Should All Homeschooled Children be Required to Report to “Child Protection Services” to Check for Abuse?

by Richard Wexler
The Chronicle of Social Change

Excerpts:

Marie Cohen’s latest column in The Chronicle calls for requiring that every parent who homeschools a child bring that child before a mandated reporter of child abuse for periodic inspection.

As with every other well-intentioned proposal to intrude on families, the problem with this one is the harm it would do to children in 32 states. (In 18 states everyone is a mandated reporter, including every parent, so, presumably, the proposal would have no effect at all.)

But in those 32 states, consider the real-world impact of requiring parents to submit their children to inspection by a mandated reporter, in this case probably a public school teacher:

The teacher knows that this child is being brought before him or her specifically to be checked to see if the child is being abused or neglected – that creates an inherent bias toward finding such maltreatment.

To the extent that the mandated reporter has been trained at all, it often involves broad, vague lists of “symptoms” or “warning signs.” One website alone lists 77 different “signs” that could be child abuse. They also could have many other causes. At least one of these “signs” probably could be found in almost any child at some point in that child’s life.

The mandated reporter knows that if s/he fails to report and then it turns out the child really was abused s/he could face dismissal and perhaps even criminal penalties. There is no penalty for a false report made in good faith.

Children will know the purpose of these visits, and they will sense the tension they cause in their families. That makes them, inherently, an act of emotional abuse against the children. As three of the leading child welfare scholars of the 20th century, Anna Freud, Joseph Goldstein and Albert J. Solnit wrote, in calling for far higher standards before ever intervening in families:

Children react even to temporary infringement of parental autonomy with anxiety, diminishing trust, loosening of emotional ties, or an increasing tendency to be out of control.

Why Single Out Homeschoolers?

The singling out of homeschoolers is odd for other reasons as well.

The children most at risk of abuse or neglect are the youngest. So the same logic behind this proposal requires that every child from birth to at least kindergarten age also be presented for periodic inspection.

Cohen even is selective in the lessons she chooses to draw from horror stories; and once again, horror stories are Cohen’s entire argument. In the two Iowa cases she cites, the children were homeschooled. They also were adopted from foster care. In one case, relatives desperate to take in the child were turned down. Yet Cohen offers no sweeping conclusions about regulating foster care or adoption.

Read the full article at The Chronicle of Social Change

Published on July 5, 2017

9 Comments

ALBERT WALKER July 11, 2017 at 10:07 am - Reply

STATS SHOW ITS PUBLIC SCHOOL CHILDREN WHO R ABUSED BY UNION PROTECTED TEACHERS IN FILTHY SCHOOLS W DISEASE CARRYING UNVACCINATED ILLEGALS.

Parents who care enough for their children to home school them do it to educate their children in a wholesome clean atmosphere so they can get a well rounded & complete education!

Public education is a communist inspired hate filled curriculum that refuses to teach American history & how it was old & young white men TOGETHER who wrote & GAVE PEOPLE OF THE WORLD FREEDOM WITH THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDANCE , THE BILL OF RIGHTS & THE REST OF THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION.

IF U ALLOW UR CHILDREN TO BE EDUCATED IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS YOU ARE ABUSING YOUR CHILD & THEIR ENTIRE FUTURE.

Angelyn Reno July 11, 2017 at 9:45 am - Reply


I was one of the children that got taken away and I got abused more while under CPS care than I did at home…So my feeling on the subject is …they need to keep their noses out of it…they have these young people who don’t have any children who think they know how to raise a child because they read a book when they have no clue and they end up putting the children in a worse position they were in to start with…

brad July 6, 2017 at 12:16 pm - Reply

Child abuse problems? How about being in a school – having to move at the sound of a bell – so Pavlovian, no? Get up. Go to another class. Sit down. Recess. Class, repeat until lunch – a bad lunch most places, repeat for the afternoon. The only other place with this management system is PRISON.

Where else are kids forced to be with bullies – emotional or otherwise? Forced to stay with their grade? When we took our kids to homeschool gatherings you’d see 15 year old girls spending hours discussing shared interests with 8 year old boys from other families. When you leave school you don’t have to put up with such abuses, but in school you have no choice. As a homeschooling group, we toured everything interesting in a college town, medevac chopper, hospital stuff, Forest picnics – you name it, we did it. Parents would teach skills – wilderness and survival skills from some, gardening from others…Share lesson plans, curriculum ideas, etc. The kids were MUCH more balanced, kinder, appeared to be smarter – and since this was in the 80s – we had a LOT of stigma attached to our being homeschoolers.

We were told over and over that our kids would never be accepted into colleges – but the Homeschool magazine had advertisements from many universities WANTING our homeschooled kids. How come? Because they didn’t have to teach remedial math, remedial english, etc to homeschooled children. These kids – unlike the public school students they had – were acting about 10 years more mature as Freshmen. West Point and Annapolis wanted these kids. 

So if you want to talk about child abuse – look to the public education system. That entire farce is designed by a German "educator" who realized that worker’s children would need to be trained to become more docile, better workers for the factories – so he proposed what is our basic school system to train obedience, subservience, and to remove imagination and creativity…

brad

Sopater July 6, 2017 at 12:15 pm - Reply

When government busybodies have thoroughly delivered the children enrolled in the government school system of any child abuse, then they can consider discussing what actions they might be able to take regarding homeschooled children. In the meantime, I think that they have enough to focus on already.

skunk July 6, 2017 at 12:15 pm - Reply

Marie Cohen needs to be placed in a nut ward.

Brian July 5, 2017 at 9:39 pm - Reply

@Lydia-A-Hubbell said:

In Tennessee, EVERYBODY is now a "mandated reporter" of abuse. So, unless a homeschooling family locks their child up and and allows them no contact with the outside world, which I have never known to happen in my contact many homeschooling families, there is no need to "require" inspections. This article was written by someone who obviously knows little about homeschooling in the 21st century.

Actually, if you click through and read the ENTIRE article by Richard Wexler, he states:

"As with every other well-intentioned proposal to intrude on families, the problem with this one is the harm it would do to children in 32 states. (In 18 states everyone is a mandated reporter, including every parent, so, presumably, the proposal would have no effect at all.)"

dave July 5, 2017 at 9:38 pm - Reply

@Lydia-A-Hubbell said:

In Tennessee, EVERYBODY is now a "mandated reporter" of abuse. So, unless a homeschooling family locks their child up and and allows them no contact with the outside world, which I have never known to happen in my contact many homeschooling families, there is no need to "require" inspections. This article was written by someone who obviously knows little about homeschooling in the 21st century.

Any one that hates you can call the 1 800- i hate you, and then comes CPS swimming up the gutters, jumping off the roofs screaming there is a mountain, and there is not even a mole hill, you have to do some research into how CPS is funded and you will see that CPS can’t prove 90 % of there cases and it’s all about the monies they get from state and fed funding, with no due process they get all there kidnaping shoved thru the courts that they own lock stock and barrel

dave July 5, 2017 at 7:32 pm - Reply

NO WAY, All CPS is doing is collecting children (S) info so they can have a list of potential children to kidnap. CPS is looking for more monies, its all about the money.

Lydia A Hubbell July 5, 2017 at 7:32 pm - Reply

In Tennessee, EVERYBODY is now a "mandated reporter" of abuse. So, unless a homeschooling family locks their child up and and allows them no contact with the outside world, which I have never known to happen in my contact many homeschooling families, there is no need to "require" inspections. This article was written by someone who obviously knows little about homeschooling in the 21st century.