Utterly Meaningless

I left a comment–dunno if it will make it to the surface.

“Police told 6 News earlier in April that Lee tried for years to get the girl to leave her family.”

Years? Just how old was she when he started stalking her if she’s only 15 now?

Not that I think homeschooling is isolationism obviously, but I may be tempted to isolate my child if some sicko was after her. Waaayyyy back in the country. Then it’d be harder for the body to be found if he came around too close again 🙂

And “strict”? Just how loosely are you supposed to let your children go when you have a known stalker after them???

I left a comment as well. He strikes me as someone (else) who doesn’t know what a hornet’s nest he may have stirred up.

It’s surprising to hear this coming from a pastor in a fairly conservative (I suppose) church. Mu understanding was that these guys are usually pretty supportive of homeschooling.

Oh, well.

I left a comment too.
Wicked pastor kidnaps a kid, and you blame homeschooling?

Maybe what the story really highlights is the danger of religous nuts who use the fear of God to hold power over their unsuspecting flock.

My comment which hasn’t shown up yet:

Yeah–A pastor abuses a child and somehow homeschooling is to blame. Physician, heal thyself (and thy profession).

A clear case of faulty logic if I’ve ever seen one.

She was kidnapped and brainwashed. Homeschool, g-school; what difference would it make? Kidnapped is kidnapped. Lied to is lied to – is his point that a g-school student would be saavy enough to see through the lie?

A+B=C doesn’t add up in his argument.

This particular story took me back in time to my own childhood. As a 15 year old, I think I’d started to question a lot of what I’d been raised believing. There were some inconsistencies that I started noticing.

However, I was very naive at 15. I attended a small christian school that was a branch of the church that we attended. I had friends at church that attended gschools, but I didn’t have any friends outside of church and school.

I could easily have been talked into any number of things that may not have been healthy, and I did in fact initiate a lot of unhealthy activities once I moved away from my family. I was naive and had no clue of the wider world outside the small sphere I’d been raised in.

And from reading other articles about this sad story, we learn that the parents knew of pastor Lee’s desire for there daughter, had known for years and apparently didn’t do a whole lot to stop it. It’s amazing what power religious leaders really have and how often it turns to evil. And this without anyone mentioning priests.

My comment:

So tell us Dr. Jim, what percentage of homeschooling parents are dangerous isolationists, denying our children important socialization opportunities outside of home and church?

Am I one of them?

Dr. Jim’s blog – where comments go to die. He has several new posts up, so the only conclusion possible is that he is a coward. Why even bother having a comments link?

Yep…would seem so. Maybe he was too busy redecorating to look at his comments 🙂

Hmmph! Coward appears to be too soft a word for him! He continues to spout the “evils” of homeschooling then won’t allow comments.

“For several years I’ve been opposed, publicly, to the inclination of some to withdraw from society and “circle the wagons” so that Christian children are “kept safe from a harmful world”. The events of these past weeks reminded me, again, that homeschooled children are not only not safer but that their parents are, to a large extent, doing them a disservice.”

He needs to reach in his front pocket and see if he can find a pair!

Oops…sorry…my “pre-parent-to-young-impressionable-children” temper just reared its ugly head…

I’m storing my comments to his latest barrage here for safe keeping–I caught the blog site at a maintenace time just as I was about to submit them. Not that I expect him to post them anyway…

Again, Daryl, I appreciate your blog and the space to comment here. I blog occasionally too but it’s mostly domestic stuff that no one is interested in. I may share the link when I get past “what good deals I got at the yard sale today”, lol!

“The events of these past weeks reminded me, again, that homeschooled children are not only not safer but that their parents are, to a large extent, doing them a disservice.”

Are you joking here? “Not safer”? Does the word Columbine ring a bell with you?

“Indeed- Chris is quite well qualified to homeschool his son. But he is clearly not in the majority of homeschooling parents.”

How do you support this statement? Just how many homeschooling families do you know personally? How well do you know each state’s homeschool law concerning qualification of parents to teach their own? What is your knowledge on data gathered showing homeschoolers’ performance on standardized tests? Have you noted from which community (public schooled or homeschooled) the majority of winners in national academic competitions are?

“First, homeschooled kids tend to be socially inept. In my experience they tend to be loners. When interacting with others (outside their comfort zone of like minded souls) they have a tremendously difficult time relating.”

Going back to my comments on your blog entry about the “pastor” and the 15yo girl (which you have obviously rejected to be made public on your blog)homeschooling affords our family the opportunities to be VERY active in our community therefore making my children able to socially interact with many age groups. My children help with Meals-On-Wheels, library story hour, preschool field trips, etc.–unlike their government-schooled peers who sit in a classroom “comfort zone” with more of the same age people all day long.

“Second, and this is the most important point, the mentality of homeschooling is withdrawalism. It is a duck and cover approach to the problems of life and in essence it is a return to the medieval “monastic” paradigm of Christian existence. That model suggests that the world is such a horrible place that children must be kept from it. They must be kept from kids who think differently or they will be manipulated and overwhelmed. If they hang out with “unbelievers” they will become pagans themselves. But such an approach is, in my estimation, a denial of the very Gospel they are supposed to believe. “No man lights a lamp and then hides it under a bushel basket”. “A City set on a hill cannot be hid”. Though Jesus uttered those words, they seem to hold no sway with homeschooling parents.”

There are so many things wrong with this paragraph I don’t know where to start nor where I’d finish if I do get started! HOW can a child reach out with the gospel of Christ when they are confined to a classroom all day? They come in contact with the same 28 kids all year long, a couple of teachers, and a principal. Homeschooled kids have contact with so many more different people.

OK…so here are my answers to your questions…

1- What qualifications do you have to educate children? I know as well as any public school teacher how to pass on information from a textbook or lab manual. Other than that I guess the only other qualifications I have are having experienced life on this earth for 40 years, being a mother for 20, successfully homeschooling for 13, and having the greatest desire above the best schoolteacher in the world to see MY children well-educated. I have one child who is a nursing major and one who is persuing a Welding Technology degree in hopes to employ welding in an art career. I am currently homeschooling the others.

2- Why do you believe it’s proper to hide from the world rather than act as “salt and light” in it? I do NOT believe this–which is why I and my children ARE acting as “salt and light” in the world instead of hiding away in a classroom for the better part of our waking hours.

3- Isn’t there something of hubris in your belief that you can “do it better” than trained professionals? Doing it better than trained professionals has never been an issue with me. If doing it better than a teacher who doesn’t love my child as I do, is teaching them toward the goal of passing state-mandated tests that make the teacher look good, and who couldn’t care less that my child blossoms as an individual instead of some drone then I would have a very low standard for myself and my children. This idea has never once occurred to me as being a factor in my decision to homeschool. Someone else will have to answer this question for you. But really, now that you bring it up, I guess I could answer yes, I believe just the mere fact that I gave birth to them and am their legal guardian, responsible for their welfare, gives me the right to presume that I can “do it better”.

I would really encourage you to do some better research before you make such assumptions about the homeschooling community. We are here and we are succeeding in educating our children.

Hey Bonnie, I’d read about your yard sale finds. 😉

[…] Another recent critic found by Daryl is a Dr. Jim West, who appears to be a Southern Baptist preacher. Dr. West used a story of the kidnapping of a homeschooled girl by her pastor to point to the “dangerous isolationism of home-schooling”: Interaction outside the walls of home and church are important socialization opportunties that this child was apparently denied. […]