Reply #35: The home schooling of children originated in the mind of

[Malva Zebrina]

R.J. Rushdoony, founder of the Christian Reconstructionist movement. Google his name, if you want a shocking eye opener.

Soon, many others who were not involved with Rushdoony's fanaticism, and for varied reasons, decided, for the betterment of their children, to home school their children. Since this home schooling movement happened way after my children went to public schools, I am not going to make any judgements on those reasons. What I do see today is a shameful degradation of the public school system and a move toward privatized schooling, and home schooling. I would have to think this a result of Republican initiatives and their obsession with smaller government--ie why should my money go to teach a dumb little black kid in the urban ghetto.

When the home school movement flowered, one criticism was that those children would not have the advantage of the needed social contacts a public school would offer and would not develop certain social skills because of that. Whether or not that is true, and it certainly is denied of course by home schoolers, it seems that, now, some of them want to capitalize on that missed social contact--kids can't play a game of baseball with themself, for instance or they throw the ball around with a kid next door who is on the after school baseball team and they want to be on the team too because they really like playing baseball. So--seems that public schools aren't that bad after all--homeschooled kids are missing something-the chance to excel at competitive sports-and the parents a chance to be sitting in the bleachers cheering their homeschooled kid on, and they will be coached by--a public school teacher!

It looks as if homeschoolers want to have their cake and eat it too.