"Drabek-Chritton has owned the home in the Twin Oaks neighborhood near McFarland since 2005, purchasing it from Habitat for Humanity."

Sigh.

Sounds like that Rebecca Long case in Carnation a few years ago. I wonder if they shared child abuse tips.

Childhaven.org

Homeschooling should be illegal. I don't give a shit that 99.999% of people who do it are just religious idiots and not physically abusive, it's fucking retarded.

Vince,
Donation made.
Thx.

@6

You can keep on missing the point, that's cool, whatever works for you. Also, my elipsis is bigger.....................................................................

@8 Yes. Complete with standardized testing.

I'm a pretty smart guy. Graduated Valedictorian of 8th grade and top 1% of a fairly large high school. Graduated from UC Berkeley. Was actually asked to teach my high school English and Algebra classes on days when there was a substitute teacher. Taught a student-led class at UC Berkeley.

But there's no way in hell I'd feel equipped to properly home school my kids all the way through high school. Sure, I'd be fine covering all subjects for younger grades. But could I teach high school-level English, history, chemistry, physics, calculus, and a foreign language? No. There's a reason high schools have teachers who specialize in one or two subjects and aren't expected to master every single one. I would feel I was doing my child a disservice by trying to home school them past a relatively young age.

@5 Thank you Allyn. You're an alright guy.

@10

trololololo.

see, i just assume this is what's happening in ALL homeschooling residences. i haven't had any experience to tell me otherwise.

the only parents i've ever met who homeschool are narcissistic and crazy. and those that i've met that were homeschooled are socially retarded, confused by science, and crazy.

Monsters are real, and they live among us. They are pictured in that article.

The fact that the girl was home schooled (or rather, was claimed to be) is about as consequential to the fact of the abuse as the fact that their house had a basement. Which is to say, it may have facilitated concealing the abuse, but it didn't cause it.

I'm neither religious nor a parent. But every time I read about kids having their lunches inspected or being hauled off in handcuffs for popping an aspirin, I have a lot of sympathy for people who aren't inclined to turn their little darlings over to the state 5 days a week.

@4 and 11: I'm with you. We're a engineer and physican, Berkeley and Yale, speak a bunch of langauges, traveled the world, etc.

And we're not qualified to teach everything a good classroom teacher does, so we pick those classroom teachers carefully, and supplement the curriculum a ton.

There absolutely are exceptions to moronic fundies doing homeschooling to avoid evil, secular influences. And they're held up as homeschooling successes when they win spelling bees or somesuch (sometimes after practicing only that for 6 hours a day, every day).

But in my area? >25% homeschooling! Public school almost functions like a magnet school for literate parents.

@6 @4 yeah, home-schooling is kind of like gun ownership: great in the theoretical world where most people are caring, strong, and trustworthy members of the community; dangerous because the people likely to partake are paranoid and prone to act against society's interests.

Vancouver (BC) school board has a homeschooling stream that includes class trips with other homeschoolers, quarterly assessments/goal setting, and access to 1/2 day of classes 2-3x/week. It's a decent blend of the freedom to allow your child to progress at their own rate and protection against the dangers of having kids grow up without any outside interactions.

Gotta give props to home-schooling advocates like #10, whose grasp of the fundamentals of grammar, punctuation and capitalization is so solid.

And #20.

@4: I was home-schooled, because there are places where it's literally the only solution (rural areas, where schools aren't present). My siblings and I turned out happy, healthy, and normal. Just because some people abuse something doesn't mean that something shouldn't exist. I bet you know more people who were home-schooled than you realize.

@16- Me too! If I had a kid getting bullied to death in my local MS/HS, I'd be home schooling him/her as well. BS on schools that won't protect our kids from soul-destroying bullying.

Yes, there are some instances where homeschooling is the only answer. But generally, I agree with @11 & @17, homeschooling much past fourth grade isn't helping children learn and to try to teach high school subjects is insane. It is pure selfishness on the part of the parents to homeschool. Public school isn't perfect, and is generally crap, but it is 100% better than keeping a child from the outside world. Most of the homeschooled kids I see are slightly nutty, and I see a lot of them in retail bookselling.

