The same laws that allow parents to create these thriving innovative settings allow parents like the Turpins to create private torture homes because theres no accountability.
Quote from beginning of Mother Jones article at beginning of thread.
Homeschools aren't particularly prevalent in the US, to my knowledge. I'm sure it could vary widely by state for a variety of reasons.
The religious freedom it offers parents seems to make it popular with fundamentalists. But there are parents who choose to school their children at home in a way that provides a far richer experience than kids could get at the local public or private traditional school.
I stumbled on this OT article. It is going to be controversial too, but it says less than 2% of kids are homeschooled in my state.
https://www.google.com/amp/host.mad...169da185-0095-53ef-81f1-986131c3bdc5.amp.html
The article mentions "unschooling" as a concept which I heard of in relation to a different large family neglect case (Nicole Naugler
http://m.wave3.com/wave/pm_/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=od:yrWwBDI5 )
Imho, in general, the homeschools are like private and public schools and even unschooling apparently. There are a few that are top notch and few at the bottom of the barrel, but most exist in the gray area in between.
I do see a theme of abuse in the fundamentalist patriarchal system. I see them as a disproportionate number of homeschoolers, imo. If they don't train the kids young this way at home, they find a "boarding school" to do it later. And that seems to be protected not so much by laws, but by powerful lobbies that hide behind religious freedom. My opinion, of course. Though, this was also in early Mother Jones article,
In recent years, lawmakers in at least five states have tried to pass measures to make homeschools more accountable. None so far have been successful, even in places with documented abuse. In 2015 in Michigan, which did not require parents to register their schools with the state, two children were found dead in a freezer in Detroit after, prosecutors said, their mother abused them and pulled them out of public school to homeschool them. The incident sparked a legislative effort that year to establish minimum reporting requirements, such as requiring kids to meet with a doctor, teacher, or other individuals twice a year and keeping records on which kids are homeschooled in the district. But the proposal failed to get even a hearing. Ellen Heinitz, the legislative director for Michigan Rep. Stephanie Chang, the lawmaker who introduced the measure and faced a barrage of angry phone calls from homeschooling parents, told ProPublica that year: Ive never seen a lobby more powerful and scary. They make the anti-vaxxers seem rational.
bbm
https://www.motherjones.com/crime-j...d-weak-homeschooling-rules-helped-them-do-it/
In the Turpin case, LT & DT seem to have taken the worst of the fundamentalist thinking and twisted it for their own pleasure.
Something else that keeps itching at the back of my brain while I think about how to stop these cases in their tracks. Years ago when safe surrender laws started taking effect, some states, iirc, initially allowed safe surrender of children & infants in addition to newborns. And it was a disaster, wasn't it? The laws were quickly changed? It seems the US doesn't know what to do with problem kids who grow up to be problem parents who can't teach the next generation.
I was reading a lot of quotes on evil last night, too. Evil does seem to be the problem here. Evil will find a way around a law.
