This is about rights. I have a right to privacy. I have a right to be secure from government intrusion without just cause.

Are you supporting Senator Leahy’s efforts to restore Habeas Corpus? Are you opposed to Bush openly breaking the FISA law and listening in on phone calls without a warrent?

I should hope so. But in your case I’d have to argue the government has just cause to force you to do a little paperwork if you want to homeschool your kid. It is society’s business if your kid gets taught.

Good luck.

“Do you? Which taxes?”

Umm, property taxes. Isn’t that how education is paid for? We all pay for the schools.

“What system?”

The system of professionals who are obligated to report suspected abuse, including doctors, and the system of child protective services.

“When my mom was a teacher…”

I’m guessing teaching was her job. And she got paid for it, right? Yeah, I thought so.

Reporting to the state isn’t my job. The almost $40 I spent on it won’t be reimbursed. (I have added in the postage, now that I have gone to the post office.) Teachers get a $250 income tax credit for out of pocket expenses related to teaching, also. (not homeschoolers, though)

And I spend all year documenting the learning. I spend an additional 10+ hours preparing reports for the state.

And since “homeschooling is what you do all day in lieu of working a regular job,” I should not have to take time away from my three children to comply with excessive regulations.

This isn’t about it being too bad that I have to do all this. It is not the biggest deal in the world to comply with it.

This is about rights. I have a right to privacy. I have a right to be secure from government intrusion without just cause.

As for the high school questions, I will answer briefly. This is not a homeschool blog. In fact, this isn’t even a homeschool post. 23 minutes of the podcast are not even about homeshooling.

Lots of people homeschool high school. There is an abundance of resources out there. I am not worried about any subject. I have a BA in Math, with a minor in political science. Plus, two years of advanced physics and chemistry with labs. Bob has a BA in English and studies computer stuff (that’s a technical term) in his spare time. If there is any area that we are not strong in, there are classes, co-operative, the option to take some classes at a school, and other options.

We’ll be fine, thankyouverymuch.

I hope I wasn’t too harsh with the homeschooling questions in my last comment. Didn’t mean to be. Sorry if I was.

*AHEM*

Do you? Which taxes?

Seems to me that there already is a system in place to catch neglected children.

What system? Going to the doctor?

I’m sure most teachers would play the world’s smallest violin for the 10 hours you spent documenting your children’s learning. When my mom was a teacher, she’s spend 2 hours a night doing that sort of thing (AND paid for a lot of her materials herself). 10 hours in a year is nothing, especially considering that homeschooling is what you do all day in lieu of working a regular job.

I’m sorry it’s a pain to have to prove you are homeschooling, but that’s life. There’s got to be some system in place for that, or you would have parents letting their kids run the streets all day while claiming to be homeschooling. You know that’s true.

Just out of curiosity, what are you going to do when the kids get to high school age? You can’t possibly have the level of knowledge about all the different subject areas taught in high school. Can you really teach high school Chemistry, English, Volley Ball, Trigonometry, etc.? And what are you going to do when a student walks out of class? Suspend him from home? What about sports or drama club? Things like that. Those things are valuable.

I can see almost see homeschooling working at the elementary level, but I’d imagine it get trickier and trickier the older the kids get. And then what about college? One thing I know is that isn’t for me. I’ll be happy to send my kids to public school. Anything I have to teach them I can teach them in the evening and on weekends. And I want my kids to be with other kids and learn how to deal without their mother or me around. Luckily, my Commie Soviet wife feels the same as me about it.

What I said was that it does not have any compelling interest in “making sure a homeschooler isn’t creating moron.”

Let me put it another way, our society has an interest in arresting thieves.

Does it then follow that there is a compelling reason to require you to prove that you are not a thief?

We are supposed to be presumed innocent. However, homeschoolers are assumed to be doing something wrong just because they are doing something different.

This year alone, I have spent at least ten hours (and that is an underestimate to be sure) gathering materials and filling out paperwork, not to mention over $30, excluding postage, in order to prove that my kids are being educated.

I pay taxes to support the public schools. I pay for all of my own homeschooling materials. AND I spend time and money to prove to the state that I am not doing anything wrong, even though they have no reason to think that I am.

I just took my 4-year-old son to a doctor for a checkup and she gave him the third degree (do you ride in a car seat, what kind of foods do you eat, do you wear a helmet, etc) and concluded that he is the most articulate four-year-old she has ever met, and she couldn’t believe his advanced sentence structure.

Seems to me that there already is a system in place to catch neglected children.

It’s not like homeschoolers live in caves.

What I want to know is, when are the public schools going to stop churning out morons?