Greetings,

Turpin: Shackled siblings found in Perris, California home

The usual suspects: religious nutters home-schooling their children.

Kindest regards,

James

Every article I've seen on this straight up just repeats the quote 'God called them to have all these children' with a straight face.

This kind of bollocks needs to be challenged instead of reported on matter-of-factly.

One reason why the state should be really careful about home schooling. Apparently this family of 13 kids was "home schooled", and there was no oversight about it. A child has, in my opinion, the right to education because of it's huge impact on his/hers future. The state failed here to provide that here.

I've also read that the parents were quite religious. But for some reason that hasn't been widely mentioned, and I've even seen in my local media doubts if that religiosity was just a ruse. Funnily enough no one is suggesting that the religiosity might actually be the base reason for the abuse.

Greetings,

Just gets worse and worse:

California siblings held captive planned escape for two years

Kindest regards,

James

Glad the kids have been freed from their nightmare, but it makes you think how many hundreds, thousands or even more kids are still currently facing this kind of situation.

In a wider perspective, going back through human history when the world was less connected, governments had less oversight, and people were generally less respected by the powers that be, one can only imagine the horrors we humans have inflicted on ourselves and our children.

How can we solve this and make it never happen again? The only ways I can think of are politically undesirable.

Greetings,

I think, with regard to America, it's relatively easy: ensure that all education is measured through the same metric - exams.

Charter schools are defined as "private", as a result, the children attending them don't have to do the exams that those in public schools have to do. This is ridiculous - although they're managed privately, they are publicly-funded. They should have to meet the same standards, exam-wise, as public schools.

Equally, home-schooled children don't have to take any exams(!) - how does anyone know if they've been educated, never-mind actually meet the standard of a good education.

This means that parents (and cults) can use "home-schooling" as a means of keeping control of children, and brainwash them.

This is the same sort of thing that occurs in abusive relationships, where the controller (abuser) doesn't want their partner working, then they don't want them to socialize with their friends, and finally they cut them off from their family. At this point they have gained total control of their partner (victim).

The use of home-schooling as an excuse to isolate children from others is a classic tactic of such controllers.

I realize that there are people who use home-schooling for other reasons - practical rather than ideological - but the only way to ensure that the children are being educated, and not abused, is to test them against state/national standard exams.

Only in this way can you have over-sight of both charter, and home, schools/ing.

Kindest regards,

James