The latest salvo from Akron
Sylvia Toyama
Here's today's article from the Akron Beacon-Journal. Apparently,
now homeschooling is nothing more than a haven from child-abductors.
And there will be another installment tomorrow on the 'politics of
homeschooling' --
Here's the addy if you'd like to see it on their site:
http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/news/special_packages/home_schooling/1021
4189.htm
A means of hiding
Home-schooling freedoms help parents who abduct children
By Dennis J. Willard and Doug Oplinger
Beacon Journal staff writers
Emily Fritts was 6 years old when her mother abducted her in
Staunton, Va.
For the next eight years, Mary Outlaw Fritts and Emily lived on the
run in at least five other states: Tennessee, Oregon, Kansas, Alaska
and Montana. They assumed new identities, becoming Mary and Emily
Stutz.
Mary Fritts took an additional step to keep her secret, something she
could not have done as easily 10 or 20 years earlier in most states:
She home-schooled Emily.
Each year, thousands of parents in custody cases abduct their
children. These parents must elude spouses, the police, state
agencies, the FBI and a legion of organizations dedicated to finding
missing children.
Parents who abduct children live quiet lives on the run. They canmove
into a community, claim they are home schooling and avoid answering
questions or providing proof of their past.
How many abductors home-school?
No one knows.
No one is trying to find out.
Even if someone were to attempt to determine the extent of the
problem, most state laws are written so loosely that it is impossible
to track children through a system they have in common: education.
When children move from one public school to the next, their records
follow them. Most private schools request prior academic files,
although some private schools -- mainly religious ones -- do not.
In Ohio, parents notify their school district that they are going to
home-school. They do not need to ask for permission.
The local superintendent cannot ask any questions about the family or
children, including where the family lived prior to moving into the
district. Requesting prior academic records is forbidden.
Ohio is considered a moderate state for oversight and accountability.
In Colorado, home-schooling parents must notify a school district,
but not necessarily the one in which they live. A parent who wants to
home-school can register with a district separated by more than 100
miles of mountainous terrain, making it difficult for that district
to check on the family.
In other states, such as Texas and Michigan, where home-schooling
laws are even looser, families are not required to notify their
district. In these states, compulsory education has, in effect, been
abandoned.
For Emily's father, Rodney Fritts, the eight years trying to find his
daughter were frustrating and expensive.
Four FBI agents and the National Center for Missing and Exploited
Children offered no answers, so Fritts paid $50,000 to hire a private
investigator. Overall, the ordeal cost him $450,000 in attorney's
fees and losses he incurred trying to keep up the search.
``It was like looking for a needle in a haystack,'' he said. ``When
(Emily) first disappeared, I thought she would be home-schooled
because there was no way she was going to be put in public
schools.... ,'' Fritts said.
The push to find children
After a series of high-profile kidnapping, rape and murder cases in
the late 1990s, the federal government and most state legislatures
passed laws to alert communities to potential threats from sex
offenders and other criminals.
States also createdimmediate-response systems, called Amber Alerts,
that are triggered as soon as a child is reported missing.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, formed by
Congress in 1984 as a private, nonprofit organization, is a
clearinghouse for information about abducted, endangered and sexually
exploited children. The agency works closely with the FBI and U.S.
Department of Justice.
The department's most recent survey on missing children is a snapshot
of 1999, when 1.3 million new cases were reported. The number of long-
term abductions -- the type that might require home schooling to
maintain obscurity -- is much smaller.
A Beacon Journal analysis of national center data from 1990 through
the summer of 2004 found that 1,000 to 1,200 long-term cases of
missing children involving a family member are reported to the center
annually.
No data kept on any link
When the national center, the FBI and the Justice Department were
asked whether home schooling hindered attempts to locate missing
children, the question appeared to catch spokesmen off guard.
Paul Bresson, an FBI spokesman, said his agency does not have data
linking abductions and home schooling.
``We've seen a few cases where that has happened,'' Bresson said.
``It's probably more than likely something has probably happened in
the past, maybe even on more than one occasion, but how pervasive it
is or how frequently those kinds of scenarios come up, I don't know.''
He said the FBI has similar difficulty tracking children through the
public school system because privacy laws prevent state education
departments from compiling specific information on individual
students.
