A couple of years ago, I stopped watching Law & Order SVU, in part because of the homeschool fixation of the producers and writers of the series. I almost felt that when "the cellos" kicked in with the suspense music, each time a parent-figure came onscreen, that homeschooling would be part of the story. It wasn't enough that parents-in-general are marginalized by the series -- watch sometime and see who children light up for, who they're shown to be best protected by, who has the kids' best interests at heart (hint: rarely the parents), but that homeschooling parents in particular are bad guys. When a series reaches that level of predictability, the theme is a cliché.
Yes, the crimes of murder and molestation of children happen disproportionally in families, but just because that's where the crimes usually happen doesn't mean that most parents commit such crimes. After a while, I had enough of Law & Order's viewpoint and stopped spending any time with Olivia and Elliot.
I have not yet stopped watching Law & Order Criminal Intent, but if this series goes the way of SVU, then Mr. D'Onofrio will have to complete the show's final season without this viewer. Tonight's episode has the homeschooled grad as a political radical, indoctrinated by his single-mother who herself was a '70s counterculture criminal with explosive tendencies. (and I just noticed my kids and I don't have matching wrist tattoos with Korean letters -- have to get on that) I can tell you, from personal experience, that even kids who graduate from day schools can be strongly influenced by their parents' opinions.
As I've said before, I'd like to see the Law & Order writers feature an observant homeschooled kid who helps solve the crime because she wasn't cooped up in school. With all the good PR that homeschooling gets, there should be at least one homeschooling family in the nation with a good enough rep to be used on a prime time show as a model for common sense.
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