Oh, and guess what? there are places that the few responsible parents who homeschool send their kids to learn what they cannot teach them. In Atlanta, Ga. they are called "homeschooling academies." I have a friend that teaches reading comprehension/lit and writing to middle schoolers and high schoolers. She says she was surprised at home many of her students are "professionals"-- athletes (gymnasts, equestrians, etc.), kids trying to make it in acting or something in the Arts. She said there are also kids with mental or physical illness who have too much trouble in traditional classrooms. So, like I said there are exceptions.

It really depends on WHY the parents homeschool. A lot do it to keep their kids from the evil influence of the outside world, and that nearly always turns out badly. But many do it because their kids need more personalized attention, have issues that make a standard classroom untenable, or, as someone pointed out earlier, are pursuing athletic or artistic careers that don't fit in with a standard schedule.

Most of the people I know who want to homeschool are very well-intentioned, but they get overwhelmed pretty quickly; it's HARD to teach for 6-8 hours a day. Especially when you aren't getting paid for it and you don't get to send them home afterward. And I can't think of a single person I know that I'd feel was qualified to teach all the courses required at the high school level.

Oh, and holy crap, I just went and looked at the pictures of the monsters. Are they brother and sister, or is it just the evil coming through that makes them look so alike?!

We did homeschooling for my kid for the last half of 3rd and the entire 4th grade. We didn't really have a choice, though. The adults at my son's school were turning a blind eye to the intense bullying my son was enduring, only to write him up when he finally had enough and blatantly refused to go out to recess.
The experience wasn't bad, though there were a lot of things I would have to refresh my memory on the night before I taught it to him. It helps that my friends and family really came together for us. Thus his class load was split by 5 people, with each person taking a subject or two to teach that they were good at explaining. We only stopped and put him back in public schools at the start of 5th grade because we were finally able to move.

@ 8 and 22 Consider registering - lots of people will miss your comments because they are avoiding trolls.

@4 - None of the homeschool parents I know are religious nuts OR abusive; they homeschool because (a) they have gifted kids and underfunded local schools that can't teach them, and/or (b) they don't want their kids to be bullied to death.

If homeschooling required regular meet-ups with school or county officials, stories like this wouldn't happen AND people could retain the freedom to give their kids a better education when they can. Let's employ some common sense and measured responses, mkay?

If you're in a upper-middle-class community and liberal parents are homeschooling, it's more likely because there's an objective need for something different - bullying, highly-gifted, emotional issues not easily addressed, etc. In my conservative, rural area, I've seen some homeschooling done well and an awful lot done poorly. In part, perhaps, because the state funds homeschooling.

@4 and the like-minded.

Fuck off with your pompous and out of touch view of homeschooling. (as if sending your kids to public schools keeps them safe...it gets better, etc)

There is a huge network of secular home schooling. Home schooled children on the whole do better than average in life/college/careers.

Welcome to the future. The internet has more educational resources than any school library. Most cities have a plethora of additional outside-the-home classes, coaches, get-togethers, etc.

Your sad little brick schoolhouse with it's focus on the lowest-common-denominator, cutbacks on art/sports/creativity, shitty food, lack of exercise can't compete.

@8

Standardized testing, LOL. That's a main component of what is screwing up the existing public schools. 90% time cramming on facts, little time actually learning or inspiring children to explore. For a bunch of liberals, you folks sure like GW Bush's idea of education.

I respect teachers, I do. But you guys are fooling yourselves if you think that the government knows best how to prepare your kids for the future.

@36

Yes, that's exactly what those of us who are breaking away from the mindless public school system need: meetings with 'county officials' and the public school.

Horrible shit happens, some people are just evil, sick fucks but you can't legislate evil away. Your knee-jerk reaction is the same reason we have an over-bearing Homeland Security force, why we went into Iraq, why I have to go through the silly undressing farce at the airport.

Because one family is sick, doesn't mean you subject the entire country to some new big-brother legislation so that you can pretend to feel safer.

How do you protect children like this? You stop relying on the government and get your asses out of the house to meet your neighbors. Learn who is in your neighborhood, develop a watch program, connect with the kids and let them know its safe to talk to adults.