Justice Department officials reiterated the FBI's assertions.
The national center said it received 14,980 reports of a noncustodial
parent abducting a child between 1990 and July 2004. The center
helped to locate 12,746 of the children, a recovery rate of about 85
percent.
Executive Director Ben Ermini said the center is not an investigative
or research agency. It routinely collects information on abducted
children, including personal characteristics, family members, and
where the child was taken from and eventually found.
Details in the center's recovery reports might mention that a child
was home-schooled if that was volunteered by another agency that
conducted the investigation, Ermini said.
``We just don't track that type of information. We don't ask the
question of families or the law enforcement agencies that locate
these children,'' he said.
Cases counted
Responding to a Beacon Journal request, the national center
identified 13 cases involving 18 recovered children since 1990 in
which the family was home schooling.
``That doesn't mean that there weren't hundreds of other kids that
were recovered that were home-schooled, but they never mentioned it
in the report,'' Ermini said.
In its research of a shorter period of time, the Beacon Journal found
18 more cases that the national center did not identify -- involving
28 abducted children -- in which home schooling reportedly was
occurring. The newspaper reviewed thousands of articles published
since 1997.
It's probable that the Beacon Journal's research is incomplete.
Abductions and reunions aren't always the subject of news coverage.
Also, newspapers and other publications don't always note whether a
child was home-schooled while in hiding.
Call for regulation
The executive director of Vanished Children's Alliance, a California-
based agency that is the nation's oldest and second-largest
organization dedicated to finding missing children, said an abducting
parent would be motivated to keep the child out of schools and away
from other children and adults.
Georgia K. Hilgeman-Hammond said law enforcement agencies should be
collecting data on abducting parents, including whether they use home
schooling to elude authorities.
``This is a way to keep the child out of the mainstream,'' she said.
Hilgeman-Hammond thinks state and federal lawmakers should hold
parents more accountable by requiring them to notify their local
districts that they are home schooling and to provide prior academic
records.
The Beacon Journal also found cases in which the national center was
involved in helping to find the abducted child but had not determined
the child was home-schooled.
In one such case, Melissa Ann Gooding was caught in Corinth, Texas,
in 2002 after the national center's routine request for an update on
the case prompted the Adams County, Ill., sheriff to renew the search
for the mother and her daughter, Lisa.
They had disappeared in 1990, about the time Lisa Gooding's father in
Illinois was awarded custody. Melissa Ann Gooding lived in several
states; among them were Illinois and Texas, where no registration for
home schooling is required.
In Texas, home schooling is so common that most people don't think
twice about a home-schooling family living nearby.
Adams County Deputy Clay Doan tracked Melissa Ann Gooding's parents
and sister to the outskirts of Corinth, where a game warden, who
regularly set traps for snakes and bobcats near the home, helped
identify the family -- including the missing mother and daughter.
Doan said that Lisa Gooding was home-schooled and her mother had
never told her that she was abducted.
Doan, who followed the girl's progress through the court proceedings
and afterward, said she was several grades behind for her age when
she was placed in a public school.
The mother was convicted of a felony and granted supervised
visitation, Doan said.
Girl found in Streetsboro
Unlike the national center, the FBI or the Department of Justice,
Deborah Aylward considers home schooling in her searches. As a
private investigator, she knows it offers a way to hide children.
Aylward heads Home Fires, a group from Virginia that offers legal and
investigative services to parents looking for lost children.
On a cold afternoon in February 2002, Aylward sat outside a home in
Streetsboro, waiting for local police to arrive. Minutes earlier, she
had witnessed a young girl in a dress walk quickly from a car to the
home, a coat pulled over her head.
For three weeks, Aylward had been tracking Gail Perkins, a 6-year-old
abducted by her father five years earlier from her home in
Greensboro, N.C.
Gail's mother, Nikki Jones, had turned to Aylward and Home Fires
after the FBI, the national center and four private investigators
were unable to locate the girl.
When the police arrived at the Streetsboro home, they found Gail and
her grandmother hiding in a bedroom closet.
Streetsboro police said that Gail wasn't enrolled in school and that
the family said she was home-schooled.
Aylward said she found Gail by focusing on the extended family of her
father, Adam Perkins.
