Wednesday, December 14, 2005

BLACKS NOW TURNING TO HOME SCHOOLING TOO

When Denise Armstrong decided to teach her daughter and two sons at home instead of sending them to public school, she said she did so thinking she would do a better job than the school of instilling her values in her children. At the time, Ms. Armstrong was the only black parent at gatherings of home-education groups. But she said that has been changing. "I've been delighted to be running into people in the African-American home-schooling community," said Ms. Armstrong, who lives in Chesterfield County.

The move toward home schooling, advocates say, reflects a wider desire among families of all races to guide their children's religious upbringing, but it also reflects concerns about other issues like substandard schools and the preservation of cultural heritage. "About 10 years ago, we started seeing more and more black families showing up at conferences, and it's been steadily increasing since then," said Michael Smith, president of the Home School Legal Defense Association, a national advocacy group.

Nationwide, about 1.1 million children were schooled at home in 2003, which was about 2.2 percent of the school-age population. That was up from about 850,000, or 1.7 percent, in 1999, according to the National Center for Education Statistics in the Department of Education. The center said a racial breakdown of students being schooled at home was not available. But Michael Apple, an education professor at the University of Wisconsin who tracks home schooling, said the numbers were still very low.

Professor Apple said much of the increase was in cities where there were histories of racial tension and where black people felt alienated and marginalized. He said some families chose home schooling because they were concerned that the public schools were not adequately teaching African-American history and culture, others taught their children at home to protect them from violence, and, "for some, it's all of this and religion."

Ms. Armstrong said she wanted her children to have a "moral Judeo-Christian foundation" that public schools could not provide. "I felt that my husband and I would be able to give more of a tutorial, individual learning situation than a teacher trying to address 40 kids at one time," she said. To help guide black families though home schooling, Joyce Burges and her husband, Eric, started the National Black Home Educators Resource Association in 2000. Ms. Burges said many black families were unaware that home schooling was a legal option. But she said that she and other blacks who school their children at home had been considered turncoats by people who think they have turned their backs on the struggle by blacks to gain equal access to public education. Still, she said, when schools are not teaching children to read, or are failing to provide a safe place to learn, the children should come first. "You do what you have to do that your children get an excellent education," she said. "Don't leave it up to the system."

Professor Apple said improvements in public education depended on the mobilization of parents. By home schooling, parents are "trying as hard as they possibly can to protect their children," he said. "For that," he added, "they must be applauded. But, in the long run, protecting their own children may even lead to worse conditions for the vast majority of students who stay in public schools, and that's a horrible dilemma."

Source




CHRISTIAN TEXTBOOKS SPURNED IN CALIFORNIA

For the UC to be rejecting textbooks because of "bias" is a huge joke. What about all the Leftist bias that they DO accept?

In a small room at the University of California's headquarters in downtown Oakland, UC counsel Christopher Patti sat beside a stack of textbooks proposed for use by Calvary Chapel Christian School in Riverside County -- books UC rejected as failing to meet freshmen admission requirements. Biology and physics textbooks from Christian publishers were found wanting, as were three Calvary humanities courses. "The university is not telling these schools what they can and can't teach," Patti said. "What the university is doing is simply establishing what is and is not its entrance requirements. It's really a case of the university's ability to set its own admission standards. The university has no quarrel with Christian schools."

The Association of Christian Schools International, which claims 4,000 member schools including Calvary Chapel and 800 other schools in California, disagrees. On Aug. 24, it sued the university in federal court for religious bias. The lawsuit marks a new front in America's culture wars, in which the largest organization of Christian schools in the country and the University of California, which admitted 208,000 freshmen this year, are accusing each other of trying to abridge or constrain each others' freedom.

Unlike recent court cases -- such as the challenge to the school district's decision in Dover, Pa., to teach intelligent design (a ruling from the federal judge is expected soon) or the decision by the Kansas Board of Education to teach that such things as the genetic code are inadequately explained by evolutionary theory -- the suit against UC does not pit Darwinism against creationism and its intellectual offspring. Rather, by focusing on courses that Calvary Chapel planned to offer this fall -- in English, history and social studies -- courses that were turned down by UC, it sets competing interpretations of academic merit against each other. "The university is in a way firing a shot over the bow," said Charles Haynes, a senior scholar at the First Amendment Center in Arlington, Va., "saying to Christian schools that they may have gotten away with this in the past, but no more. And that will have a chilling effect across the country."

