I sure don’t know what a “TOUCH novel” is, but it sounds like this one might put Edward and Bella to shame.
And fresh from finishing this one:
Education policy, sociology, political science, conservative manifestos, and scintillating teenage love/murder dramas with buffed out teenage boys make for a well-rounded citizen. I should write my own homeschool curriculum.
Odd bedfellows I say, but both have demonstrated varying levels of opposition to the growth of charter schools. I guess this isn’t surprising in itself. since both of these organizations have their power structures threatened by the alternative presented by charter growth.
Unions fear loss of membership and power because of the freedom of choice exercised by the staff at most charter schools. Some choose to unionize, some form alternate associations, and most teachers at charter schools report high levels of job satisfaction, in spite of the fact that the NEA or AFT is not there to protect them.
CHEA is even more direct, attacking the emergence of homeschooling via charter school, where parents can procure governement funding to educate their children at home. Literature from CHEA and other evangelical homeschooling groups refer to state-sanctioned homeschooling as “a trojan horse,” a “tool of the enemy,” ”the plague,” and other nefarious something or other.
CHEA and the NEA have about as much in common as Mike Tyson and Michael Jackson, so this momentary unification in purpose is striking, even though it makes sense. If public homeschooling is indeed a “trojan horse” being used by the minions of the state to usurp parental authority and reel children back into the folds of government education, it’s paradoxical to find the NEA, one of the most powerful influences in government education (and elsewhere, despite the fact that they are an “education” association) opposing the trojan horse that is preparing to infiltrate the fortresses of Christian homeschoolers.
Now that has the makings of a serious conspiracy. Maybe the NEA is pretending to oppose the trojan horse, and when the perfidious soldiers leap from the belly of the horse, the NEA will suddenly join forces with a diabolical “GOTCHA!”
Perhaps I shouldn’t make light of a serious issue, because I respect and advocate for parents’ right to education their children as they see fit without any interference from the state or federal governments. I am a product of public, private, AND home schooling, with the latter making up the bulk of my education. I have taught in a public school for 6 years, and my wife and I will likely homeschool our own children, with God’s help raising them in the fear and admonition of the Lord.
I find it troubling AND manipulative to see CHEA and others using scripture (out of context at times) to demonize what can be a viable educational choice for Christians. I fear that they may even be using scripture to preserve their existence, and while I support their existence, employing the word of God in service of sustaining a physical endeavor is an inversion of priorities.
For example:
In government homeschooling, you place those who hate God over your homeschool. God is the head of the husband who is the head of the wife. The divine lines of authority established by God are disrupted when you insert the public school system into this holy order.
I do not disagree that much of what is encountered in a public school system can be hostile to God. However, it is disingenuous to make claims like this, ESPECIALLY when all legal homeschoolers are registering as private schools that pledge to teach the same basic subjects, as dictated by state regulations. This legal reality, then, is subject to the same criticism of placing “those who hate God over your homeschool.” Most would consider this a false dichotomy, and it is. Using state funds to homeschool your kids is a free exercise of choice on behalf of the parent, who are the ones responsible for educating their children. To demonize such a decision as ungodly is to inject a third party human perspective into the family unit, which ironically is what is supposed to be preserved.
EVERY parent/guardian is a homeschooler. Some suck at it. Some are brilliant. Many choose to use a public school as a tool, others choose a private school, and still others opt to homeschool. A variety of tools are at the parents disposal, and each parent is responsible to make the best use of such tools. To assume that employing one tool over another is to reject biblical authority is to assume a false dichotomy. This dichotomy, in essence, holds that public resources and spiritual integrity are mutually exclusive. This is not the case, and I would argue that acknowledgment of this dichotomy, at its root, is fairly common sense. I may take the time to argue the specific reasons later, as my goal is not to diminutive towards those who hold otherwise. It is this false dichotomy, I believe, that permeates every Christian rejection of the charter school movement for homeschoolers.