For five years, as they moved from state to state, Gail had been told
that her grandmother was her mother. Law enforcement officials
believe the family was in southern Virginia before moving to
Streetsboro.
Evasion and tracking
``It's very hard to disappear in the United States today,'' Aylward
said.
She said someone in hiding must stop using a Social Security number
and credit for purchases. The person needs to find work that pays
under the table, use a post office box instead of a mailing address
and register vehicles in someone else's name.
``School is a major issue,'' Aylward said.
In her experience, many abducting parents either home-school or
enroll the children in an obscure religious school that doesn't ask
for student records, she said.
``In most of the cases I have handled over the past 10 years, home
schooling has been a factor,'' Aylward said, adding she has handled
about 75 cases.
When someone is caught with a child, they say as a defense that they
are home schooling, she said. ``It's a great cover. `I'm home
schooling my kids.' ''
But, she said, home schooling is often only a cover.
``They are living a fugitive lifestyle. Schooling is not high on
their list,'' Aylward said. ``They're protecting their own butts from
prosecution and how they can lay low. I don't think there is home
schooling at all. I don't think these children are schooled
whatsoever.''
She thinks legitimate home-schooling families should be concerned
that these parents are tainting the movement's reputation.
The same laws that empower a parent to home-school can provide cover
to abducting parents.
``It's a loophole in the whole mess,'' Aylward said. ``Home schooling
should not be looked at as a method of harboring abducted children.''
She estimated that abductor families truly were home schooling in
about 10 percent of the cases she has investigated.
``It's a great way to deflect attention about why children are home
all day and not going to school. Who is going to call first? It's the
nosy old lady on the street who is going to say, `These kids aren't
in school,' '' she said.
``If I were a parent and I moved into a neighborhood, it's like being
in the witness-protection program. I would make friends with
everybody, introduce my kids under an alias and say they were being
home-schooled, and that would be it,'' Aylward said.
'Out of the sunlight'
Linda Shay Gardner, a Bethlehem, Pa., lawyer who specializes in
abduction cases and sits on the board of The Committee for Missing
Children, said no data exist on the link between home schooling and
missing children, but she has encountered the problem in her efforts
to reunite children with custodial parents.
``They are home schooling to keep them out of the sunlight. I have
seen it in cases,'' she said.
Gardner said states with laws like Ohio's make it almost impossible
to track a child.
Parents are not going to be able to call the more than 600 school
districts in Ohio, Gardner said. ``Even the national center isn't
going to spend the time to call (all those) school districts.''
And that is just one state.
Many abductors move their children from state to state.
Nancy Hammer, director of the international division and policy
counsel at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children,
said an abducting parent's claiming to be home schooling makes sense,
but her experience has been that little or no education is taking
place.
``Why would anybody bother to register, even in Ohio, that they are
home schooling if they abducted their child?'' she said. ``I would
just wait and see if anybody asked me, and then if I got caught, I'd
say I didn't know I was supposed to register.''
Hammer said the issue raises a number of questions that lack easy
answers, such as: Do relaxed rules for home schooling create an
environment that leads to an increase in abductions? Would an
abducting parent who already has violated laws by taking the child be
concerned about following home-schooling registration laws?
Schooling missed
The search for a missing child is, as Rodney Fritts said, like
looking for a needle in a haystack.
For eight years, he and a team of investigators could not break the
case and find his daughter and her mother. Finally, in 2002, he went
on The Montel Williams Show. Afterward, someone in Montana spotted
his ex-wife, he said, and shortly thereafter they showed up at
Fritts' back door.
Mary Outlaw Fritts was convicted of a misdemeanor and fined $250. The
same judge recently issued a warrant for her arrest for failure to
provide child support, Rodney Fritts said.
He learned that for eight years, his daughter had never attended
conventional private or public schools. Instead, she was home-
schooled or attended small religious schools run by a network of
parents.
When Emily came home at age 15,Rodney Fritts offered her a choice of
school settings. She opted to enroll in Stuarts Draft High School, a
public school, as a freshman.
Emily should have been a sophomore, but she had no high school
credits.
She went to summer school, took extra courses and will graduate on
time in June 2005, with plans to go to college next fall.
Rodney Fritts said their relationship was strained at first, but a
few months ago, Emily's attitude suddenly changed, and now she is
happy, positive and excited about school.
