Six paragraphs about people in favor of homeschooling; fifteen against homeschooling from people who haven’t ever homeschooled; four relatively neutral.  No verbs needed because nothing happened in the article.

Home schooling: Beneficial, or not?, 29 May 2008, Daily Mississippian, Oxford, Mississippi

Think back to your past memories of your classes in school. Remember those group reading lessons, tumbles on the playground during recess, feeding the class pet, lunch breaks with your friends?

What if all of those days at school were spent at home with your family? Would you give up those memories for the chance to be accepted into a better college or to have avoided exposure to peer pressure?

These are reasons why many parents choose home-schooling programs for their children. Because there are currently over 2.4 million students home schooled in the U.S, home schooling is possibly the fastest growing form of education.

In the following article, it sounds as if the townspeople have not differentiated between truancy and a daytime curfew.  The effectiveness of homeschooling is also touched on, although whether or not children learn well at home, as people generally assume they do at school, has nothing to do with the suspected juvenile crime concerning the citizens.

Home schooled children aren’t truants, home schooler says, 28 May 2008, Picayune Item, Picayune, Mississippi

Rigney addressed the school board for the Picayune Municipal Separate School District at its noon meeting Tuesday because of concerns raised at an earlier meeting by the Pearl River County Neighborhood Watch about truancy and whether all children who are supposed to be being home schooled actually are being home schooled.

There is a difference between detaining truants, that is children who are enrolled in a school and who are playing hooky, and a daytime curfew that forbids people under a certain age to be in public during the hours between, say, eight in the morning and three in the afternoon.  One method targets specific children, the other targets all children.

However, Pearl River County Sheriff’s Dept. Chief Deputy Frank Vaccarella said later in the meeting that the sheriff’s department would like to help enforce truancy laws but now have to back off when they stop a child and the child says that it is home schooled.

Is it difficult to tell a truant from a homeschooled child?  Of course.  As yet, I haven’t read about any state that requires either group to sport an identifying symbol, temporary or permanent, so that onlookers can determine the child’s status at a glance.  Even in our identity-badge-aware society, we are not all under house arrest and allowed to be out only with permission.   

Another question I see is, what are the children doing when they are questioned?  Are they committing crimes?  Are they walking somewhere?  Are they playing in their yards?  What is it that catches the officer’s eye?  Just their presence, or their activities? 

• If the children are committing crimes, then whether they are homeschoolers on a flexible schedule, truant public school students, errant private school students, or visitors from Timbuktu, lock those kiddies up.  Crime is crime.  Don’t put up with it. 
• If the kids are meandering along, do they have Fifth Amendment rights?  I don’t mean to get between the police and wrong-doers, I’m just curious.  When they are talking to the police, do children have Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination, or do they say, “Yes, officer, I’m playing hooky.”  This is a dicey area because I think most of us want kids to answer police officers truthfully.  To complicate matters, are we talking about Officer Friendly talking to Timmy who is avoiding ‘that big kid’ at school, or is this Officer Krupke grilling the Jets?

If the school attendance reasons are, indeed, paramount, what prevents the school from maintaining a daily list of the names of absent students?  Can the police not be given a specific truancy phone number to call to determine if Hudson Higgenbotham III is on the list?  If Hudson is, then the officers take Hudson back to school and the principal calls Hudson’s parents.  If he isn’t, then Hudson is not a truant.  Hudson may be homeschooled, or he may be visiting relatives for the funeral of Uncle Hudson Higgenbotham, Sr. and was so overcome by the demise of his namesake that he had to take a walk to calm down.

I don’t mean to mock police officers while they do their jobs.  I just think that the relationship of kids in our society to schools, and to authority, is not clear.  Maybe to some people the changing status of children is still ’future shock.’  I’ll admit that the recent FLDS mess in Texas comes to mind, where young women who produced driving licenses to prove their ages but were taken into custody because they looked young.

Police judge criminal profiles based on who writers them, study finds, Ohio State University

“A profile is not intended to identify a specific person. A profile is only one of many tools in an investigator’s arsenal, and it is not my business to tell investigators what tools they should use.” But the results do suggest that anecdotal accounts of the accuracy of a profile are not a good basis for arguing that profiling is actually useful, [Andrew Hayes] said.

If “students” are truant, find out who the “students” are.  Don’t presume that, like the FLDS women assumed to be children, that all children are ”students.”

Changing perception of home-schooling, 27 May 2007, Jackson Clarion Ledger, Jackson, Mississippi [Felicia Bell] said her son, like many home-schooled children, doesn’t fit the stereotype of the sheltered homebody.

“I want to change the perception of home-schooling,” she said. “So many people think our children sit at home 2 4/7 and hardly go outside. That’s not us. When he’s finished (with lessons), he hits the door.”

When R’Daniel is not studying at the table beside his mother’s refrigerator, he participates in the First Lego League, the Mississippi Gem and Mineral Society and 4-H. He volunteers at the Agricultural and Forestry Museum.

