I will get some more kids crafts posts up this weekend.

Here is an update on the post I did about Mississippi’s homeschool regulation. The paper that the article in the post came from - The Clarion-Ledger - now has an op-ed on the matter.

It opens:

HOMESCHOOLERS — those who teach their children at home - can boast of dozens of famous people as successes.

They include former presidents George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore F. Roosevelt, authors Mark Twain, George Bernard Shaw and C.S. Lewis, and other notables including Booker T. Washington, Benjamin Franklin and George Carnegie.

So far so good. Then it concluded with this gem:

The state should ensure that kids have a chance to learn. Not every child is a Washington, Twain or Carnegie.

I think it is extremely unfortunate that the paper chose to insult the homeschooled children instead of keeping their insults directed at the parents.

I know that not every kid had the same potential. I have three of them. I am aware that their potentials differ, but that is not the problem the paper has with homeschooling. The problem they have is with the possibility that deadbeat parents are using homeschooling as a cover for educational neglect. As such, they should refrain from insulting the children.

As I said in my previous post, investigate the parents when there is probable cause of neglect. Do not treat all homeschooling parent as guilty. That is not American. In this country, we are supposed to be innocent until the state proves guilt. Not the other way around.

The scenario quoted by the editorial is that of the parent who gets tired of dealing with the school and pulls the kid out to save the hassle. If the principal is convinced that a child was pulled out for that reason, with no intention by the parent to educate at home, then that could lead to a state investigation. There is no need to penalize all homeschoolers for a few bad parents.

My favorite line in the piece was this,

“More is learned in a classroom and school setting than A-B-Cs.”

Yes, that is true. In a classroom, children also learn about the latest pop culture trash, sex, drugs, bullying - how to do it and how to have it done to them, swear words, songs with dirty words in them, how to exclude other kids because they are not wearing cool shoes, and other socialization skills beneficial in the real world.

They also can learn how to sit still in a seat after they are finished with under-challenging busy work, how to stress out about grades as early as kindergarten, and the illuminating fact that teachers don’t always know the material they are teaching, even if they come equipped with a piece of paper that states they had pedagogical indoctrination.

Yes, more is learned in a classroom and school setting than A-B-Cs. That is often the reason many of us chose to homeschool.