In its suit, the association and its co-plaintiffs objected "to government officials ... dictating and censoring the viewpoints that may and may not be taught ... (in) private schools. ... (They) have rejected textbooks and courses based on a viewpoint of religious faith, for the first time in the University of California's history." The rejections, the suit asserted, "violate the freedom of speech of Christian schools, students and teachers."

On Oct. 28, UC asked U.S. District Judge S. James Otero to dismiss the suit. The university was not "stopping plaintiffs from teaching or studying anything," it argued. "This lawsuit is really an attempt to control the regents' educational choices. Plaintiffs seek to constrain the regents' exercise of its First Amendment-protected right of academic freedom to establish admissions criteria."

A hearing is scheduled today on the motion to dismiss. "I think there's a good chance the judge may take (the suit) very seriously," Haynes said. "The implication is now all religious schools have to clean up their act if they want their students to get into the university."

Hollyn Hollman, a church/state attorney for the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty in Washington, D.C., said the plaintiffs face "a high burden ... to prove they are being discriminated against," based on the rejection of a handful of courses alone. But Wendell Bird, lead attorney for the schools, believes, "This is a liberty case, the right of nonpublic institutions to be free. I'd be bringing the same case if the clients were Jewish or Buddhist. It's very troubling to the largest Christian school organization in the country because it restrains freedom and could spread. Many trends tend to start in California." ......

"The question here," Haynes said, "is whether a public university can disadvantage students from these schools because the science or English they took is not up to par. I wouldn't teach Emily Dickinson in a Christian context, but the point is they have the right to put it in the context of their faith."

Calvary Chapel students have been successful in gaining admittance to UC. In the last three years, said Patti at university headquarters, 18 of 25 of its applicants have been admitted. He said he did not know how those students were faring in college. Calvary Chapel says their students score better on standardized tests than California public school students. The school, in Murrieta (Riverside County), describes itself on its Web site as, "first and foremost a Christian school, which seeks to provide our student population with a Biblical world view." The plaintiffs include six Calvary Chapel students. One is the president of the school's national honor society, another the quarterback of the football team. They were chosen, said a school lawyer, because they all had the grades and scores to qualify them for admittance to UC. ....

Among the courses turned down were a history class, "Christianity's Influence on America"; a social studies class, "Special Providence: Christianity and the American Republic"; and, most contentiously, an English course, "Christianity and Morality in American Literature." None is being taught because of the dispute. The English course would have included reading material from many major authors, from Hawthorne to Tolkien. The syllabus called it, "an intensive study in textual criticism aimed at elevating the ability of students to engage literary works." The primary text, published by A Beka Press, of Pensacola, Fla. -- whose biology text also was rejected -- was to have been "American Literature: Classics for Christians."

In turning down the English course, Sue Wilbur, the director of UC undergraduate admissions, checked two categories as "inadequate" on a standard form: "Lacking necessary course information," and "Insufficient academic/theoritical [sic] content." She added a note that said: "Unfortunately, this course, while it has an interesting reading list, does not offer a nonbiased approach to the subject matter." And she also commented that "the textbook is not appropriate." During the interview, Patti said the textbook was an anthology and that UC demands some full texts be read.

But Bird scoffed at the explanation in his soft Southern accent as a "post-hoc rationalization. Unless I can't read, there's no objection to its being an anthology." In their suit, the schools argue that UC has accepted courses in "The Jewish Experience" and Islam, and also allowed courses in "Military History and Philosophy," "Gender, Sexuality and Identity in Literature" and "Children's Literature." These acceptances, they claimed, undercut the university's rationale in rejecting Calvary's history course as "too narrow/too specialized." ....

Ravi Poorsina, a university spokeswoman, disputed the criticism. "Their (students') ability to enter UC is not hindered," she said, explaining that other Calvary Chapel courses in the same academic fields did pass muster.

Another of the plaintiffs' lawyers, Robert Tyler, who has a son at Calvary Chapel, said the issue was simple fairness. "This is America. We have the right to send our kids to private schools, and have them study from a Christian perspective," he said. "The university has no right to tell any person of any faith they're not going to accept courses because they're taught from a Christian perspective. They have every right to look and see if it's sufficiently rigorous, sufficiently analytic.

More here

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


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