The recent situation with the two mothers in New Haven, “Moms’ pleas highlight home-school dilemma” (Dec. 30), has prompted discussion about home schooling, and a recent editorial, “Indiana needs standards for home schooling” (Jan. 5), focused on increasing regulation of this private educational alternative.

Unfortunately, this ignores the real concern, which is why did the public school system fail these children in the first place?

Many important facts about this case are unknown to the general public, but one fact is clear: At some point, these women stopped sending their children to the local public school. Why?

Why did they choose to leave? What went wrong? Does anyone really think it’s as simple as saying that some parents are so irresponsible that they don’t want their children to be educated?

If true, that points even more directly to our education system’s failure because such a parent was likely educated by our public schools.

Proposing increased regulation on Indiana home-schoolers as a solution to the concern of irresponsible parents assumes that regulation is a factor in educating a child.

We already know it’s not, because if it were, our highly regulated and tested public schools would be having no problems at all.

Regulation and testing assume we can define and measure learning in one single way that works for everyone. To see how misguided this is, just ask 10 people to define a “good” education. You’ll probably get 11 answers.

When we try to make education exactly the same for everyone, we end up with regulations that lack clarity, cohesiveness and even common sense.

Perhaps the most important lesson we can learn about education is that it cannot be defined, let alone measured and regulated.

Yet measure we do. We pretend that loads of data can inform us about the connections made inside individual minds. So we test. We regulate. It makes us feel better. It makes it easier for officials to create the illusion of turning an abstract concept into something tangible.

But we know from our own experience this just isn’t true. When you passed a test, did you really celebrate because you experienced the innate joy of learning? Or did you wipe the nervous sweat off your brow and immediately move on to the next hoop placed in front of you?

We say we value individuality, yet we refuse to acknowledge this in education. Even worse, we have loads of evidence demonstrating that it’s often the misfits, the bad test-takers, the restless, etc., who often end up making valuable contributions to the world. Yet we have faith in regulations even when they stifle these individuals.

Home schooling in Indiana is an alternative that frees families from this over-regulation and creates the flexibility needed for individuals to truly learn. This is why home schooling works, so it’s completely illogical to propose that families need to preserve the right to home school by taking away the very essence of its effectiveness.

In addition, imposing the same restrictions, regulations and testing on home-schoolers that are hampering the public school system will do nothing to improve our public schools.

Their problems remain, and we would only be interfering with one alternative out there for families who desperately need more flexibility.

It’s interesting that the editorial brought up the possibility of paying more in taxes to take care of adults who need public assistance because they were ineffectively home-schooled. Yet every year, schools send ineffectively educated children out into the world who cannot read, comprehend, think critically, write persuasively or manage finances.

How many of them need our public aid, and why aren’t the regulations preventing this?

If it’s purely a numbers game based on the possibility of having to support ill-prepared adults, then it’s obvious where we should focus our energy.

We need to figure out how to deal with the over-regulation that is causing the public school system to fail rather than trying to put the same burden on home-schoolers who aren’t even spending our tax money.