Students at the tiny, nondescript public school building in North Seattle have no playground, no formal cafeteria, no sports teams, no bells signaling the end of class.
They come and go as they please, and the nearly 250 who pass through the halls don't even consider themselves public school students.
They're among the more than 20,000 children statewide who are thought to opt out of public schools each year. They and their parents are drawn instead to the flexibility and freedom of homeschooling....
Any homeschooler who would be foolish enough to take any favors from the government education industry is helping to tie the noose around the neck of the rest of the homeschoolers.
Instead, we should suck it in and support groups like Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) -- a group of lawyers that defends homeschoolers all over the country from Child Protective Services, truant officers, and other government creeps looking to take people's kids and control our lives.
To me, this sounds like just another effort to get the government camel's nose under the homeschooling tent. It's sort of like the old analogy of saying "nice doggie" long enough to find a big stick. Given the opportunity, the teacher's union and the professional "educators" would make homeschooling illegal in a heartbeat.
My wife and I have homeschooled our kids since 1989 and I can tell you for a fact that the government school system powers-that-be despise homeschoolers. It goes against the grain of everything they believe (mostly socialistic humanism) and it seriously threatens their ability to make a living at the government hog trough.
"They worry that districts are offering hybrid homeschool programs simply to lure students back into the public school system, to boost their enrollment figures and to receive more money from the state. "
This is a valid concern. Higher Average Daily Attendance = more money, quite apart from pedagogical considerations. Plus I think it is a partial capitulation to the "socialization" myth.
I know I can only write from my own perspective, but this strikes me as defeating the purpose. My wife and I began home-schooling 4 years ago. Our main reason was to be obedient to God's direction in our lives through His Word. However, one of the needs we saw was to have more oversight of who might be influencing our children. We were not only concerned about what was being taught by the schools, but were very concerned about the influences of the other children. The article shows me that the concern for that, as well as Biblical training are not a priority.
1
There are a total of 4 user comments displayed | add new comment |
COMMENTS | 