Won't stop evil from occurring altogether but it will stop evil from changing our country into Orwell's mastubatory fantasy.

Alright, done ranting...just as someone who's pulled their head out of the public school sand recently I can see sharply how prejudiced and ill-informed many of you are on the subject of modern homeschooling.

How do you protect children like this? You stop relying on the government and get your asses out of the house to meet your neighbors. Learn who is in your neighborhood, develop a watch program, connect with the kids and let them know its safe to talk to adults.

Yeah, it's so much worse to have a social worker check in now and then than to have every old biddy in your neighborhood trying to interfere in your personal business.

connect with the kids and let them know its safe to talk to adults.

That'll work really well for the girl being starved to death in her parents' basement.

If you're going to fall for the most absurd anti-government claptrap, at least admit that the logical conclusion of your refusal to make a few minor sacrifices for the common good (like allowing a social worker to check in now and then) is that kids will be starved, beaten, raped, and murdered by their parents well outside of the public eye.

Refuse to admit even that, and you simply out yourself as a selfish, pathetic piece of shit.

I'm a queer homeschooling parent of two. I'm feeling pretty gobsmacked that so many folks think the problem with this family was homeschooling.

Last time I checked, middle school and high school were no party for "our" kids. Homeschooling is an ethical choice having not one damned thing to do with abusing your kids.

We should hold a vote to eliminate a parent's right to home school. It's unnatural and usually used as a front for child abuse. It's for the children, after all!

@38 good points. Our argument here is falling into the classic Dem/Repub divide, which boils down to an individual's gut feelings: who is more trustworthy, individuals or the government? There are plenty of scary individuals (many of whom tend to be gun-toting, bible-thumping, home-schooling science-haters). I fear them and want the government to protect their children, me, my community, other peoples' rights, and the future from them. You fear the government more, and think it's a problem of society oppressing individuals. There's some validity to that. Who's more right?

@11, 17, 37, etc.: I know homeschoolers, and none of them fall into the evil category, but none of them fall into the well-prepared category, either. All of them are avoiding secular/liberal influences, and conversations with the parents about basic science/math facts reveal vast ignorance, which I think is what allows people to plunge in ... they have no fucking idea. I think it's part of the general erosion of respect for the profession. "I was a student once, therefore I am qualified to be a teacher!"
Case in point: A former HS classmate desperately IMing me for help figuring out the most basic of algebra problems ... he's teaching algebra! We haven't touched on his creationism, although I know it's there. He's teaching biology and astronomy!
I applaud people who are doing a good job at it, although I haven't met any. I know they exist, but I haven't met them. I find this depressing.

In Alberta you can do "distance learning" where you can take various subjects at various grade levels online for a small fee, and you learn by reading lesson pdfs and a textbook, and can ask a teacher for help via email. I used it to do biology in high school when it wouldn't fit into my timetable, and I wish I'd done all of grade 7-9 that way due to horrendous bullying.

I'm going to be rather arrogant and say that I'd probably do a much better or equivalent job teaching my (hypothetical) children science and math, but I can't imagine the effort it would take for me to teach all of the material that they would receive at a school. It would take up far too much of my time and put all of my effort so far to waste (I'm not working hard at school to give up my dream career and be a homeschooling housewife).

On a side note, if I have children, I'm totally putting up blackboards around my house for us to do math on. It will be the best house ever.

The homeschooled kids I know, now well into adulthood, had parents who were back to the land hippies living in the back of beyond. For one, it worked out well - she's farming and training horses, and the way she grew up was very useful to her. For the other - she chose to go into the school system for the last two years of high school. Her teachers were very impressed with her intelligence and self directed attitude - a little too impressed. They puffed and praised and patted her, and off she went to McGill, only to promptly crash and burn because she just did not have the solid grounding she needed to do first class work. What she knew, she knew well, but there were great gaps in her knowledge, in areas that neither she nor her parents had been interested - they just hadn't bothered covering that stuff. It was a long hard frustrating slog for her to get a degree, in a smaller and less competitive school.

How the fuck can anyone treat another human being like that - especially their own child?

@39 "Yeah, it's so much worse to have a social worker check in now."

