Home schooling is wrong target in child abuse case.(Insider Report)

When New Jersey state officials discovered four foster children in poor physical condition--allegedly underweight and underdeveloped-the media immediately locosed attention on the fact that the children were home-schooled. The New York Times opined: "Americans everywhere wondered how their condition had gone unnoticed by people outside their family for so long. Part of the answer was that they had been home-schooled."

Critics of home schooling will use any excuse to sabotage home-schooling rights, but in this as in other cases, they are way off target. An earlier Times article admits that "though the children were homeschooled, they were not hidden away." Indeed, the family attended church weekly, and the pastor saw the children regularly. And the New Jersey Department of Youth and Family Services (DYFSI has sought the dismissal of nine employees, charging that although 38 visits in the past four years were made to the foster home by department social workers, no report of abuse was made.

DYFS director Ed Cotton described the ...