tv Ali Velshi on Target Al Jazeera September 24, 2015 1:30am-2:01am EDT
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nobody has ownership of the song. keep in mind you can keep up with all the latest news at aljazeera.com, that is aljazeera.com. >> i'm ali velshi. "on target" tonight, reading writing and risk, a hard lesson and why some aren't learning like they should be. it's mid september and that means about 50 million american kids are heading off to public schools every weekday. another 5 million go to private schools but nearly 2 million students stay at home and receive ho home schooling and in some ways, home schooling is old schooling.
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the only way americans got educated until public education got mandatory in the early 1900s, in response to desegregation, social upheaval. today, why people home school, concerning about the environment in schools and the desire to provide religious instruction of instruction. home schooling has been legal in all 50 states for the last quarter century but doesn't mean it is heavily regulated. a mortgage of states require parents to notify if they are home schooled. but states in red don't require any notification at all. others require their parents to report home schooling and in arkansas and pennsylvania a
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parent's criminal history cannot prevent them from home schooling. these 28 states in orange don't require parents to submit tests or assessments and get this: most states have no minimum education requirement for parents who home school their kids. this lack of oversight has led critics to say that home schooled students or at least some of them are not receiving a basic education. here's an example of that from a recent documentary. >> 12 times 12. >> i don't know that one. >> how about 6 times 6? >> 20. >> five. (laughing). >> we have studied genesis to joshua. thought so hard on the math problems. we're on bible. >> now, it's one thing not to know your multiplication tables
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but critics say the lack of supervision of home schooling is putting some children at risk of abuse and even death. december is still months away but 12-year-old william daniel hawkins is already rehearsing christmas songs with new york city . >> william' mother has been home schooling her child for years, in new york, a state that monitors home schoolers, every year the hawkins have to register william, the family sort of fell into home schooling after she became ill and was forced to quit her job. >> i told my husband, this is first grade. how bad can this be, we'll give
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it a go, i'll probably go back to work, and we're all set. i fell in love with home schooling. i ask him do you want to go to school he says no i want to home school. >> the number taught at home more than doubled between 1999 and 2012. that makes it harder to detect cases of child abuse. rachel coleman is the executive director of the center for responsible education, her organization collected data and with that data they asked a question. >> what would be the proportional rate of fatalities, if the proportion was the same, and we found that the number of home school fatalities is higher. >> one case in new jersey made headlines in 2003. 19-year-old bruce jackson was
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found on the street weighing just 45 pounds. he was searching for food in the garbage to feed himself and his three underfed foster brothers. their case fell through cracks because all four were being home oversight. >> did you give them my -- yes, okay? >> yes i did. >> new jersey state senator loretta wineberg said she was shocked by the case, so she tried to introduce some laws in the state legislature. >> we ended up drafting a will which required home school families to register child, school district knows that they exist, take your child for an annual physical and put in a body of work to the district. >> wineberg said in all her years of public office she has never experienced such hostile backlash. >> we were jammed with phone
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calls, our voice mail couldn't take any more messages. now i understand this whole feeling about the government is going to come and take your children away. there's nothing like that going on here. >> wineberg eventually gave up on the bill. >> it's not an experience i'm proud of for not pushing it. but i do believe, if one, two or three children out this whole population are put in jeopardy because we don't even know they exist and they never get to a doctor and because they are not really being home schooled, that new jersey should have some very basic regulations. >> you have the choice of doing the previous one or going to the new one. >> in contrast, new york state has much more regulation. parents are required to register their home schooled children. they also have to submit reports and evaluations to education officials. and that's just 79 with hawkins.
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>> i do find it helpful personally to have some level of structure about what i'm expected to report back. i don't think that scrutiny is bad in my experience. >> gross abuse is harder to get away with when a child is attending school. >> we're not calling for banning here. absolutely not. what we're saying is abusive parents will always find some way to abuse but home schooling will offer them a tool that they wouldn't have otherwise. >> hawkins says yes coleman's research is disturbing but too much oversight may not be the answer. >> if we say hey, there are these one-off situations, how can we look at these systemically, not just one-off. the conversation i keep hearing is how can we make sure that these home schoolers are doing what they should be doing, which
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is paternalistic, authoritarian models these are based on. >> up next i'm i'll take to a person who says data suggesting >> the homeless... it's not always who you think. >> the majority are families with children. >> a growing epidemic that impacts us all. >> i think it's the most helpless feeling i've ever experienced. >> but who's getting rich while some are just trying to survive? >> they want to make the city for people that can afford things. >> "faultlines". al jazeera america's hard-hitting... >> today they will be arrested. >> ground-breaking... >> they're firing canisters of gas at us. >> award winning investigative documentary series.
