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Homeschooling requires some degree of investment in the child, even just to keep them occupied or tolerate their presence. School provides free childcare for lo

Homeschooling requires some degree of investment in the child, even just to keep them occupied or tolerate their presence. School provides free childcare for long periods of time. I don't think the majority of abusive parents will ever homeschool their children, because most are not believers in teaching an abusive ideology but rather have simple personality disorders. "Homeschool makes it easier to hide abuse" presupposes that abusive parents are planning or organizing abuse which is plainly not true in the majority of cases. Like the Satanism panics of the 1990s demonstrate, elaborate imaginings of complex sadistic rituals that are necessarily rare[0] bordering on nonexistent, tend to capture the public mind and suck oxygen away from treating the totally unattractive (not even in the capacity of making for a true crime special) real problems. If you want to see this on TV, the last season of The Wire was about it. [0] There were actually a spate of ritual killings in Liberia through the 1970s, proving humanity capable at least and making the issue to be one of reasonableness.

escapedmoose 3y ago
Unfortunately, of the 4 people I know personally who were homeschooled, it was a vehicle for abuse for 3 of them. One friend’s mom wouldn’t teach him the curriculum for months, and then when she knew a test was coming up she would make him study with her for 14 hours a day to try to cram it in. Then when he naturally performed poorly on state exams he was punished (often physically) for not trying hard enough. She regularly woke him up for classes when she wanted to be awake at 2 or 3 am, then later after her afternoon nap at 6 or 8pm. He grew up constantly tired, without a regular schedule of meals, and never made it to the group outings because he felt sick all the time. Another friend’s mom just couldn’t be bothered to teach and just took her out on “learning” hikes with other homeschooling moms, never taught her anything, and wound up sending her back to public school with severely (I mean severely) underdeveloped skills after being held back for several years. Neither of these parents I’m sure “planned” to abuse their children in this way. They just weren’t up for the task of teaching in the way that a child requires, and their own personal issues turned that into a larger problem. But my friends suffered for it.
- whatshisface 3y ago
  I don't think it's ever going to be possible to separate the outcomes of homeschooling from the selection of parents who desire to homeschool, but this overall neutral study (I'm not really arguing that homeschooling is a great thing just that it is okay) doesn't find evidence of the three out of four thing that you encountered extending to the whole population. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8580227/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8580227/ My honest sympathies to your friends.
  - escapedmoose 3y ago
    From your link, homeschooling is… > negatively associated with college degree attainment (RR = 0.77, 95% CI: 0.67, 0.88) and possibly with greater risk of posttraumatic stress disorder. I’m sure I’m just unlucky and that the 3/4 abuse ratio doesn’t hold for the broader population. Higher rate of PTSD is suspect though.

escapedmoose 3y ago

Unfortunately, of the 4 people I know personally who were homeschooled, it was a vehicle for abuse for 3 of them. One friend’s mom wouldn’t teach him the curriculum for months, and then when she knew a test was coming up she would make him study with her for 14 hours a day to try to cram it in. Then when he naturally performed poorly on state exams he was punished (often physically) for not trying hard enough. She regularly woke him up for classes when she wanted to be awake at 2 or 3 am, then later after her afternoon nap at 6 or 8pm. He grew up constantly tired, without a regular schedule of meals, and never made it to the group outings because he felt sick all the time. Another friend’s mom just couldn’t be bothered to teach and just took her out on “learning” hikes with other homeschooling moms, never taught her anything, and wound up sending her back to public school with severely (I mean severely) underdeveloped skills after being held back for several years. Neither of these parents I’m sure “planned” to abuse their children in this way. They just weren’t up for the task of teaching in the way that a child requires, and their own personal issues turned that into a larger problem. But my friends suffered for it.

whatshisface 3y ago
I don't think it's ever going to be possible to separate the outcomes of homeschooling from the selection of parents who desire to homeschool, but this overall neutral study (I'm not really arguing that homeschooling is a great thing just that it is okay) doesn't find evidence of the three out of four thing that you encountered extending to the whole population. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8580227/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8580227/ My honest sympathies to your friends.
- escapedmoose 3y ago
  From your link, homeschooling is… > negatively associated with college degree attainment (RR = 0.77, 95% CI: 0.67, 0.88) and possibly with greater risk of posttraumatic stress disorder. I’m sure I’m just unlucky and that the 3/4 abuse ratio doesn’t hold for the broader population. Higher rate of PTSD is suspect though.