There are standards of discourse in private and there are on my blog.

You have your speech. Start your blog, take it to Greg’s. I believe in open and civildiscussion. And if I want my comment section to continue to be a welcoming place, I have the responsibility to eventually step in and enforce the standards of communication on my blog.

You obviously have issues with a number of people from past encounters. I am sorry you could not leave that behind and allow it to be separate from the current discussion.

This is not a forum to see how many insults you can put in a single comment. Those who disagree have always been welcome and you are the first to have ever earned moderation.

Sorry to have wasted your precious time, but certainly there are better things to do than lace your comments with so much venom that it is difficult to even get through to your point.

Abusers hide their children. OK. Sometimes, but not always. After all, a good number of abusers send their children to public school. Most in fact. I think you are viewing the world through your filter. That isn’t an insult. We all do. But no matter what I say, you seem to take it as further evidence that we are somehow “hiding” our children.

One of the strongest correlations to abuse is the number of government services the family is enrolled in. Shall we require weekly check-ins for every mother on medicaid? When I worked with the system, I actually saw the opposite of what you claim. The children were enrolled in so many programs you wondered when the parents had time to abuse their children…school, daycare, before and after school care, weekend and evening programs.

Belief in the constitution is not an indicator of abuse. I am sorry that “for the children” has become such strong argument that we are willing to place everyone who believes in basic constitutional rights under suspicion.

really? Someone forgot to tell that to your cabal of buddies JJ, Nance, et al. Thety are exactly the mindset of self styled so-called feminism that I am talking about and they ARE homeschoolers, Dana.

Those who pre-suppose researcher bias, are the same who taunt ” prove it” “show me the evidence” and all that other crap. That in and of itself is not only redundant, but it is insulting in and of itself.

“the evidence does not bear out the assumption that home educators are more likely to abuse”

Yes, it does. One crucial component of child abuse that abusers depend on is keeping the child away from authority/ies.

And Dana, if I had to explain myself even one more time to YET ANOTHER hs parent who asks for “that which indicates that the home education population enables or encourages abuse more so than the regular population,”

**I am sure I would keel over from the great weight of HS apathy,because as I said above, the very basic foundation of abusers by definition is to hide the abuse, and thus, those who keep their children away from mandatory reporters, and “society at large” not only fit the profile, but they fit it “by definition”.**

After that Dana, good luck interpreting the data yourself: like dogs chase tails so I could endlessly go around with this mindset.

Go find your own data–if in fact it is possible for homeschoolers to actually care about this issue.

People react defensively to me? Gee, I had never noticed–except for homeschoolers, and the other groups outlined above.

Thank you for your time, and your admonishment that I am in moderation. And save your own passive aggression for someone else, to whit “An intelligent person should be able to make a point ”

Yeah, Dana, someday I might be smart enough, and gosh darn it nice enough to come back and waste my time on your blog, people by you who is “An intelligent person … able to make a point”

Feeling snipy today Dana? Or does the thought of all that other name scalling up there

I will save you the trouble of having to moderate my awful defensiveness causing words(pot/kettle), and not grace your pages ever again. I believe in open discussion, not moderated, censored, or selectively edited speech.

Lastly, Dana, I could never prove you wrong: you have your mind made up already–but at the very least, Greg speaks with tongue in cheek, whereas these others? Wow, the horse/water debate always turns into the horse/blinders show;-)

The original point of this entry was that Greg had no place to talk about the “level of discourse.”

Prove me wrong and post something that actually follows the guidelines I linked above. An intelligent person should be able to make a point without the verbal punches.

libel
A false publication, as in writing, print, signs, or pictures, that damages a person’s reputation.

Libel is a strong accusation, and one I am not guilty of. Nowhere have I said anything false about Greg. I merely criticized his entry.

Accusing people of abuse, on the other hand, might qualify.

If getting defensive when accused of abuse is hardly evidence of abuse. Especially online where people tend to become more aggressive. Especially Doc, et al, who tend to be a little edgier to begin with.

It is not obfuscation to say that homeschooling itself is not abusive, that homeschooling cannot be equated with abuse and that it isn’t the state’s business to oversee private families. Your postings are so riddled with negative comments, I have a hard time imaging that you will have a very easy time discussing any of these issues with anyone. The accusatory tone does little but set off the defensive in anyone.

What we have is not abusers getting defensive, but a fundamental difference in world views. I believe strongly in the US Constitution and believe that it serves a limiting function to the powers that are given to government. Particularly the 4th amendment is interesting:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

We have a right to be secure in our persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures. The state needs probable cause. Not just “those wierd homeschoolers.” But actual evidence of some sort.