Bell, a single mother of two, is also a member of a handful of home-school support groups, or cooperatives, that provide her with assistance when she needs it.

posted by Valerie

Home Education Week: Many county parents opt for homeschooling, 15 May 2007, Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, Tupelo, Mississippi Although new to teaching out of her home, Stephanie is no stranger to the world of education. Having worked as a substitute teacher for several years, and currently earning her M.A., and later doctorate, in education, she prides herself in being able to provide the best learning environment for her son. …

“It takes a lot of organization, and I’m not nearly as organized as I need to be,” Stephanie said. “But, I’m a stickler as far as schoolwork goes. I believe that, if your child is going to get an education, he is going to have to do the work.”

What bothers her is the lax interest the state takes in the jobs home educators are doing. Stephanie is fairly outspoken on the topic of state requirements, and how they aren’t up to par.

“I don’t have to turn in anything to the state that shows what I’m teaching my son,” Stephanie explained dishearteningly. “With the governor promoting this as Home Education Week, it really is a shame that there are no rules or guidelines, [dictating that] you go in and they test to see if your child is learning what he/she should be learning.”

She explained that this could be, and probably is, an issue with some parents who have pulled their children out of public schools. Although there are achievement tests that allow the parents to know how the students are performing something that both she and the Baneses require their children to take these are not mandated by the state. Children can be pulled out of school with little explanation, and no follow up by the state itself, which many responsible homeschoolers find a little frightening.

“Homeschooling is not for everyone,” Stephanie explained. “If you have a child who does not want to learn, and parents who don’t what level their child is on curriculum-wise, it makes things very difficult If you have parents who are not dedicated to their child’s education, and they don’t teach the child, then that child can’t grow up and function in today’s society. It’s really scary, and there should be rules and guidelines.”

What’s scary is a homeschooling parent publicly lobbying for restrictive laws. Homeschooling has a long history of successful education of children with minimal oversight by the state. Perhaps, as a new homeschooler, Mrs. Eads could read some back issues of Home Education Magazine columns for insight into that history.

July-August 2000, Problems with Legislation to Prevent “Unqualified” Families From Homeschooling

A central question facing homeschoolers today is: Are we willing to judge and be judged by the values, beliefs, and practices of conventional schools in an attempt to ensure that “unqualified” people don’t taint homeschooling? Do we want to lose the distinctive elements of homeschooling? Do we want to destroy homeschooling in an attempt to save it? The way we answer these questions will have a strong impact on the future of homeschooling.

May-June 2003, Practical Ways to Claim Responsibility for Our Homeschools

The key ways we can maintain our homeschooling freedoms is by making it clear both to ourselves and to public officials that the responsibility for our homeschools is ours and not theirs. If we are going to maintain our independence, we need to think and act like independent homeschoolers.

September-October 2005, Eight Principles for New and Experienced Homeschoolers

Do not push for new homeschooling legislation except in very unusual situations. Small minorities generally have difficulty getting legislation passed, especially if they don’t have large sums of money to hire lobbyists. In addition, once a bill has been introduced, it is very difficult to control. It can be changed so much through amendments that it actually ends up the opposite of what it started out to be. Some of the best homeschooling laws in the country have resulted from legislation introduced by opponents of homeschooling being changed through amendment. It is easier for a small minority like homeschoolers to gain support from non-homeschoolers when we are a beleaguered minority being put upon by a large interest group like a teachers union than to find support for legislation we initiated ourselves.

posted by Valerie

Jackson Clarion Ledger, Jackson, Mississippi, 10 April 2007, ’07 Legislature: Home schooling ‘absent’

Conspicuous in its absence in the 2007 Legislature was legislation to tighten laws regarding home schooling.This is an election year, and parents having the easy ability to take their kids out of school is a hot-button issue – perhaps explaining the nonexistence. Call it an “excused” absence, perhaps.

But it should be more carefully studied, and state Superintendent of Education Hank Bounds is doing so, to determine if the state should take action.

Superintendent Bounds got the attention of Jackson homeschoolers last December.

News and Commentary, Home Education Magazine, 9 January 2007, December letters all from Mississippi

posted by Valerie

Since all the December letters (that I found) were from the Jackson Clarion Ledger, I would say that Superintendent Hank Bounds’s announcement about proposed homeschool legislation to control the “free rein” that homeschooling parents in Mississippi enjoy hit a nerve.

Jackson Clarion Ledger, Jackson, Mississippi, 24 December 2006, Home-schooling system is successful now

When kids who can’t even read are graduating from high school, it seems the public schools have serious shortcomings to overcome. State Superintendent of Education Hank Bounds and House Education Committee chairman Rep. Cecil Brown need to understand that government doesn’t always have to get involved in every aspect of our lives and that parents should have a “free rein” in constructive areas of their child’s life.

Jackson Clarion Ledger, Jackson, Mississippi, 24 December 2006, No more home-school regulations needed

State Superintendent of Education Hank Bounds insinuates in an article that he believes the majority of home-school parents are doing a good job teaching their children (“Home-school quandary: ” ‘Free rein’ concerns state ed chief,” Dec. 13). If so, then why create more regulations? Laws and regulations are for the majority of people to follow. And if most of the people are apparently already doing what they are supposed to, we need no new regulation.

Jackson Clarion Ledger, Jackson, Mississippi, 28 December 2006, Studies support homeschooling

With homeschooling providing high-quality academic and socialization results at a lower cost – the average per-student cost for homeschooling is $546 vs. $5,325 for public schools), The Clarion-Ledger should be promoting homeschooling rather than reinforcing ill-informed misconceptions.

posted by Valerie