the thing about being a homeschool abolition hardliner is that people always want to come to you with some bullshit sob story about how you hate disabled people because they were bullied for being autistic and homeschooling was so amazing for them. and it's just like well unfortunately homeschooling is also a widespread tool of coercive control in child abuse used by christofascists to raise kids without the tools they need to function in the world so that they will always be afraid, dependent, and unable to think critically and discern right from wrong and truth from lies. so unfortunately i do think this is a situation where in order to prevent enormous harm to untold numbers of children those bullied kids who just don't wanna go to school are going to have to suck it up. (and in reality what i always propose is a more robust system of alternative/magnet public schooling set up for kids who are basically on grade level but who DO struggle to thrive in a mainstream setting, but nobody ever wants to hear that, they just want to guilt you for not thinking anyone who ever gets picked on should just get to stay home and play vidya and do all their lessons on zoom. and it's like honestly i don't think you're having this argument in good faith bc you are very much centering hypothetical discomfort you MIGHT HYPOTHETICALLY have experienced over, again, widespread child abuse and neglect. so.)
so i watched the netflix documentary about piper rockelle yesterday and i would like to once again humbly suggest that homeschooling be permanently abolished and perhaps even criminalized
It’s so frustrating that when there’s an overwhelmingly common and dangerous phenomenon related to something so you say “Hm, seems like a sane and responsible society should ban or regulate this.” And you get hit by a million responses that amount to…
“Oh? [X thing] has a documented extremely negative impact on a large group of people?? And you’re critiquing it? Well I did [x thing] and that horrible thing never happened. I guess you’re just PERSONALLY ATTACKING me.”
“Have you considered the nuanced reality that if something is beneficial to me in any way then everyone who has been deeply harmed by it should simply eat shit? Also if they criticize it it’s because they hate me specifically?”
“What about those of us who actually ENJOY AND LIKE [x thing] and also feel entitled to never have access to something that I like restricted? Hmm? What about us?”
It’s not actually possible to have a functioning society where everyone does whatever they want all the time. You can’t just trust that your populace is going to do the best possible version of everything. I’m absolutely sure there’s a lot of responsible gun owners in the US — unfortunately, the negative societal impact of guns means that in a sane, effective society (which ofc the US isn’t) they’d still be banned. There are some things that are more important than you and what you like and what is beneficial to you. Some things are worse than other things, like objectively worse. Some things are more important than you.
This is the very definition of hyper-individualism. If something is working for you, it must continue. No one else matters. No one’s suffering could ever be more important than your own.
A reminder both that per Pew, in the US in 2024-25 <15% of parents cited any kind of physical, intellectual, developmental or psychological issue as a motivation for homeschooling. Meanwhile, disabled children as a whole are twice as likely to be abused physically, emotionally, and sexually in the home by parents (and that factor is the same for autistic children as a whole).
A second reminder that equal access to public schooling is something disabled people had to fight tooth and nail for and which became guaranteed via the IDEA law less than fifty years ago. The Trump administration is currently trying to overturn it, and RFK Jr. believes disabled children should either be kept at home or institutionalized. Explicitly because he thinks they do not belong in society. Support for (Christian) homeschooling and parents’ rights to isolate their children in general but particularly disabled ones is explicitly part of this agenda.
Isolating disabled children specifically with their parents and away from mandatory reporters and people trained to recognize abuse (as well as resources like food and nurses’s offices/health centers and instructors who are trained to work in SpED, which even well-intentioned parents are not) is putting them at starkly heightened risk of abuse even compared to the risks posed to nondisabled kids. It’s also capitulation to the goals of fascists dismantling public education.
