Posted on 11/18/2005 7:33:41 AM PST by TaxRelief
Baker is right that that would be unlikely, but I think he's wrong in believing the media shouldn't play up Ludwig's and Borden's educational background. The fact that they were homeschooled makes the murder even more significant. Why? Because the nature of the news is that when certain types of people act in ways that are inconsistent with what the public traditionally expects from them, it makes a story more newsworthy.
"Man Bites Dog" is a superficial and negative criterion for significance. It is why the newspaper is such a terrible place to look to learn about American society. If it's in the paper, it is not usual.Which is just one more way of proving that by its very nature journalism is not objective.
Some kids are homeschooled because they are kicked out of other schools and are problem children anywhere they are. Don't know if that is the case here.
I agree. It's newsworthy because it's unusual. The disciplinary problems in our public schools are getting commonplace.
I think even, or maybe especially, Christians and homeschoolers are interested in these details, because they want to know how a couple of kids brought up strictly as Christians went off the rails like this.
It's not totally surprising. We are all sinners. But it's tragic and at the same time interesting. What went wrong? What were the telltale signs? How can it be prevented in the future?
Thought this might interest you.
I would be interested in knowing the kids other habits, like violent video games, music, movies, etc. He didn't get this from his Christian upbringing. What was the source?
Well-put, and true.
Before you have kids, it's easier to make lofty generalities on the assumption that Child-Training Method X will produce Child Type Y; or equally that Child Type H can be simply traced to {presumed} Parental Style L. This could also be called the Job's Friends Syndrome: all misfortune can be directly traced to a human behavior.
Then you do it, and you learn that, while generalities can be made, they are, at best, generalities.
IMHO ----Doesn't make a difference which way a child is schooled (Home or Public) because if a person has this type of rage, it wouldn't matter how he was educated. Neither a school nor the parent taught this 18 year old to murder.It could happen and does happen in both educational atmospheres.
I haven't seen anything other than a kind of off-hand comment that the kids were homeschooled. I didn't think anything more of it than I would have if they'd said "So and so, who attends such and such high school, was captured with the girl that also attend such and such high school."
Maybe I'm wrong, but I didn't see it as anything more than the news reporting where they went to school. They didn't go to any local high school...they were homeschooled. If they'd gone to a local high school, I suspect it would've been mentioned. Maybe even interviewed some of their fellow high school students.
Did homeschooling play a role in this tragedy?
Don't know enough about it, but probably not.
So, it's really just another "fact" about the people involved. Unfortunately, those who trumpeted that fact likely had an agenda: Bashing homeschoolers.
And that's wrong, wrong, wrong.
If the perp in this case were Muslim, the only place you would learn that would be here on FR and similar websites.
Aye, how much responsibility did the Publik Skewl lobby take after Columbine?
I know and have known a family....the father & mother are the manipulative, controlling types...and both their boys have rage.
The parents not only attend church every Sunday, but are very active in church participation.
The rest of us can see, at some level, why the boys are this way....
..they have taken drugs ....been arrested....& had to change schools often..
...and are rude & angry with their mother, especially
..but the parents continue to manipulate & control...
..and by this, I don't mean just.....'telling the boys to go to church', etc....
..The parents are rather liberal in much of their thinking toward child rearing, but have been members of a conservative, Evangelical church for over 20 years.
I think the children grew up with very mixed signals.---None of us are perfect parents, but personally, I think these two set some poor examples.
Sadly, I would not be surprised if one or both young men turn on their parents someday....and that is very hard to admit.
And the more I reflect on these two, it becomes more clear exactly how a homeschooled boy from a Christian home (as they put it) has done such an awful deed.
The rule is that Christian parents are loving, patient, strong in morals & conviciton.
The aberration is the parents I just described...
...and I know the mother to be a gossiper..... and someone who compromises in a heartbeat....and someone who let her boys have girlfriends early..... and someone who spent a good portion of time away from her children--(doing her good deeds, she said).., even though she was a stay at home mom
The world will herald this murderer as a homeschooled boy from a Christian home...
..but those who know him or his family might have a different story to tell.
How come every time something happens at a public school, homeschoolers come on threads to bash the public school systems and hold up homeschooling as an ideal system of learning, but if when someone who is homeschooled does something, we are not supposed to mention it or we must assume automatically that it had nothing to do with it. The author's point was if homeschoolers was to take credit every time a homeschoolers wins a spelling bee, then they open themselves to a bit of self-examination when something bad is done by a homeschooler.
I don't believe that homeschooling had anything to do with this case. But I don't believe that public school has anything to do with much of what public schooled kids do either. Some kids are just bad seeds.
Most of the information about him has been taken down, but try these links:
http://www.xanga.com/Haydren/382862356/item.html?nextdate=794134351&direction=n#viewcomments
http://www.picturetrail.com/gallery/view?p=999&gid=8459823&uid=2412720
The primary reason is that nobody holds a gun to your head to force you to pay for homeschooling... homeschoolers aren't constantly gorging themselves at the public trough and calling you a criminal for not fully agreeing that they should get more and more and more and more until it costs more to put a child through 1st grade than it does to put someone through two years of community college. Homeschoolers don't demand public funding to indoctrinate children into lifestyles that serve to break down society. Etc. etc. etc.
..some are saved by Grace.
Very good point. And the meat of the article IMHO. Thanks for the ping Fawnn!!
Both get the homeschool label but only one deserves it. Which type were these perps?
That's my question, too.
The media is only reporting, as far as I've seen, that Ludwig was "homeschooled" -- no information about why or how or for how long he was homeschooled.
I thought journalists were supposed to ask who, what, when, where, why. Guess that's gone out of fashion.
Now it's sufficient for journalists to intone, ominously, "homeschooled" -- as if all homeschooling situations were the same (bad, of course), and that's all the public needs to know.
So, saying they met through homeschooling contacts would be irrelevant? Seems to me people might wonder why an 18-year-old knew a 14-year-old.
But wait...in Littleton, Colorado...did they ever mention where those kids went to school?
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