Quote:Susan Svrluga of the Washington Post has an incredible story of a Christian home-schooling family where the parents don’t want to send their children to the local public school, and the children, knowing they’re not getting a good education, are fighting back:
[Son] Josh Powell wanted to go to school so badly that he pleaded with local officials to let him enroll. He didn’t know exactly what students were learning at Buckingham County High School, in rural central Virginia, but he had the sense that he was missing something fundamental.
By the time he was 16, he had never written an essay. He didn’t know South Africa was a country. He couldn’t solve basic algebra problems.
If parents claim a religious exemption from public education, the state government doesn’t do anything to check in on them and make sure they’re doing a decent job.
It’s scary to think that 7,000 children in the state are being home-schooled and we have no idea how many of them are getting a decent education. We don’t know how many can read or write. We don’t know how much math they can do. We don’t know what books they’re reading (besides the Bible, anyway).
Josh Powell, now 21, wonders how much more he could have accomplished if he hadn’t spent so much time and effort catching up.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyath...bly-wrong/
As much as I dislike the public school system, I know it is still a better alternative to religious homeschooling. Religious people who finally enter the world, whether to attend college or get a job, tend to only have one thing on their minds, god, and that makes them completely unprepared for the world.
"Never trust a fox. Looks like a dog, behaves like a cat."
~ Erin Hunter
~ Erin Hunter