Negative CBS "report" about home schooling

Wow! I read the transcript of this crazy report, and I'm furious. And I'm not even a homeschooler yet!!
I sent feedback:
---RE: Vince Gonzalez' report on "Home Schooling tragedies"
I am appalled that your producers chose to run this story. I am not a homeschooler, but I appreciate the philosophy behind it. Parents who choose to educate their children at home many times feel that they (the kids) are exposed to too much violence and immoral influences at regular public schools. There is indeed an abnormally high incidence of violence in American schools (compared to other developed nations); would CBS conclude that public schooling is a deadly situation for children? Taking one horrible occurence and turning it into an example of a typical homeschooling family is just as preposterous as labeling Columbine as the typical public school atmosphere. This report is irresponsible, sensationalist journalism at its worst.---

This report is an excellent example of why I don't watch the news anymore. I figure if the sky is falling, Chicken Little will knock on my door and tell me about it!

Cheers to all you homeschoolers out there! You're all groovy in my book!

I just read the transcript of part two of this intelligent piece of jounalism

In explaining the qualifications needed to hs, there is this:

"Not one state requires criminal background checks to see if parents have abuse convictions."

Are they suggesting there *should* be background checks? Using this "logic" then, wouldn't ps parents need background checks too, since they spend time with their kids? And what about parents of the pre-school set? Shouldn't they be "protected" as well? Maybe we should just have criminal checks prior to conception, to make sure we cover everything. And, we wouldn't want to have any "accidents" before we could run those criminal checks, so maybe we need to mandate birth control.....

ARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!

Okay, rant over.

My college newpaper staff showed more intelligence and logic and journalistic responsibility than the people who produced this piece of_____.

Speaking of logic, how many ps kids are abused each year? Why aren't we blaming schooling for that?

Quote:
exactly my thoughts. Hey maybe they should just finger print all new parents at the hospital and remove any children born to qquestionable parents. But then you have those shady homebirthers who haven't passed all the standard government check points

Its too maddening to talk about

but I will do it anyway

I can'tbelieve the brought up Andrea Yates. For crying out loud she was psycotic. Which made her kill her kids. She was homeschooling for religious reasons. TOTALLY UNRELATED. As I can bet it is in most cases. Even people who abuse thier children while homeschooling probablydidn't make it thier choice to homeschool.

Ironically this just gives me one more reason to homeschool (no I don't beat my children) Apparently the function of the PS system isn't to educate our children to to monitor thier home life and keep an eye on thier parents. Don't get me wrong i think it is great that teachers are able to step in and protect children who are truely being abused but that doesn'tmean that that is the reason kids should go to school. Srry furiously ranting. I'll stop now. . . .

> To: [email protected]
> Subject: [Parent-DirectedEducation] CBS Eye on America Sponsors
>
>
> http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/...in577817.shtml
> CBS Evening News is running a segment on homeschooling
> Monday and Tuesday evening:
>
> This report will focus on a handful of child abuse cases involving
> "presumed
> homeschoolers". The intent of the report is to encourage further state and
> federal government regulation of homeschooling.
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i'd heard of this story from my homeschooling groups but we don't have broadcast tv so i didn't see it. thanks for posting the link to the transcript.
this is exactly the sort of reporting that has always fueled my disgust for broadcast journalism.
that said, i'd like to offer another perspective on why this story was produced.
i worked in daily journalism for a decade, at a mid-sized newspaper, and my husband still works for the largest paper on the west coast, and i freelance for them a bit. i can't say with any certainty that the same observations are true for t.v. news, but i suspect it's so, as they're all owned by the same corporate entities now.

i didn't realize this at the time i was a reporter, but journalists and editors are all completely immersed in mainstream culture, as much as we like to believe we are outsiders looking objectively at the people and organizations we cover. only fringe/alternative media outlets truly succeed in seeing through the cultural memes that we all unconsciously accept. (and i know i still unconsciously accept a lot of cultural memes that i can't even see for beliefs yet, they just feel like the way things are to me.)

i don't see a vast conspiracy here to undermine our rights to homeschool. i see a newsroom full of people who work long, hard hours and, if they've managed to find time and energy to have kids, never think to question whether other people should be raising and educating their children.
to them, the choices i have made are hard to fathom. i really believe it simply never occurs to reporters or editors to question medicalized birth, institutional education, compulsory medical treatments and so forth.
so, i don't think it's such a big leap for them to connect these horror stories to homeschooling (although you could just as easily have titled this report "the dark side of rural living" or "fundamental religions" or whatever other beliefs and behaviors tie these unfortunate families together) because i'm sure it seems unnatural to them to cling to your children and keep them home even after they turn five years old.

i don't know if that makes anyone feel better, but thinking it through helped keep me from making myself anxious with paranoid thoughts about whether i was going to be able to homeschool my kids in the future.

fwiw,
warmly,
susan

Homeschooling regulation will not stop abuse (does anyone really believe that if only the government could enforce curriculum and testing that parents would not abuse? : Oh, right, it's not about that, it's just an excuse to get someone in there to look at the living environment just to make sure that the kids aren't eating out of the garbage or something. Like most abuse is that obvious. ) And regulation does infringe pretty seriously on the rights of human beings (who just happen to be children.)

But so does abuse from family members. I don't believe that parents own their children anymore than the government does. No human being has the right to own another or do something to it against its will. And some parents do abuse, and children have no way to get away from it when their parents isolate them from anyone who could possibly recognize what is going on and help. We know this is going on. So it is important for there to be some sort of system in place for advocacy and protection of children. One, however, that cannot in itself violate children's civil liberties. Ha ha. Ha! That's a good one, right? I know, I know. And as far as my own family goes, the government is going to come into my home and tell me and my kids what we can and can't do over my dead body. Seems like there's just no good solution.

Quote:
It's not a big leap. It IS however, not an intelligent leap. Not a logical leap. Not a responsible leap.

Journalists, of all people, should be questioning things, investigating, yk?

It's not simply that I don't like what they said, it's that it's so far from accurate, truthful reporting, as to be slanderous.

Suggesting that more laws are needed to control hsers because of this one, sad, troubled family, maligns all the other homeschoolers out there.

Quote:
I don't think anyone here is being paranoid. My rant, the other day was to point out the stupidity of the line of thinking--I wasn't forcasting life in the future. I think others were responding in kind.

Personally, where I live, I think that any restrictive legislation that might be proposed would be loudly challenged by the hs community. But I DO think that news reports like this one serve to color people's images of homeschooling and may, truely lead to someone introducing legislation to control/supervise hsers. Especially if the media goes unchallenged.