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November 24, 2004

Akron Beacon Journal Reporters Drink the Kool-Aid

Note: this is a post recovered from my old blog, before it died of an insufficient backup. Any comments/trackbacks on it have not been brought over, but can be seen with the original. The date is that of the original posting.

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Doug Oplinger and Dennis J. Willard of the Akron Beacon Journal (annoying registration, use BugMeNot) have not just drunk the NEA's kool-aid; they've nearly drowned themselves in it. Oplinger and Willard came to my attention when Steph started talking about a series of articles they are doing on homeschooling, among other things either saying outright or merely insinuating that homeschooling leads to:

• Child murder, incest, abuse and other violence against children (children in government schools, on the other hand, are overseen by the government and therefore safe)
  
• Withdrawn children incapable of interacting with others, raised by religious fanatics and cultists and prevented from having a normal childhood (children in government schools, on the other hand, are very well-adjusted and mentally fit and have healthy and happy psychological relationships)
  
• Poorly-educated children unable to compete in the economy, and imposing huge social costs (government schools, of course, educate all children to the peak of their potential)
  
• Hiding abducted children, taken by parents, sex offenders and in particular, parents who are also sex offenders

(government schools, of course, detect all such cases almost immediately)
And that's just their current series of four articles (so far). It gets worse, though, when you google the authors. They have asserted in the past that:

• Alternatives to government schools, such as online charter schools, are not so much a way to improve education or lower its cost as they are a way to strip tax revenues from public schools to provide a profit for sinister corporate entities
  
• Homeschooling is a way for white supremacists to indoctrinate their children into being racists. They conveniently provide a list of fringe groups some or all of whose members homeschool their children.
  
• Homeschooling is a way to cover up for not educating children

There's a lot more; I'm just tired of reading this stuff. I was going to fisk their articles, but the reality is that it's just not worth my time. What has basically happened here is that two reporters have a very particular view point, and a platform for expressing it in print. Fine, fine. Just don't expect me to agree.

Government schooling has given every child in the US the opportunity to be educated at least to the degree of basic literacy and numeracy. For a while, government schools were able to provide an excellent education, but between education fads and dumbing down the material repeatedly, a cycle of degeneration has set in, and American government schools are now by and large slipping into a mold of barely educating most of their students. Government schooling does provide a needed service. It should not be taken beyond that point, though, into giving government oversight rights on all children "in the public interest", or allowing government bureaucrats to decide what is best for all children. There is a name for this: tyranny.

I reject both the poor education and the tyranny for my children: I want my children to have excellent educations and thus be able to achieve anything they set their mind to. I want them to be free, and to be good citizens (by and large, government schools teach children to be good subjects). I don't want them to be limited by lack of understanding. Government schools, in my opinion, would limit their understanding and poison them against self-education. For that, among many other reasons, we homeschool our children.

To lump us in with white supremacists, child kidnappers, child abusers and the like says way more about the reporters than it does about us.