Homeschool News & Views

Issue 42, October 19, 2007

From Homeschool Helpers

Greetings. This is Dan White with Homeschool Helpers.

Last week there were some items in the local news which caught my eye.

We live in the Ozarks, which is a very conservative area. I have heard that Missouri ranks very high in cows per capita, and our county has the highest per capita number of cows in the state. I think the most liberal areas of the county rank low in per capita cows, so maybe cows have something to do with being conservative. Indeed, I have never known a bovine which wanted to abort its kids or be homosexual.

The elected officials in our county are all conservative Republicans. I like to say that our county is so conservative that the Democrats don’t even run – unless they’re chased.

So the Ozarks is filled with conservative people, and there are churches all over the place. In spite of that, this was what was in the news last week.

In Licking, Missouri, a town of about 1500 people an hour east of my home, the county sheriff is handling charges against a public school student who did not attend school on Wednesday and made threats against other students. Law enforcement did not say specifically what the threats were, but they are handling it as a serious matter.

In Springfield, Missouri, a big city an hour to the west, a middle school student was being investigated for threatening other students in his school on his website on one of the social networking sites.

In Marshfield, Missouri, a town of about 6,000 a half hour west, both the middle school and the high school were evacuated in two different incidents with bomb threats.

In Mountain Grove, Missouri, a town of about 5,000 a half hour east, the high school was evacuated because of a bomb threat.

That’s astounding. In one week, in a quick glance at the news, in one of the most conservative and safest areas of the nation, I noticed five major incidents of a most violent nature concerning the public schools.

I also noticed a news item relating to another part of the country in a big city.

From click2houston.com

“Some parents in Fort Bend County are outraged after their children said they witnessed a pair of eighth-graders engaged in a sex act, right in the middle of class.

Parents told KPRC Local 2 that they received the unsettling news about an incident at Crockett Middle School in a letter that went home on Friday.

"My mouth flew open when you told me just a few minutes ago," Lubergha Munson said. "I didn't expect you to say anything like that. I thought you were going to say they were fighting or something."”

So what happened in the Houston school was beyond normal. Apparently, from this lady’s reaction, fighting is normal, and this went beyond normal.

“The principal sent letters home with some students explaining a situation that was reported to campus administrators last week. The principal reported that the students, a boy and a girl, made inappropriate sexual contact with each other while other students watched.”

“Inappropriate sexual contact” was the official description. Which brings up the question, “What would appropriate sexual conduct be?” This language usage is muting what was apparently a breeding session by a couple of fourteen year olds right in the middle of class. What class was this, biology? They’ve gone far beyond dissecting frogs.

“That was a shock for Tom Ray, who has a 14-year-old daughter.

"To me there are a host of problems and I think it starts at home," Ray said.”

I’ll tell you that it starts with people like Tom Ray, who are willing to support this kind of behavior with their tax dollars. Ray was worried about his daughter watching live sex in class, but I’ll guess that he wasn’t worried enough about her to pull her out of that environment.

Those two young people who fornicated in class – how do you think they would have been received by their classmates? Now the administrators are going to appear stern, but to many of the other students, those two fornicators will be heroes. They will be glorified for doing what no one else was brave enough to do. They will be the talk of the school. Since there is no Biblical right and wrong taught in the schools, the only way that this act can be condemned is because it was in front of others who might be offended. Most of the students in the school will not at all think it is wrong for fourteen year olds to have sex. Instead they will think it is wrong to say it is wrong.

“In the letter, Principal Corliss Rogers said that there was an investigation and that both students received appropriate disciplinary action. The letter does not say where the teacher was at the time. However, some concerned parents told the station that their children said the sex act happened once the teacher stepped out of the classroom.

"I think there should be more supervision. If that's the case and they have enough time to do such things, obviously there's not people there to supervise them," Crockett parent Gerry Banez said. "That's real disheartening."

What's also disheartening for some parents was the amount of time it took for the information to get to them. It's been more than a week since the incident happened.

"I would expect the parent to at least have a call from the principal if not the day at least the next morning. I don't believe there's any excuse why that wouldn't happen," Ray said.

Campus and district counselors have talked with the students who were in the class and will be available in the future if those students need to talk.”

The schools always say that when something bad has happened in the schools. They have counselors ready to help the students. The counselors themselves don’t have the basis for right and wrong, so how are they going to guide the students?

That Houston classroom gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “sex education.”

