BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
Loss of Opportunity

Firstly, Proposition operates under the assumption that a kid needs an extraordinary non-parent "mentor" to fully develop its potential. No evidence is provided in support of this statement; for all Team Opposition knows, full development is especially based on familial support rather than random encounters in school. That may be why Venus Williams has been coached by her father since 1995[[http://tinyurl.com/68bj24]]. Secondly, Team Opposition finds it hard to believe that schools can provide better mentoring to children than parents. This assumption is obviously incorrect: we know that the average number of kids in class is 23 or 24 [[http://www.publicschoolreview.com/articles/5]] and even the simple pupil/teacher ratio (currently 15.2 in public schools[[http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372]]) is much higher than the number of kids per parent. The underpaid public-school teacher has many more students to deal with than just a few offsprings; he simply cannot be the good mentor for all of them, if any of them. However, it is definitely easier to reveal the kid’s talent for the parents who knows it deeply, than for the teacher who only needs perfunctory awareness of it. The Proposition claims that "parents couldn’t see the whole picture": in light of these facts, we can say that teachers in public schools cannot even look for it. All that this ban means is that children will spend more time with overworked teachers instead of loving parents: we have already proven that home-schooled kids attend more extra-curricular activities than public-school kids, thereby meeting more "mentors" to be "guided by" than public-school students. "Mentoring potential" is thus maximized in a homeschooling environment. Having pointed that out, Team Opposition must insist that the entire theory of necessary "mentorship" lacks substantiation and cannot be regarded as significant.
We trust parents to know what is best for their child

2. We firmly believe that education provided by the state is by its very nature far less likely to make mistakes than parents or home tutors. Furthermore, the opportunity to keep children at home will be seized upon in large numbers by parents who resent the costs of schooling (e.g. uniform, trips, and transport) who simply can’t be bothered with the hassle of ensuring their child receives schooling. That attitude obviously points to the standard of teaching they would provide in the home.Given that it is the state’s duty in liberal democracies to ensure children receive a decent education, the state is entitled to take positive steps to reach that end - much safer to have children educated by the state or established, tested bodies (such as private schools) large enough to bear corporate responsibility where observation and review can frequently occur, than in the home where review is necessarily infrequent and unrepresentative. Teachers in both state and private schools are within an environment we can subject to quality control, and are employed to do their jobs and therefore have a driving interest in ensuring it’s done properly. No doubt some parents who want to educate at home have good intentions but others do not, and we don’t have the same kind of immediate control over them.
Summary: Proposition

We do not object to home education, and we do not claim that public education is perfect. We seek to ensure that these two essential practices do not become competitive. All the benefits of homeschooling can be maintained without pulling students out of public school. Parents influence their children and can direct them to other intellectual pursuits that the school does not offer, or can tell children why they object to something they might hear or learn in school rather than pretending that the subject they dislike does not exist. But, if they wish to keep child abuse secret, to radicalize or unschool their children, to create their own education system with other parents or guardians, or to avoid more strenuous oversight through homeschool, we object to this. We therefore find it justifiable to ban homeschooling as a practice: not because it is an evil, but because it takes away the good of social education and because it can endanger some children. School is still invaluable, and there are benefits that are mutually exclusive from homeschool: teachers who are experienced professionals, and a diversity of thought regardless of the type or common ethnicity of a school. If a a student had the same teacher for 12 years, it would be cause for alarm. Homeschooling is a legalized version of this limiting and unnecessary practice. It necessarily limits the scope of a child’s learning by placing it on the expertise (or lack thereof) of a single individual. For the same reason we don't allow children to study only math if it is their favorite subject, we don't allow the parents to educate their children fully simply because they object to the curriculum and its diversity. All the opposition’s points about better academic performance and civic involvement are explained by the fact that the majority of the homeschooled belong to a high socioeconomic class, which has a significant effect on school achievement and child development [[http://tinyurl.com/329qzko]]. This achievement would be boosted in traditional school settings because of the uniqueness in schools we have already described. Research has also shown that mixed-ability classes, in which higher and lower performing students are taught together, produces better academic results in students[[http://tinyurl.com/23glrmb]]. Specialized schools are also options. Opting out of society is something one can only choose as an individual. We do not believe that the choice is valid when you decide it for someone else, particularly a child, who has not had the benefit of seeing what society is. Even the Amish who religiously object to most of modern society’s practices allow all the individual members to experience society as long as they see fit so that if they choose to join the community, it is by their own volition and not by the force of ignorance. To fight ignorance and ensure cooperation is what we wish to achieve by this measure. We wish to keep parents and children involved in society.
Family bonding

