Utterly Meaningless

He also seems totally oblivious the fact that many, many people in the world don’t base every decision in life on what the Bible says.

Chris, I’m a follower of Christ and I’d have to say that I honestly haven’t read where this guy’s suggested even one single action based on what the Bible actually says. He seems to be making this “pastor” thing up as he goes along. So, IMHO, he has even the ones of us who are supposed to be in tune with his faith scratching our heads.

So hits is what he is looking for, eh? I guess everybody has their vices.

Black families don’t like public schoooling, either.

from Calvert School

Multicultural Homeschooling

By Jennifer James Articles in this Topic Discussions in this Topic

According to a recent report from the Motherhood Project, the number one concern for black mothers is the education of their children. Without an exceptional education, black mothers know their children’s prospects for a promising future are diminished. That is why an increasing number of black mothers and fathers have decided to home school their children.

In opting to home school, black parents along with other parents new to the idea of home education, are often faced with the difficult task of navigating the vast and varied amount of home schooling information. There are currently thousands of home schooling books, texts, curricula, how-tos, web sites, online charters and educational companies created especially to capture the fast-growing home school market. Online charter schools or public e-schools, however, are one group of options that pose a grave concern for black home schooling parents.

In the previous articles about online charters, I have outlined reasons why these schools can be detrimental to black home schooling families, namely the proliferation of black families who are again becoming totally reliant upon schools to teach their children as opposed to parents taking an active role in their own children’s education, the easy opportunity for unequal resource allocation, and the absence of these schools to provide a balanced and fair black and multicultural education, a factor that weighs heavily in the reasons black families decide to home school in the first place.

Additionally, another primary reason black families decide to home school is because they are tired of their children facing racism of varying sorts and degrees by some school systems, districts, administrators and teachers. Racism, in whatever form, from the lack of advanced placement classes in urban schools to the increased chances of black children to be labeled remedial or ADD/ ADHD, is pushing black parents to educate their children at home, where they are free to learn without the negative influences of educational biases and racist attitudes about their ability to learn.

While these parents are abandoning brick and mortar public schools, online charter schools are waiting in the wings to bring these families back into the fold of public education in order not to lose precious government funding. Racism along with the aforementioned factors, however, can become a negative factor in online charter schools despite these schools being in a virtual environment.

It is important to note that virtual educational environments are not insusceptible to racism. Although virtual teachers and administrators will not have direct personal access with students, per se, they will know children’s names and also the names of their parents. In effect, if a child is determined to be black by his name or his parents’ name, how differently will that child be treated? Recent research by University of Florida economist David Figlio shows children with black sounding names are more apt to do poorly in school, especially in reading and math, not because their names make them inherently less smart, but because along with their name comes a whole host of racist attitudes about their ability to excel in school and bad impressions of black parents who would give their children black sounding names. How, then, will racism factor into online charter schools? Although there is no research about racism in online charter schools specifically, one must not throw this concern out entirely.

Go To Page: 1 2

I am a Christian too and I just don’t get this guy. Initially I was a little sympathetic with him, meaning years ago I used to think homeschooling was wierd and overprotective(until I worked in the schools and saw how much they have changed(decayed) since even I was a child and then met some great homeschool kids). But he is ravingly adamant about the black and whiteness of the issue, when it is such an individual choice thing with so many factors contributing to it.
I don’t understand how he can quote Martin Luther as a reason to keep your kids in school. Luther couldn’t even begin to remotely COMPREHEND what most of our schools are like now!! This guy really has an axe to grind against homeschoolers. He must have met some real interesting homeschoolers to give him this impression; in which case, he needs to open his mind and his eyes because this is movement is such a fluid thing and is changing and becoming more diverse all the time with infinitely more possibilites and opportunities for these kids than existed a couple of decades ago. (of course I wrote all this in a comment to him, but never got through. I did get one through though on the piece about the 15 year old homeschooler that was molested by the preacher. Don’t know why he took that one and not the other).—

Oh, let me amend my previous post. It appears that Rev. Jim has now deleted my comment on the 15 year old homeschooler. It was there for a few days, a mistake on his part I guess. He must have been afraid it might have spurred one of his readers to actually think critcally for a moment.–