Emily, now 18, has also become a standout long-distance runner on the
high school cross country and indoor and outdoor track teams.
``She's got three letters in three different sports,'' Rodney Fritts
said. ``She couldn'texcel in anything before without the threat of
being found.''
Coming Friday: The politics of home schooling.
now homeschooling is nothing more than a haven from child-abductors.
And there will be another installment tomorrow on the 'politics of
homeschooling' --
Here's the addy if you'd like to see it on their site:
http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/news/special_packages/home_schooling/1021
4189.htm
A means of hiding
Home-schooling freedoms help parents who abduct children
By Dennis J. Willard and Doug Oplinger
Beacon Journal staff writers
Emily Fritts was 6 years old when her mother abducted her in
Staunton, Va.
For the next eight years, Mary Outlaw Fritts and Emily lived on the
run in at least five other states: Tennessee, Oregon, Kansas, Alaska
and Montana. They assumed new identities, becoming Mary and Emily
Stutz.
Mary Fritts took an additional step to keep her secret, something she
could not have done as easily 10 or 20 years earlier in most states:
She home-schooled Emily.
Each year, thousands of parents in custody cases abduct their
children. These parents must elude spouses, the police, state
agencies, the FBI and a legion of organizations dedicated to finding
missing children.
Parents who abduct children live quiet lives on the run. They canmove
into a community, claim they are home schooling and avoid answering
questions or providing proof of their past.
How many abductors home-school?
No one knows.
No one is trying to find out.
Even if someone were to attempt to determine the extent of the
problem, most state laws are written so loosely that it is impossible
to track children through a system they have in common: education.
When children move from one public school to the next, their records
follow them. Most private schools request prior academic files,
although some private schools -- mainly religious ones -- do not.
In Ohio, parents notify their school district that they are going to
home-school. They do not need to ask for permission.
The local superintendent cannot ask any questions about the family or
children, including where the family lived prior to moving into the
district. Requesting prior academic records is forbidden.
Ohio is considered a moderate state for oversight and accountability.
In Colorado, home-schooling parents must notify a school district,
but not necessarily the one in which they live. A parent who wants to
home-school can register with a district separated by more than 100
miles of mountainous terrain, making it difficult for that district
to check on the family.
In other states, such as Texas and Michigan, where home-schooling
laws are even looser, families are not required to notify their
district. In these states, compulsory education has, in effect, been
abandoned.
For Emily's father, Rodney Fritts, the eight years trying to find his
daughter were frustrating and expensive.
Four FBI agents and the National Center for Missing and Exploited
Children offered no answers, so Fritts paid $50,000 to hire a private
investigator. Overall, the ordeal cost him $450,000 in attorney's
fees and losses he incurred trying to keep up the search.
``It was like looking for a needle in a haystack,'' he said. ``When
(Emily) first disappeared, I thought she would be home-schooled
because there was no way she was going to be put in public
schools.... ,'' Fritts said.
The push to find children
After a series of high-profile kidnapping, rape and murder cases in
the late 1990s, the federal government and most state legislatures
passed laws to alert communities to potential threats from sex
offenders and other criminals.
States also createdimmediate-response systems, called Amber Alerts,
that are triggered as soon as a child is reported missing.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, formed by
Congress in 1984 as a private, nonprofit organization, is a
clearinghouse for information about abducted, endangered and sexually
exploited children. The agency works closely with the FBI and U.S.
Department of Justice.
The department's most recent survey on missing children is a snapshot
of 1999, when 1.3 million new cases were reported. The number of long-
term abductions -- the type that might require home schooling to
maintain obscurity -- is much smaller.
A Beacon Journal analysis of national center data from 1990 through
the summer of 2004 found that 1,000 to 1,200 long-term cases of
missing children involving a family member are reported to the center
annually.
No data kept on any link
When the national center, the FBI and the Justice Department were
asked whether home schooling hindered attempts to locate missing
children, the question appeared to catch spokesmen off guard.
Paul Bresson, an FBI spokesman, said his agency does not have data
linking abductions and home schooling.
``We've seen a few cases where that has happened,'' Bresson said.
``It's probably more than likely something has probably happened in
the past, maybe even on more than one occasion, but how pervasive it
is or how frequently those kinds of scenarios come up, I don't know.''
