Specifically, the appeals court said, the trial court had found that "keeping the children at home deprived them of situations where (1) they could interact with people outside the family, (2) there are people who could provide help if something is amiss in the children's lives, and (3) they could develop emotionally in a broader world than the parents' 'cloistered' setting."
I find that very unsettling. I homeschool both my children through an online PUBLIC charter school that lets the parents be in control. I teach two electives that are not included in the curriuculm, Bible (non-denominational) and Spanish. In doing this, I have met MANY homeschooling families. Every family does it for a different reason. Our MAIN reason was overpopulation of what would have been our youngest's Kindergarten class (28 students with 6 K classes having at least this many...that's a lot of freaking 5 year olds with ONE teacher per roughly average of 26 students). But the majority of home-schooling families home-school because they don't believe their children are getting a quality education. I went into many of these 'groups' thinking I would meet crazed religous extremists and actually was amazed how few claim their religous beliefs influenced their decisions at all.
That being said... there are FOUR home-school groups in the tiny town I live in. You hit the Phoenix metro and there's at least 500. We go on field trips, most ALL museums and attractions have a "homeschool day" and we get together then. My boys play football, go to the Y and have friends in the neighborhood.
There's not much background on this family, but for a judge to rule something like that (which could and will later be used many times against many other families to enforce the same law) terrifies me. He took all rights away from that family. I have no teaching credentials, and yet, my son has already completed the second grade (FOUR months early) and is whizzing through third grade material.
I have more to say on the subject, but I'll leave it at that for now... I'm a little ticked off and need to check into some Arizona laws now to be sure this type of thing won't happen here.
Oh and I need to add... while right now, we DO use a public system, it's very open and accomidating (sp) to the broad spectrum of homeschooling families... you can omit lessons or specific things in lessons and can 'add' curriulum (as I did). However, if we move back to the coast, there is no public virtual academy (so far, anyway) and therefor, I was planning on purchasing the curriculum (
www.k12.com) and home-schooling them the same way.. please don't take offense, but I am very unhappy with Mississippi's schools (I graduated from OSHS, I know first hand, and OS had one of the top ranking in MS).