FrankRep
12-21-2009, 11:32 AM
Detroit News’ Bogeyman: Homeschooling Moms and Dads (http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5783-detroit-news-bogeyman-homeschooling-moms-and-dads)
Isabel Lyman | John Birch Society (http://www.jbs.org/)
21 December 2009
The Detroit News (http://detnews.com/article/20091217/METRO/912170337/%22%20%5Co%20%22http://detnews.com/article/20091217/METRO/912170337/%22%20http://detnews.com/article/20091217/METRO/912170337/) featured a huge, above-the-fold, front page story about home education last week.
Take a guess what it was about....
The homeschool graduate who was nominated, for the third time, for a Heisman Trophy?
The former homeschooler who won a Nobel Prize?
The homeschool mom whom Time magazine recently selected as one of the best bloggers in the world?*
If only.
The first sentence of the article: “Calista Springer lay tethered to her bed by a dog collar while siblings went off to school each morning.”
You can guess where this is going.
Ron French, starring in the role of crusading investigative journalist, reported how Calista, a 16-year-old who lived in Centreville, Michigan, tragically perished in a house fire last year, while strapped to her bed.
The teen was "homeschooled" by her allegedly abusive father and stepmother, Anthony and Marsha Springer, who have been charged with felony murder, first-degree child abuse, and torture.
Prior to 2005, Calista attended public schools, and French dutifully noted that confidential complaints had been lodged to the Children’s Protective Services, an arm of Michigan’s Department of Human Services, about her welfare — but nothing came of it. What French does make perfectly clear is that the complaints stopped when Calista was removed from conventional school to home school. Prosecutor John McDonough eagerly makes the implication, “Home school played a role in Calista’s death. They basically eliminated any person who could have reported abuse...."
Of an estimated 72,000 homeschoolers in Michigan, French found only one other example, similar to the Springer story, to bolster his anti-parental rights argument for tougher homeschooling sanctions targeting closet child abusers posing as homeschoolers. Back in 2004, the body of seven-year-old Ricky Holland was found near his home in Williamston, Michigan. His adoptive parents, Tim and Lisa Holland, also claimed to be homeschoolers. The Hollands were convicted of little Ricky’s murder and are currently in jail.
Fortunately, cooler heads do live in the Wolverine State. One voice of reason was that of Hannah Mead, of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. In response to The Detroit News, Mead blogged that public schools aren’t exactly safe houses. Citing several statistics culled from the Center for Disease Control school violence fact sheet, she wrote that, in 2005, almost 630,000 violent crimes were committed in government schools.
That’s a fair amount of serious criminal activity, and Mead took no prisoners: “Home schooling gives parents the opportunity to keep their children out of dangerous schools and give them an excellent education.”
The Home School Legal Defense Association also responded in kind:
Regrettably, tragedies do occur, and no amount of regulation can ensure that all children will be safe all the time. Unfortunately, even in the most heavily regulated area of education — the public school — children suffer serious injury and death. It is a sad fact that some parents mistreat their children, and society rightly devotes time and resources to protecting children from abusive parents. But Mr. French is suggesting that Michigan should spend millions of dollars registering and investigating all homeschooling families in an attempt to uncover child abuse. This would be unwise in light of the fact that there is no assurance that increasing the regulation of homeschoolers would prevent child abuse.
What is comical is that in the same edition that the sad Calista story ran (along with two accompanying articles hammering the point that the vast majority of Michigan’s law-abiding homeschooling parents aren’t monitored enough), the newspaper’s opinion page was brimming with letters on the theme of “how to fix Detroit’s schools.” (Motown’s test scores are among the worst of the worst in the nation.) Not one writer — whose letter was printed, at least — argued that the public schools just might be magnets for employing corrupt, underachieving individuals, or that parents who allow the government to assume the responsibility of teaching their kids might — gasp — bear the responsibility.
To make matters even more absurd, there was also a house editorial, on the letters page, about a “rubber room” — a holding pen of sorts for unfit classroom teachers who can’t be fired. The new labor contract (if enacted) mandates that these Detroit teachers will not only get paid, they will receive benefits, while sitting in this rubber room and leeching off the taxpayers in the state with the highest unemployment rate in the nation.
The editorial noted, “The old contract kept those teachers in the classroom, where they could continue to damage children” (emphasis mine).
So, who will monitor the monitors, Ron French?
As if lumping dedicated homeschooling parents with evil child abusers wasn’t enough damage for one day, The Detroit News went on to post a cyberpoll (http://apps.detnews.com/apps/forums/schooltalk/lettersindex.php?topic=Home_school_reg) which asked the following: “Michigan's laws on home schooling include no instruction-time requirements, no curriculum standards, no minimum education level for the teachers and no testing. Should the state toughen its laws on home schooling?”
I vote “No”!
