Deaths of Children Blamed on Home Schooling . . . Again

Recently an article in the New York Times titled Lack of Supervision Noted in Deaths of Home Schooled has raised interesting discussion in the home school community on how the media ostracizes home schoolers for choosing to educate their children at home rather than send them off to a government run institution.

Banita Jacks has been charged in the deaths of her four children ranging in age from 5 to 17. According to news reports she claims that they were possessed by demons and died in their sleep despite evidence of stabbing and strangulation. According to the Washington Post and MSNBC five different government agencies had contact with the family before the deaths of the children. There is a list of reports against the mother that agencies closed or failed to follow up on because what amounted to incomplete or inaccurate information. MSNBC is now reporting that six D.C. employees have now lost their job for mishandling the case. Despite evidence of mental illness and drug abuse in Ms. Jacks, once again home schooling is taking the blame for the deaths of children. This happened in the case of Andrea Yates, this happened in the case of the Warren Family as well as the case of Deanna Laney. In fact, in 2003 CBS did a remarkable job exposing The Dark Side of Homeschooling as they called it.

The blame is being placed on the lack of regulation in home schooling not on the questionable job that agencies involved with investigating these families did. If there had been one of the "systems watchdogs", as it worded in the New York Times article would that have guaranteed these children were not killed by their parents? Would it have encouraged social workers to do their job properly? Maybe, maybe not.

Home schooling just seems to be the easiest thing to exploit in these cases, where if someone had been paying close enough attention, could have been prevented. The media wants to play up and sensationalize lack of regulation in home schooling because of the lack of public school officials not being in a position to see the children almost every day. Meanwhile, the majority of the people who read these articles wonder how it was government workers dropped the ball, where were the other family members and friends that normally have contact with the family, where were the neighbors? Blaming home schooling and lack of regulation is a weak excuse at best. Treating home schooling like it is a societal problem is a way to sell papers and get ratings.

The Organization of Virginia Homeschoolers has issued a statement on their homepage stating that, "news stories have highlighted several isolated cases of child abuse and presented them as indicative of problems in the homeschooling community, because they happened within families who claimed to be educating their children at home. Some of these reports have suggested that Federal or state regulations requiring background checks and monitoring of homeschooling families would minimize such cases of child abuse.

The Organization of Virginia Homeschoolers acknowledges that in our society there are people who neglect, abuse or isolate their children. These people exist in all walks of life, and their children are educated in public, private, and home instructed environments. Fortunately for our society, these people are the minority. Neglectful or abusive parenting is not a homeschooling issue. It is not unique to the homeschooling community, and statistically is not more significant in the homeschooling population.

Child abuse is a societal issue. Examples of abuse exist in all educational settings. There is no method of education that guarantees child abuse won't happen, or that it will be detected if it does happen."

Child abuse is a problem of society, not a result of home schooling. It would be nice if the media could acknowledge that instead of making the home school community out to be one of the evils of society.