I will take a moment to point out one obvious inconsistency: Public schools are often demonized as indoctrination centers, and often they are. It is not so much the texts, but the philosophies of the educators that are the method of indoctrination. This “indoctrination” can and should take place at the home, where even public school children spend the majority of their lives. The parental influence made possible via home charter schools allows for ample infusing of a biblical world view. Under a parents’ watchful eye, critical examination of “worldly” texts, alongside systematic biblical teaching is perhaps a superior method of instruction.
Ultimately, CHEA’s wholesale assault on homeschooling via charter makes me squirm, as does their employing scripture to promote what is an arguable position. If charter schools show themselves to be a trojan horse, then they must be resisted. But they are miles removed from it thus far, and homeschooling is enjoying soaring public approval. If preservation of freedom is paramount, it does not make sense to restrict freedom of other individuals to make use of the tools available in this country.
A month or so ago I stumbled upon an outrageously amusing post about homeschooling, authored by a teacher at the blog Teacher, Revised. The post delivered a series of reasons intended to show why homeschooling was a bad idea. Most of the reasons were so outlandish and c0ntrafactual that they could have been mistaken as part of a parody of the anti-homeschool crowd. Most people took the post seriously, however, since last time I read the post it had garnered somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000 hot-under-the-collar-homeschooler comments.
At least he didn’t claim homeschoolers were in the dark ages technologically.
Now the point of this post: As I reflected on the asininity of point #8–
Homeschooling is selfish. According to this article in USA Today, students who get homeschooled are increasingly from wealthy and well-educated families. To take these (I’m assuming) high achieving students out of our schools is a disservice to our less fortunate public school kids. Poorer students with less literate parents are more reliant on peer support and motivation, and they greatly benefit from the focus and commitment of their richer and higher achieving classmates.
–I recalled an article in the Winter edition of Education Next that dealt with the issue of comparing household income levels of public and homeschooling families. The findings were surprising to me, since I did not deny the claim that homeschooling households were probably, in general, a bit more affluent than public school families. Instead, the information from the National Household Education Survey Program noted that home and public school households had almost identical yearly incomes. In fact, homeschooling families were actually lower by several percentage points. For example, 21.7% of homeschooling families made over 75,000 a year, as compared to 25.3% of public school families. The quote from Teacher, Revised (and his source)above fails to inform readers that the percentage of public school families making more than 50,000 a year is also nearly identical.
There was a rub, however, and here it is: 54% of homeschooling families with two parents had only one of those parents in the workforce, compared to 19.7% for public school two-parent families. So if you were to break down income individually, homeschooling parents would indeed make much more; however, the bottom line is that both households experience, on average, the same income when it comes to actual dollars earned. Perhaps this has implications for the accessibility of homeschooling as an option for all families, since more public school families have two parents in the workforce.
A few parting words for point #8 quoted above: More affluent homeschoolers are homeschooling, and therefore homeschooling is selfish? Such a claim is almost incoherently illogical, and I would get lost trying to pull out each fallacious pus-sac. Suffice to say, this quote actually supports the opposite of the claim, since even with the influx of wealthy homeschoolers, the numbers are STILL roughly equivalent to those of public school families. In other words, before the rush of the rich, homeschoolers were actually much poorer than public schoolers, and the USA Today article says about as much. So I guess everyone is selfish.
Also, by this logic, parents of underperforming students should immediately remove them from the public school before they poison the rest of the poor students with their detrimental intellectual and socioeconomic baggage. Because it’s unfair to have poor kids around bad influences, but then which poor kids to you remove because if you take out all the poor kids you won’t have any poor kids to benefit from the rich smart kids….Otherwise, the underlying assumption is that obligations of fairness only apply to those with money, which is a significant insult to the diversity of talents, abilities, and determination nested among people of all tax brackets.
I’ve heard homeschooling could be a great option…of course only for those families wealthy enough to have a parent stay at home, pay for the materials, tutors, extra curriculars, etc.
