Parents’ choices need to be balanced with child protection
Public policy, whether it is formulated into laws, rules or regulations, is aimed at the outliers, not the vast majority of people who will do the right thing.
Sometimes those policies overreach as seems to have happened in the case of Adrian Crook and his five children. A single father, Crook is trying to teach his kids aged five to 11 to be independent and able to navigate Vancouver without his supervision.
He started by taking them on public transit — including their 45-minute trips to school — to teach them how that works. Over time, he began allowing the older four to go without him on their commute to school.
But somebody complained and the Ministry of Children and Family Development swooped in, investigated and sent Crook a letter warning him of its “protection concerns.”
The ministry did that even though no rules or legislation forbids 11-year-olds from taking public transit on their own. It was a decision made by some unnamed — no doubt well-meaning — person in the ministry.
For those of us who grew up in an era before helicopter parenting, when there was still a firm sense that it takes a village to raise a child, these rules and regulations seem ridiculous.
We were allowed to range rather freely because our parents fully expected not that someone would do us harm, but that some other adult would step in and set us straight if we misbehaved on the bus or at a movie or anywhere else. And adults did. I know that from personal experience.
Because we were raised to respect our elders, we were chastened and did as we were told. Of course, that system made children vulnerable to abuse from the outliers, which helps explain why stricter rules and regulations were formulated.
Outliers in the education system should concern us as well.
Last year, there were 2,316 children in British Columbia whose parents registered for homeschooling. By law, they are not required to follow the provincial curriculum or teach anything in particular. The children’s work is not evaluated by qualified teachers, nor do the children have to write exams. To qualify for high-school graduation, they must register for distance learning courses. But by doing so, they are no longer deemed by the Education Ministry to be registered as home-schoolers. The overwhelming majority of home-schooling parents put the best interests of their children first. Their success stories are testimony to that.
A group of girls being taught at home finished second last year in the B.C. seniors’ division of the Technovation Challenge, hosted by Simon Fraser University.
Each year, participants in local home-school theatre programs put on productions at ACT Theatre. This April and May, the productions include Aladdin, Thoroughly Modern Millie and Pirates Past Noon.
The Greater Vancouver Home Learners website lists dozens of activities in a wide variety of subject areas.
Organizations including the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre and the Vancouver Aquarium offer special shows and workshops for home-schooled children.
But there are a small number of outliers — parents who don’t put their children’s best interests first and parents whose own limited education makes them poor teachers of anything beyond the most basic fundamentals of reading, writing and arithmetic.
Among these outliers are members of religious sects who follow the dictates of powerful, charismatic leaders who insist that the only texts that a child needs to study and learn from are their sermons, speeches, screeds and revelations.
These home-schooling parents are connected only to others within their communities. By choice, they are often physically and socially isolated from mainstream society. Even if they live in the heart of the city, they are completely uninterested in participating themselves or allowing their children to do so.
As home-schoolers, these parents have every right to ensure that their children are unable to function within mainstream society, guaranteeing that a second generation is vulnerable to being manipulated by charlatans and false prophets.
The government has both the right and the duty to protect the most vulnerable children. It could do that quite easily by requiring home-schooling parents to provide evidence that their children are being taught and are learning at levels that are at least commensurate with their peers.
Yet, even suggest that the government has a duty to protect those most vulnerable of children from their outlier parents and the home-schooling community reacts with ferocity. Ironically, in defending their right to choose, they provide examples and reams of stories of their children’s success.
So, asking home-schooling parents to provide evidence of their children’s accomplishments would not be over reaching. It certainly wouldn’t infringe on parents’ educational choices. But what it would do is support a child’s right to be educated.
Outliers in the education system should concern us as well.