Posted on 03/18/2008 1:17:51 AM PDT by rhema
The controversy over a California appeals court ruling on homeschooling continues to expand, even as Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger pledge to defend the rights of homeschooling parents and Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell on Tuesday affirmed families' right to homeschool their children. As The Los Angeles Times reported March 12, the superintendent told parents, "There's no cause for alarm." He continued: "I want to assure parents that chose to home school that California Department of Education policy will not change in any way as a result of this ruling," he said in a written statement. "Parents still have the right to home school in our state."
Now, even as the political and legal shockwaves reverberate, an overt hostility to homeschooling families has come to the surface. One example is an opinion column published in the March 13 edition of The Los Angeles Times. On March 12, the paper's editors had called for the California legislature to adopt legislation recognizing a right to homeschool and establishing an appropriate set of regulations [see editorial here].
In "Regulating Home Schoolers," Walter P. Coombs and Ralph E. Shaffer -- both emeritus professors at Cal Poly Pamona, respond to the editorial and unleash vitriol at homeschooling, calling it "elitist" and "illiberal."
From their article:
There has always been something decidedly elitist and anti-democratic in home schooling. It smacks of a belief that privileged children should not have to associate with the other kids in the neighborhood and that by staying home, they would not be subjected to the leavening effect of democracy. Moreover, it is apparent from the cries of the far right that there has been a specific policy in home schooling -- to teach only the ideas acceptable to ideologues who fear the contaminating influence of what is commonly known as a liberal education.
Of course, it is the argument of these two retired professors that is truly elitist. They presume to know what is best for all the children of the state -- better than parents. Their hostility toward parents is evident in their argument that homeschool parents teach social studies by putting their kids in front of the television screen "watching Fox with its strange assortment of oddballs pontificating on current events."
Get that? The animus toward evangelical Christians is also transparent:
It's evident that the vast majority who teach their offspring in front of the television do so because they don't want their children to be subjected to such dangerous doctrines as evolution, abortion, global warming, equal rights and other ideas abhorrent to the evangelical mantra.
This means, of course, that these professors demand that all children be subjected to the "dangerous doctrines" they list -- including evolution and abortion.
A similar level of hostility is evident in an article published at the Web site of the National Education Association (NEA), the nation's largest teachers' union. As the author asserts, the union demands that the teaching of children be left to "professionals," not parents:
So, why would some parents assume they know enough about every academic subject to home-school their children? You would think that they might leave this -- the shaping of their children's minds, careers, and futures -- to trained professionals. That is, to those who have worked steadily at their profession for 10, 20, 30 years! Teachers!
The article's author, Dave Arnold, suggests that parents are "gullible" and "well-meaning amateurs" who simply have no business educating their own children.
Note carefully that the situation in California is still unfolding -- but the reality of such hostility toward homeschooling parents is becoming all too clear.
I don’t have kids and didn’t think being here in the midwest there was any real reason to home school your children. I was sure the resources available to school would be a great benefit to the kids.
Then this happened: The neighbors were visiting and in the casual chat you hear about school so I turned the conversation there. The 10 year old daughter was telling all about school. She is one of those unusual kids who would rather chat with the adults than go play. The two most important things she said she had learned that year was Kabuki Dance and Global Warming.
Where we live is 85%+ republican. Wealthy area.
I never knew...
If you don’t home school your children, you are in a battle for their minds. The schools are filled with your enemies. You are going to end up with addle minded marxist dolts if they go through the public system.
(Dave Arnold, a member of the Illinois Education Association, is head custodian at Brownstown Elementary School in Southern Illinois.)
At the risk of angering all the Obama Worshipers, those are
JUST WORDS!
The court's ruling needs to be OVER-TURNED by a higher court and the over-ruling needs to be codified by the legislature and signed by the governor.
I've seen too often what one lameass judicial ruling can do to freedom.
Gullible about what? Truth?
My home schooled kids got 1590 and 1520 on the SAT. They both have 4.00 GPAs in college and are helping, during their second year in college, with remedial ed for all the kids who went to public high school and the future teachers who cannot do math and other academics. They can also spell and read.
They were however culturally deprived according to some. They were not subjected to socialist, pro-abortion, pro-homosexual, antichristian propaganda. They also did not learn how to put a condom on a banana.
They actually learned how to write a term paper by themselves instead of it being the product of the collective.
(We are forever warned that whatever 'goes in California'. . .so goes the rest of the Country. . .
And from west coast to east, with the open boundaries of the Left's equal playing field; and it's flatness; the ease of 'travel-time' is maximized.)
So, why would some parents assume they know enough about every academic subject to home-school their children? You would think that they might leave this -- the shaping of their children's minds, careers, and futures -- to trained professionals. That is, to those who have worked steadily at their profession for 10, 20, 30 years! Teachers!