And this information from Yahoo News about Portland, Maine:

PORTLAND, Maine - After an outbreak of pregnancies among middle school girls, education officials in this city have decided to allow a school health center to make birth control pills available to girls as young as 11.

“After an outbreak of pregnancies among middle school girls, education officials in this city have decided to allow a school health center to make birth control pills available to girls as young as 11.

King Middle School will become the first middle school in Maine to make a full range of contraception available, including birth control pills and patches. Condoms have been available at King's health center since 2000.

"We are dealing with children," said Diane Miller, a former school nurse said. "I am just horrified at the suggestion."

Another opponent, Peter Doyle, said he felt the proposal violated the rights of parents and puts students at risk of cancer because of hormones in the pill.

Nationally, about one-fourth of student health centers that serve at least one grade of adolescents 11 and older dispense some form of contraception.”

When the schools introduced evolution, that seemed like a simple intellectual matter. God or no God – what difference does it make?

Look at the fruits it has borne.

Sometimes I hear people say that they know a homeschool student who isn’t doing anything, and something needs to be done about that student.

Homeschool Helpers supports Christian homeschoolers. I have heard locally of some lesbian homeschoolers. We don’t support that.

Three is the number of finality in the Bible, such as in the time of Christ’s death and resurrection. So I say that if a Christian family has been homeschooling for at least three years, then they are committed homeschoolers. Less than that and they may still be dabblers.

When people see a family which claims to be homeschooling but doesn’t really appear to be doing much, they think that the student should be forced back into the public schools, where he or she will get a good education. Ultimately the liberals will argue that because of a few homeschoolers who are doing nothing we need to put all homeschoolers under the supervision and control of the government bureaucrats, to make sure that all homeschoolers are getting a good education.

But wait – there is a large false assumption there.

That assumption is that the public schools are certain to give a good education. Just because kids are institutionalized does not mean they are getting a good education.

What kind of an education are public school students getting?

The No Child Left Behind Act mandated that states set educational standards for their students, where they have to meet certain test levels.

Notice that the educational bureaucracies themselves set the standards for their students. How do you think they are going to set those standards? Are they going to be very high, which a lot of students would not pass, and which would make the public schools look bad? Or are they going to set those standards very low, which will make the public schools look as good as possible?

Answer: they are going to set those standards low, to make the educrats look good.

And we have to appreciate just how good educrats can be at setting low academic standards. There have been repeated examples where teachers, with college degrees and responsible for imparting knowledge to their young students, have a large portion of their ranks who can’t meet an eighth grade academic level themselves. These people should be very good at setting a low academic standard.

So what happened?

Even the educrats were mistaken about how poorly the public schools educate, or don’t educate. In the US, about 25% of the students don't meet those minimal standards. 25%! One in four cannot meet the low minimum level of education which the educrats themselves set.

What are they doing about that? They’re going to lower the standard.

Don’t ever tell me that you know a homeschool family somewhere who is not doing anything to educate their kids, and they need to be put in the public schools. I know of an institution right now which is not teaching 15 million kids to read the comics or count beans. What in the world are we going to do about that? Surely we need to do something about those millions of uneducated public school failures first.

Plus, what kind of an education is it when middle school students can be so brazen as to have sex right in the middle of class? We can say, “Yeah, but that was an exception.” And that’s true. Usually the middle school students have their sex out of class. So the school health centers are giving condoms and birth control pills to the eleven year olds. The schools are so sexual that some middle schools are putting in rules against any touching at all. These are just sixth, seventh and eighth graders.

This whole government system is just totally out of control. Shootings, bomb threats, eleven year olds on birth control pills – It’s just totally out of control.

Are you really shocked at the things I have mentioned here, with all these things which happened in about a week’s time? Did they shock you?

Probably not. We’ve come to expect that from the public schools. That’s how bad the system is. Almost everybody just accepts the system, no matter how bad it is.

Eureka Springs, Arkansas is a pretty town of 2,000 in a Christian area of the country. 400 homosexuals moved in and managed to take over the city council. They passed a domestic partner registry, as close as they can get to declaring gay marriage.

What did all the Christian churches around Eureka Springs do when this happened?

Nothing, except for two. All the rest didn’t want to get involved.

That may be the worst thing that the public schools teach – to accept evil and not stand against it. Obviously that’s what all the Christian parents who support the public schools are doing. Obviously that’s the example they are setting for their children. And obviously that’s what the whole country is now doing, just accepting evil and refusing to speak out against it.