He said the FBI has similar difficulty tracking children through the
public school system because privacy laws prevent state education
departments from compiling specific information on individual
students.
Justice Department officials reiterated the FBI's assertions.
The national center said it received 14,980 reports of a noncustodial
parent abducting a child between 1990 and July 2004. The center
helped to locate 12,746 of the children, a recovery rate of about 85
percent.
Executive Director Ben Ermini said the center is not an investigative
or research agency. It routinely collects information on abducted
children, including personal characteristics, family members, and
where the child was taken from and eventually found.
Details in the center's recovery reports might mention that a child
was home-schooled if that was volunteered by another agency that
conducted the investigation, Ermini said.
``We just don't track that type of information. We don't ask the
question of families or the law enforcement agencies that locate
these children,'' he said.
Cases counted
Responding to a Beacon Journal request, the national center
identified 13 cases involving 18 recovered children since 1990 in
which the family was home schooling.
``That doesn't mean that there weren't hundreds of other kids that
were recovered that were home-schooled, but they never mentioned it
in the report,'' Ermini said.
In its research of a shorter period of time, the Beacon Journal found
18 more cases that the national center did not identify -- involving
28 abducted children -- in which home schooling reportedly was
occurring. The newspaper reviewed thousands of articles published
since 1997.
It's probable that the Beacon Journal's research is incomplete.
Abductions and reunions aren't always the subject of news coverage.
Also, newspapers and other publications don't always note whether a
child was home-schooled while in hiding.
Call for regulation
The executive director of Vanished Children's Alliance, a California-
based agency that is the nation's oldest and second-largest
organization dedicated to finding missing children, said an abducting
parent would be motivated to keep the child out of schools and away
from other children and adults.
Georgia K. Hilgeman-Hammond said law enforcement agencies should be
collecting data on abducting parents, including whether they use home
schooling to elude authorities.
``This is a way to keep the child out of the mainstream,'' she said.
Hilgeman-Hammond thinks state and federal lawmakers should hold
parents more accountable by requiring them to notify their local
districts that they are home schooling and to provide prior academic
records.
The Beacon Journal also found cases in which the national center was
involved in helping to find the abducted child but had not determined
the child was home-schooled.
In one such case, Melissa Ann Gooding was caught in Corinth, Texas,
in 2002 after the national center's routine request for an update on
the case prompted the Adams County, Ill., sheriff to renew the search
for the mother and her daughter, Lisa.
They had disappeared in 1990, about the time Lisa Gooding's father in
Illinois was awarded custody. Melissa Ann Gooding lived in several
states; among them were Illinois and Texas, where no registration for
home schooling is required.
In Texas, home schooling is so common that most people don't think
twice about a home-schooling family living nearby.
Adams County Deputy Clay Doan tracked Melissa Ann Gooding's parents
and sister to the outskirts of Corinth, where a game warden, who
regularly set traps for snakes and bobcats near the home, helped
identify the family -- including the missing mother and daughter.
Doan said that Lisa Gooding was home-schooled and her mother had
never told her that she was abducted.
Doan, who followed the girl's progress through the court proceedings
and afterward, said she was several grades behind for her age when
she was placed in a public school.
The mother was convicted of a felony and granted supervised
visitation, Doan said.
Girl found in Streetsboro
Unlike the national center, the FBI or the Department of Justice,
Deborah Aylward considers home schooling in her searches. As a
private investigator, she knows it offers a way to hide children.
Aylward heads Home Fires, a group from Virginia that offers legal and
investigative services to parents looking for lost children.
On a cold afternoon in February 2002, Aylward sat outside a home in
Streetsboro, waiting for local police to arrive. Minutes earlier, she
had witnessed a young girl in a dress walk quickly from a car to the
home, a coat pulled over her head.
For three weeks, Aylward had been tracking Gail Perkins, a 6-year-old
abducted by her father five years earlier from her home in
Greensboro, N.C.
Gail's mother, Nikki Jones, had turned to Aylward and Home Fires
after the FBI, the national center and four private investigators
were unable to locate the girl.
When the police arrived at the Streetsboro home, they found Gail and
her grandmother hiding in a bedroom closet.
Streetsboro police said that Gail wasn't enrolled in school and that
the family said she was home-schooled.