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>> i'm talking tonight about what role state governments should have in supervising parents who decide to home school their children. joining me tonight is a man who thinks there should be no recollection at all on home schooling. he believes parents are the best judges of their children's needs. michael thank you for being with us. michael your organization reaches out to its members think time a state legislature tries to impose any regulation whatsoever. in 2004 in new jersey you
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rallied huge opposition to a home schooling bill. you have heard all these horror stories about home schooling. as dra con draconian as they may, heart felt desire and need for home schooling. >> well, thank you and thank you for having us here, i really appreciate it. the answer goes back a little bit to how long i've been involved in home schooling and my relationship with the state. when we started home schooling our child we started because he had a special need. he was in kindergarten and he couldn't get out of kindergarten. and so they wanted to label him and we didn't want that to happen. we hid h t had to figure out hoo school him, he didn't read until eight years of age, were we worried, absolutely. i started to defend families who
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home schooled their children, they were being threatened by the state of removal of their children or going to jail. through the years i've had an opportunity to meet literally thousands and thousands of parents and studying home schooling and it is our view at hslda, that regulation is worse than not being regulated. i heard the legislator, i heard what she has to say, but hslda, i understand we are a strong lobbying group. these are home school families that feel fairly strong actually real strong about quite frankly their liberty. they don't want the state, the same people who tried to put them in jail to regulate them. that's the bottom line. >> as a society, we do have governments that the state clifl
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decided we as a population of decided kept electing legislators who decided that we go to school and that is in the public interest, sometimes -- >> absolutely. >> we have decided that it is not a weird thing that kids have to go to school. >> no, it's not but on the other hand, the choice is a fundamental right for parents to make that choice to be able to educate their children and give them the best education possible and that's what they're doing. the other thing is the legislature makes the determination about the legislation in the particular state. so any legislator that wants to introduce a bill like this lady did that's fine. but they have to realize there's a process, its democracy and the people that are affected by it if they're concerned about it are going to act on it. and that's what's happening. that's what you get when you're a legislator. you have to expect every once in a while that you're going to have some controversy.
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>> absolutely. the story we just ran, the two little girls couldn't multiplies 5 times 5 but knew everything about genesis. doing better than as you're pointing out, in a public school system. but we're allowing those two little girls to go into a world that their preparation ever knowing genesis better than 5 times 5 isn't necessarily setting them up for success. >> i agree ali, but if my son couldn't read until he was eight, if you asked him if he could read at seven you'd be shocked. you can't judge children at a certain age. the issue is whether at the end of the process they have learned
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sufficiently to not only satisfy compulsory attendance but they're actually smart kids and that's what we see in home school. >> i'll give you this. let's talk about this issue ever abuse. i don't know, we have seen studies, it is clearly not most home school parents but if there is a single case of abuse or a few cases of abuse where there isn't a school that's able to supervise that that is going on, wouldn't you support laws that would at least determine that much, that there's a way to keep these children safe from their parents? i know your fundamental view is parents know more than schools, and i would admit that is in most cases the truth but in some cases parents abuse children. >> if you say one case, child abuse that's a separate issue than education. child abuse is a parental issue isn't it? any child whether they be a
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nonhome school parent or home school parent they have the potential to do it. the question is would all this monitoring seeing a child abuse reporter, let's say they had to go in twice a year or had to have their house open would that prevent child abuse let me tell you why not. in the public schools that is the parents who are not teaching their children at home, you gave the numbers, that's huge. they see a mandatory child abuse reporter every day they're in school. their rate is approximately the same according to rachel coleman who just had on is not significantly different, the fact that they are seeing somebody every day is not preventing people from committing fatalities to their children. why should we for just a few invade all the other innocent parents, that's prior restraint,
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unconstitutional it's unamerican. >> i want to ask you something. the language used, invade, there is a sense of takeover or invade on any laws. are there some categories of regulations around home schooling that you would support? that you don't think of as an invasion or a takeover? >> no, not any. because i'm going to go back ali you got to see my history and what we know about the people that would actually be dmomg to coming in to so-called judge us. i don't trust them, i can't do it. >> things as basic as registration, having to tell the authorities every year that you're home schooling? >> same thing. >> you don't like it? >> we don't need it. we don't need it. >> that was michael smith of the association. thank you for sticking in. china's president has just
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kicked off a week long visit to america, washington is going to wait. >> i died and came back to life... but yet still wanted to get high. >> i have prostituted. >> for drugs? >> for drugs, yeah. >> we're dealing with the worst drug epidemic in united states' history. >> she said "dad, please don't leave me here". i said "honey, i don't have any choice".
