ADDENDUM::Relaxed Educational Standards for Homeschooled Children in Pennsylvania and Beyond Should Frighten All of Us

Hemant Metha is not only a former homeschoolee but and educator as well. He offers some interesting insights concerning Pennsylvania's recent relaxation of its requirements. While I focused primarily on the home schooling issue as a whole, Mehta has dug in deeper.

However, I have concerns when, unlike in a school setting, facts go through the filter of one or two individuals, for whom there is little or no oversight at all. In other words, a well-meaning but wrong individuals can teach their children something entirely, demonstrably false, with no one there to sound the alarm, simply because they believe it to be true. That isn’t education.

Which is pretty much what the NYT piece is about — states making it easier for parents to teach whatever they’d like, however they’d like to do it. The statistics are very worrying:

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We shouldn’t relax or eliminate teaching standards for parents who take on the role of educator for the same reason we shouldn’t eliminate all educational standards.

Education is supposed to provide a student with factual information and the tools to reason in order to prepare him or her for life. We have a system in place to guarantee students this basic opportunity. By eliminating standards and guidelines that protect students’ interests in certain cases, we’ve effectively declared that some students don’t deserve the same access to factual information; they can receive it only at the whim of their parents.

And still, those championing largely religious “alternatives” to public education are demanding to be held to fewer — or no — standards.

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This isn’t right — not for the children whose educations are at risk, not for the adults they’ll become who may well have to unlearn any number of false teachings, and not for the society that faces the prospect of potentially under-, poorly-, or un- educated citizens. It should hardly be a burden to meet reasonable educational standards. If the responsibility to demonstrate that you are fulfilling your self-appointed obligation to educate your child offends you, your priorities are misplaced. Education is, after all, about the child — not the beliefs or convenience of his parents.

Relaxed Educational Standards for Homeschooled Children in Pennsylvania and Beyond Should Frighten All of Us