Parents/guardians should be in control of their child(ren)'s education, not the state.

I will defend my arguments, attack CON's points, then add a new argument. I. Given control, a state [Germany] abuses power. The persecution is relevant. I have shown you an example of a state that does not allow parental control of education, and how that state abuses that power. I will permit and continue the use of the PISA test as an accurate measure of a country's education system. You claim that because Germany's education system (homeschooling is illegal) is superior to the United State's education system (homeschooling is legal). However, homeschooling is legal in Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, Switzerland, Estonia, Finland, Canada, Poland, and Belgium [1], all of which scored higher on the PISA in 2013 than Germany [2]. II. Quality of Education CON attempts to counter the Home School Legal Defense Association's (HSLDA) web poll [3], which I have now more specifically cited, with a misrepresented statistic from the Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE) [4]. In truth, HSLDA and CRHE do not contradict each other. The data provided by CRHE says that just over 60% surveyed included religion as 'an' important reason. Concern about school environment was selected as 'an' important reason more than 90% of the time. The point is, only 17% gave religion as their most important reason. This does not contradict my earlier point that less than half of homeschooling parents' main reason is religion. CON would have you reject my U.S. news source [5a], claiming I am taking the “testimony of one parent of home schooled children”. While the article in question does include several first-person testimonials, the facts I shared (that home schooled children receive better grades, transition to college better, etc.) came from studies [5b] [5c] cited by the article. These studies go on to show that home schooled undergraduates are more likely to be Pell scholars, have higher GPAs, have higher ACT composite scores, and bring more transferable credits than their standard educated counterparts [5b]. III. Social Interests should not be decided by one party CON claimed “the state, which in cases of educated nations is often democratic”. This is severely untrue. Going back to the top 15 countries with superior education systems (PISA, 2013) [2], their government types are highly varied: communist state, parliamentary republic, multi-party democracy, republic, communist state one man dictatorship, constitutional monarchy, hereditary constitutional monarchy, parliamentary government with a constitutional monarchy, confederation, federal parliamentary democracy under a constitutional monarchy, and Canada's democracy/federation/monarchy [7]. This fact also destroys CON's claim that the state is “fairer in education because more people have a say”. If you want people to truly have a say, let them decide if the state's education system or an alternative is best for their child. The problem of leaving the education of children to one single entity, is that any single entity is fallible. Uniformity of any kind leaves systems prey to shared vulnerability. No, parents don't count as 'single entities' in this explanation because a single parent could not educate a state's worth of children. A. “homeschooling is not in the best interest of the child” First I would like to attack CON's playful interpretation of certain statistics. Yes, 3% of K-12 aged children are currently home schooled in the US. Yes, only 1% of students out of 1000 colleges polled were home schooled. This does NOT mean that 2 out of 3 home school graduates do not continue their education. homeschooling has been growing at an alarming rate, nearly doubling in the last decade [5b]. This means that the statistic is probably closer to 1 out of 5 home school graduates not continuing their education at college, because at the time this 1% home schooled graduates were being home schooled, there were half (1.5%) as many home schooled students as there currently are (3%). B. “Parent Choice of Education is Harmful” CON claims that because a significant portion of parents who home school do so because of religious conviction, the state should not allow parent control of education. Where is this inherent link between religion and abuse that CON seems so afraid of? Not only is separation of Church and State a long fought for right, but religion is not some hideous monster that will either abuse children or turn them into bigots. On the note of child abuse, allowing parents the right to control their child's education in no way 'gives a thumbs up' to child abuse. The state still has the responsibility to discover and stop child abuse and neglect. C. “State Controlled Education works better” The United States is not the one and only example of homeschooling. CON cannot simply show that other countries beat the US at the PISA, therefor homeschooling is ineffective. CON goes on to say “The majority of students are not taught at home or alternatively schooled in those countries [that did better than the US at the PISA]”. I know of no developed country where the majority of students are home schooled. It seems the PISA data by country alone is not relevant at comparing homeschooling. CON again tries to rely on the 1% / 3% botched statistics, but as I showed earlier, the situation for home schoolers is not nearly as bad as CON believes. D*. “Skimming” While CON did not organize this as a separate argument, I found that “Meanwhile, private schooling and school choice also have a strong effect of cream-skimming, or discriminating against lower-opportunity students (8)” was inconsistent with argument “B” and needs to be labeled separately. The point I believe CON was heading towards is that allowing private schools increases elitism.Private schools are not the source of inequality. Eliminating private education, would simply remove a valuable service and not solve the problem of inequality. This debate has so far focused on homeschooling. I would like to remind all parties that the resolution is “Parents should be in control of their child's education”. This means being allowed to choose alternative education such as homeschooling, private school, and parochial school. While homeschooling is a hot topic, are you willing to say goodbye to private education too? This leads me to my new argument: variety. IV. Variety Having a variety of education systems available is best. Having the state's education system available is important, as many families default to public education. However, having only a public education system available is unacceptable in a world where great alternatives could be offered. CONCLUSION In conclusion, parents should be in control of their child's education because states are corruptible, states are fallible, alternative education systems provide quality, and alternative education systems provide variety. CON attempted to show that homeschooling is poor quality, that homeschooling parents are trying to indoctrinate their children in an abusive way, that the public education system is better, and that alternative education systems support elitism. I have rebutted CON's arguments, leaving you to agree with PRO. SOURCES 1. http://www.hslda.org... 2. http://www.theguardian.com... 3. http://www.hslda.org... 4. http://www.responsiblehomeschooling.org... 5a. http://www.usnews.com... 5b. http://i.bnet.com... 5c. http://files.eric.ed.gov... 6. http://www.responsiblehomeschooling.org... 7. https://www.cia.gov...