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

I. Abuse of Power That the Romeike family was accepted to the US under refugee status, lends that the harsh action of the German government traumatizing the Romeike children by physically removing them from their home and escorting them to school is in fact an abuse of power. The Romeike children were not abused. The states only reason for interfering was its instistance that all children receive the exact same education. II. Quality of Education While CON has showed that a significant proportion of home schooling families are religious, CON has failed to show that religion is inherently harmful to the quality of education. Private Schools are known for their quality education and what few studies there are have begun to show the benefits of home education. Optional alternative education allows parents to choose a higher quality education for their child. III. Fallibility of a Single Entity CON believes that democracy gives decision making power to the many, and that this is better than having every guardian decide on behalf of their child. However, voter turn out for presidential elections fluctuates between 50% to 60% [1]. Barely over half of US citizens give their voice to presidential elections. Far less have direct input into the public education system. It is vital that parents have the choice to place their child in the care of the public education system or an alternative, such as private school or home school. It is too risky to force all children to go through the same education system. A variety of educations is best to ensure a variety of schools of thought have an input on our future. This leads me into point IV. IV. Variety of Educational Systems If you'll refer back to the rules in the first speech, new arguments are only not allowed in the last round. My opponent is much more interested in playing at statistics than using critical thinking. A lack of statistics where irrelevant or unattainable does not make an argument invalid. CON attacked the format of this argument, not the argument itself, thus dropping the point to me. A. Best Interest of Child I apologize for “1 out of 5”. This was a typo. In my notes I have “1 out of 3” home school graduates do not continue on to college, which is congruent with the math. CON shared with us that Public School graduates continue on to college at approximately the same ratio as home school graduates. This may have led you to believe we have tied this point. However, CON forgets that home school is not the only form of alternative education. Private Schools pride themselves on extremely high college acceptance rates for their graduates. Therefor, alternative education is in the best interest of the child. Home schooling gives the child as good a chance at continuing on to college as public schooling, and private schooling gives the child an even better chance. B. Parent Choice is Harmful Allowing the state to prevent child abuse is not the same as allowing the state to control all education. Parents have been indoctrinating their children into their religious beliefs for centuries with or without the help of home education. If CON suggests the state prevent parents from indoctrinating their children into their beliefs this would be a gross overstep and directly violate freedom of religion. As usual, CON ignores the branch of alternative education that is private school. CON feels it is necessary for parents to limit contact with their child. Again, this would be a gross overstep of state control to dictate how much time a parent can spend with their child. The exception to this being abuse, in which case it is the state's duty to interfere. The only harm CON has shown is child abuse, which is not directly caused by parent choice of education, and does not fall under state controlled education for the state to remove a child from an abusive or neglectful environment. C. State Controlled Education is Better CON has merely shown that there is more data on public education than home education. Yet again, CON neglects the branch of alternative education that is private schooling. Public education is certainly not better than private education, otherwise why would anyone ever pay to send their child to private school when public school is free? D. Elitist Education “Skims” CON claims I dropped this point. I did not. I said “private schools are not the source of inequality. Eliminating private education, would simply remove a valuable service and not solve the problem of inequality”. Here is a quick summary for you. I have four arguments. I. Allowing the state to control the education of every child lends it to abusing that power. II. Quality of education would be hampered by limiting children to the public education system. III. Putting all children to through the same education system is irresponsible due to the fallibility of a single entity (putting all your eggs in one basket. IV. Having a variety of education systems available is our best chance at success. My opponent also have four arguments. A. CON believes public education is in the best interest of the child. However, public school is just as bad as home school at getting their graduates into college and private school is fantastic at getting their graduates into college. B. CON believes parent choice is harmful. However, allowing every parent to decide on behalf of their child is better than allowing the state to put them all through the same system. C. CON believes public education is better. However, it is clear that private education is superior. D. CON believes private education causes inequality. However, eliminating private education will not solve inequality and instead steals a valuable service. The central theme of this debate is would you rather risk a small proportion of the sliver of the families that home school having an easier time indoctrinating or abusing their child, or would you rather risk the state putting all children through the exact same sub-par education with the curriculum and pledges chosen by the state. How children are educated shapes the future. Don't let the state water down the potential of the future by controlling the education of our children. 1. http://elections.gmu.edu...