CBS News is wrong. Their reporter is wrong. Dan Rather is wrong. Mostly I just blame Dan. Say you have a large group of people who brush their teeth. It turns out a few of the teeth-brushers are also axe-murderers. What can you conclude about the horrid effects of teeth-brushing? Nothing. But don’t be surprised if a journalist on CBS intones about the “dark side” of the “largely unregulated” teeth-brushers.
Recently “The CBS Evening News With Dan Blather” ran a two-part story about homeschoolers. Oh, not about how homeschooled kids score higher on average than public-schooled kids on the standard tests. Or why they got pulled from school. No, instead CBS dredged up a few horror stories about wacko parents, and muttered ominously about the whole homeschooling community. Which consists of between one and two million kids and their parents, wanting to give them something better.
Andrea Yates drowned her five kids. Andrea Yates homeschooled her kids. Would it have been hard for her to drown them after they got home from a school? For most parents it’s very hard to drown their kids. Most parents love their kids. But give me a minute and I’ll find examples of teachers who have abused kids, and of parents who have abused kids returning from school.
By the CBS kind of reasoning, even becoming a parent should be subject to regulation. But do we really want Joe Bureaucrat monitoring everything we do, just because somebody else out there is bad?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.