The article's author, Dave Arnold, suggests that parents are "gullible" and "well-meaning amateurs" who simply have no business educating their own children.
It looks to me like Dave Arnold is among the king's morons and dregs because he knows NOT the history of education in the USA. Today's "government schools" evolved from parents teaching their children at home. Then neighbors got together, built a schoolhouse and hired a schoolmarm to teach their children. Every aspect of education was managed by the participating parents.
Today we have every aspect of education being managed by the government as the government incrementally got more and more involved in indoctrinating our children. As our government gets more socialist and Marxist oriented; as our government dumbs down morality; as our government introduces moral relativism; eliminates our cultural heritage from the curriculum; and gets so separated from the origin and intent of the role of parents, they go off on a tangent and demand total control of raising our children. Is that what we want as a society?
Well it is interesting to see how things get handled. The conservative parent usually takes the time to immediately correct the child.
The stunned liberal parent just ‘shuts-up’ both literally and figuratively speaking.
My wife and I never had children. But, I can honestly say that if we had, there’s no chance in hell they would have attended public school during their formative years (i.e., K-12).
Gee, give ‘em another reason to leave why dontcha?
Is anyone surprised? having the Democrats/Liberal/Socialists/Commmunists attack home schooling is simply because they can’t afford clear minded free thinking youth. These young peple would be seen as enemies of the state.
It’s not just hostility. The marxists plan to eliminate this threat to their propaganda machine. For years the left has had complete and free access to our children’s minds. They have been training the kids to be good little marxists. They won’t let go of that power very easily.
[...staying home, they would not be subjected to the leavening effect of democracy.]
[...staying home, they would not be subjected to the leavening effect of perversion and deceit.] is more to it if the truth be told, which the government school system will no longer abide as the mush minded children are taught the same things the brown shirt children of the Nazi government school system taught in the 1930’s.
Being homeshooled means much more than that, though what they call democracy, righteous Biblical Christians call tyranny of the perversion and brain washing of the liberal athiest secular humanist perversions of the hateful and non educating government system. They teach children so many lies and deceits and now they want the Christian children to be perverted also.
The Lord Christ Jesus will judge every soul who destroyed Christian children through their perverted and godless and pagan school systems.
That is so true of their hostility. When I was filling out my son’s exiting papers from his h.s., a counselor came over and starting telling me my son couldn’t take biology in his freshman year as it wouldn’t count for credit. I asked why? She said something about his maturity level. I just blew her off. These are some of the mandates the state of CA has for public school. I am thankful I made sure he is attending (online) an accredited christian private academy. Most of what the public school did (brainwashing) is being reversed now. I have noticed so many improvements in his personality since I pulled him out of public school, and toward the last of his attendance it was getting pretty ugly. Thank God He provided a way for us to finance his schooling now.
Our enemies. Well indoctrinated in teaching colleges, Columbia U being the genesis, and before it The Frankfurt School (who brought us consensus building and sensitivity training). What better way, although slower, to gain control of a society than through indoctrination of its young. It was/is an actual plan and and infiltrated the government schools and the NEA decades ago.
Wow....outstanding young adults...your kids, that is...that really P’O’s the libs...”That’s Not Fair!!!”; “We’re gonna tax you to death for our efforts!!”
A parent who homeschools is basically telling the govt. and the NEA something like “Hey, this is one child you will not have an opportunity to indoctrinate.” No real way to expect them to be happy about it...
They can masticate feces and expire.
Nope, it is totally believable: Brownstown Elementary School has assigned the custodial work to a guy who can string three sentences together... while the illiterati teach the kids.
You all might appreciate this anecdote.
We have three children, and two attend a private Christian K-12 school (thank God for the resources to afford it) and the third has a few learning issues which required individual teaching and homeschooling through a local state-funded charter school that might as well be Christian because all the staff are Christians.
Anyway, my third (boy, 6th grade) had to meet with an educator/evaluator because of his learning issue ... routine, but it had to be held on a local middle school campus (not the charter school campus). So my wife dropped him off, handed him off to the staffer, and drove away.
My son had to walk with the district staffer for a few minutes to arrive at the evaluation classroom. In those few minutes, during recess, he witnessed bullying, fighting, heard four-letter words that he'd never heard before, and saw boys forcibly take lunch money from smaller boys. This was a middle school, mind you, where the oldest child is probably 11 or 12 years old.
When my wife picked him up, he was relieved. His only comment was, "Mom, now I know why you and Dad are homeschooling me."
Q.E.D.
I’m not sure how much things have changed.
Are you guys chagrined by this for the same reason I am?
The custodian at my elementary school was the guy who swept the floors.
Is this the title now given to those in positions of authority where their primary task is sweeping out the interest’s of the riff-raff (i.e., the noisome parents)?
ping
the densest person I ever dated in college or right-thereafter, was a UCLA Ed. Phd. grad student. whoa! the whole dept. . what bunch of losers.! .
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