===================
Isabel Lyman, author of The Homeschooling Revolution (http://www.amazon.com/Homeschooling-Revolution-Isabel-Lyman/dp/0967043069), blogs at http://thecastillochronicles.blogspot.com
SOURCE:
http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5783-detroit-news-bogeyman-homeschooling-moms-and-dads
Isabel Lyman | John Birch Society (http://www.jbs.org/)
21 December 2009
The Detroit News (http://detnews.com/article/20091217/METRO/912170337/%22%20%5Co%20%22http://detnews.com/article/20091217/METRO/912170337/%22%20http://detnews.com/article/20091217/METRO/912170337/) featured a huge, above-the-fold, front page story about home education last week.
Take a guess what it was about....
The homeschool graduate who was nominated, for the third time, for a Heisman Trophy?
The former homeschooler who won a Nobel Prize?
The homeschool mom whom Time magazine recently selected as one of the best bloggers in the world?*
If only.
The first sentence of the article: “Calista Springer lay tethered to her bed by a dog collar while siblings went off to school each morning.”
You can guess where this is going.
Ron French, starring in the role of crusading investigative journalist, reported how Calista, a 16-year-old who lived in Centreville, Michigan, tragically perished in a house fire last year, while strapped to her bed.
The teen was "homeschooled" by her allegedly abusive father and stepmother, Anthony and Marsha Springer, who have been charged with felony murder, first-degree child abuse, and torture.
Prior to 2005, Calista attended public schools, and French dutifully noted that confidential complaints had been lodged to the Children’s Protective Services, an arm of Michigan’s Department of Human Services, about her welfare — but nothing came of it. What French does make perfectly clear is that the complaints stopped when Calista was removed from conventional school to home school. Prosecutor John McDonough eagerly makes the implication, “Home school played a role in Calista’s death. They basically eliminated any person who could have reported abuse...."
Of an estimated 72,000 homeschoolers in Michigan, French found only one other example, similar to the Springer story, to bolster his anti-parental rights argument for tougher homeschooling sanctions targeting closet child abusers posing as homeschoolers. Back in 2004, the body of seven-year-old Ricky Holland was found near his home in Williamston, Michigan. His adoptive parents, Tim and Lisa Holland, also claimed to be homeschoolers. The Hollands were convicted of little Ricky’s murder and are currently in jail.
Fortunately, cooler heads do live in the Wolverine State. One voice of reason was that of Hannah Mead, of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. In response to The Detroit News, Mead blogged that public schools aren’t exactly safe houses. Citing several statistics culled from the Center for Disease Control school violence fact sheet, she wrote that, in 2005, almost 630,000 violent crimes were committed in government schools.
That’s a fair amount of serious criminal activity, and Mead took no prisoners: “Home schooling gives parents the opportunity to keep their children out of dangerous schools and give them an excellent education.”
The Home School Legal Defense Association also responded in kind:
Regrettably, tragedies do occur, and no amount of regulation can ensure that all children will be safe all the time. Unfortunately, even in the most heavily regulated area of education — the public school — children suffer serious injury and death. It is a sad fact that some parents mistreat their children, and society rightly devotes time and resources to protecting children from abusive parents. But Mr. French is suggesting that Michigan should spend millions of dollars registering and investigating all homeschooling families in an attempt to uncover child abuse. This would be unwise in light of the fact that there is no assurance that increasing the regulation of homeschoolers would prevent child abuse.
What is comical is that in the same edition that the sad Calista story ran (along with two accompanying articles hammering the point that the vast majority of Michigan’s law-abiding homeschooling parents aren’t monitored enough), the newspaper’s opinion page was brimming with letters on the theme of “how to fix Detroit’s schools.” (Motown’s test scores are among the worst of the worst in the nation.) Not one writer — whose letter was printed, at least — argued that the public schools just might be magnets for employing corrupt, underachieving individuals, or that parents who allow the government to assume the responsibility of teaching their kids might — gasp — bear the responsibility.
To make matters even more absurd, there was also a house editorial, on the letters page, about a “rubber room” — a holding pen of sorts for unfit classroom teachers who can’t be fired. The new labor contract (if enacted) mandates that these Detroit teachers will not only get paid, they will receive benefits, while sitting in this rubber room and leeching off the taxpayers in the state with the highest unemployment rate in the nation.
The editorial noted, “The old contract kept those teachers in the classroom, where they could continue to damage children” (emphasis mine).
So, who will monitor the monitors, Ron French?
As if lumping dedicated homeschooling parents with evil child abusers wasn’t enough damage for one day, The Detroit News went on to post a cyberpoll (http://apps.detnews.com/apps/forums/schooltalk/lettersindex.php?topic=Home_school_reg) which asked the following: “Michigan's laws on home schooling include no instruction-time requirements, no curriculum standards, no minimum education level for the teachers and no testing. Should the state toughen its laws on home schooling?”
I vote “No”!
===================
Isabel Lyman, author of The Homeschooling Revolution (http://www.amazon.com/Homeschooling-Revolution-Isabel-Lyman/dp/0967043069), blogs at http://thecastillochronicles.blogspot.com
SOURCE:
http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5783-detroit-news-bogeyman-homeschooling-moms-and-dads