EPTHomeschoolers are not usually isolated communities.
US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1608
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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please. In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. | ||
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Bigtony
United States1606 Posts
Homeschoolers are not usually isolated communities. | ||
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Nyxisto
Germany6287 Posts
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oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
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Millitron
United States2611 Posts
On January 31 2015 08:42 oneofthem wrote: government's right to do so and so is always an imperfect argument, a proxy for 'what is the desired outcome.' fact of the matter is the child deserves high quality education, and this is a children's right issue not a government right issue. you are treating the child as some sort of attachment to your kingdom. this is just not going to work. if you are arguing for high quality homeschooling, okay. but detached from quality i do not see the sovereignty argument at all. Have you seen public schools recently? They're by-and-large deplorable. In Buffalo, NY, they consider it a smart class when 80% get a diploma. And the standards are so low for that diploma many can barely read. The average reading level of high-school students in the US is 5th grade. If this is your definition of high quality, I feel bad for you. I wouldn't worry about parents doing a poor job homeschooling their kids when the public school system can get away with results like that. | ||
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farvacola
United States18827 Posts
On January 31 2015 08:39 Bigtony wrote: There are very few regulations for homeschooling in most places (it varies considerably from state to state), but across the board they are hands-off (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling_in_the_United_States#State_requirements). I don't think I need to argue the position that it's my right as a parent to teach my child whatever I want as long as it does not bring them to physical/emotional harm. The government does not get to decide what type of life outcome is preferable to another. If I want to homeschool my kid and guide them to a life of living in the woods, farming, and otherwise living off the land that is my prerogative. It's not the government's right to coerce me to do otherwise. You are arguing against the status quo, not me. You can guide your child on to whatever you wish, though you sound like you're talking about pets rather than progeny, but I digress. Irregardless, society and the government by extension has a profound interest in providing every individual with the right to choose their own destiny and the right to be taught about the "basic" aspects of the country they are born into. There's this funny phenomena that develops in these homeschooling debates. Those who espouse individualistic ideas as to how they should get to parent as they choose seem to conveniently devalue the right to autonomy when it concerns their children. By sheer virtue of how the child-parent-government chain of authority works, a parent will always have de facto control over how they raise their children. But let's not confuse raising with controlling. It is in literally everyone's interest but self-interested parents that children are guaranteed a basic set of opportunities in light of their eventual majority status, particularly if we are going to value autonomy as a society as strongly as we claim to. A basic education, home-schooled or not, is the best way to achieve this goal. Edit: lol, "y'all see Buffalo? Public schools are awful. Just ignore Central Ohio, Northern Virginia, most of the state of Massachusetts, and literally hundreds of other locales throughout the country!" | ||
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Bigtony
United States1606 Posts
A basic education, home-schooled or not, is the best way to achieve this goal. Absolutely. My argument is that in a society that values freedom as highly as America you are looking at an impossible problem defining "a basic education." At this point we do not have a widespread homeschool failure or abuse problem with only the slightest of barriers to entry (regulatorily speaking), so why regulate? By definition an average implies that just as many communities are ABOVE average as BELOW average. Some communities graduate with 12th grade + reading levels, I'd say the median is probably around 8th grade and then their are your below average communities. These outcomes are usually caused by a myriad of factors, not just the local school (which itself is going to be government by local economic and social issues). | ||
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oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
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Millitron
United States2611 Posts
On January 31 2015 09:00 farvacola wrote: You can guide your child on to whatever you wish, though you sound like you're talking about pets rather than progeny, but I digress. Irregardless, society and the government by extension has a profound interest in providing every individual with the right to choose their own destiny and the right to be taught about the "basic" aspects of the country they are born into. There's this funny phenomena that develops in these homeschooling debates. Those who espouse individualistic ideas as to how they should get to parent as they choose seem to conveniently devalue the right to autonomy when it concerns their children. By sheer virtue of how the child-parent-government chain of authority works, a parent will always have de facto control over how they raise their children. But let's not confuse raising with controlling. It is in literally everyone's interest but self-interested parents that children are guaranteed a basic set of opportunities in light of their eventual majority status, particularly if we are going to value autonomy as a society as strongly as we claim to. A basic education, home-schooled or not, is the best way to achieve this goal. Edit: lol, "y'all see Buffalo? Public schools are awful. Just ignore Central Ohio, Northern Virginia, most of the state of Massachusetts, and literally hundreds of other locales throughout the country!" The NATIONAL average reading level of high-school students is 5th grade. It's not just Buffalo that sucks. | ||
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oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