Go and find the most recent census data. Calculate how many children there are in America (hint: ~74 million). Now take a wild guess how many government pre-emptive parole officers you'd have to hire to make sure every last child is safe from their parents by going house to house.

"That'll work really well for the girl being starved to death in her parents' basement."

Shame on you for shifting blame for this terrible event from the sick parents to the government. It's a childish fantasy to think we can regulate and police all evil from the world.

The number of basement-prisoners in America is probably far less than one discovered per year. So your brilliant plan is to create an entire infrastructure of parent-cops because of this extremely rare case?

If you want to protect kids, forget the home-schooled basement-prisoners. Accidents, Homicides, and Suicide are the biggest threats to kids 15-24 so we'd be better off letting cops enter into every family's home on demand, install government tracking GPS chips on our kids, and enforce a tight nationwide curfew for those under 25.

@48: The various governments already hire scads of people to educate the kids who do go to school. Since relatively few kids homeschool, it wouldn't be that difficult to hire some people to check up on them.

I have a friend who has home schooled her kids. The younger (16) is already taking college courses. They even did Bible Study in terms of actually studying the Bible, complete with the flaws and fallacies. No one in that family subscribes to a religion, so it was more a case of critical thinking and literary study.

Of course, she has problems in that the home-schooling community IS mostly religious airheads. So she seems to be the exception to the rule.

I live right near this neighborhood. This girl was found on the cross-street of where I live. There are arguements for and against homeschooling. The school she should have gone to was a good one. But the homeschooling was NOT the abuse. it was a part of it, to keep her isolated from help. People are losing sight of the actual story here. I'm just grateful she found a way to escape and get help before it was too late.

Dear Savage Readers, I Just have to add something here, because as much as homeschooling for the sake of masking abuse or teaching extreme doctrines is despicable, it's got it's uses. My cousin has been battling cancer for the past 3 years. On days that she doesn't have treatments, dr's appointments and check ups, she's sick from the chemo. She hasn't spent a full day in school in all that time. How is she supposed to pass the fourth grade AND survive cancer if my aunt isn't also authorized to teach her from home or from the waiting room?

I have also met children of professors where I work who are home schooled in order to accommodate their music instruction or other talents that take time away from school. Young olympians are often home schooled, as are child actors.

There is a huge industry around home schooling, the same companies that make the textbooks and teachers guides (which school teachers depend on more than you would like to think) also make materials for home schooling. There are websites that check progress, tutoring with qualified instructors, even field trips, and home schooled students had to pass the same standardized tests that everyone else does. Given the amount of tailored, individual attention these kids get, it's not surprising that they often exceed the standards set for kids in 30+ classrooms.

@52, etc: I'm certainly not saying all homeschooling is bad. 5-10% is probably better for the child because the local schools suck, bullying, special needs best met at home or really dedicated parents who find/hire people to supplement what they themselves aren't best at.

Then, a continum of the vast middle from falling a bit sort on academics and minimal social interactions to the complete lack of those plus truly whacky beliefs with no counterpoint heard from anyone.

Then 5% bottom-feeding parents at the other end who are severely damaging their kids in anyone's minds. Yes, this was a horrifically extreme example, (and mostly about abuse, although homeschooling greatly facilitated it).

I volunteer in public schools a lot and there are kids who clearly don't have consistent guidelines, predictable adult behavior or logical conversations at home, because it comes as shock to them when I engage with them in those ways. And those kids are in school 35 hours a week! I'm more concerned about the kids who never leave that environment and what sort adults they become.

@49 You have an odd notion of 'some'. There are 1.5 (3% of school-age children and growing) million home-schooled children spread across the US.

You're not talking about hiring more educators which have some ROI on investment, you're talking about hiring an army of parole officers to drive around and contact these families one-by-one, what, monthly?

All that on the .000000667% (1/1.5million) chance that a given child is being basement-jailed.

Pure fantasy...will never happen.

Child abuse happens and is no more prevalent in home-schooling than anywhere else in society. Except for extreme cases, educators are no more likely to pick up on it than anyone else.

You can't legislate it away just like you can't legislate spousal abuse away - just punish those who get caught. Do you think for a second that sick-fucks like these parents thought twice about the consequences of their actions?

