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A Presbyterian Exodus?
2007-02-27 16:15:02
By Mimi Rothschild This month’s issue of the Heartland Institute’s School Reform News included an interesting article by Grove City College professor Michael Coulter regarding Bruce Shortt’s crusade against the public school system. This particular piece takes note of an encouraging development in the movement. The Rev. Steven Warhurst, associate pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Kingsport, Tennessee, has taken up a similar cause in his own denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). With more than 1,200 churches and 300,000 members, the PCA is the largest of the seven conservative Presbyterian denominations. The two largest protestant church organizations now have factions pushing for a move away from government-run schools. At last year’s General Assembly, the Presbyterian equivalent to the Southern Baptist Convention, Warhurst and his supporters introduced the possibility of a church-wide push for homeschooling and Christian priva...
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Cheerleaders? Reign of Terror Comes to an End
2007-02-27 16:15:02
By Mimi Rothschild Sometimes I just have to shake my head at these sorts of things.  The Telegraph News reports of a shocking scandal in which a clique of teenage cheerleaders essentially had the run of the school, even in the classroom.  They intimidated other students, pulled pranks, intimidated the teachers, skipped school, and committed other various acts of disrespect. “These girls were at the top of the food chain, they were ‘uber-cool’, they had the looks ? some of them had the money,” said Mr Jones. “I talked to a real good-looking football coach and he was obviously scared of them. He had taught inner-city school kids in San Francisco and he said gang members were nothing compared with these girls.” As much as I hate to say it, this sort of social climate exists within most schools.  The public school environment not only allows this sort of behavior, but fosters it.  This particular situation got out of control enough that it got media a...
More About: Terror , Cheer , Come , Error , Cheerleaders

Dr. Bruce Shortt Slams Mississippi Public Schools
2007-02-27 16:15:02
Mimi Rothschild Citing some of the prime failures of Mississippi schools, and public schools in general, Dr. Shortt compiles a biting critique published in World Net Daily. What seems to burn more is not so much the inadequacy of the public school, but the audacity of its administrators to divert attention to the homeschooling population. What hypocrisy! Hank Bounds, the man behind all the finger-pointing, had the following to say: “? [Y]ou must realize we all have this moral and ethical responsibility to deal with those situations where clearly it’s nothing more than a child abuse situation when parents pull their children out of school, say they’re being homeschooled just because parents … don’t want to be involved in the education of their children. …” What?! What does that even mean? Is he saying that abusive parents homeschool their children because they don’t want to be involved in the education of their children? I guess he...
More About: Schools , Public , School , Bruce

Cheerleader Tyranny Part Two
2007-02-27 16:15:02
By Mimi Rothschild It appears as though there is more to the aforementioned cheerleading scandal than initially met the eye.  The New York Post enters the fray. The girls in question not only bullied their fellow students, but were able to intimidate school administrators. Apparently one of the student’s mothers was the principle of the school. Mom had no problem with her girls acting this way, and abused her power to award them preferential treatment. Now, teachers and parents are coming forward to complain that Theret created a climate of fear bolstered by a culture of retaliation, litigation and Texas employment laws that made firings easy. Ward said some teachers had changed grades for these girls because they feared for their careers. “The principal made sure that every teacher knew that their job was on the line. I can’t tell you how many times I thought I was going to lose my job,” Ward said. “I was scared to death. It was a nightmare.” T...
More About: Tyranny , Cheer , Part , Tyra , Lead

The Southern Baptist Academy Stands for Homeschooling
2007-02-27 16:15:02
By Mimi Rothschild I would like to do my part to spread the word about the We Stand for Home schooling petition. The petition was designed to help spread awareness about the deceptive use of the word “homeschooling” by public cyber schools. These public cyberschools are using the word homeschooling as a way to lure those wishing for a public school alternative back into the fold.  The problem the signers of this petition are trying to avoid can be summarized by a simple guilt by association.  Public virtual charter schools are proving to be colossal wastes of money, especially when their students are not performing even as well as their public school counterparts.  Their use of homeschooling terminology needs to stop now. We might not be able to define what homeschooling is, given its variety of forms, but we can confidently define what homeschooling is not, and that is a publicly-funded program. I can’t be any more emphatic about this: Enrolling in public virtual...
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World Magazine on PBS Special about Homeschooling
2007-02-27 16:15:02
By Mimi Rothschild World Magazine ’s Joel Belz takes the public school to task in a recent editorial. He is specifically covering a recent PBS special about homeschooling, which in his eyes, was relatively fair and balanced. Giving the last word to Dr. Bruce Shortt, the documentary allowed him to get this insightful thought in. “Reich’s attack is fundamentally ideological. He is clearly a collectivist who, like his fellow travelers in the universities, is seeking complete cultural hegemony. What he is really objecting to is not the ineffectiveness of homeschooling, but its effectiveness. A homeschooled child is effectively a child outside the grasp of the state and, therefore, outside the grasp of those who control the state’s educational institutions. He fears that these children will have a worldview of which he disapproves and that he finds threatening. That is what drives Reich. His real concern is not ‘ethical autonomy’ or the welfare of chi...
More About: Homeschooling , Home , School

Children of the State
2007-02-27 16:15:02
By Mimi Rothschild Religion and Ethics has a transcript of a PBS special on home education featuring advocates such as Bruce Shortt and Voddie Baucham. The show highlights opinions from both sides of the playing field. A professor declares that homeschool students are not well socialized. Another claims that the government has an interest in ensuring that homeschool children are exposed to beliefs outside of what their parents believe. I don’t think that most homeschooled children run the risk of not being exposed enough to ideas that oppose their parents’ worldview. Every single media outlet is constantly sending messages to our children that conflict with a Christian worldview. What Professor Reich is essentially saying is that its the government’s responsibility to make sure your children believe what’s right and what’s wrong on their terms. There is a “You birth the babies, we’ll take over from here” mentality. He claims that ...
More About: Children , State , Child , Stat , The State

Indoctrination Disguised as Diversity
2007-02-27 16:15:02
By Mimi Rothschild There is a flurry of media attention pointed at a Massachusetts school district that distributed a “diversity book bag” to elementary students promoting the homosexual lifestyle. When David Parker, a concerned parent, prompted a meeting with school administrators, they responded by having him arrested for trespassing. An ACLU lawyer, however, told the judge that “it is a tremendous bonus” for children to be given information of which their parents wouldn’t approve, and that teaching children homosexuality when their parents’ Biblical beliefs do not support that has nothing to do with a violation of religious freedom, according to the MassResistance.org reports. This boils down to a fundamental question about the nature of government’s rights. Does the state have the right to interrupt the parent-child relationship for the “good” of society? It’s an interesting concept; one that Germany has been grappli...
More About: Diversity , Nation , Trina , Indo , Indoctrination

Florida Convention Rejects Exit Strategy Resolution
2007-02-27 16:15:02
I came across a saddening article today in the BP News. Tucked away amongst articles that some would consider to be more relevant, the homeschooling movement suffered a terrific blow in paragraph three. “Addressing the decision not to consider the resolution, John Sullivan said while he serves as executive director?treasurer of the Florida Baptist Convention , ?I would never lead our staff or the state board of missions to develop an exit strategy from the public schools.? With no offense to my brothers and sisters in Christ who are currently employed by the public school system, there will come a time when Southern Baptist leaders will realize that the public school has gone too far. Hopefully that time will come sooner rather than later. Church leaders need to understand that today’s public school is not the halcyon place they remember in their youth. It cannot be reformed, it is too far gone. Attempting to redeem the public school would not be like redeeming the R...
More About: Strategy , Exit Strategy , Trat