The Southern Baptist Academy Blog

By Mimi Rothschild

A friend pointed out today’s post at Pharyngula to me this morning. Man, it really burns me when atheists like this professor try position themselves as open-minded.

His solution to the evangelical “problem” is to ban homeschooling. Sounds awfully fascist to me. And yet, isn’t that the term so often thrown at right-wingers?

Here’s what it boils down to, folks. Today’s homeschoolers have got the left terrified. They can’t stand the audacity of the church to provide an alternative to children. Imagine, more than one set of ideas or values being taught in a country! This guy finds it positively distasteful and a little bit scary.

“Their ‘advantage’ and ‘success’ is completely artificial, the product of years of gutting standards so they can cultivate these little, self-satisfied, ignorant homeschooled kids in a hothouse of ignorance…and then they need to set up special colleges to maintain the illusion that they know anything.”

Try standardized test scores that would make Stephen Hawking blush! In all seriousness, homeschoolers have consistently proven over the years to perform 15-20% better on SAT’s and ACT’s.

“At my department, we just got the requirements for state licensure of education students, and we’ve been given the task of making sure our course content delivers what future teachers will need. It’s not trivial getting licensed to teach; but any idiot can declare themselves to be a teacher for purposes of homeschooling, and apparently many idiots do.”

If your teachers are so special, explain the perpetually flagging test scores, and the inability of the public school system to keep up with homeschooling teachers who have no teaching education? These are just regular moms and dads who are putting your certified teachers to shame!

“I’m serious. We need to stop this. I think any politician who professed to be concerned about educating the children of this country, by supporting the NCLB, for instance, ought to be required to support increasing the qualifications and standards for homeschooling…and if a district doesn’t have the resources to monitor the competence of homeschool teachers, they ought to simply refuse to allow the kids to be pulled out of school.”

What Meyers fails to realize is that the academic standards of homeschooling are too high, not too low. Banning homeschooling would be an incredible infringement of personal freedoms. Giving parents an alternative to the moral decay and academic rot of the public school system has been a hard-won battle. It is a progressive move towards a freer society.