The Risks of Homeschooling

So kids have to go to school to be saved from abuse but then they get to go home after school?

That's not how society works for some reason. You don't get to criticize "necessary" institutions like schools. Child abuse according to convictions for violent crimes against kids, almost always happens either at school, or related to school. Either on the way, or at events related to school, from dances to after-school clubs. About half by other children, half by various adults. Teachers are a big group, the number PE teachers getting convicted is surprising. Probably partly the problem is that some people get jobs like PE teacher BECAUSE it's a great way to abuse kids. And we all know they're not doing it for the money.

If you said that child physical or sexual abuse by natural parents doesn't exist at all, you're only a little removed from reality. For some reason everybody thinks this is what has happened to every youth services kid, when in fact it's like 1 in 200 or less. Acquired direct family abuse is a little more common, but still low single digit percentages of the total.

Children are much less at risk of abuse at home than at school. Perhaps that's a cost worth paying for an education, I don't know, but it's a fact.

And the moral rules of our society are weird: you don't get to criticize institutions, or society itself, even when they damage people and have negative influences. America's prisons, being the number one example. I'm not saying schools are bad, but they definitely have a darker side. Both kids among themselves and people kids get in contact with because of school lead to child abuse much more often than things people keep focusing on, such as stressful home situations or addicted parents.

Even when child abuse does happen at home, it is pretty common that an external influence is the underlying cause. A single mother or even father being forced to work, for example. Work, which entails leaving her kid home alone for extended periods. Or a single father working as a truck driver. What would you suggest they do? Or parents getting arrested. Or people with serious disabilities having kids, then finding it impossible to care for them. People with serious mental limitations (meaning not crazy, just very low intelligence, like Down syndrome) can and will have kids, but these kids experience more problems often called child abuse, but in those particular situations it's actually more common that by the time the child is 12 or 14 it's the child doing the abusing.

And even then research suggests that in such situations, there's a lot the state can do to end the abuse, and there may be very little the parents can do. Even some research was about an experiment that allowed parents (mothers) in jail to take care of their kids in prison, rather than having them in institutions or foster care. This meant the kids sleep in prison, not locked up, and the parents get some leeway to do things like attending PTA meetings. This works a lot better than foster care for the children, and for the parents and society (meaning they commit less crimes in the future). This sounds absurd until you realize that in some prisons "locked up" is a relative term, and the only thing that prevents prisoners walking out is the threat of relocation to a prison with actual locks, with for example prisoners working, individually, outside of the facility.

And not just locked up, but locked up in a house made of books while the other children play outside. And the books are Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Bible. With Arithmetic misspelled.

In France education is mandatory until 16yo. But you can choose to do it at home as long as you tell it to the city and Education nationale (which is state school administration)

Never heard of a year exam (apart from the mandatory ones around 11 and 17 yo) but you (in theory, sometimes they don’t) get a yearly visit from an Education nationale inspector to check if you are doing right and the kids are not left too behind the cursus.

They have the power to force your kids back to school, but I’ve never heard it happens to anyone in our (close) community

FWIW, I find the premise to be rather outrageous. However I submitted it to HN in the hopes of a lively discussion. She does actually make some valid points, although her suggestions seem to be a prime example of “throwing the baby out with the bathwater.”

[0] https://arizonalawreview.org/pdf/62-1/62arizlrev1.pdf

[1] https://arizonalawreview.org/homeschooling-parent-rights-abs...