Aylward said she found Gail by focusing on the extended family of her
father, Adam Perkins.
For five years, as they moved from state to state, Gail had been told
that her grandmother was her mother. Law enforcement officials
believe the family was in southern Virginia before moving to
Streetsboro.
Evasion and tracking
``It's very hard to disappear in the United States today,'' Aylward
said.
She said someone in hiding must stop using a Social Security number
and credit for purchases. The person needs to find work that pays
under the table, use a post office box instead of a mailing address
and register vehicles in someone else's name.
``School is a major issue,'' Aylward said.
In her experience, many abducting parents either home-school or
enroll the children in an obscure religious school that doesn't ask
for student records, she said.
``In most of the cases I have handled over the past 10 years, home
schooling has been a factor,'' Aylward said, adding she has handled
about 75 cases.
When someone is caught with a child, they say as a defense that they
are home schooling, she said. ``It's a great cover. `I'm home
schooling my kids.' ''
But, she said, home schooling is often only a cover.
``They are living a fugitive lifestyle. Schooling is not high on
their list,'' Aylward said. ``They're protecting their own butts from
prosecution and how they can lay low. I don't think there is home
schooling at all. I don't think these children are schooled
whatsoever.''
She thinks legitimate home-schooling families should be concerned
that these parents are tainting the movement's reputation.
The same laws that empower a parent to home-school can provide cover
to abducting parents.
``It's a loophole in the whole mess,'' Aylward said. ``Home schooling
should not be looked at as a method of harboring abducted children.''
She estimated that abductor families truly were home schooling in
about 10 percent of the cases she has investigated.
``It's a great way to deflect attention about why children are home
all day and not going to school. Who is going to call first? It's the
nosy old lady on the street who is going to say, `These kids aren't
in school,' '' she said.
``If I were a parent and I moved into a neighborhood, it's like being
in the witness-protection program. I would make friends with
everybody, introduce my kids under an alias and say they were being
home-schooled, and that would be it,'' Aylward said.
'Out of the sunlight'
Linda Shay Gardner, a Bethlehem, Pa., lawyer who specializes in
abduction cases and sits on the board of The Committee for Missing
Children, said no data exist on the link between home schooling and
missing children, but she has encountered the problem in her efforts
to reunite children with custodial parents.
``They are home schooling to keep them out of the sunlight. I have
seen it in cases,'' she said.
Gardner said states with laws like Ohio's make it almost impossible
to track a child.
Parents are not going to be able to call the more than 600 school
districts in Ohio, Gardner said. ``Even the national center isn't
going to spend the time to call (all those) school districts.''
And that is just one state.
Many abductors move their children from state to state.
Nancy Hammer, director of the international division and policy
counsel at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children,
said an abducting parent's claiming to be home schooling makes sense,
but her experience has been that little or no education is taking
place.
``Why would anybody bother to register, even in Ohio, that they are
home schooling if they abducted their child?'' she said. ``I would
just wait and see if anybody asked me, and then if I got caught, I'd
say I didn't know I was supposed to register.''
Hammer said the issue raises a number of questions that lack easy
answers, such as: Do relaxed rules for home schooling create an
environment that leads to an increase in abductions? Would an
abducting parent who already has violated laws by taking the child be
concerned about following home-schooling registration laws?
Schooling missed
The search for a missing child is, as Rodney Fritts said, like
looking for a needle in a haystack.
For eight years, he and a team of investigators could not break the
case and find his daughter and her mother. Finally, in 2002, he went
on The Montel Williams Show. Afterward, someone in Montana spotted
his ex-wife, he said, and shortly thereafter they showed up at
Fritts' back door.
Mary Outlaw Fritts was convicted of a misdemeanor and fined $250. The
same judge recently issued a warrant for her arrest for failure to
provide child support, Rodney Fritts said.
He learned that for eight years, his daughter had never attended
conventional private or public schools. Instead, she was home-
schooled or attended small religious schools run by a network of
parents.
When Emily came home at age 15,Rodney Fritts offered her a choice of
school settings. She opted to enroll in Stuarts Draft High School, a
public school, as a freshman.
Emily should have been a sophomore, but she had no high school
credits.
She went to summer school, took extra courses and will graduate on
time in June 2005, with plans to go to college next fall.
