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mare-of-night comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 20, chapter 90 - Less Wrong Discussion
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That sounds like it would give a lot of false-positives for non-muggleborns... (Not arguing with your statement, just noting that it seems like the wizards made a bad choice of what to detect, if there were other options.)
Indeed it is. In book.. 6(?) it is made clear that children in magical families are essentially exempt because of this rule. It is assumed that parents will enforce the rules on their children. It is another example of prejudice in the magical world (which I believe is deliberate. Rowling explicitly and implicitly suggests repeatedly that the current set up of the magical world is corrupt and prejudical)
This particular rule strikes me as pretty reasonable. It is assumed that magical parents can manage their children's magic.
If you don't consider that parents might surreptitiously teach their children spells, then sure, that makes sense.
Huh? What's there to be surreptitious about? The whole point is that magical parents are trusted to participate in their children's magical development.
The students were not supposed to do magic over the summer, full stop. There's no official exception there. The leniency could be rationalized as "magical parents can stop their children from casting spells if need be, so we don't need to monitor them," but it's not "go ahead and do magic, magical parents are trusted to teach and guide their children's magic."
If the children are casting spells, then they are breaking the law. If the parent is teaching them without the child actually casting the spell, then there's no need for an exemption.
The trace is only placed on muggleborns. The Ministry expects magical parents to supervise the magic use of their own children.