What you can do is change society through education, awareness, community outreach, shelters, etc.

Jesus H Christ look at these two. Look at these two fucking cave trolls with the mother fucking audacity and utter lack of humility to try to pass themselves as god damned human beings. I can't even begin to describe the unholy rage that makes me tremble when I look into their horrible sub-human faces, scrunched and twisted in some sort of cruel mockery of centuries of tireless human development. Any scientist who tells tries to tell you that the neanderthal genome died out 30,000 years ago is a mother fucking liar and here is the god damned proof. Holy shit will you just look at these two living, breathing evolutionary mistakes.

How I wish that just for a second, one mother fucking immeasurable instant, these maddeningly imbecilic sacks of horse shit could gain the slightest spark of cognizance of how truly broken they are on every level, what a cruel and sick cosmic joke their existence is. My god, if they had even the barest speck of insight into what utterly miserable organisms they are, into how profoundly they pollute, corrupt and desecrate every inch of God's creation with each foul breath expelled from their lungs, they would surely hang themselves with their own filthy rags. But sadly it will never come to pass. Those sloping foreheads are the unflinching sentinels that will forever keep even the tiniest subatomic particle of awareness from penetrating their ghastly, misshapen craniums. Sweet merciful Christ, I am wholly unable to fathom what sort of unspeakable, festering horror could possibly muster enough hatred for all life and matter to spawn such wretched, miserable cretins.

@53 you have some good points but your statistics seemed to be fabricated from gut-feeling and bias.

"Then, a continuum of the vast middle from falling a bit short on academics and minimal social interactions "

So considering there are 1.5 million U.S. home-schooled kids you are saying that max only 150,000 are getting a net benefit over public schooling.

More interesting is that you think that currently in the U.S. about 1.35 million kids are being severely socially isolated and doing worse than the average public schooled child.

That doesn't tickle your bullshit spidey-senses at all?

If a kid doesn't attend public school then there is no possible way they could get daily social interaction? No neighborhood after-school play? No enrollment in sports? No church groups? No family friends and relatives? No technology for tweens and teens to make friends and keep in touch? No clubs, scouts, playgroups, public parks/pools/malls etc?

Yep, 1.35 million kids living with "minimal social interactions" - the invisible generation...that's exactly what is happening, LOL.

So, hopefully you can see how far off your gut-feeling is and how terrifically biased you are on the subject.

6, I suppose to someone with your narrow home schooled background, it would seem that way. Subtext goes right over your head, but that's okay. The world needs fast food workers too.

@57: Of course the numbers I threw out are just estimates based just on what I see in supermarkets, homeschoolers who use some public school services, interactions with local fundamentalists, and stats from the local shelter in my capacity as a board member. Conducting a US-Census-like door-to-door survey (1) ain't my day job and (2) would get me shot in this area.

Of course homeschooling families could do sports, community theater/band, or play at the park during the 4 months of summer. And some of them do. But I'm there, with my family, and I just don't see many of them - it's a small town, you talk to people, learn their story.

There are roughly 9,000 public-school students and 3,000 homeschooled students in my area. I see a few percent in those social settings, not 25%. So homeschoolers are vastly underpresented while I'd wish they were OVER-represented so they had more social interactions.

I'll grant that they might be doing a ton of religious activities, VBS, etc, that I don't see. In our fellowship there were lots of teachers, but no home-schoolers although I wondered how well the public schools were serving the gay kid and the one who converted to Islam.

So, yeah, I think something like 10% of homeschoolers are better served than in public schools. And that another fraction come close but with pluses and minuses that are different than I think are ideal.

And, yeah, I think the bottom end of the home-schooling spectrum is pretty scary. Do you think a hundred homeschool families wouldn't contain a dozen that would worry both of us?

Maybe you've got higher functioning homeschoolers in your area than I do. It wouldn't be hard. I try to minimize my observer bias. Our friends are high-functioning and a larger fraction who homeschool work hard at it and do it well. I try to look at the more randomly sampled examples - at the playground, Walmart, etc.

I like what I see with a lot of the homeschoolers I meet in the library. There just aren't near enough of them there given their numbers in community.

