More Statist Nonsense
“Education, after all, is typically described as a core, and possibly the core, state responsibility . . . Homeschooling is now such an entrenched practice, recriminalization is not a viable option in any event.” ~ Robin L. West, Georgetown University Law Center
Not a “viable option?” Well at least I can rest peacefully tonight knowing that jack-booted thugs won’t be knocking my daughter’s door down any time soon to arrest her for teaching “the state’s children.” (My daughter would want to know where the state was when she was going through those labor pains to deliver “their” children. By the way Professor, the youngest one has something stinky in her diaper – could you lend a hand here?) Professor West thinks that more government regulation of homeschooling is a good idea:
As the political philosopher and homeschool critic 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.
Well, gee whiz, that approach certainly has worked wonders in the public schools, hasn’t it? Diverse and more liberal – that’s what this is really all about. Professor West doesn’t like the fact that “the state” is losing the opportunity to indoctrinate OUR children. Maybe she’s bucking for Secretary of Education in the Obama administration. More here.
I raised seven children without any help from the state or federal government. They attended one of the most liberal schools in L.A. County, but hey had my wife and me. The experience was terrific, each day they would come home with nonsense and we would sit and go over the materiel, correcting the falsehoods etc. I do not think it could have been a better method of teaching. All but the youngest has graduated from substantial universities, there’s an MBA, a top law school grad and a gulf war era vet. All are conservative and all vote straight GOP. The Point: 99% of schools are crazed liberal hot beds, even the Jesuit schools or more accurately; especially the Jesuit schools. As a parent you have to recognize that it is as important to be involved on a daily basis with your child’s education as it is with their diet or teeth. Without your constant vigilance and in- put it’s a crap shoot.
You obviously did a great job.
“Well at least I can rest peacefully tonight knowing that jack-booted thugs won’t be knocking my daughter’s door down any time soon to arrest her for teaching ‘the state’s children.’”
Typically when you put a phrase in quotation marks, it indicates that someone else actually said it, rather than it being something you made up to fit your paranoid argument.
I remember when a colleague many years ago told me that he and his wife were home schooling their kids. My first (unspoken!) reaction was “but you seem so normal.” On reflection, however, I can’t really find any reason to oppose it in principle. It’s hard to deny that home schoolers seem to do just fine in college and the world.
I do have a lurking feeling that some home schooling has an anti-modernist agenda (cf. the vaccines mentioned in one of the stories linked above), but I reluctantly have to admit that scientific literacy is not a requirement for getting through life for most of us. You don’t need to understand or believe in evolution to pop an antibiotic. Heck, for all I know about superconducting magnets or nanomaterials they might as well just be magic beans.
From a business/economic perspective, public schools and their supporters opposition to homeschooling is irrational and quite frankly, downright stupid. For every kid that is home-schooled that is X-amount of dollars less the system has to spend on schooling, but they still keep the Y-Dollars of that family’s property taxes and other means used to collect school funding. It’s a “win-win” proposition for school systems and their supporters, at the very least, not to poo-poo homeschooling. For that matter, more private schools effectively also leave more dollars in the hands of public schools.
It’s downright paranoid of staunch supporters of state-only schools to think somehow that the fledgling homeschooling and private schooling movements are going to cause a fundamental shift in their own operations. Property taxes, property values and schools are too closely tied together in most regions to even begin thinking of something like that happening.
But what do I know.
Anon:
“Typically”, yes, but not always. The intent is there, though thinly veiled. Is that your best shot? Pathetic.
Alberto:
There’s more to the economic equation than that. Most local schools also receive dollars on a “per child” basis. Every child that they lose is a net loss in “income.” Besides, its as much about indoctrination as it is about dollars.
“fledgling homeschooling” Actually, homeschooling is flourishing.
More here:
http://www.hslda.org/docs/news/200908100.asp
Sorry to change the subject, but has everyone seen this?
http://www.couragecampaign.org/page/s/TeleviseTheTrial
I understand that now the Californian VOTERS are on trial for exercising their Constitutional rights. Apparently, though, they used them in favor of Proposition 8, which is frowned upon by the homosexual population there.
The judge wants to televise the ‘trial’ in defiance of the federal rule.
Whatever these homosexuals claim to be FOR, it certainly isn’t love and brotherhood, unless of course, you’re a homosexual.