Interaction with other pupils is a crucial element of a child’s development, and mere social interaction isn’t good enough - team building, working towards goals, being forced to confront problems with and live alongside individuals one might not like, or come from different backgrounds, is clearly done best in a school environment. Being able to integrate depends on exposure to other people - obviously there’s more diversity in a class than in the home! The proposition is right to identify wider needs: education is about more than just academic tutoring - it’s about educating the whole person, and that is best achieved by educating them within a school with their peers, in a microcosm of the society they will soon enter.Indeed, parents and children spending day after day at home are sometimes subject to a phenomenon sociologists call the ‘hothouse’ relationship - the closeness between them becomes exclusive, with reaction to outsiders almost aggressive by instinct. Such a relationship makes it even more difficult for the child to adapt to life in the wider community.Those that seek to cocoon their offspring from the outside world merely delay the time when their children have to deal with it - and strengthen the impact of the shock that will be received upon seeing the element of society they find so unpleasant. Furthermore, what is the guarantee that the moral structure parents might be instilling in their children, year after year, away from any kind of effective monitoring, is beneficial?
Home schooling can be the only alternative

There are many cases in which the home schooling is the only possibility to get education. It can be in the cases where the school is too far away and there is no possibility to go there, this is a big problem for example in New Zealand where The Correspondence School had originated in order to help parents educating their children at home.[[http://tinyurl.com/wodc1]] This problem can be even bigger when the children are handicapped in any way, there are numerous cases of deaf children who live too far away from schools for them, so they have to home schooled.[[http://tinyurl.com/wodc2]] Even greater problems have to tackle the parents of physically or mentally handicapped children who would become victims of bullying in normal schools (according to the reports from British schools 82% of children with learning disabilities are bullied)[[http://tinyurl.com/wodc3]] and the special schools are not always accessible. Hence, home schooling is the only possibility for parents to defend their disabled children, mainly in the earlier school years where is the possibility of bullying highest. Thus, ban on homeschooling would constitute an unusual and cruel burden on many families, and would actually deprive their children of proper education. That is not something that any society can stand for. Another group harmed by the standard education system are talented and gifted children. The public schools and teachers there usually don’t have time and opportunities to help them. They spend their time in school uselessly and can’t use their potential because teachers don’t have time to work with them. Homeschooling provides parents the chance to fully use the potential of their children and give them the most effective education because they can work with them on topics in which the children are good. So there is a possibility of 14-year-old children getting place at the Cambridge University.[[http://tinyurl.com/wodc4]]
Loss of Opportunity

Children can perhaps be best described as beings of potential – during their school years, each child is in the process of discovering their talents and having them be nurtured in an attempt to best reach self-actualization. We believe a self-actualized individual is aware of their own limitations because their talents have been nurtured from a young age, with their mentors providing for their development. Under the homeschooling system parents become much more exclusive mentors to a child, and this can be problematic. Although parents are generally aware of what their child is capable of, their assessments are not always accurate. This could be for a number of reasons – perhaps it may be due to the fact that their children are predominately seen in the home environment, limiting their chances to show off their potential in other situations. It could also be because parents sometimes assume that their children will share the same talents that they had. Simply stated, it would be unreasonable to assume parents could see the whole picture. This is why nearly everyone has someone in their life that helped to form their identity or helped them discover a talent – a mentor that is someone other than their parents; very often even a schoolteacher or a coach who gave them an opportunity to excel that may not have been available in the home. It is this sort of mentoring that can lead a person from simply having potential to becoming self-actualized, and banning homeschooling best provides an avenue towards that goal. Governments have a duty to protect these non-consenting individuals from a severe loss in psychological advancement due to their parents decision. Governments require parents to feed their child's body, why not require them to feed their minds as well by partly liberating them from the shackles of their parents' world view?
We trust parents to know what is best for their child