Rodney Fritts said their relationship was strained at first, but a
few months ago, Emily's attitude suddenly changed, and now she is
happy, positive and excited about school.
Emily, now 18, has also become a standout long-distance runner on the
high school cross country and indoor and outdoor track teams.
``She's got three letters in three different sports,'' Rodney Fritts
said. ``She couldn'texcel in anything before without the threat of
being found.''
Coming Friday: The politics of home schooling.
[email protected]
In a message dated 11/18/2004 9:11:24 AM Mountain Standard Time,
sylgt04@... writes:
``That doesn't mean that there weren't hundreds of other kids that
were recovered that were home-schooled, but they never mentioned it
in the report,'' Ermini said.
-------
How many were in school?
The stories I've read of people who had been abducted by the other
(non-custodial) parent usually involved a kind of shaming brainwashing or flat-out lies
about the first parent, and threats of what awful things the other family had
or would do to the kid.
Although there was some harsh stuff said about HSLDA here, I think this is
the very kind of situation they will jump back on and pretty hard. They don't
want the government in their homes, maybe because of corporal punishment, maybe
just on principle. So they like to comply outwardly (test scores, reports)
but they don't want social workers at their doors. In that way they ARE
watchdogs for freedoms. They want the freedom to teach a skewed view of history and
science and social realities, and so they will work to protect that freedom.
I want the freedom to let my kids learn as many different versions of every
story they can come by, and so I want that freedom too.
I think, personally, that the problem isn't homeschooling, but the larger and
more complex problem of broken homes and the state of adults caring more
about themselves than about their children. Yes, sure, there are TONS of cases in
which abducting a child is for the child's protection, but very often it's
just a tussle between two adults who couldn't get along before and can't get
along now, and the kid becomes a pawn, a victim. I think schools add to all of
that. I bet if someone could magically show all factors, that WAY more would
fit the scenario I'm about to make up than any will EVER homeschool:
Maybe this scenario would be more prevalent:
Teens who had become discouraged and felt helpless met in high school, where
they were forced to go against their will. Already estranged from families
for whatever all reasons (partly school's mechanisms to make kids more loyal to
school than to parents, which DOES happen), they clung to one another and got
pregnant. Unprepared and rejected, they tried and failed to make a marriage
work.
I would love to counter with statistics about how many of those non-custodial
parents hated school and met the custodial parent in school and the mom was
pregnant before she was eighteen or nineteen, but might not have been had it
not been for school.
Just speculation.
And another thing, his articles are not even written as articles. They're
like information dump, as though he were the fact-finder for someone else who
intended to write an article later. I'd expect them to have outline numbers on
every paragraph. They're repetitive and mechanical. What format is that
intended to be!?
Sandra
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
sylgt04@... writes:
``That doesn't mean that there weren't hundreds of other kids that
were recovered that were home-schooled, but they never mentioned it
in the report,'' Ermini said.
-------
How many were in school?
The stories I've read of people who had been abducted by the other
(non-custodial) parent usually involved a kind of shaming brainwashing or flat-out lies
about the first parent, and threats of what awful things the other family had
or would do to the kid.
Although there was some harsh stuff said about HSLDA here, I think this is
the very kind of situation they will jump back on and pretty hard. They don't
want the government in their homes, maybe because of corporal punishment, maybe
just on principle. So they like to comply outwardly (test scores, reports)
but they don't want social workers at their doors. In that way they ARE
watchdogs for freedoms. They want the freedom to teach a skewed view of history and
science and social realities, and so they will work to protect that freedom.
I want the freedom to let my kids learn as many different versions of every
story they can come by, and so I want that freedom too.
I think, personally, that the problem isn't homeschooling, but the larger and
more complex problem of broken homes and the state of adults caring more
about themselves than about their children. Yes, sure, there are TONS of cases in
which abducting a child is for the child's protection, but very often it's
just a tussle between two adults who couldn't get along before and can't get
along now, and the kid becomes a pawn, a victim. I think schools add to all of
that. I bet if someone could magically show all factors, that WAY more would
fit the scenario I'm about to make up than any will EVER homeschool:
Maybe this scenario would be more prevalent:
Teens who had become discouraged and felt helpless met in high school, where
they were forced to go against their will. Already estranged from families
for whatever all reasons (partly school's mechanisms to make kids more loyal to
school than to parents, which DOES happen), they clung to one another and got
pregnant. Unprepared and rejected, they tried and failed to make a marriage
work.
