The Wall Street Journal put up an editorial this week praising Gov. Greg Abbott for his appointment of Donna Bahorich to chair the Texas State Board of Education.
TFN was just one voicing concern over Bahorich’s appointment, in part because she “rejected public education for her own family” and home-schooled her children.
And here’s some of the logic the Journal used to praise the Bahorich appointment:
The Texas State Board of Education *IS* the board of public schools! The board does nothing else other than oversee the state’s public school system. If the board had authority over all education, as you seem to imply, then they would also have power to regulate home-schoolers, which, ironically, they don’t.
7 Comments
Mommas don’t let your cowboys grow up to be babies.
Education has not been about the kids for a long time. It is about people wanting to ramrod their own agendas. This appointment kind of gives evidence of that fact.
I’m against home schooling because for many parents it’s a path to “no schooling” or woefully inadequate schooling. Since she obviously thinks that home schooling is acceptable she should not be controlling schools.
You got that right. Teaching, like any other profession, isn’t for everyone; but homeschoolers seem to think that simply being a parent automatically qualifies anyone to teach. That a housewife with no education past high school could be a better teacher than someone with a degree in education.
Until a few years ago I 100% shared that opinion. But now I am open to exceptions since I encountered families that had to take out their kids out of schools in the US South because of a) teaching descending into right-wing religious indoctrination and b) massive discrimination against the kids with more or less open support by the school officials. Those were not black kids (as one might assume), they were (secular) Jewish.
Even I would consider homeschooling when/if my kids would get beaten up regularly by their classmates incited by the teachers preaching about the God-murderers in class on a daily base and every complaint would make it even worse. And all of this at public schools not private religious ones.
But that’s of course a tiny minority of homeschoolers. Most do because the local schools are NOT like the above mentioned enough.
In other words I accept homeschooling where schools have turned into hellholes but not as a protest for them being not.
I agree with you. There are definitely some toxic schools, especially here in the south. I just think the answer is not homeschooling but better schools and better teachers because taking your kids out of a school does nothing to improve it. Probably isn’t going to happen in our lifetime but I still plan on pushing for reform.
One has to keep in mind that the WSJ is owned by Fox.
The SBOE has become a laughing stock in the nation.
I’m SO happy that I have no kids that are going to school now.