Child Abuse

Nice effort at misdirection, but the home schooling issue is not about religion. The issue is about whether the state has the absolute right to control your children's education, or whether parents have the right.

I'll put you down as being in favor of the totalitarians. Please re-read the U.S. Constitution.

What is ungodly about evolution? Nothing. People want to "see" their miracles, divine signs, spiritual guidance—how human of them. How vain of them to want outward "proof" that God is there for them. Faith is knowing how things work on this earthly plain…slow, sure, and steadily. Knowing, that likely, the sun will continue to rise over their lifetime…God must think that religious people of this ilk are completely ridiculous…because they are. Read it again…people who insist that the bible is truth, that the earth is 6-10,000years old are ridiculous… man wrote the bible—not God. God made the universe—simpletons try to explain it in human terms. Human kings made the rule that the bible was divinely inspired in order to control the masses of people.

Wow Reverend. All children should be raised to contribute to the good of the state? You're getting a little nightmarish.

An absurd ruling even for California

Ben: So you support the "teachers" in the Colorado ABC video?
You support the abuse of young children's minds?

Here's something that's absurd AND tragic….

The mother of an 11-year-old rural Weston girl who died of untreated diabetes says she didn't know her daughter was terminally ill as she prayed for her to get better instead of taking her to the doctor.

Madeline Neumann died Sunday from an undiagnosed and treatable form of diabetes.

Her mother, Leilani Neumann, tells The Associated Press her daughter's condition worsened suddenly, and the parents stayed in prayer, believing she would recover.

She also says she's not concerned about a police investigation, because she and her husband believe their lives are in God's hands and they did nothing criminal, only tried to do the best they could for their daughter.

Rev: Occasionally faith-based child abuse results in tragic and unnecessary deaths.

Occasionally middle school teachers have sex with 12 year old students, too. Others just fondle, slap or ridicule.

Larry D. — home-schooled kids undoubtedly get taken advantage of, too—and more likely to be hidden from the outside, as well. No child is immune to abuse anywhere.

Rev—if I may add to your previous comment:

This is the one other meaning of "taking God's name in vain"—to expect God to save your child through prayer alone—God gave humankind brains in order to come up with solutions:
"God helps those who help thenselves". Hence, we have doctors who practice medicine, scientists who come up with life-saving drugs such as the polio vaccine and insulin—do ya' think maybe God has something to do with all this given knowledge?
Or do ya' just believe God's hand is in things when it appears to be "magic" or "miraculous"? Have more faith—miracles surround us all over the place.

Thanks for those 2 cents. Money well said.

The Lords' name in vain insight alone is worth it's weight in gold.

Thanks again.

Yes, 2 cents, children are abused in all different kinds of environments. My point is that, just because there's a few instances of parent abuse or incompetence doesn't mean all homeschooling parents should be thought of that way, as the Reverend implies with his example.

After all, there's tons of examples of abuse in the state run school systems, but that doesn't mean state run school systems need to be abolished.

If we are to go by averages, test scores, etc., the consensus seems to be that homeschoolers do better than kids in public systems.

Larry–I am not against choice at all—I am against using public funds for groups that advocate for a specific religion or dogma of any kind—this is wrong, in my opinion.

Because I am from a mixed-religious background, but am agnostic, as are my children, (so far), I don't like groups getting money to teach their children separatist dogma or the idiotic idea that some people get to heaven for accepting a human sacrificial victim while others who do not accept, (but are good and moral, nevertheless) go to a place called Hell.

Bullcrap. Fable, Myth, Malarkey, Offensive, Unintelligent, Wrong. No matter what that man-made book says—Wrong, and I would say it directly to God's face.

Giving a portion of my tax money, (no matter how infantisimal that may be) to any cause or group that advocates that I be "saved" and teaches its' children that my children are less because they are not "saved" is against my beliefs in the way humanity should be.

Rev,
If we are to have the state take over just because the possibility of child abuse exists, we might as well take all children away from their parents and have them raised by the state (not that I want to give you any MORE nutty ideas).

If we are to have the state take over just because the parents might believe in some crazy ideas, well,….hand your kids over right now, Rev. You're the craziest person I know. We can't have you damaging those kid's minds.

That's the funny thing about living in a democracy, 2 cents. Money gets distributed to people who have nutty ideas all the time. Some of those homeschooling parents aren't too happy to contribute to the NEA, I'll bet.

I don't know how much money homeschool parents get from the government, but I'm pretty sure it's a lot less than they contribute to their local school systems through property taxes. Maybe they should get a pass on those taxes and in return receive nothing from the government.

Yes, Larry—a good point , indeed. Perhaps we should have a checklist of programs our tax dollars go to and be able to choose where we want our dollars to go—perhaps taking back our people power would cause people to pay closer attention to exactly who, what, where our collective money goes….like, I don't want to support this war, nor see my precious children nor anyone else's go off to that god-awful land over there and fight so that richer people who are too good to drive Honda's and hybrids can continue to suck on the oil-tit that is killing our earth, or to bring a "supposed" democracy to people who don't seem to have it in their blood to want to get along AND treat women as actual human-beings.

