[madfly]

NOW ON FOX NEWS...SANITIZING OF CHILDREN'S SCHOOL BOOKS AND CLASSIC FICTION.

[dawn53]

So funny you should ping me on this. My 14 year old has a summer reading list assigned by his tutor in composition (I was never much of a writer and felt like this was one subject I needed to "farm" out in order for him to have a good foundation.)

At any rate, his summer reading list consisted of:
Murder on the Orient Express
Screwtape Letters
The Old Man and the Sea
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Uncle Tom's Cabin
All Quiet on the Western Front.

When I went to pick these up from our local book store, the proprietor gave me a hard time about letting a 14 year old read Uncle Tom's Cabin. Told me that I needed to put it in context, how a child might misunderstand it, even told me to have him watch the King and I in order to get a better grasp of the issue. He was very condescending in his attitude toward me as a homeschooler, and in the fact that I was allowing my son to read a book that he felt should be "sanitized."

[Victoria Delsoul]

It takes uncommon commitment by parents to undertake a home-school regimen, but they soon discover that they can do in a couple of hours what takes all day at regular school. Home-schooling parents can save lots of time since there are so many courses they don't have to teach.

Right. But it's not just the commitment and the hard work by the parents but also home schooling inherently focuses on the individual child, while public-school reformers try to devise plans for all children that lead to mediocrity.