[email protected]

In a message dated 2/24/2002 12:13:43 PM Pacific Standard Time,
[email protected] writes:


> IMO it's the fear, anger, and the personal attacks that is more of a
> problem than the purity of homeschooling.

When I was in a charter program, someone said in my hsing group once said, to
my face, "How can you let your own greed put all other homeschoolers at
risk?" Nice.

I've hsed under a regular public school program, a charter school program, a
private school program, by filing as a private school myself, and finally
just doing nothing - going "underground."

We could be radical unschoolers under each of those options. We could get
some pretty nice materials from the charter school - I got a soil testing kit
that I just stumbled across the other day - we never got around to using it. <
g>

I think there are two reasons for the hostility against the people who join
public programs:

1. Most of the people who oppose them think that taking money from the
government is pretty close to selling your soul to the devil (for a soil
testing kit? <G>). They are political extremists - opposed to government
funding of education at all. Want to see any government funding of schooling
of any kind completely eliminated.

2. Many also see a slippery slope - they are afraid that someday legislators
are going to outlaw any homeschooling except through public schools. They
think that the hsers who enroll in those programs voluntarily are paving the
way for that to occur.

Like Tia said about her province, it isn't what we've seen in California. We
see many people stepping out of regular school into the public hsing programs
and then into independent hsing. I talked to a woman just this morning who is
in a public school program and is going to become indepdent after this year.
The public school programs are, to some degree, acting as
transition-to-independent-homeschooling stepping stones.

If they were eliminated, a lot more people would feel stuck in public schools
and never make the jump to homeschooling. I know so MANY kids who have been
rescued from regular schooling by going into one of the ps programs.

But - again, that argument won't hold up to people who outschool the schools
with their own kids at home --- they aren't opposed to schooling, they're
opposed to government funding of it.

--pam


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