Help protect home-school children

Tag : children's suits


Home schooling is an effective way to balance family time whileeducating children at a pace that suits them. Statistics and mostpersonal accounts support that.

However, recent incidents in which children have been neglected andabused while enrolled as home-schoolers demands state lawmakersconsider more stringent oversight of home-school families.

The unfortunate deaths of 4-year-old Sean Paddock and 13-year-oldTyler McMillan are not home school issues, really, as much as theyare child abuse and neglect issues. Regardless, because bothchildren learned from the home, teachers and other outside adultswere not able to intervene.

No one was there to see the warning signs of abuse. Quite often,public and private school employees intervene and report suspiciousbehavior to social service officials. Sometimes schools are able tosave good kids from bad parents.

But there is no one to protect home-schooled children from abusiveparents.

Because of that, home-school families should be willing to submitto more oversight, perhaps in the form of occasional visits fromsocial workers.

Most parents who teach their children at home do so to give theirkids a leg up and to protect them from unwanted outside influences.That effort should be applauded.

But sometimes, the unwanted influences come from within the wallsof their own home.