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On October 13, Vince Gonzales, a CBS news correspondent, reported on the tragic deaths of three children in a North Carolina home in 2001. During the report, Gonzales blatantly attacked homeschooling and suggested tighter government regulation to prevent such tragedies from occurring in the future.
But to the dismay of many informed people, Gonzales conveniently overlooked key information that would have cast the story in a totally different light. John Holzmann, co-owner of Sonlight Curriculum, Ltd., responds below.
Dear Friend,
As you may be aware, CBS Evening News ran a two-part series Monday and Tuesday that purports to show the "Dark Side" of homeschooling. View the pieces at http://snurl.com/HomeSchoolDarkSide and http://snurl.com/HomeSchoolNightmares, if you like. (You can find the show TRANSCRIPTS as well as VIDEO versions from these pages.)
Vince Gonzales [gvg@cbsnews.com], the "reporter," suggests (he doesn't QUITE come out and say it, but he strongly IMPLIES) that there is some kind of nefarious PATTERN of child abuse among homeschoolers and that homeschoolers are being permitted to abuse their children because no one is watching them. (Monday's Segment 1: "home school laws 'allow persons who maltreat children to maintain social isolation in order for the abuse and neglect to remain undetected'"; Tuesday's Segment 2: "some children have suffered abuse--and much worse--while no one was watching.")
Gonzales made it SOUND as if the family highlighted on Monday evening had flown completely under the radar with respect to North Carolina's governmental authorities. He (Gonzales) placed on the program a brief "interview" with the SHERIFF of the town where the two "homeschooled" children were murdered by their brother who subsequently committed suicide. Missing from the story: the fact that "Social Services had contacted the family eleven times, were well aware of the condition of the home and had been working with the family" (see http://www.hslda.org/elert/archive/2003/10/20031014141409.asp). Or the fact that "Social Services had not only contacted the family on numerous occasions--they had already removed the children from the home for a time. In spite of all the laws and agencies in place and involved, the system was still not able to prevent the deaths of these children. And besides that, long before the tragedy occurred, the family had consciously dropped out of compliance with the homeschool statute, and from that point on they were simply truant from the public school system" (see http://www.nche.com/cbs-sponsors.html).
And while Gonzales suggests that all "we" need is more laws and regulations to ensure that homeschoolers are more adequately supervised by the government, what he doesn't address is the far WORSE problems in the public schools.
The public schools provide plenty of opportunities for people to WATCH potential and/or real abuse. And the result? (See http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2003/schoolcrime/index.asp):
In 2000, students ages 12 through 18 were victims of about 1.9 million total crimes of violence or theft at school.
In that same year, students in this age range were victims of about 128,000 serious violent crimes at school (i.e., rape, sexual assault, robbery, and aggravated assault).
There were also 47 school-associated violent deaths in the United States between July 1, 1998 and June 30, 1999, including 38 homicides, 33 of which involved school-aged children.
And so forth.
According to the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES), 6.4% of all students age 12 through 18 "feared attack at school or on the way to and from school" in 2001 (see p. 82 in "Indicators of School Crime and Safety, 2002," Supplemental Table 12.1, http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2003009; p. 36 in http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2003/schoolcrime/pdf/2003009_1.pdf).
Somehow, I doubt one in 16 homeschooled children experience such fears.
John Holzmann, Co-Owner
Sonlight Curriculum, Ltd.