We trust parents to know what is best for their child - parents care more, because it’s their child. To them the child is an individual - to the state, merely one of the many thousands moving through the system. Changes in the curriculum, experiments in teaching practice, can take years to iron out - fine for the system, disastrous for the individual caught up in it at the time.What is the difference in principle between home schooling and private schooling? Both involve taking one’s child out of the state’s prescribed school structure and instead educating them in a private environment that’s been vetted by the state. Given state regulation is present, isn’t this just private schooling on a micro level?
Proposition plan is unfeasible

First, just because some citizens will choose to violate a law is definitely not sufficient reason to decide not to pass it altogether. We recognize that there will be parents who will break the law, just as there are still those who commit murder, theft, and fraud despite the harshest of punishments. It is still important for a government to uphold the principles it believes are beneficial to society - in this case, the importance of a complete, wholesome education that will create a better citizen in the long run. Take the smoking ban. Are there those who smoke despite the ban and pay the fine when caught? Yes. Is the law still supported? Definitely - because when it comes to a matter of public good, the government passes the necessary laws that will deter most people from acting in an undesirable manner. Most citizens would rather be law abiding. In addition, institutions of higher education, as well as job-offering companies and organisations, will probably not be willing to accept students who have not passed through a legal, state recognized curriculum. This serves as a powerful disincentive to parents who choose to home school - these parents take their children's education so seriously that they teach children themselves; they will weigh pros and cons very carefully. As for the supposed 'loophole', there is a substantial difference between a state recognized private school and Aunty Jane teaching the neighborhood kids. A private school is a registered institution under state or federal law, often financially independent . In Texas, for instance, the Commissioner of Education recognizes the accreditation of non-public schools in a Letter of Understanding before operations can begin[[http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/RegPrivSchl/texas.html]]. And if parents start creating mini-private schools instead of home schooling...well, we can cross that bridge when we get there. More stringent teacher and curriculum certification requirements are among the available options.
Family bonding

Home schooling doesn’t just offer a better education. Family bonding is a massively important element of a child’s development, one that’s constantly undermined in modern society. Positive parental role models are found less and less frequently. If a parent is judged by a state vetting process to be good enough, isn’t it enormously positive to approve of an environment that cements both a positive role model and family bonding? It is absurd to suggest that children only interact with others at school. The concern regarding ‘getting to know other children’ has been solved in the USA, the nation that home-schools the largest proportion of its population; a network of home-schoolers exist to provide companionship, promoting sports events and social functions through the internet and other methods - it fulfils the role admirably (recent steps include the creation of a home-school honour society). Furthermore, the standard social provisions for children in civil society - scout movements, sports clubs - are open to home schoolers like everyone else. Seen in this light, home schooling is not a removal of a child from society - just from the state’s schools. But such interaction happens outside the classroom, where it belongs, instead of acting as distractions to learning. Within this point, some parents have legitimate concerns about the moral tutelage their children receive in state schools - about the kind of moral message some teachers choose to impart, and the kind of classmates they find themselves alongside. Parents are entitled to judge schools on a moral level, and find them lacking. In so many school districts, the only way to avoid drugs in school is not to go.
Individual Rights Take Precedence Over Government's Monopoly on Education

Schools do benefit public health. Disturbingly, some parents homeschool children only because they believe the state should not mandate vaccinations for students. In August 2008, the number of children with measles doubled to 131; homeschooled children accounted for 25 of 30 in an outbreak in Chicago in May and for 11 of 19 cases in Grant County, Washington[[http://tinyurl.com/6yp4lk]]. Of the infected, 91% were unvaccinated, for the same "philosophical or religious beliefs” that keep 83% of homeschooled kids away from school. It is a government's duty to protect its citizens, particularly those who are not old enough to oppose parents. Opposition asks us to institute an obligatory vaccination; we have, in the only place we can enforce it - school. Parents' rights are important, but states often intervene for collective benefit. Laws protect children from their parents’ physical abuse. Laws require all children to be educated. We support freedom of choice and religion – we believe, though, that a child, not the parent, has the right to choose these, after s/he has had exposure to other ideas at school. We definitely don’t endorse parents pulling children out of school because they disagree with a taught concept; homeschooling in the US took a jump soon after public schools began teaching evolution. When a parent disagrees, s/he should work towards solving the problem with the school rather than losing hope. Finally, the idea that a ban on homeschooling would result in the creation of totalitarian regimes like Nazi Germany is ludicrous in today’s world. Public discussion occurs whenever school curricula are changed; the democratic processes that exist to vote on such changes(communities elect school boards) ensures that the indoctrination of children that occurred in Nazi Germany won’t occur. For example, opposition’s citation is from MSNBC, a liberal voice in public discourse, and the article is an example of the debate following Texas' change.
Breeds Separatism

