ARE HOME SCHOOLERS CHILD ABUSERS?

"Child abuse, as defined by the Child Maltreatment 2002 report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human services, is defined rather broadly. While the overall statistics legitimately portray parents as the most likely perpetrators, it also includes things such as mental and verbal abuse, which is not what most people are considering with regards to the homeschooling issue.

In keeping with these broad definitions, 58.3 percent of the abusers are women, which should help indicate the definitions are not limited to the extreme abuse about which most people are concerned with regard to the issue at hand. Fortunately, the report breaks the statistics down into highly specific segments which are informative and very useful.

The maltreatment report reveals three problems with the idea that public schooling will help prevent child abuse. First, the vast majority of child fatalities - 82.3 percent - occur before the child has even reached school age, while 40.1 percent of all abuse does. Even if the public schools were made mandatory, no teacher or principal could possibly help a 2-year-old. According to the report, 166 children between the ages of 5 and 17 were victims of lethal child abuse, which is less than one-fifth of the 836 children who died in school-related transportation accidents!

Second, the likelihood that evil pedophile parents will keep their children in order to sexually abuse them seems unlikely considering the following facts. Of the 88,656 cases of confirmed sexual abuse in 2002, 16,210 were committed by parents. Despite having far less time and opportunity than parents, teachers and day-care providers were responsible for 15,098 such cases. In fact, the number of confirmed sexual abuses committed by educational personnel represents almost a quarter of the total cases of all abuses accurately reported by educational personnel.

The third problem is that teachers simply don't make for very reliable reporters. Educational personnel were the single most likely group to make unsubstantiated claims of child abuse. Their 179,098 unsubstantiated claims represented 17.1 percent of all such claims, even higher than the percentage reported by the notoriously inaccurate social services personnel (12.4 percent) and anonymous reporters (11.9 percent.). A case of abuse reported by an educator was 2.83 times more likely to be determined to be unsubstantiated than it was to be found true upon professional investigation, while another 176 abuse claims made by educational personnel were intentionally false.

The reality is that although child abuse is a horrific evil that even moral relativists can find the moral outrage to condemn, there is simply no way to eliminate it completely without eliminating every last vestige of freedom in America. As the sexual-abuse statistics indicate, even permanently removing every child in the country from his parents would not eliminate such abuse, indeed, it might well increase it instead by giving more time and opportunity to the teachers and day-care providers who are molesting children at a greater per-capita rate than parents.

But the real question underneath it all is this: To whom does a child belong? The child either belongs to the state or to the parents. There is no middle ground. And considering the long, lethal history of the relationship between governments and children dating back to King Herod, turning to the state to prevent child abuse would appear to be rather similar to relying on the National Socialists to protect Jews....

It is not an accident that public schools were a major component of the Communist, National Socialist and Fascist party programs; conservative parents who believe their neighborhood public school is excellent would do well to examine precisely how excellence in education is defined by the educationist elite."

From Vox Day:




POLITICIANS TRYING TO DUMB DOWN AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITY EDUCATION EVEN FURTHER

Under the "Dawkins" reforms all sorts of teachers' colleges and the like got rebadged as universities. But even that did not lower standards enough, apparently. But allowing more private institutions might save the day

Australia would be home to hundreds of boutique universities and colleges within a decade if the Howard Government's push to open tertiary education to the private sector were a success. Incoming University of Melbourne vice-chancellor Glyn Davis said last night that higher education in Australia was "on the threshold of radical change" and predicted a US-style three-tier system with more private colleges and fewer big research universities. "A shortfall in public funding, an eager private sector and international competition all challenge a regulatory system designed in an era before the world wide web of trade liberalisation," he said.

Current guidelines stop teaching-only colleges from becoming universities, because they do not have a research output. The Howard Government is keen to relax the protocols and open the market, because the trade-off for badging more universities is that the Government can meet increasing demand for places without using public money.

Professor Davis's prediction came as debate flared over the definition of a university, after the release last week by Education Minister Brendan Nelson of a report on their role. That report leaves open the possibility of a new breed of smaller education providers called university colleges or university institutes with specific focuses, and flags the need to open up the tertiary market in Australia. Report author Gus Guthrie, a former vice-chancellor at the University of Technology, Sydney, said the review was designed to encourage diversity.

Professor Davis said the 1988 Dawkins reforms, which overhauled tertiary education by fusing teaching colleges and research universities, were outdated. "A decade from now ... there are 20 or more universities operating in Melbourne alone, and many more than a hundred across Australia," he said. "Some are the familiar large research universities ... but most of the new entrants are small and specialised."

Speaking at the inaugural Melbourne Politics lecture, Professor Davis said the first tier would probably be made up of private and public community colleges offering diplomas, associate degrees and the vocational fields now provided by TAFE. The second tier would be public and private teaching-only institutions, some ranging across disciplines and others with specific focuses. The third tier would include a small number of public and private research universities, which would be the only institutions qualified to award research qualifications such as Masters and PhD degrees. He said the system, used in California for half a century with great success, could work only with a regulatory body independent of government. "(It) has produced the best universities in the world, public and private," Professor Davis said.

Source






ANOTHER TRIBUTE TO THE CURRENT AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

Somebody get Nicolas Cage's new wife, Alice, an American history book - and quick! Spies at the L.A. premiere of "National Treasure" last week said Alice, 20, seemed befuddled when someone talked to her about the Declaration of Independence. "She looked at them and said, 'What is the Declaration of Independence?' " our witness relates - an account confirmed by another attendee. Cage, 40, quickly came to the rescue and said, "I'm sorry - please don't ask my wife any history questions." Another source said, "Nic is so odd - a day before he married Alice, he was asking friends for advice because he didn't want to go through with the wedding. He just can't be alone." Cage and Alice met on Valentine's Day at a sushi joint where she was a waitress

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

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