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Galatians 6:10


    Homeschooling

    Chelsea
    Chelsea
    Admin


    Posts : 110
    Join date : 2011-01-30
    Age : 32

    Homeschooling Empty Homeschooling

    Post  Chelsea Fri Mar 18, 2011 4:10 pm

    So this article is about a case in New Hampshire where a father sued his ex-wife and demanded their daughter be put in a public school. The father's reasons were that he thought she was being overly exposed to the mother's Christian values. It's really short, but I think this article raises some interesting points.

    Article: http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2011/March/NH-Court-Homeschooled-Girl-to-Public-School/

    Now I have several reactions to this article. My first reaction is one of deep concern. Why is the government deciding how this girl needs to be raised? The article says, "The state supreme court upheld a lower court ruling that said the girl needs to be exposed to other viewpoints." Now I'm not saying I disagree with them, but why do they get to make the parenting decisions in this girl's life? I understand they are currently going through a custody battle, but the ruling wasn't, "the father gets to make the educational decisions" or "the mother gets to make the educational decisions," it was "this is what's best for the child." Excuse me? If the government got to decide what was best for my children I would certainly not stay in California. Now, of course, if the mother was a drug addict with a record of abusing her daughter and the father couldn't keep a steady job, let alone support a kid, then maybe the government has something to say. But that is not the case here. In fact, what I could dig up about these kind of court cases is that if you are going to try and modify the way a child is currently living (in this case, she has been homeschooled for the entirety of her parent's divorce) you have to prove there is some sort of "harm" being done to the child. (Note: I could only find articles about this on either christian news sites or homeschooling advocate sites, so I realize the information I'm receiving is biased, but to me this raises some fundamental concerns.)

    Another thing that stood out to me in the article I linked was that the court noted how a lot of parent's were homeschooling their kids recently. I really can't say I blame them. As it pertains to education, I support the public or private schooling system. However, I can honestly say that if certain viewpoints slip their way into the education system, I will be homeschooling my kids. To me, this case says the state of New Hampshire doesn't think I have the rights to protect my kids from an onslaught of immorality. Again, I understand the case is different in that a dispute between two divorced individuals had to be settled, but it disturbs me that the court decided it was good for the daughter to be thrown into a public school environment. I appreciate my public school experience. I appreciate the knowledge of the world that I received from it. Even if PLNU wasn't so expensive I would still have chosen a secular school, because I don't want to risk being naive to how things "really work" in the world. On the other hand, I know people who have been homeschooled (Shane Smallwood from church, for example). They are not "less aware" of the world than I am.

    To me, the whole "raising children" thing in general is a rough spot. When states are telling parents their religious views are bringing up narrow-minded children, and Britain is saying that Christian morals "infect" children, I tend to be concerned. It's especially concerning that I'm called "hateful" and my ideas are "dangerous" if I think that a child should have one mother and one father. When you see direct correlations between criminals in prison and the absence of a father in their lives (even up to 95% of prison inmates growing up without a dad), I don't call that hateful; I call that science. I haven't heard recently about any statistics relating Christian homeschooling to drug dealing or terrorist attacks later in life (I'm just sayin').

    Anyway, to any of you that read all of that (for one, bless you), there are a lot of topic that could come off this article, and I'm interested to hear people's reactions.

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