On January 31 2015 09:00 Bigtony wrote: It has everything to do with what you're saying. You said that it HAS TO be regulated so you can identify cases of failure. I'm saying it doesn't have to be regulated because there is an entry barrier and "failure" will be no more likely than attending a public school. that's very specious, the selection effect is real but parents can be motivated to homeschool for wrong reasons. the kind of regulation we are talking about pertains to the quality and content of the education. this is not about succeeding 100% of the time, but setting standards so success can at least be defined. | ||
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Bigtony
United States1606 Posts
Defining failure is meaningless unless you are doing something about it. Once you hit a certain age it doesn't matter if the student (or the school) has failed, they're removed from the system. | ||
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oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
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farvacola
United States18827 Posts
On January 31 2015 09:04 Millitron wrote: The NATIONAL average reading level of high-school students is 5th grade. It's not just Buffalo that sucks. lol, you're teaching a lesson in poorly executed exaggerative rhetoric, so thank you for that. When you're done going from very specific to very general in order to maintain your posture, it won't be hard to see that public education has succeeded in some states and locales, and has performed quite poorly in others. Where those lines fall ends up looking like a pattern with major and varied exceptions. States with red legislatures and blue city governments tend to be where one sees a lot of the most poorly performing public schools, and behind almost every one is a decades long history of incompetent administration, latent widespread racism, and crushing poverty. Money most certainly does not fix all problems in education, but the association between well-funded public schools, academic success, and general prosperity is very obvious. On January 31 2015 09:09 Bigtony wrote: It's not specious because you're applying a higher standard to homeschoolers than you are to private schools and even public schools. The number of parents deciding to homeschool for the "wrong" (again, define "wrong" in a way that can withstand a constitutional challenge in America) reasons is lower than the number of people abusing their children in the general population. There's no reason to regulate a problem that doesn't exist. The law should not ASSUME that a parent who makes a conscious effort to homeschool is an abuser. A parent should not have to prove they are not an abuser. Defining failure is meaningless unless you are doing something about it. Once you hit a certain age it doesn't matter if the student (or the school) has failed, they're removed from the system. Your logic is not consistent because you are misunderstanding what is being argued. Regulation does not presume a problem, it presumes an appropriate function of government relative to the functioning of a society and the protection of the rights of said society's members. All homeschooling parents are not to be presumed abusers. All homeschooling parents ought not be presumed to be "teachers" in the civic sense either. | ||
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Stratos_speAr
United States6959 Posts
On January 31 2015 04:54 GreenHorizons wrote: I fail to see how stripping employees of the ability to functionally collectively negotiate helps those employees? It doesn't. Conservatives will just pretend it does because their entire economic ideology revolves around giving a select few people the most resources and power possible and relying on them to be incredibly altruistic. It's really hard to take your post seriously when it contains such nonsense as your quote of "Additionally, the vaccine eliminates any potential further complications and long-term consequences, and prevents an otherwise unpleasant disease". Shingles for starters. Then your rant in the last paragraph which makes little sense. HPV vaccine is relatively new for starters, so to attribute any sort of positive outcome from it defies reason. Besides, you don't contract HPV like the flu. It's a virus that is spread by one way. Go get educated, and come back and talk. This is incredibly ironic considering the fact that pretty much everything you've said is 100% baseless and completely defies all education and science. Ignoring all of that - if I want to teach my kid that aliens are real and pork chops come from Satan (and will make you grow hair on your palms if you eat them), that's my own business, not the government's. No, it isn't only your business. Teaching them certain false claims isn't in-and-of-itself harmful, but it's incredibly harmful to teach someone racist, sexist, or discriminatory views, or that some random holy book written thousands of years ago trumps all science (or similar claims). Despite your selfish views, your child is not your property. He/she has the right to a basic level of education, and therefore deserves to be protected from a parent that wants to sabotage his/her education at a young age, which is incredibly harmful for the rest of their life. As a side note, I think we got fairly side-tracked when I brought up home schooling as an example. Home schooling isn't actually that much of a problem, since the people who are dedicated enough to home-school their children are usually good enough to give them a high-quality education. The problem is when these home-schooled children are taught things like "scientific facts are debatable opinions" or "our holy book trumps science" or things like this. As I mentioned before, it isn't just a problem in home schooling, but is actually even more of a problem in states in the Deep-South, where parents and random lawmakers are dictating what is taught in schools (e.g. not allowing evolution or climate change education, or forcing teachers to teach Creationism alongside evolution as an "alternative opinion"). | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States23231 Posts
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oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
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Mercy13
United States718 Posts
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farvacola
United States18827 Posts
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Slaughter
United States20254 Posts
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IgnE
United States7681 Posts
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farvacola
United States18827 Posts
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