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Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Why do they hate home schooling so much?

The answer is easy. They can't control it. Robin West recently did a hatchet job on "The Harms of Home Schooling." West is a law professor at Georgetown University. (Why am I not surprised when the attack comes from a teacher at a so-called Catholic university which should be a defender of the primary rights of parents over the education of their children?) West bemoans the fact that many Protestant fundamentalist parents are home schooling and doing it "with little or no oversight from public school officials, who in some states need not even be notified of the parents’ intent to homeschool."

Wow! what a horrifying situation! Public school authorities who often expose children to the glories of sodomy and abortion are being taken out of the loop by concerned parents. But West is appalled that home schooling has become a "widespread and thoroughly privatized educational practice that devolves full responsibility for a child’s education to whatever parent wants to claim it, which is not only legal, but virtually unregulated as well."

For lawyer West's information this was the same situation that existed in this country for two centuries when parents, not the state, taught their children to read and write and apprenticed them to learn a trade. She is also horrified that some of these parents might use the Bible as their primary curriculum. (Another widespread practice in Colonial and post Colonial America.)

West goes on to make a number of outrageous claims about "unregulated" home schooling, from the allegation that home schooled kids are likely to be physically abused (parents of the Columbine students might have an interesting take on this statement) to the claim that parents aren't qualified, curricula is probably deficient, kids miss out on being socialized, and that "poor" fundamentalist parents are probably economically depriving their children as well.

In view of massive research on the success of home schooling and the fact that children at home outperform their institutionalized peers by wide margins, West's article, which provides NO documentation to back up her outrageous allegations, is irresponsible. She wants state regulation by educational bureaucrats who in many places have failed miserably and are producing functional illiterates.

But I suspect West's real agenda isn't so much with what parents are teaching their children, but what they aren't. She espouses her agenda by quoting an opponent of homeschooling. "Robert Reich has persuasively argued, curricular review would give the state a way to ensure that the academic content is such as to protect the children’s interest in both acquiring the necessary skills for active, autonomous, and responsible citizenship in adulthood, and in being exposed to diverse and more liberal ways.

Ah! There you have it. Children schooled at home partly to protect them from "diverse and more liberal ways" that include teaching them to put condoms on bananas, reading about Heather's two mommies, safe touch and sex ed programs that sexualize them from Kindergarten, how to pray like a Muslim, etc. must be liberalized. As always, the foxes want authority over the chicken coop for the benefit of the chicks.

If you're interested in homeschooling you can read West's article here and a response by PhD Brian Ray here.

9 comments:

  1. Home schooling terrifies the professional indoctrination establishment because 1) they can't control it, and 2) it actually does a much better job educating then they do.

    Gee, how did Western Civilization every survive without government run schools? The answer of course is that Western Civilization was built by home schooled and privately schooled individuals, not by the mass indoctrination of government schools.

    The sooner we go back to that system of the past the sooner our problems will begin to decline.

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  2. Let's face it: West is braindead and Ray exposes that fact in a cogent and well argued way.

    It is really annoying how liberals just accept their own stereotypes as proven fact and ignore reality. We see that all over the place from their economic ideas to their climate agenda. If reality doesn't match their agenda, no problem, just invent whatever you need.

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  3. In my experience teaching public schools, never did I see anybody glorify sodomy or abortion. I'd be more than happy to share my experiences and gripes with public education with you sometime. I find your generalizations about liberal views to be inaccurate.

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  4. Thanks, Amy,

    I'd be interested in your experiences. I've been involved in the sex ed fight since the 70s when Fairfax County was telling middle schoolers (eleven and twelve year olds) that "The way to avoid sexually transmitted diseases is not to change sexual partners too frequently." (How many sexual partners are okay for a 12-year-old?)

    I particularly remember a movie with Michael Douglas called "Hassles and Hangups" that showed parents causing all their kids' problems and advising them to go to teachers and school counselors, you know - people they could trust. The materials were definitely anti-parent.

    After the meeting I overheard the "facilitator" telling a parent she showed the "less controversial" materials.

    I've been researching sex ed in the public schools for thirty years and the programs in many counties around the country are outrageous.

    I know you taught music, Amy. How much exposure did you have to the sex ed curriculum

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  5. The topic of sex ed came up when we were having dinner with a principal from another school in our district. He said there was no sex ed in our school which surprised me because we had a few pregnant seventh graders.

    My big gripe with public education is that schools put too much focus on AYP which is determined by scores to standardized tests. Teachers use the standards as the maximum learning rather than the minimum, which they were intended. Students miss out on critical thinking and often times teachable moments arise and are dismissed.

    Schools are also used as a platform for fixing society's problems. For example, a study says that Americans are too fat so schools are then put to the task of providing more phys ed, nutrition education and reworking the school lunch menu. That's all great, but what's missing? Parents are the biggest influence over a child's life and if they go home to junk food and sedentary living then it is highly unlikely to turn around this hypothetical student.

    Most likely, E will go to public school. I attended public school as did most of my cousins and we all turned out alright! We've got a rocket scientist, teachers, a pharmacy student, med student, lawyer, lots of college educated folks and lots of loving parents among my public educated cousins.

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  6. I agree with a lot of what you say here, Amy. Some of the very worst schools, not educationally, but for passing on values, call themselves Catholic.

    But the real purpose of education is to help us get to heaven, not succeed in the eyes of the world. The Catholic Church started the university system in the middle ages to focus on learning about the most important things in life (Who made us? Why are we here? How do we find the true, the good, and the beautiful? etc.)

    When you get right down to it the only thing that matters is going to heaven to be with God. Whatever helps us toward that goal should be embraced. Whatever hinders it should be thrown out.

    My goal is to go to heaven and take as many people with me as possible starting with Uncle Larry, our children and their spouses, and our grandchildren. Whether they become rocket scientists or janitors or eat healthy or junk food doesn't matter much in the long run. But living for God does. Grandma Trischler cleaned office buildings but I think she was a holy woman and a great role model. Some famous and "successful" people (Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt come to mind) are leading people to hell. "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose your soul in the process."

    Marianna was here last night. She and all the other little innocent ones are what it's all about.

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  7. The purpose of schools is probably not to get you to heaven, although it would be helpful if they did. That is more everyone's purpose. The purpose of a school is to equip you to teach yourself. Today we have too many schools and personnel that imagine that education is some set of facts which can be regurgitated on command to pass SOLs or other such things.
    That isn't true. All the facts in the world won't make someone educated. Education is about learning a applying principles both now under supervision and in the future on your own.
    If you escape from the current educational system and cannot learn new material on your own then you have not been educated. You have likely been indoctrinated.

    Regards, Ray

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  8. I can't agree, Ray. Your definition is amoral. Education should make us able to discern the true, the good, and the beautiful -- in other words to be able to see the face of God. Your definition, to be able to teach yourself, would equally apply to the abortionist learning the latest technique to murder a baby and a doctor using his knowledge of science to develop a cure for cancer.

    I think the central purpose of education is aid students in the search for truth, give them the tools to seek and find it. You can be a rocket scientist and totally committed to untruth outside your scientific field. (Or within your field as climategate shows.) If education is separated from truth (Jesus is the truth) it is meaningless.

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  9. What Ray is saying is absolutely true! Intellectual independence is an integral part of searching for the truth. Public schools do teach children how to think, solve problems and how to learn independently. Schools are tied down to SOL test scores but teachers are pushed to achieve these standards using methods such as Blooms Taxonomy, a method of teaching higher level thinking skills.

    They cannot teach students the truth through Jesus though. That does not make them worthless.

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