Posted on 12/21/2006 9:09:27 AM PST by achilles2000
Hank Bounds, MS Superintendent of schools, is proposing forming a panel to explore regulating homeschoolers. This proposal is getting support from Jackson's Clarion Ledger:
http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061216/OPINION01/612160304/1008/OPINION
The irony of this is that by 4th grade 79% of the children that Bounds is responsible for are below grade level in reading, and about 1/3 can't read at all.
Given the "exceptional" academic performance of MS public schools, someone ought to publicly propose that homeschoolers regulate Superintendent Bounds until the students he is responsible for perform as well as homeschoolers.
One of the especially insidious aspects of this approach is its attempt to co-opt some homeschoolers into betraying the homeschooling community. It is not difficult to imagine a few homeschoolers being flattered into helping Bounds carry out his agenda.
The article also has some comments posted with it, as you will see. A portion of one of the comments was particularly interesting:
"And why this sudden interest in homeschooling by the CL, could it be because the director of the Clarion Ledger's editorial department, David Hampton's wife, Peggy, is in charge of public relations for Jackson Public Schools? Could it be because the public schools in Mississippi are so inadequate that the only way they can make them look good is by bashing other educational alternatives - like homeschooling? Hmmmmmmmmmm.......................................... "
ping
They want to make sure that HOMESCHOOLERS are as dumbed down as public schoolers. Ironic!
Yes!!
Isn't this Haley Barbour's home state?
The problem with reading is that there is no phonics!!!
Gee, could that explain why my kids were reading before their fifth birthdays? Actually, they wanted to read so I taught them earlier. And the books we used were so good and wholesome that they wanted to read them over and over.
Pathway Readers--they kept the kids interest for a long time. Even now, my daughters still like to go back and read those books.
It may be ironic, but the aim of the NEA is to dumb down kids and brainwash them into socialism. IMHO, of course.
My parents did some of my reading teaching and I had a kindergarten teacher that was from the old school of more proper ways of teaching. I could read some at age 4 and I was proficient by age 6.
That is just staggering. How can parents not rise up and demand change or pull their kids out?
Regulating homeschooling is sure the way to take care of the failure of the public school system, isn't it?
This guy, Hank Bounds, used to be the super in Jackson County, I have a friend who is a techer in his former district. She said that he's a real idiot. BTW
The link to the article in post 9 should work. In the comments on the article toward the end there is a summary of the 4th and 8th grade NAEP results for MS. You need to see it all, but here are a couple of the interesting results:
80% of MS 4th graders are below grade level in math, while 87% are below grade level in science.
By 8th grade, 85% are below grade level in math, while about 1/3 can't perform at even a basic level. In science 85% are below grade level, with about 45% having no clue of what science is.
All of this notwithstanding, the editors at the Clarion Ledger support the Superintendent's initiative to regulate homeschoolers. People ought to give the Clarion Ledger an earful. Homeschoolers don't need the dead hand of the ed monopoly on their children.
It may be ironic, but the aim of the NEA is to dumb down kids and brainwash them into socialism. IMHO, of course.
You don't have to be uneducated to be a socialist but, you do have to be stupid.
Perhaps, but I think it's more about jumping in front of the parade. If the public schools "regulate" homeschoolers, then they can possibly (a) claim them as public school students in a legal sense and get federal money, and (b) lay claim to their achievement, thereby boosting their own miserable record.
You win the thread.
Good points. Hank Bounds (the superintendent) must be mentally challenged. Why would anyone draw attention to an educational system that is a national laughing stock by proposing to regulate the most successful educators in the country? I hope that homeschoolers and others in MS slam-dunk the proposal down his throat.
You are right. The agenda now is to use the schools to indoctrinate children with the standard leftist pieties. Which ones? Just look at the resolutions passed at the annual NEA convention to get an idea. Here is a summary by Phyllis Schlafley of some of the more recent resolutions:
"The NEA convention handed a big victory to its large Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Caucus by easily passing its proposal calling on the NEA to "develop a comprehensive strategy" to deal with the attacks on gay curricula, policies and practices by what the NEA calls "extremist groups" (that's the NEA's term for parents). A delegate who asked for respect for ex-gays was loudly booed, while delegates cheered the speaker who pronounced that there is no such person as an ex-gay.
Resolutions passed by the NEA convention that have nothing to do with education included a call to boycott Wal-Mart, statehood for the District of Columbia, affirmative action, opposition to private accounts in Social Security, opposition to capital punishment, gun control, "single-payer health care" (i.e., government medicine), and endorsement of the International Criminal Court and the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights.
NEA resolutions pertaining to education called for the teaching of global, multicultural, suicide, environmental and bilingual education. Somehow, resolutions about the need for improvement in the teaching of phonics or basic math didn't make the cut.
NEA resolutions endorsed all feminist goals, including abortion, comparable worth, the Equal Rights Amendment and taking over the baby-sitting of children "from birth through age 8." The gay lobby's influence extends even over these infants, whom the NEA wants to provide with "diversity-based curricula" and "bias-free screening devices."
In another manifestation of hypocrisy about educational diversity, the NEA resolved that "home-schooled students should not participate in any extracurricular activities in the public schools." At the same time, the NEA demands that home-schooled students should be taught only by people who are "licensed" by the state and use a curriculum approved by the state.
About one-third of NEA members are estimated to vote Republican, and there is a Republican Caucus within the NEA. However, the powers-that-be running the NEA launched a coup this year and took it over (so that "Republican" NEAers will be able to bash Bush), after which three-fourths of the real Republicans quit and joined the Conservative Educators Caucus."
The essential first step for recovering our country is to take our children out of government schools. Not only will it rescue our children, but it would defund vast sectors of the left. Lance the government school boil and we would be at the beginning of the road to recovery.
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