Homeschool News & Views
Special issue 41-A, October 12,
2007
From Homeschool Helpers
On Friday, October 12, the
news included headlines about a “homeschooled” teen arrested for planning a
school massacre.
An ABC TV station
reported, “Home-schooled Philadelphia-area teen allegedly had weapons, talked
of school attack.” The Canadian Press
says “
Further details from the
Bulletin, a Philadelphia paper:
“Plymouth Meeting -Police arrested a 14-year-old boy after he admitted
he planned to execute an attack at Plymouth Whitemarsh High School similar to
the 1999 Littleton, Colorado massacre…
The boy used to attend schools in the Colonial School District but his
parents opted 18 months ago to home-school him to allow him to avoid constant
bullying, Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor said.
And from Fox News, “The
mother of a 14-year-old who authorities say had a cache of guns, knives and
explosive devices in his bedroom for a possible school attack was charged
Friday with buying her son three weapons.
Michele Cossey bought her
home-schooled son a .22-caliber handgun, a .22-caliber rifle and a 9 mm
semiautomatic rifle, authorities said. The teenager felt bullied and tried to recruit
another boy for a possible attack at
"This is not the best
parenting I've ever seen and she needs to be held accountable," District
Attorney Castor said.
Acting on a tip from a
high school student and his father, police on Wednesday found the rifle, about
30 air-powered guns, swords, knives, a bomb-making book, videos of the 1999
Columbine attack in
Other reports indicate that
the boy had completed making four live grenades and was working on three more.
Reading further from Fox
News:
His mother was charged
with unlawful transfer of a firearm, possession of a firearm by a minor,
corruption of a minor, endangering the welfare of a child and two counts of
reckless endangerment. She was not accused of helping the teen plot an attack,
"but by virtue of her indulgence, she enabled him to get in this
position," Castor said.
Castor has said he does
not believe an attack was imminent or would occur at all. He said Friday that
the teen had a "disturbed mind."
"This was a smart kid
that clearly believes he was picked on and was a victim," Castor said.
"He had psychological issues and began to act out on those feelings."
The teen's father, Frank
Cossey, was sentenced to house arrest for lying about his criminal record when
he went to buy a .22-caliber rifle for his son in December 2005, police said
Friday. On his application he said he had never been convicted of a felony, but
he had pleaded guilty in 1981 to manslaughter in a drunken driving death in
When the headlines report
something like “Homeschooler arrested for planning massacre,” that throws implied
blame on homeschooling. Then left
wingers use such incidents to prove that homeschooling should be prohibited. Did homeschooling cause this teen to go
crazy? Or did he already have problems,
which the parents tried to deal with by homeschooling?
First of all, this family
was a bit off the wall. The father had
been convicted of manslaughter. He was a
felon. Through his negligence he had
killed someone.
The mother, instead of
baking her son chocolate chip cookies, bought him rifles. Now that’s kind of a strange thing. If you are a typical mother and your young
son came to you and said, “Mom, would you buy me a few rifles? I need them to go with my hand grenades and
assault rifle,” most mothers would not just run down to the nearest Rifle
Mart. They would be a bit
concerned. Yet this mother bought the
kid more guns.
All society is based on
the family. The family is a husband and
wife and their children, who love those children more than themselves. People who are criminals tend to raise
criminals. Bad parents tend to raise bad
kids. Many of them don’t show love to
their own children. And those who do
care for them may still lead them in the wrong way, as in this case.
Unchecked human nature is
the way of death. The only way to
overcome that nature is through the blood and the nature of Christ. That is really the only way for the chain of
criminal behavior which is passed from morally destitute parents to children to
be broken.
Christian prison programs
are having good results by introducing the criminals to Christ. The liberals are attacking these programs, not
because they are not helpful, but only because they are Christian.
Christian homeschool
families do show love for their children, as shown by being willing to
sacrifice time and money to be with them and teach them the most important
lessons in life. Christian homeschool
families do try to follow, to whatever degree, the one way out of this destructive
human nature we all have, which is to take on the blood and nature of Christ.
It is said that this
family homeschooled this boy. What does
that mean?
First of all, the kid’s
problems came from the public schools. Public
school culture sets the standard for most young people. They want to serve that standard more than
they want to serve parents or God. This
young man was put down by his public school peers, but he still valued that
culture. That’s why he wanted to get
back at them. Parents may pull kids out
of the public school to break the hold of that culture. Sometimes it may be too late.
The greatest learning that
takes place in the public schools is not in the classroom but in the
culture. That becomes God for most young
people.
Secondly, people can pull
their kids out of school and then not do much with them. We support Christian homeschooling, and that
means Christian parents who make a committed effort to take the time to teach
their children. Three is the number of
finality in the Bible, as in the crucifixion of Christ, and I say that if a
family has homeschooled for three years, with positive results, then they are
committed homeschoolers. Less than that
and they may be dabblers.
Why did this troubled kid
leave the public schools?
From the
The 14-year-old former
Neighborhood children said
that the boy, when he was in sixth grade, had been harassed by other students
because of his weight, said Sally Black, a school district resident and an
assistant professor of health services at
"My understanding is
that students mumbled nasty names about his weight as they walked past his
desk," Black said, referring to what she learned from his classmates.
The arrest is one more
grim reminder that bullying, once regarded by many districts as a problem
between two students, has emerged as one of the root causes of school
shootings.
That belief is borne out
by a 2000 Secret Service report on the prevention of school attacks that said
in two-thirds of the shooting cases
studied, the attacker had felt persecuted, bullied, threatened,
attacked, or injured before the incident. Many had experienced long-standing
and severe bullying and harassment, which some attackers described as
"torment."
On Wednesday in
So the so-called
homeschool teen was threatening the public school people because they
persecuted him.
Bullying is not a
Christian homeschool problem. Bullying
is an institutional public school problem.
It is a terrible problem, to have young people be persecuted almost
every day of their lives. It is a
growing problem, getting worse and worse as the schools get more and more
violent. There are new programs dealing
with bullying in the schools. They will
not work. They can’t eliminate the
problem of bullying in the institutions, just like they can’t eliminate drugs
in the institutions, because the institutions are the problem.
God did not mean for kids
to be raised in institutions, whether that’s day care or public schools. God meant for kids to be raised by loving,
God fearing parents, who then raise loving, God fearing kids.
The headlines which say
Homeschooled Teen Plans Massacre totally casts the blame in the wrong
direction. This problem did not come
from Christian homeschooling.This teen was part of a public school culture. He had been brought up in a violent Godless
institution which gets worse every year.
They tried to pull him out but he still identified with it.
That stinking public school culture has to be
replaced with something else, and that is Christ. Christ is the standard. Christ gives us our worth. A young person does not have to try to please
a bunch of misguided, taunting juveniles. A young person does not have to show his boxer
shorts or bra straps to be accepted. A
young person does not have to do drugs or sex or homosexuality to be
somebody. Christ gives the young person
the worth that God intended for that young life, to be included as part of the
family of God.
That is the big difference
between the public schools and the Christian home schools. Even if the public schools can’t teach
academics as well as private schools or home schools, that’s still not the
important point. The important point is
that they cannot teach God. Christian
schools can and do.
How many kids are
persecuted every year in the public schools, because they’re fat, ugly or
Christian? How many teens commit suicide
every year because they’re depressed over school pressures?
A fat kid went to school and
was persecuted. The parents pulled him
out. But then they should have given him
God, not guns.