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>> chinese president xi jinping arrived in seattle this week. he's touring companies with a huge presence there like boeing and microsoft and today president xi addressed executives at an industry forum. but xi's visit to seattle is just a prelude to washington. for more on that allen schauffler has the report. >> chinese president xi jinping is headed to washington, d.c, meeting with members of congress and address the united nations. but first three days in the seattle area. meeting with business leaders. gary locke
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served as secretary of commerce. >> millions of americans depend on our trade with china. our trade has governor astronomically over the past years. >> assurances that they can do trade in china without undue interference. >> obviously a concern about cyber security and a level playing field for american firms in china, discrimination against foreign firms as well as the lack of a rule of law. and the inadequate protections of our intellectual property our trade secrets. >> xi is the fourth consecutive chinese leader to visit the northwest. long time tech writer bryer dudley. >> they want to encourage
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companies that not just thrive in china but thrive internationally. look at boeing. >> it will likely be a soft landing in the west before more substantive talks and a harder line back east. >> we are preparing a number of measures that will indicate to the chinese that this is not just a matter of us being mildly upset, but is something that will put significant strains on the bilateral relationship. >> so i think it's a good cop bad cop situation where we can talk good cop here and entrepreneurialism and trade relationships and then hopefully obama is going to play the bad cop and take a firmer line on some of these things. >> the visit comes at a time when china is flexing its military muscle and trying to solidify territorial claims in the south china sea. all those items expected to be
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on the agenda when whe the two presidents meet. >> joining me from seattle is allen schauffler. you heard the presidential candidates that president obama should uninvite xi from the white house. but they want to protect their tech companies, you think there's any hint of that kind of back and forts with president xi at today's u.s. china internet industry forum? >> oh absolutely and in the speech we saw last night everything very polite but president xi making the point over and over again a, no, china doesn't engage in cyber attacks and b we want to work together to try to solve these things in the future. also the most recent talk he gave before the group of business leaders same kind of tone, saying look, we don't do
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this kind of thing, we want a framework we can all get on and not make it happen in the future. at another meeting. u.s. and chinese tech leaders put out their own version of this, with leaders saying, look we're concerned about whether we can do business in your country and a chinese spokesman saying, we have a completely different history, completely different culture, we're at a different state, and our rules may not be the same as yours, so that is something shadowing almost every move president xi makes here. >> there's focus on cyber attacks emanating from china but spokespeople are lobbying for more access to the chinese market. are they raising -- the concern always is with american companies that want to do more business in china at a they don't push what other americans might think are american
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national concerns right? these companies their deal is they want more access to chinese customers, they're not looking at sitting this guy down and grilling him about other american security concerns. >> no, i don't think there's any grilling going on at all. it's all being couched very politely and what do american firms want? you know as well as i do ali, 600 million are internet users, 1.2 billion mobile phone users. that's what they want, they want access to that enormous market, it boils down to money. each of the companies is going to have to make a decision what they want to give up to gain assess to those companies. the chinese will point out in this country there have been very solid accusations that many of the tech companies have happened the nsa to monitor u.s. citizens and u.s. companies on the way they do business on the basis of security. gain of had why should americans complain about the chinese
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government asking for access, some sort of back door access to personal data and operations.companies. >> and that's sort of what some of this comes down to, u.s. companies doing business in china are being asked as you said or compelled to hand over user data and property to china's government. china sort of saying we need that protection. this is getting confusing. if you oar u.s. technical company everybody is asking you for user data now. >> yeah, absolutely. so you have to figure out well, what kind of a deal do we make, how much do we want access to that market, how much are we to sell of ourselves in point of fact. 6 million internet users, 1.2 billion with a cell phone, that's a big market. >> who -- we were talking a lot about this internet forum allen, who was there and how do you get in it, it's a big deal to have xi jinping and a bunch ever
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officials there, is this a meeting of very big hitters? >> actually two different meetings today. one was a morning meeting from the henry paulson organization, put together where president xi spoke and in the afternoon there's also a meeting at microsoft involving chinese and american tech leaders, big hitters, bezos from amazon, cook from apple, howard schulz, et cetera, the list goes on and on. big hitters, not much for likes of us, we're sort of outside the room with our ear on the wall hearing what's coming out of this stuff. >> i suspect everybody in those that room doesn't want you to hear. that's for our show today. >> "inside story" takes you
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beyond the headlines, beyond the quick cuts, beyond the soundbites. we're giving you a deeper dive into the stories that are making our world what it is. >> it's a week of big visits. the leader of one fifth of the world's people, xi jinping has arrived on the world trade center, and the leader of one fifth of the world's people, pope francis, is on the east coast. we'll look west to east, and america's complicated relationship with an ambitious wo
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