Firstly, ban on homeschooling will not diminish parents' influence on children's morals & religion. If religiosity truly is the top factor, parents will enroll their children in a religious school, thus impose a single world view as well. Demonstrably, though, it is not: "religious or moral instruction is a relevant reason for only 1.3% of parents" and, even if it were, "no association was found between parents’ most important reasons for homeschooling and the pedagogical methods they utilized" [[http://sorrel.humboldt.edu/~soc/downloads/senior_projects/2008_Higgins.pdf]]. Even in the 2007 study provided, more parents cite "a concern about the school environment" and "dissatisfaction with academic instruction at other schools" rather than religious reasons. We think that parents want to educate a child, not indoctrinate it. Secondly, home schooling is not separation, but rather direct integration into the local community. Instead of being integrated into an arbitrary system of school hierarchy, children get to know their own community much better, as they do not spend hours locked up at school, but rather keep everyday contact with their family and neighbors. Removing children from classrooms doesn't mean confining them to the house. A lot of life lessons can be learned in extended community service (i. e. church) or simply by being involved in the community substantially. Additionally, home schooling offers protection to vulnerable children from the wrong kind of socialization (youth gangs, bullying...). Regarding the bland assertion concerning lack of empathy, we feel obliged to point out that Brian D. Ray, 2009, "Research Facts on Homeschooling The home-educated are doing well, typically above average, on measures of social, emotional, and psychological development [including] peer interaction, self-concept, leadership skills, family cohesion, participation in community service, and self-esteem.
Parents are entitled to make judgements about the quality of state provided teaching.

Hundreds of researchers and experts within the educational profession labour to ensure that the best methods are deployed in schools. How presumptuous to think one might know better than that accumulated wisdom how to teach a child - as if that child being the product of an individual suddenly enhanced that individual’s knowledge of their educational needs beyond that of those that have given their lives to building an understanding of these complex matters, and are qualified through years of training to carry out the tasks we set them. State schools may not be perfect - but they will only get worse as those who can afford to opt out in order to educate at home.
Proposition plan is unfeasible

No matter the alleged "benefits" of Proposition policy, it must first show that the mechanism for putting them forward is effective. We don't believe it is: as the only punishment put forward by Prop is "fining the parents/legal guardians", we say that many parents will be more than happy to pay a fine for the privilege of educating their own child. After all, many non-homeschooling parents are quite content with paying exorbitant tuition at private schools; as Prop failed to set an exact fine, we daresay any fine will scarcely outburden that. Additionally, it is important to recognize that this plan will inevitably have many loopholes. For instance, it is extremely difficult to draw the line between homeschooling and small private schools. If a parent, for instance, teaches his children and children of his neighbor could he technically be eligible for a 'private school' status? We don't know - but apparently, neither does the Proposition, as it completely failed in its responsibility to provide specific definitions for anything it prohibits, or how it will prohibit it. While we think that failing to provide for the ban of homeschooling is a very good thing, it also means that none of the alleged benefits of the ban can stand.
Classroom education often fails the bright and the slow

The benefits of education in a wider context more than counterbalance to this objection. Of course, the state doesn’t just leave high achievers and strugglers to rot! Whilst admittedly, attention for individuals in either group isn’t one on one, it’s not awful - and the experience of growing up alongside less and more able students produces individuals with greater understanding of their society. Furthermore, students with special needs are those that most need the state’s enormous resources to focus on their requirements. Once a student has needs of such a magnitude that demands it, they are educated in special schools specifically intended to help them.