Posted on 03/04/2009 9:34:11 AM PST by Sopater
BLOOMFIELD, N.M. - New Mexico's education secretary has ordered a publicly funded home school to stop using curricula produced by A Beka Academy -- a conservative Christian publisher.
The Family Home School, operated by the Bloomfield School District with parental involvement, is located in a portable classroom on the campus of a Bloomfield elementary school.
The school's teacher, Kathy Harper, says she uses non-religious A Beka materials to teach math, phonics and language, and there have never been any complaints.
But Education Secretary Veronica Garcia wrote a letter to Bloomfield's superintendent requiring that the home school "immediately cease using the A Beka Academy curriculum." Her letter says, "sectarian doctrine is prohibited from being taught in public schools."
Well,I’ve seen that coming for ages. He who pays the piper calls the tune.
agreed completely. Whoever controls your funding controls you. It’s the same as in bussiness.
This has been typical of public-associated “home school” programs. Anyway, how is it a home school program if there’s a teacher and a government classroom?
“Home school” in name only.
Lord, God Almighty,
May all such bureaucrats speedily reap what they have sown.
May they repent and learn the error of their ways.
If they refuse, may they fall in the hole they have doug.
May they find the ‘interest’ they have to pay on the costs of being clueless and evil far to high to pay . . . and may they find that out quickly enough to learn something lastingly redemptive.
Well, what did they expect?
BTW, am I the only one who finds the term “publicly funded home school” to be a contradiction in terms?
This is the danger with large scale voucher programs as well. If they ever became popular, the government would start imposing controls on schools that accepted them.
Lie down with dogs...
I guess Ms. Garcia prefers the prophet who had 6-year old wives’ teachings...
I guess. Maybe it’s a part-time public school program, with families supplementing the basic instruction at home. Anyway, expecting government intervention, including atheism, should have been a no-brainer.
Home School bump!
Wonder if they are giving ‘free meals’ as well to this homeschooler?
They can’t have Peanut Butter in the house in case a student is allergic to it. blblblblblblbl!
Does anyone know anything about this “Church Report” organization? I would like to know if they have any denominational affiliation.
The borrower is always the slave of the lender.
In “fairness”, homeschoolers should get a deduction on 1040 in the amount of the per student expendetures of the school they are avoiding.
F A I R
Typical cost of a child’s public school education here (PA) is $7k a year. Imagine if the state offered homeschooling parents that much money in reimbursement...and after all, the homeschooler usually gets better results, according to achievement test scores.
But the smart ones would never take the money, knowing that if they did, they’d lose control of the child’s education.
I do see the future in home schooling as being a high tech, networked organization, that provides “intensive interactive” multimedia to members. Literally, an entire elementary and secondary school curricula, far more “learning dense” than a person could provide, with parent-teachers acting as “enablers” instead of doing most of the heavy lifting.
Say a student is getting a production block multimedia presentation about 19th Century European history. They are learning, reviewing and examining at the same time with their mouse and keyboard. Parallel to history they are getting a geography, spelling, and German language lesson along with English language instruction. They are also getting as part of it an introduction to some of the highlights of literature, culture and music of the period.
The density of learning is so great that “digressions” are used to relax the tempo. These are used to exploit a student’s individual interest, at the moment they are interested, like linking off a website to one that is more to the point. This takes the lesson from a parallel lesson to a single, focused lesson.
This is best for the lowest levels of the educational pyramid. The parent-teacher enabler is there to provide instruction on the higher levels, such as appropriate discrimination and organization of knowledge, analysis, induction and deduction of information, as well as more creative uses of the information, so it is not just idle data.
The objective is to provide a level of education so advanced that there is no competition with more traditional, time wasting, linear modes of instruction.
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