I thought we would get our money's worth when 2 cents stepped in and joined the party. He hasn't disappointed.

All home schooling parents/teachers do not abuse the children they are teaching. That would, of course, be ridiculous to say. That's not, however, what I said in the post.

While I agree completely with 2 cents about the tax dollars going for religious teachings stuff. They shouldn't be. It's a direct, as direct as you can get, violation of the 2nd amendment.

However, larry, I am saying that the crazy anti-science of the one group of extremist evangelicals I described, by teaching these children to distrust science and scientists and reject the reality of our existence, are indeed, abusing them. These folks are crippling their own kids and when they are raised they wind up becoming dysfunctional in society, producing stupid and regressive behaviour like the Conscientious Pharmacists who won't fill our prescriptions.

Secondly, everyone has the option of public school. If a parent decides to reject that option….then they have rejected it. They have made a choice. The original option of public school for all children is not an option to negotiate whateverthehell each and every parent would like. The option is the public school, available to all equally.

The current theo-con approach in Ohio is an attempt to change the rules of the game. Conservatives, especially far right conservatives, have a penchant for trying to change the rules. In this case they want their option and the money too. No one offered that deal….and it shouldn't be offered.

Certify those home school teachers, challenge their teaching materials and offer them not one dollar of state money. I hate to sound harsh about this but if a parent believes strongly enough about educating his children that he wants them out of a public school environment, then that parent should also be willing to play by the rules.

Anyway I'm off topic now and it's all larry's fault.

Rev,
The 2nd amendment is about the right to bear arms. It's got nothing to do with religion. Perhaps you meant the Establishment Clause ?

I do agree with you on one thing. Home schoolers should not get state money.

But the 'certification' idea is just a means to eliminate home schooling. Surely you know that. Requiring parents to get a 4-year college degree to educate their kids isn't workable, and the teacher's unions know it.

Thanks King. I did err on the amendment number. My bad.

Consider this comment a virtual handshake over the agreement we have on state money to home schoolers.

And I respect your viewpoint on certification. I don't fully agree because if a state public school system begins allowing home schooled kids to be taught by non-credentialed teachers, then the foot would be in the door to bring non-credentialed teachers into the public schools themselves.

I actually think that is why home schooling leaders across the country want to win this fight. One of your regular commenters believes that public school systems are for the purpose of destroying Christianity. So you could see why Christians, at least some of them, would want to destroy public schools.

Do homeschoolers get state money?

Also, what are the credentials for our public educators?

When I went to college, the only things I knew about education majors was they practiced cursive handwriting a lot during class and did pretty poorly writing essays and taking tests.

Rev,
One of the purposes of Leftists has always been to destroy religion, so that commenter isn't off the wall in his thinking. You have referred to religious teaching as 'child abuse' in this very thread. The ACLU has made an industry out of attacking Christianity. One would have to stick their head in the sand to not see how the Left is attacking Christianity and religious expression.

There is an element of religious freedom to home schooling, but that is just a side point to the issue. I don't think we will ever have a mass exodus from the public schools into home schooling. That's pretty much a non-issue as well. Most people have to work for a living, and since the dawn of superbig government, the government has seen to it that both parents usually have to work for a living to support their families. There's no time to educate your own kids.

Larry,
I don't think homeschoolers get state money now, but Mitt Romney did float the idea in his presidential campaign.

Public educators have a college degree. That's a start. Home school teachers have what credentials?

King: You are mistaken about this religion stuff. I expect it's because of your more rightward lean…but whatever.

It is NOT true that liberals are seeking to destroy religion. Not true of the ACLU either. Liberals and the ACLU want to uphold the estalishment clause of the Constitution which the right wants to eliminate. That's not seeking to destroy religion inside America. That's seeking to stand-up for America's legal roots.

And when you mischaracterize what I said in my original post….it only adds to my suspicion that you are only replaying the far right's rhetoric.

I did NOT refer to religious teaching as child abuse. I referred to a narrow and specific radical extremist anti-scientific religious cult within evangelicalism. Hosts of religious schools, Catholic, Lutheran, Baptist….don't take an anti-science fantasy approach to education. I have no beef with these folks. I don't want them receiving public tax dollars but I certainly don't want the government to eliminate their freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution.

You are probably right about not seeing a mass exodus to home education…. at the same time….the GOP would like nothing better than to destroy the entire public education system. It's just too Democratic.

I would guess a very good percentage of homeschooling parents have college degrees, Reverend. Every homeschooling parent I know does.

Every homeschooled kid I know excels, too.

The fact lefties get so upset at homeschooling proves our unfortunate kids are in school for social control more than learning. It's pretty creepy.

Rev,
You said: "Public educators have a college degree. That's a start. Home school teachers have what credentials?"

The home schoolers have better educated kids, by all measures, which is the whole idea. The education issue isn't about teacher's unions, it's about educating children.

And you most certainly did draw equivalence between religious teaching and child abuse. If you didn't, then maybe you should have called your long rant about religion something other than 'child abuse'. You used the example of creationism, and then linked that to evangelicals, and then linked that to Conservatives for your political point. It's the same old phony argument you always use (as if liberal Christians don't believe in creationism, God, or biblical teachings).