Sunday, January 26, 2014

Fundementalist Parents allowed to deny their HomeSchooled Children the right to an education.


The appropriate balance between freedom and harm can be hard to strike, particularly when it comes to religious freedom. In an attempt to find this balance, religious conservatives have been granted exemptions from a wide range of civil rights laws and social obligations. In the last two decades, one of the exemptions they have secured in many states is the right to opt out of school attendance for their children.
Led by a group called  Home School Legal Defense Association, a network of institutions and activists have sprung up to advocate the  rights of parents to educate their children—or not—as they please. Now the largest generation of home-schooled children are coming of age, and some are telling horror stories that suggest parent privilege may have gone too far. 
recent testimonial posted at  Homeschoolers Anonymous opens like this:
It was not so much homeschooling that traumatized me as much as my mother’s mental illness. This was hidden by homeschooling, and the pain that damaged me came from the constant exposure to her psychiatric illness. I feel like someone roasted me over a fire, leaving me with burns to rest the remainder of my life, and I didn’t even know at the time what fire was.

http://www.alternet.org/why-are-christian-fundamentalist-parents-allowed-deny-their-kids-basic-literacy?page=0%2C0&akid=11443.294211.RlxSvv&rd=1&src=newsletter951489&t=21

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