And to maintain rights should now be seen as somehow suspicious? Do we jail anyone who takes the fifth amendment? Because that refusal to give evidence is certainly suspicious, isn’t it?

And how do you feel about the Patriot Act? Maybe it should be expanded to cover all citizens everywhere. After all, if you have nothing to hide, why would you care if the government is listening?

All of the philosophies you cite have nothing to do with homeschooling. You talk about feminism. But most of the hard line feminists I have read are strongly opposed to homeschooling as another means of enslaving women.

You talk about the “family bed.” I know many physicians are against it (as is the AAP) because of a feared risk of SIDS, but I’ve never heard of it connected with abuse issues. But it is supported by La Leche League and they have quite a few studies listed on their site about it. But that isn’t my point really.

Outside of the western world, it is a very common practice. Here, not so much, but one study found that approximately 15% of those studied co-slept. Only two percent of the US population homeschools. The “family bed” is a social phenomenon, not a homeschooling one.

Radical feminism is a societal issue, not a homeschooling one.

The law may be there for all to see, but you are not.

Discussions about the supposed invisibility of homeschoolers due to a lack of mandatory reporters having access to their children is an interesting enough discussion of its own. We don’t have to immediately get suspicious of homeschoolers just because of that as if we were all trying to hide something.

Children aged 0-3 are the most likely to be abused.

Four children die in the US every day of child abuse.

3/4 of these children are under the age of four. Under the age of mandatory school attendance. “Invisible” to society.

http://www.childhelp.org/resources/learning-center/statistics

What do you propose to do with this population which constitutes a significantly higher percentage of children?

But you only come here because your husband subsidizes your maternity, right?

And you wonder why you find people react defensively to you?

Try for one whole comment to edit out the venom and you might suddenly find you are received very differently.

That is simple: for the same reason that homicide is taking place in Iraq: because it is public knowledge that an army of trained killers marched in there at the behest of a president who flatly lied about the “evidence”; and now several outside monitoring groups/ mechanisms are in place to record it.

And for the same reason that Abu Ghraib was brought to the publics attention: because others who were objective, and available were involved in bringing it to light, despite the groupthink that many in the military have about keeping secrets and covering their asses when they do wrong. But mostly because someone, somewhere, had a conscience, and told another about it.

Unlike homeschool environments. (period)

The evidence you seek that HS can (and does) foster a culture of potential abuse is that the children–just like abused kids–have authoritarian parents who employ strategies of non-disclosure, manipulation of the childs trust,manipulation of the childs view of ‘outsiders’, etc.

Pick up any training manual on spotting abuse, sunni, and read the signs and spotting section.Then devote a couple of years of your life to reading about how to conduct research, and voila! You too can be an evidence collector!

But for now, those of you closest to the front row like your seats far to much to rock managements boat, so I sit here in the peanut gallery with binoculars.

But honestly sunnie, that is the best I can do for you, and I actually don’t think you are interested in anything other than to circle around the “HS are all way cool” stereotype wagons.

I honestly have never had a more difficult time discussing child abuse with anyone other then a) homeschoolers b) so-called feminists c)cultists d) incarcerated pedophiles

Honestly. Really! Actually true. They all react in a similar manner, and all are defensive. Sunnie, that in and of itself is “evidence” from a cultural anthropologist POV. It is an “observation”.

Some HS’ers refuse to acknowledge ( or even care about it actually) or are unbelievably defensive. Feminists talk endlessly about male abusers, but become almost numb eyed at the idea of maternal incest. A real contradiction , those so-called liberators of women. The only thing I have seen these HS types liberate is their own ego, and then conscience when it comes to kids.

Here is my most important support for anything sunni: your line of questioning is exactly what I have seen, observed, and written about–you are more than likely to be religious; dogmatic; alligned with others who help hide your children from the view of those who are trained to spot abuse. Am I right so far?

that in and of itself is a simple kind of observation–and your written reactions are “evidence.”

But I am not here to provide you with evidence: I am collecting it. But I was called here for OTHER REASONS, chiefly that a friend of mine was being libeled on other blogs which led here.I didn’t come here to waste time with yet another religious homeschooler who has it all figured out (you?), but loves to waste the time of ‘evil scientists’ who don’t believe the world, created in six days, is still flat.

Do you see that connection? Your general attitude of obfuscation is an “HS typical” reaction. And it IS evidence of a mindset–written evidence of how you think.

BTW: I am not the right scientist to be asking for this type of evidence you seek, that is Gregs field, and others, as I am objectively collecting data, some of which is evidentiary, some of which is just data.

