quality, private education; or (3) providing their children with high-quality education at home.

Many people disagree with the priorities of these duties (for example, whether the primary duty is on the parents or on the state) and many people disagree with whether any particular example of education counts as "high-quality" (for example, whether a particular teacher is doing a good or bad job at teaching a particular child).

Some people don't believe that children have a claim-right to high-quality education.

My opinion is that a child's claim-right to high-quality education is only violated when neither the state nor the parents provide this high-quality education. States generally provide public education in order to relieve parents from having to fulfill this duty themselves (because of cost or incompetence), while some parents choose to provide this education themselves or privately because they believe that the state fails to fulfill the duty because the education is not "high-quality".

There are people who fall outside of all of these groups as well, and I don't intend to dismiss them. Most people, however, fall into these groups.

With this interpretation of the claim-right of children to high-quality education, it is irrelevant whether the child wants to be homeschooled.

Here's a question: do children have a power-right to waive their claim-right to high-quality education?

[kevingadd]

That would be fine with me, but we have precedents establishing that minors are not well-equipped to make important decisions for themselves (at least until they're older). So I don't know if they can actually make that choice.

I know a couple kids who preferred homeschooling, but mostly because it was easier than going to school. That was to their detriment later on when they started college. I don't know if that makes it wrong, though. Education is definitely not one-size-fits-all.

You could make the libertarian/capitalist argument that if a child is really lazy and wants to do highly relaxed homeschooling that won't prepare them for college, that's fine, and they can just accept never having a good job or lifestyle, I guess? I don't really like that.

If the parent prefers homeschooling but doesn't have the time/energy to do it right, is that similarly fine? Or do they have an obligation to deliver their children an adequate education, just like they have an obligation to feed and care for them (otherwise the kids will be taken away)?

[eurleif]

Anecdote time: I was not just homeschooled, but unschooled. Unschooling basically means that instead of my parents teaching me, I was expected to learn on my own. They provided some direction and assistance, but they weren't especially well-equipped to teach, and I was always free to choose not to learn something, which I absolutely did do out of laziness sometimes.

I got very into programming, and when I was 18, I launched a Web site which succeeded wildly, and has been paying my bills ever since. I did fine on the SAT, and I had a 4.0 GPA during the year I spent in college. (I left after that to run my company.)

My feelings on unschooling are complicated. Knowing how it turned out, there is no way I would go back in time and make my parents send me to school. But I can easily imagine alternative outcomes where I end up dying in a ditch instead of starting a company. I don't think I would ever unschool a child myself.

But since I'm happy with how unschooling turned out for me, how can I support a law denying those potential benefits to everyone else? That's essentially a law against what caused me to be who I am. I'm fairly certain that if I'd been sent to school, I wouldn't have started my company. It was the result of endless hours of tinkering -- time I wouldn't have had if I'd been busy with homework.

It's a bit like doing a startup versus working a normal job. If you do the startup, you might lose all your cash and fail; but you also have a small chance of winning big. High risk, high reward. The job will give you consistent pay, with no chance of losing your hat; but also with no chance of a big win. Low risk, low reward.

High risk certainly isn't for everyone, but imagine a world where no one ever took risks.