[EdReform]

Homeschool bump

[Piquaboy]

Control of the school system is right out of the Marx/Lenin playbook.

[kellynla]

Excellent piece. Thanks for posting it. Every day I find another reason to home school children.

[Ahban]

Yep. Its about control. We need to eliminate the unconstitutional Department of education and push all school power as close to the family level as possible. Local control of schools, in partnership with a healthy homeschooling base, is the answer. It is the perfect antidote to the danger of schools being used as instruments of statist indoctrination.

[don-o]

Yes, government has an obligation to ensure that children receive an adequate education.

Faulty premise.

The "obligation" is on the parents, not the state.

[kellynla]

Wouldn't a class action lawsuit by home schoolers against the state put a stop to the harassment.

[valkyrieanne]

What I don't like about articles like this, is that they drop a few "scare" anecdotes with no specifics. Then everyone runs around thinking, "Oh, homeschooling is under attack - whatever shall we do?"

The sky is still firmly attached in place last time I looked. But to keep it that way, homeschoolers need to rely less on organizations to "protect" them, either personally or on the state level. It's especially unnecessary and undesirable to let out-of-state organizations (no matter how well-intentioned) come into one's local community or state to "fix everything" as if they were "experts."

[Blue_Ridge_Mtn_Geek]

"Please note well: The most important reason was that parents felt that they, the amateurs with no significant facilities, could do a better job than the professionals with their gargantuan resources."

---

Strong arguments in support of this position are found even among well credentialed educators, for example in the publications at:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/
which sees students, teachers, and even educational administrators caught up in dystfunctional institutions with agendas that run counter to their interests as educators and learners.

[Grampa Dave]

Beside the brain washing, there is a more basic reason that the public education industry hates home schooling.

As in all cases with the lunatic left, just follow the money.

We are invited to a large 4th of July party every year by a couple who are best friends. They invite several neighbors who are teachers, principles and one is a superintendent in a school district over 100 miles away. She has an apartment in the town where she is the superintendent.

Last year about 2 hours into the party and probably at least two glasses of wine for most, a friend came up and said follow me, sit down with me, listen and don't say anything.

He led the way to a bench about 10 feet behind a cluster of teachers, principles and this superintendent. The superintendent was leading a vocal and hostile discussion about home schooling. At times she appeared about to stroke out.

In her district a home school student cost the district $7500 per year, and in our district it was about $8,000. She said that every teacher, principle and superintendent had to work 24/7 to discourage home schooling. They should have a goal of getting at least one child per year back into the system to negate future budget cuts.

She concluded that if they didn't stop home schooling their sweet jobs would be in real danger.

[Fester Chugabrew]

. . . So they're attacking in the name of "standards."

Standards of mediocrity.

[Edgewood Pilot]

Thanks for your nice post !

[spodefly]

There are plenty of "soft-tyrants" who feel they can do a better job raising your children than you can:

[headsonpikes]

In the light of what transpires in the 'public schools', I don't see why the author refers to 'soft dictatorship'.

It's certainly not 'soft' to the children forced to conform to its strictures.

[Types_with_Fist]

Reasons for homeschooling range widely, from physical conditions and danger in government schools to concern about unacceptable teaching of ideology or religion.

Yup. Those were our reasons--all of them. Our kids were in public school for a few years. Once, our 6-year-old daughter showed up at home in the middle of the day, unsupervised and fresh from a field trip (half an hour early). Apparently, she had been cut loose and allowed to walk a mile home by herself. Nobody explained or cared. Another time, a group of boys were following her around on campus, threatening to "rape her." The self-proclaimed lesbian principle didn't listen, care or act. We supposed, at the time, that she was much too busy implementing Gray Davis' "inclusion" program for homosexuals.

Even here in Colorado, where we escaped to, our oldest son came home once with an assignment to "write a spell," in celebration of the release of the new Harry Potter movie. He tells us that the teacher announced also that he was "a pagan." I still haven't figured out what the assignment had to do with math. Our calls went unanswered.

My youngest is Down Syndrome and was coming home from Special Ed with work he could not duplicate for us. Once, when he brought home one of the many school illnesses, that all public school parents can attest occur regularly, we all got sick and, subsequently, harrassed by some bureacrat at the school who threatened "truancy" (we were not able to get to the doctor right away and, being sick, we did not keep the bureacrat immediately informed of our movements, or lack thereof).

Praise God! It is very easy to homeschool here in Colorado. We saw much too much in two states and at three seperate schools. Of course, we've read of much more. Our kids have been homeschooled over three years now, and we are blessed that they are away from these and other influences, found in these mini-concentration/indoctronization/illness incubation camps known as "public schools."

[ChevyZ28]

I have always found it interesting that people can have the choice to kill their unborn child through abortion but don't have the choice to take responsibility to educate their children. There is a fox in the chicken house folks!!!!!!!

[I still care]

A quote by John Dewey, one of the philosophers of modern American education, should be inserted here:

Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming where everyone is interdependent."
-- John Dewey (1859-1952), American philosopher, educator

Or how about:

"Intellectually, religious emotions are not creative but conservative. They attach themselves to the current view of the world and consecrate it. (i.e., religion is not progressive)

[longtermmemmory]

The left is always threatened by success. They hated reagan because they knew he succeeded. (now they are trying to revision history on him)

What has been forgotten is that private schools were seen as the same threat. The only fact that keeps the left from going "Lenin" on them is that they are cost prohibitive to most families.

The left knows they can compete in the education arena becuase in the market place of ideas, the left is unarmed.

[Old Professer]

Yes, government has an obligation to ensure that children receive an adequate education.

Poor debating tactic; akin to telling your opponent just before a duel that your piece is unloaded.

[BenLurkin]

bttt

[PresbyRev]

Thanks for the article.

A site with a Christian rationale for homeschooling, along with addressing various other worldview issues, is:

http://www.chalcedon.edu