Home Schooling Under Attack

January 13, 2010

I was going to title this piece “Whisky Tango Foxtrot”, because that is exactly what I thought when I picked up this little gem over at The Other McCain. Stacy McCain has gone off to report on the goings on in the Scott Brown for Senate campaign in Massachusetts, and left a little reading for the class. Tucked in at number three on the list was an article entitles “Home Schooling is Harmful“. Stacy home schools his kidlets too, so I thought I’d mosey over and see what this was all about.

Wiskey Tango Foxtrot!!

Ms. Robin West, her info is here, has decided all on her own that home schoolers are doing harm to, not just to themselves but to society at large.  She is just shocked, SHOCKED! I tell you that some parents are actually removing their children from public schools and daring to believe they can provide a better education for their children that the local union run kiddie factory.

Let’s take this apart piece by piece.

Says she:

“Because of lax or no regulation, in most of the county parents who homeschool now have virtually unfettered authority to decide what subjects to teach, what curriculum materials to use, and how much or how little of each day will be devoted to education. In most (but not all) states, testing is optional, and in almost all states, the parent-teachers need not be certified or otherwise qualified to teach. In other words, in much of the country, if you want to keep your kids home from school, or just never send them in the first place, you can. If you want to teach them from nothing but the Bible, you can. If they want to skateboard all day, and you choose to let them, you can.”

Ms. West, it will come as a surprise to you–because it always does to liberals–that the “authority” to decide what my children will learn comes not from a governmental agency, but from my Creator. Yes, I just played the God card. When determining what subjects we will cover during a school year I am very mindful of the fact that I have two children that must be productive members of society and earn enough money to support me in my golden years. As for your assertions that my kids can just “skateboard all day” and that is perfectly acceptable, you couldn’t be more wrong. I live in the Great State of Texas. It is one of the best states in the union to home school in because of the low regulation requirements. But even in Texas, there are standards. You must teach a child mathematics, reading, grammar, spelling and good citizenship. I throw in the history, latin  and science because I’m just mean like that. I am not a certified teacher, but I do have a degree in English. However, it is from a state school in Texas so maybe that just doesn’t count.

Let’s go on:

“The main purpose of this essay is to criticize this ‘right to homeschool’ that the religious parents and their lawyers and lobbyists have claimed, or created, over the past couple of decades. My criticism will rest primarily on the basis of the harms such a right might inflict upon the children so educated.”

OHHH! It’s for the CHILDREN? Silly me! I thought is was for all the governmental agencies and union members that hate the thought of not being able to get their claws on the free thinking brains that I’m raising here at Academy de Skirt. But if your concern is truly FOR THE CHILDREN, then maybe you ought to turn your attention away from the homeschooling kids that are kicking the crackers out of publicly schooled children in every standardized test this country gives and focus on the plight of the public school kids who are dropping out of those “fabulous” institutions in droves. Every single one of the teachers in those failing, squalid schools is government certified to be competent at their jobs. How’s that working for you?

There’s so much more, but lets hit one more high point of Ms. West’s essay:

“Fourth, there are political harms (to home schooling). Fundamentalist Protestant adults who were homeschooled over the last thirty years are not politically disengaged, far from it. They vote in far higher percentages that the rest of the population. They mobilize readily….Their capacity for political action is palpable and admirable, although doubly constrained: it is triggered by a call for action by church leaders, and in substance, it is limited to political action the aim of which is to undermine, limit, or destroy state functions that interfere with family and parental rights.”

Damn Skippy! Heaven forbid we have an engaged public!! Remember that course in “good citizenship” that the Great State of Texas requires of this home schooling mom? Well guess what evil and nefarious things I teach my kidlets? I teach them that government intervention into your lives is rarely a good thing. I teach them that their individual rights and liberties are not served out by a benevolent Uncle Sam, but are granted to us by God. And most recently I’ve been teaching them that if you do not like the way your government is handling things, you get involved and get the bums voted out!

Oh, and by the way, home schoolers take aim at much more than just issues regarding family and parental rights. Ask me about healthcare or cap and trade. You’ll find I have a strong opinion on those, too.

They’re coming. I told you they would.

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