Add me to the list of people who are tired of homeschooling being blamed for appalling things like this. Blaming homeschooling for abuse isn't any different from blaming sexual orientation for abuse. And yes, I know no one said homeschooling caused the problem, but imagine "The parents were gay" instead of "The child was homeschooled" written after every horrible case of abuse you read about.

My partner and I homeschool. We want our kids to have a wider experience of the world than they would if they were in school for 6-7 hours a day with kids the same age. We want our kids to have access to teaching that matches their ability levels. We want our kids to be at lower risk for the kind of bullying that makes some kids kill themselves, and others think of school as a kind of prison sentence they have to get through until "It gets better."

We have standardized testing done every year. The kids are tested in math, reading, spelling, history, and science. Both score from 2-8 grades above their ages in everything. Both have time to take multiple classes in things they love--karate, swimming, circus arts, and dance. Both sing in a children's choir. Our daughter plays two musical instruments and participates in a homeschool band. Both take Spanish classes. We belong to a model rocketry club, visit museums, read books, and travel across the country. We volunteer at the local nursing home. And the kids have time to do all these things and also plenty of time to play, by themselves and with their many friends.

I get tired of hearing that we're the exception--one of the very few "good" homeschooling families. It doesn't sound any different to me than when people say we're one of the "good" gay families, but that most gay people shouldn't have kids. There are people of all types who abuse their kids, and it has nothing to do with their sexual orientation, what race they are, what language they speak, or how they choose to educate their children.

I agree that this isn't really a reason to indict homeschooling, but my experience (in my area ... a bit north of DAVIDinKENAI ... at least as nutty) with parents who are homeschooling is that they are doing it for what I think are the wrong reasons -- to make sure their kids aren't exposed to any reality that might shake loose the dingbat ideology they're giving them as fact -- and they're woefully unprepared to teach anything but Bible study and talking points for debates with seculars.
Most parents who are not crazy ideologues would probably do as well as the school system or better, with the added personal attention making up for gaps in knowledge. And, not being crazy ideologues, they wouldn't be afraid to call in outside knowledge when needed.

@60: Congratulations on the awesomeness of your kids, but your family would be the exception in my area. Think Taliban, and you'd be disturbingly close for a lot of folks up here.

@55 - Very well put.

@59 You don't think it is a mistake to take the apparently low rent and/or fundamentalist area you live (going by your comments) and extrapolate opinions on nationwide homeschooling off of that?

The point I'm making is that your comments, and similar ones, try to paint homeschooling in general as an epidemic of underachievement because of a ridiculously low statistical sample bias.

The %0.002 of home-schooled kids in your area are not representative of the whole.

@56

"do we as a society, have the right to demand that parents make their kids available to some level of scrutiny so that we can identify and address unacceptable situations and outcomes?"

Why? Because it has worked so well in public schools? Just how successful do you think schools are in stopping the most prevalent types of child abuse? Does it bother you at all that the average public school kid is in much more at risk of being teacher-abused, bullied, sexually harassed, pressured to use drugs/alcohol, beaten-up than a homeschool kid?

When you bring the incidents of abuse and hazard in public schools down to the same rate as home-schooled kids, then you can come talk to me about your wonderful, common-sense plans to make home-schooling safer.

Or are using real numbers also a "straw man" argument?

"sacrificing a significant number of children to starvation, beatings, rapes, and murder, all well outside of the public eye."

Do you have any numbers to back this up at all? (hint: no) Jesus fuck-bus you'd think that basement-starvation-rape-rooms were all the rage. Exactly how many similar cases have been reported in the last decade? Do I need two hands or just one to count?

Tern @60: I get that it must suck to be catagorized with low-achieving homeschoolers. I get it. If I say "I'm Alaskan" I then feel compelled to work into the conversation: D, pro-environment, gay ally, have a passport, etc, etc. I could imagine someone who did Hopkins or Stanford on-line always stressing, "I took one of GOOD correspondence courses."

Going to state, national and international academic competitions with our public-school kids, I see lots of top-notch homeschool kids. And in that setting, I'd be surprised to hear "homeschooling" and then observe social or academic deficiencies.

But at the fundie church with the signboard against reading Harry Potter? I'd expect shortcomings in some kids' homeschooling.