Why do they hate home schooling so much?

The answer is easy. They can't control it. Robin West recently did a hatchet job on "The Harms of Home Schooling." West is a law professor at Georgetown University. (Why am I not surprised when the attack comes from a teacher at a so-called Catholic university which should be a defender of the primary rights of parents over the education of their children?) West bemoans the fact that many Protestant fundamentalist parents are home schooling and doing it "with little or no oversight from public school officials, who in some states need not even be notified of the parents’ intent to homeschool."

Wow! what a horrifying situation! Public school authorities who often expose children to the glories of sodomy and abortion are being taken out of the loop by concerned parents. But West is appalled that home schooling has become a "widespread and thoroughly privatized educational practice that devolves full responsibility for a child’s education to whatever parent wants to claim it, which is not only legal, but virtually unregulated as well."

For lawyer West's information this was the same situation that existed in this country for two centuries when parents, not the state, taught their children to read and write and apprenticed them to learn a trade. She is also horrified that some of these parents might use the Bible as their primary curriculum. (Another widespread practice in Colonial and post Colonial America.)

West goes on to make a number of outrageous claims about "unregulated" home schooling, from the allegation that home schooled kids are likely to be physically abused (parents of the Columbine students might have an interesting take on this statement) to the claim that parents aren't qualified, curricula is probably deficient, kids miss out on being socialized, and that "poor" fundamentalist parents are probably economically depriving their children as well.

In view of massive research on the success of home schooling and the fact that children at home outperform their institutionalized peers by wide margins, West's article, which provides NO documentation to back up her outrageous allegations, is irresponsible. She wants state regulation by educational bureaucrats who in many places have failed miserably and are producing functional illiterates.

But I suspect West's real agenda isn't so much with what parents are teaching their children, but what they aren't. She espouses her agenda by quoting an opponent of homeschooling. "Robert Reich has persuasively argued, curricular review would give the state a way to ensure that the academic content is such as to protect the children’s interest in both acquiring the necessary skills for active, autonomous, and responsible citizenship in adulthood, and in being exposed to diverse and more liberal ways.

Ah! There you have it. Children schooled at home partly to protect them from "diverse and more liberal ways" that include teaching them to put condoms on bananas, reading about Heather's two mommies, safe touch and sex ed programs that sexualize them from Kindergarten, how to pray like a Muslim, etc. must be liberalized. As always, the foxes want authority over the chicken coop for the benefit of the chicks.

If you're interested in homeschooling you can read West's article here and a response by PhD Brian Ray here.