The Ignorant Want Your Children

It's true. Some of the most ignorant people in the country really expect that you'll give over your children to them to -- don't laugh -- educate.

If this expectation wasn't so widespread, I'd almost think it funny in a morbid, ironic, bemused sort of way.

The irony is, of course, that so many in the government education system -- my euphemism for public schools -- actually think parents who homeschool their kids pose the bigger danger. They like to spout off nonsense about how we are not credentialed, don't have that piece of paper from a so-called teacher's college or college of education, aren't wise enough to impart the information our children need to succeed.

Like they do?

I'll start locally and work my way out, so bear with me.

The Texas Homeschool Coalition, a state homeschool advocacy and watchdog group, regularly publishes in its news magazine and on its website case after case in which a school district official has failed to learn the law regarding homeschoolers' rights. What? They can't read? Or don't want to? Either way, ignorance prevails and these districts go off half-cocked requiring things from homeschooling families the law does not require the families to produce.

I think if I was about to go and cite and then try to enforce a law of any sort, I'd make very sure I actually knew what the law said. But far too many public school officials don't seem to mind eating crow once the THSC writes to let them know they've stepped out of bounds.

They want us to let them teach our children and they can't even bother to know the state education code? Sweet.

Okay, enough about fools in the Lone Star State. Let's move on to Illinois, a state that in spite of producing two presidents (Lincoln and Obama) has yet to figure out what to do about its schools. Education officials in Illinois seem about as capable of understanding their state's laws -- nevermind the Constitution -- as their Texas counterparts.

A March 7 article on WorldNet Daily's website reports that the Illinois High School Association is actually trying to ban PRIVATE Christian schools from broadcasting pre-game prayers over their loudspeakers on their own property.

Purportedly, the IHSA is worried that allowing such prayers on PRIVATE school property somehow violates our poor misunderstood First Amendment's establishment clause -- the one that says government will not endorse a particular religion but will be neutral towards all.

The IHSA is a bunch of idiots, seeing as how time and again the courts have reaffirmed the right of religious institutions to express their respective religious beliefs and purpose.

This is nothing but ignorance on the part of those who are supposedly in charge of education.

Embarrassing and potentially costly to the school association if it ends up being sued.

And by the way, a dear lifelong friend of mine who has taught in public schools for going on 15 years now told me just the other night that she wishes more parents knew just how bad things are. If they did, and they were able to, they would homeschool, she said.

Out of the mouth of one who's there. Thanks Jennifer, for affirming what so many of us have suspected for so long.