Better Off in a Government School? Not Even Remotely…

I thought it would be interesting to look at a few quotes from people involved in the much-discussed California homeschooling court case.

According to Leslie Heimov, executive director of the Children’s Law Center of Los Angeles, the most important role teachers play is observing children to make sure that they are safe.

Heimov said her organization’s chief concern was not the quality of the children’s education, but their “being in a place daily where they would be observed by people who had a duty to ensure their ongoing safety.”

Ongoing safety? In the eyes of this government bureaucrat, it is safer to take a child out of their home and put them in a government school. Which is interesting when you consider the following:

• Physical attacks without a weapon, theft or larceny, and vandalism are much more common in schools than are the more serious incidents. Forty-four percent to forty-nine percent of all schools reported crimes of these types to the authorities.
• There are one hundred times more guns in the hands of children attending American schools than children have been reporting to Congress.
• Students aged twelve through eighteen were victims of more than 2.7 million total crimes at school.
• Almost one in five students reported being threatened with a beating, and again this was a more common experience for middle school students (22%) than for high school students (16%).
• Youth are far more likely to be victimized by violence than to commit violence.

It seems that schools are not safer than the home, unless that is not what Director Heimov meant by “ensuring their ongoing safety.” Perhaps she meant they were to keep the children safe from a home environment they didn’t approve of, such as a homeschool environment. Perhaps she meant that the education provided in a homeschool setting isn’t as good as government provided indoctrination, therefore the child was at risk. Or maybe she meant the teachers had to protect the children from their parents.

Either way, the role of government education is to educate, not protect. They have a role in the child’s welfare, but it is secondary to educating the child. Maybe if they focused on that, our children would not be graduating functionally illiterate.

No longer do we teach reading, writing, and arithmetic, or even those touchy feely values that so many schools have spent so much time on. No, we’re simply watching children to make sure they don’t run with scissors, climb too high, or wash too many dishes. Too bad they can’t stop the shootings at their own schools before they start coming into our homes, or rather dragging us out of them, to make sure we’re safe.

From the largest teachers union in California, we have the expected line.

“We’re happy,” said Lloyd Porter, who is on the California Teachers Association board of directors. “We always think students should be taught by credentialed teachers, no matter what the setting.”

Of course they’re happy. No union is ever happy with competition. But let’s talk about the teachers who are “qualified” to teach our children. Math is one of the subjects that comes up as being difficult to teach, therefore a trained teacher employed by the state is more qualified than a homeschool mother or father to teach it. However:

Shockingly 40% of mathematics teachers in California are not fully qualified in the subject — a higher percentage of unqualified teachers than any other subject.

Four out of every ten are unqualified according to the state that just mandated all children be taught by them. Other subjects? In Washington D.C., it’s worse:

Last year, nearly half of all core subject classes taught in DC schools were taught by unqualified teachers. The worst-staffed subjects?

- Geography — 32.9 percent qualified
- History — 33.8 percent qualified
- Chemistry — 47.3 percent qualified

People have this idea that by working at the school, you are somehow more “qualified” to teach the subject you are teaching, but as you can see, that simply isn’t the case. Add the poor conditions, like overcrowding, disruptive students, violence, and tell me how sending my child off to a government school is any better than teaching my child Algebra myself. Or hiring a tutor to supplement where I lack knowledge.

And then we have this gem from the judge-

“A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare,”

When was the last time you saw this being taught in public school, let alone being the “primary purpose”? Our local public school is the only school I’ve attended or visited in years that still says the Pledge of Allegiance over the loudspeaker every single morning. Our history classes are being rewritten to cast America, capitalism, and democracy as evil. If you doubt this, check out one of the most popular history textbooks used today, both in high school and college: Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States.

At least State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell has his head on straight. He actually supports the homeschoolers, at least verbally.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell issued a statement saying he supports “parental choice when it comes to homeschooling.”

Tell me again that there’s not a political agenda here- they really just want what’s best for the children.