Curfews and homeschoolers.

The city of Rockford, Illinois is weighing a new daytime curfew law:

The curfew would apply to children younger than 18 who are out in public places from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. on school days. Violators would face a fine ranging from $10 to $500 and potential community service.

Homeschoolers, understandably, are worried.

James, in the comments at the link, asks,

[W]hy in the world shouldn’t [truancy laws] encompass home schoolers, all of whom should be learning when all the other kids are? Increasing the scope of the law to include home schooled kids shouldn’t make for a burden as I’m confident most home schoolers in fact do have their children engaged in learning during school time, so it’s not like a lot of home schooled kids would be picked up in truancy dragnets.

I understand why folks who are not familiar with home schooling think that home schoolers should be "having school" during "school hours," so I don’t blame James for asking.  The answer is simple, though.  Two reasons:

First, school at home takes less time than does school in school.  A child working one-on-one with his "teacher" can plow, in a couple of hours, through material that takes six hours in school.  It’s silly to make a child stay inside when he’s finished his work for the day.  If the state wants to enforce standards on homeschoolers—and most do, one way or another—spending the hours from 9:30 to 2 pm indoors seems like a strange way to define "learning."  (On the other hand, it gets the school off the hook if that’s all that it takes.)

Second, who’s to say that a parent doesn’t "have their children engaged in learning" at the zoo, the museum, the grocery store, for pete’s sake?  One of the principles of homeschooling is that the barrier between "real life" and "learning" is dissolved.