Originally Posted by Technocratic_Utilitarian

The fact that it was watched on PBS is irrelevant.

Originally Posted by Technocratic_Utilitarian

And that's piss poor home schooling standards. If you can teach "creationism" in the science curriculum and virtually ignore evolution, the standard is a joke, period. The state standards are crap then, which proves my point for me. It's too lenient. It gets worse though. Here's an example of just how crappy home schooling quality standards are:

"According to the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), an advocacy group for home schooling that has been instrumental in getting more permissive home school legislation passed in many states, 25 of the 50 states have no regulations governing home schooling except a requirement that parents notify a local public authority that they have set up a home school." Moreover, "of these 25 states, (ten) do not even require parental notification."

Essentially, the home school system is a free for all in 25 of the 50 stages, given there are virtually no regulations governing quality in a half of them. Of that half, 10 don't even need to notify a public school nearby that they are going to use home schooling. At best, all the parentso do is go "lolz, I am gonna home school!" and create Jesus Camp. That's poor, just as I said it is.

There aren't even good statistics on the quality of instruction. This should be no surprise, given 10 states don't even require anyone to be notified of homeschooling.

Another interesting fact is that many of the statistics that show home schoolers do well...are unreliable and biased. For example, some studies indicate that home schoolers did better than public schoolers on the Iowa Scholastic Achievement test. What the home school associations didn't bother to say is that not everyone takes this test, often, the test is in an uncontrolled home environment..given by the parents, and almost 10,000 volunteers opted out. This is absurd.

http://www.stanford.edu/~reich/other...ing%202005.pdf

Originally Posted by Technocratic_Utilitarian

A lot of states, as my article indicated, have poor or nonexistent standards, and home school agencies want it to stay that way. Some do not. Your website has links to 50 states, and when you click on them, you get their State DoE website listing the standards for public education. The information is available to all, even if they don't look at it. Showing, say, NY standards doesn't refute the fact that 10 don't even require notification and 25 are either so poorly regulated or not regulated at all.

That's like pointing out beating your children isn't bad if one person ends up turning out okay.

Originally Posted by Chan

But then I provided the second link:

Here are some relatively recent changes made in New York State:

Originally Posted by Technocratic_Utilitarian

The fact that it was watched on PBS is irrelevant. The video actually gets worse when you watch the DVD of it. Not better.

The "standards" for homeschooling are often poor or poorly enforced in the United States. That's why you can have parents nominally cover "evolution" but then teach creationism as the "real" theory. They can purchase specific religious content from organizations like Discovery Institute and give only cursory recognition to valid scientific theories.

Originally Posted by Technocratic_Utilitarian

Uh-huh. Whatever. If you say so, okay. Irrelevant, still. It's a credible academic source. Moreover, the other source you provided doesn't contradict my source anyway. In fact, it's vague as hell and only covers 1 state. I never all states have no standards. I said many have poor regulations, poor standards for homeschooling. They do.

Originally Posted by Chan

Oh, so it's okay for your damned government indoctrination centers to brainwash people but it's wrong for parents - WHO ARE THE ONLY ONES RESPONSIBLE FOR EDUCATING THEIR CHILDREN - to do so?

There not your kids: keep your damned hands off!

Of course, it's clear that you have animus toward evangelical Christians based on your comments. Therefore, nothing you say is valid. What you SHOULD have gotten from Jesus Camp is the danger posed by those Christians who are following after dominion theology and/or Christian Reconstructionism.

Originally Posted by leviathon435

This reminds me of a classic Humphery (from Yes Minister) quote: "parents are the worst people in the world to raise children, they've got no qualifications to do it!" But there is some sense to what he says, we wouldn't expect parents to perform surgery on their children, or to cure them of a serious illness, we'd leave it to the professionals. And so the same should be true for teaching, no child should be taught by anyone other than a qualified teacher.