Those other scientists–the ones with the “evidence” you seek, are elsewhere. I am the person making observations about “attitudinal bias” and attitudinal basis”, etc.

Read up a few lines, and notice that word objective: it is SO subjective, isn’t it? A matter of perspective. But it IS the operative word when collecting data–in this case, data about you: you are HS mom # blankety blank who has asked the same question, and then reasserted yourself into the comfort of your relative seclusion, far away from science, and bad outsiders.

The law may be there for all to see, but you are not. That is the core problem of observation oriented scientific experiment: there must be something to see in order to study it.

You are in relative seclusion, and pot shotting hypotheticals at the wrong guy right now via cyberspace–as are your entrenched ideas (religion, perhaps? “faith”?)ideas, your ideologies( like the reasons you became a mom, and a womans place in the home), and most importantly, your habits with your children–or to borrow a word from Pierre Bordieux–your personal habitus and how it affects the future, via your children.

I met you here, and have spent waaay too much time explaining the ‘evidence collection’ process to you. But have a nice life, and I hope your kids are “doing great,” etc.

But you only come here because your husband subsidizes your maternity, right?

Teachers are monitored? Then why so much sexual molestation and physical and mental abuse going on in schools? A child’s presence in the public school system does not prevent abuse or guarantee that it will be reported. The highly monitored foster care system does not prevent abuse. Again, the evidence does not bear out the assumption that home educators are more likely to abuse, or are able to use homeschooling to hide abuse.

You still bring no supportive data to this discussion. But you don’t come here to discuss anything, do you cmf?

Here: I will give you an example of something that doesn’t work for some, and works for others: FEMA relief.

Hurricane Katrina was a dismal failure for some people(public schools in redneck Jim Crow states, New York, etc)and especially for blacks who get the sh!t end iof the stick (inside joke alert for Sunni: look up the name Amadou Diallo).But the PS works GREAT for others (Wayzata, Breck school; Irvine California, OC–all white schools)

Each system is in theory the same, but funded differently, and many horror stories make it out of the “bad ones” that make all of them look bad.

So back to FEMA relief: Burma just got its ^ss kicked by some bad weather…and so far, up to 100,00 ppl have died; the problem is, we cannot assess it because the data doesn’t exist. Why doesn’t the data exist? Because those who are in power over tha data are a) authoritarian b)tightly controling the media coverage and c) completely inactive, and uninterested in giving the world a view of what is going on there, focused instead as they are on a though c.

That is the short story on data about the PS vs- data about HS.But at least we have a “right” AND an “obligation” to society to monitor the PS, and at least like all real actual systems, it is provably fallible, unlike the HS land of cloudy, mist covered mountains of gold and high test scores.

Does that help?

Simple really.

I’_m with Stephanie; but I must add that I am happy here, too: The grass is Green; the sky is Blue…and I love Spectre!

“Did you ever think that maybe you’re not too big. Maybe the town is kind of small?”

Hey dana: just for the sake of (well, for the sake of your own rational mind, and the rations of others) please check the IP addresses of every post I send to you ok? That way, we can tell who has been lying to you, and who has not. Especially check the workstation portion–if you have a GOOD location service. A sort of baseline credibility test, OK?

It would really help facilitate discussion to get the liars, obfuscators, and plain ol’ nassy!-folk out of the game early.

Sunnim: “(American) culture clearly defines abuse”

Really!? In my lifetime, I have watched a definitional shift at least three times….from Freud to now….never mind lil’ ol’ Electra, or Eve Ensler…

and sadly: “you are not providing any data”

Data is everywhere, like information; if you want that go to , um the “RAINN website”…

new observations, emerging perspectives, and fluid definitional structures are not everywhere.Neither are ppl who can have the discussion without feeling “defensive.”

IPT forensics has some good stuff if you are interested. Search term “genital reference”

“Should all teachers now be monitored?”
B!G Faaa^^AAAAAaaT YUP. You fr33kin’ bet.

AND THEY ARE monitored (the sytem is HUGE).
Stay at home lunatics, family bed proponents, and Rainbow free-lovers who homeschool are not monitored, and there are HUGE cracks in the “system that refuses to be called a system” because everyone is soooo unique.

“right of privacy and freedom of families to home educate”

Cool, as long as my (hypothetical)son doesn’t get involved with one of these freewheelin’ baby makin’ single mommin’ feminfisting type homeschooled girls “in the wider world” where the rest of us live, and vice versa for my daughter and some g-d feerin’ tee-totlin’ young sap who will bring my grandchild back to some bonobo coven, or some fundie virginity ball.

But you don’t come here for the hunting, do you SunniM?