Pa. Home Schooling Oversight Challenged

[G_j]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-4377233,00.html

Pa. Home Schooling Oversight Challenged

Monday August 2, 2004 10:16 AM


By JENNIFER C. YATES

Associated Press Writer

PITTSBURGH (AP) - On any given school day, the five Newborn children might be studying statistics at a local college, learning Spanish from a tutor or watching a procedure at a veterinarian's office. It's part of a curriculum set by their parents, who home school their children because they consider it a calling from God. It all must be carefully documented in a report each year to their local school superintendent.

In cases being closely watched by home schooling advocates across the country, the Newborns and a second Pennsylvania family have filed lawsuits under the state Religious Freedom Protection Act challenging the state's home school reporting requirements.

The act allows people to challenge any laws they believe impose ``substantial burdens upon the free exercise of religion without compelling justification.'' Similar statutes were passed in 11 other states after a federal religious freedoms law was declared unconstitutional in 1997.

``God is in our math, God is in our science, God is in our history. Yet we have to submit to a government agent for approval,'' Maryalice Newborn said.

..more..

[MikeG]

1. I went to Franklin Regional High School.

These parents are nuts.

Franklin Regional is one of the best public schools in the state.

The state should take these children off these parents before they screw them up further.

[el_gato]

2. It's their children not yours

Your comment wreaks of fascism. While I may not agree with
what these kids are taught exactly but they have a right to
raise their kids the way they see fit. If I had kids I would
home school them as well, I just wouldn't fill them full of
religious crap because I don't believe in religion. However,
I don't have any desire to prevent these people from raising
their own children.

[TahitiNut]

4. Yup. Purchased at WalMart. Made in China. Property.

Entitlements. Chattel. Mere repositories for every bigotry, delusion, ax-to-grind, and sociopathic demon over which the breeders obsess.

Everyone knows it's the parents who have rights and the children who have duties, not vice versa. Yup. Ubetcha. :eyes:

[yellowcanine]

10. Children are not the property of their parents. Society has a vested

interest in the education of all children. If you ever name a guardian for your minor children in your will in the event of your demise a good lawyer will tell you that your wish is advisory only on the family court - the judge will decide the best guardian based on the available testimony and evidence after you are gone.

[LeighAnn]

3. Take them and put them where?

Put them on medication? Put them in an abusive foster home? Put them in an institution?

Always easy to suggest the "state" take the children, but then what do you do with them?

[Ellen Forradalom]

8. How is taking stats at the local college,

learning Spanish from a tutor, or watching a procedure at the vet's office "screwing them up?" It sounds like a very personalized and effective education to me.

[rinsd]

11. Seriously...I wish more kids go that kind of attention (nt)

[tlcandie]

5. I can see their religious point of view, BUT IMO wouldn't this open

a can of worms? If you stop reporting home schooling then that leaves the door WIDE open for....


No schooling at all

Using them for child labor instead of learning

I'm sure others can come up with a lot more possible tragic scenarios. What if it was say a commune of people and no reports were ever necessary regarding any of their children's schooling?

I dunno, but to me this is a bit scarey for the children. Maybe someone has a more objective view point.

[starroute]

6. I homeschooled my kids on and off in Pennsylvania

And the reporting requirements aren't exactly onerous. We'd hand in a one-page curriculum over the summer listing what we expected to teach in English, social studies, math, and science. And we'd hand in a portfolio at the end of the year with a daily journal (mostly just one-line entries for each day to show there'd been 180 days of instruction) plus a brief general write-up and samples of papers and stuff.

My highly school-adverse younger son spent 11th grade mainly playing Everquest online, along with writing and history assignments I gave him structured around that. Dumb though it sounds, it was the most educational (and confidence-building) thing he did in the two years I had him at home. From failing everything at the start of 10th grade when I pulled him out, he went back to public school for 12th grade, got almost all A's, got into a good college, and graduated this spring.

If the Pennsylvania school system can handle Everquest, I don't think it's going to make much of a fuss about God-based mathematics. (Is that the kind where pi is defined as equal to 3 like it says in the Bible?)

[gauguin57]

7. Congratulations on your son's success,

starroute!!! That is so cool! With your son's wonderful accomplishment, he deserves to find a great job, and I hope he can/has find/found one despite this Bush economy!!!

[rinsd]

12. Thanks for the personal anecdote. (nt)

[Book Lover]

9. These reports are not onerous

and completing them does not prevent these people from practicing their religion. From what I can gather, as well as what other homeschooling parents have told me (we don't yet homeschool, as our child isn't 2 yet), the requirements are just as starroute describes. These people are anti-staters, or religious anarchists. Bet they don't believe in vaccinations either (OK, unfair shot. But I ain't deleting it.)