I would love to counter with statistics about how many of those non-custodial
parents hated school and met the custodial parent in school and the mom was
pregnant before she was eighteen or nineteen, but might not have been had it
not been for school.
Just speculation.
And another thing, his articles are not even written as articles. They're
like information dump, as though he were the fact-finder for someone else who
intended to write an article later. I'd expect them to have outline numbers on
every paragraph. They're repetitive and mechanical. What format is that
intended to be!?
Sandra
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
mamaaj2000
--- In [email protected], "Sylvia Toyama" >
eyed at us...otherwise we might think what we are doing is good!
--aj
> In Texas, home schooling is so common that most people don't thinkOh, the horror! Thank goodness people in other states *do* look cross-
> twice about a home-schooling family living nearby.
eyed at us...otherwise we might think what we are doing is good!
--aj
Cerridwen Lorelei
May I have permission to use your quote on a hs board I belong to? THat is GREAT
--- In [email protected], "Sylvia Toyama" >
eyed at us...otherwise we might think what we are doing is good!
--aj
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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
--- In [email protected], "Sylvia Toyama" >
> In Texas, home schooling is so common that most people don't thinkOh, the horror! Thank goodness people in other states *do* look cross-
> twice about a home-schooling family living nearby.
eyed at us...otherwise we might think what we are doing is good!
--aj
"List Posting Policies" are provided in the files area of this group.
Visit the Unschooling website and message boards: http://www.unschooling.com
Yahoo! Groups SponsorADVERTISEMENT
---------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links
To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/UnschoolingDiscussion/
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[email protected]
Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.
---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Meet the all-new My Yahoo! � Try it today!
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Robyn Coburn
<<<<Evasion and tracking
``It's very hard to disappear in the United States today,'' Aylward
said.
She said someone in hiding must stop using a Social Security number
and credit for purchases. The person needs to find work that pays
under the table, use a post office box instead of a mailing address
and register vehicles in someone else's name.>>>>>
And yet identity theft is apparently so easy.
If someone is going to hide, they hide. If they are in States with big
regulations, they would just go underground, so all the additional
regulation in the world would not find them. They would undoubtedly tell
people they were homeschooling, and maybe even be able to talk about the
laws. For example anyone in our local group (in California) could *say* that
they have put in an R-4, and no-one would assume that they had not done so.
In custody case abductions where one major motivation is probably a belief
on the part of the kidnapper that the child would be better off with them
than the custodial parent, maybe they *are* homeschooling.
Robyn L. Coburn
---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.795 / Virus Database: 539 - Release Date: 11/12/2004
``It's very hard to disappear in the United States today,'' Aylward
said.
She said someone in hiding must stop using a Social Security number
and credit for purchases. The person needs to find work that pays
under the table, use a post office box instead of a mailing address
and register vehicles in someone else's name.>>>>>
And yet identity theft is apparently so easy.
If someone is going to hide, they hide. If they are in States with big
regulations, they would just go underground, so all the additional
regulation in the world would not find them. They would undoubtedly tell
people they were homeschooling, and maybe even be able to talk about the
laws. For example anyone in our local group (in California) could *say* that
they have put in an R-4, and no-one would assume that they had not done so.
In custody case abductions where one major motivation is probably a belief
on the part of the kidnapper that the child would be better off with them
than the custodial parent, maybe they *are* homeschooling.
Robyn L. Coburn
---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.795 / Virus Database: 539 - Release Date: 11/12/2004
Seth W Bartels
>Maybe this scenario would be more prevalent:where
>Teens who had become discouraged and felt helpless met in high school,
>they were forced to go against their will. Already estranged fromfamilies
>for whatever all reasons (partly school's mechanisms to make kids moreloyal >to school than to parents, which DOES happen), they clung to one
another and >got pregnant. Unprepared and rejected, they tried and
failed to make a >marriage work.
wow...that's my teenage love story! minus the icky failed marriage
ending. ;) we're still together (and stronger than ever!) 8 years -and
three beautiful babies- later. i feel like i've escaped the practically
inevitable! phew...color me relieved.
lisa
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]