Get a Real Education
Los Angeles Times writers seemingly communist, ill-informed hacks.
Today I want to comment on one of the worst researched and most highly inflammatory articles that I’ve had the displeasure of reading on the Los Angeles Times website in years. In the article, "Regulating home schoolers," Walter P. Coombs and Ralph E. Shaffer think they have it all figured out for the rest of us.
According to them, not only should parents who homeschool be regulated, but we are "elitist and anti-democratic" because we choose to spend our days working with our own children, instead of relinquishing them to the care and custody of state dictators on a daily basis.
In a misguided attempt to sway opinion, the authors had this to say…
"One anecdotal case of a home schooled teen writing a bestselling novel is cited, with the implication that such a remarkable achievement could not possibly have been attained because of the demanding homework assignments given by our public schools. Sounds like the board believes our traditional schools are overworking the kids — which is not what most critics say. Isn’t a major argument for home schooling based on the belief that the public schools aren’t demanding enough?"
Busy work is not the same thing as quality work. Schools are under mandate to teach to tests and meet minimum standards, how can any child excel in that type of an environment? "Demanding homework assignments," doesn’t always translate into meaningful work. Many teachers assign homework because it’s expected. Often the teacher doesn’t bother to have students turn in the work, much less grade it.
"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."
In stark contrast, we have "public schools" that are run like socialist communes, where each child is forced into the same mold and expected to regurgitate the same old stale facts, in order to pass an arbitrary test. This is not education. It is not teaching students to use the brains gifted to them by God. What will these children do when they grow up and no one is around to tell them what to do?
Your article is highly biased against Christians in the belief that the majority of those homeschooling do so because of their religion. You have really misjudged homeschoolers as a whole. The majority of us, even those of us who are Christians, do so in order to provide our children with the best educational opportunities available.
Christians are great at networking and due to tightly-knit church affiliations it may appear that they make up the vast majority of homeschoolers, but that simply isn’t the case. Homeschoolers come from all walks of life, they are a diverse bunch; some are into environmental issues, some are pagans, some are unschoolers, others choose to educate with the classics, etc.
When you choose to make blanket statements about homeschoolers, you are showing your ignorance – it’s almost laughable. It would be like saying that every person who lives in San Francisco is a spaced-out hippy, addicted to drugs. We know that is not true, there are many hard-working individuals that live in the city.
Next time you decide to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard if you will) why not try doing your homework first and writing something with some actual truth to it.