MICHIGAN HOME SCHOOLERS UNDER ATTACK AGAIN
Recently an article was published in the Kalamazoo newspaper from a home school student discussing stem cell research. His article elicited a horrific response but one that is reflective of many who oppose home schooling. Therefore, we at INCH felt the need to formulate a response. The articles and the INCH response are included below. Informing you of this event reinforces our need to stay alert and active at the work of preserving our educational freedom, this November your vote for home school friendly candidates is imperative. Also, your support of INCH through membership and conference participation allows us to continue monitoring these threats against us. Please keep praying and working. Blessings.
Mike Winter
INCH Executive Director
Original Article: http://www.mlive.com/opinion/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2010/04/our_turn_should_embryonic_stem.html
Opposing Response - From the Kalamazoo Opinion: "State should examine, approve homeschooling curriculum" and more
By letter writers
May 27, 2010, 8:48AM
Written by: The Rev. Dennis Smith
State should examine, approve homeschooling curriculum
The trouble with homeschooling is not so much that it serves as a smokescreen for havens of child abuse, but that it can, with state sanction, substitute ideological indoctrination for actual education.
To be fair, not all homeschoolers are motivated by religious doctrine and not all who are subscribe to ideologically biased curricula provided by the various homeschooling publishers such as the Weaver curriculum, a “Bible-centered homeschool curriculum.”
That said, the regulatory control of homeschooling is practically nonexistent. There is no state regulation of the content of basic courses. There are no test requirements and one can obtain a religious exemption from the requirement that the homeschooling parent be a teacher or work with one.
In short, homeschoolers are exempt from every educational quality control measure imposed on public education. The result of which is manifest in a recent Young Editorial Staff column in the Kalamazoo Gazette.
It is genuinely tragic when otherwise bright and caring young people are asked to evaluate scientific research with important social consequences such as embryonic stem cell research and they respond with misinformation, put forth by some ideologically biased homeschooling curriculum.
I confess that I don’t know what curriculum Justin Wing (in his April 17 column) was using, but he is simplistically biased in his assessment of the relative utility and versatility of adult stem cells over embryonic stem cells in research and applied therapy. His arguments echo the faith-based critiques regularly trumpeted by various ”right to life” ideologues.
Though adult stem cell therapies do indeed exist and continue to show promise, limitations with respect to pluripotency and transdifferentiation make continued research with embryonic stem cells vitally important. Even if there were genuine, credible debate within the scientific community over this question, it is doubtful that those being sequestered from the broader academic conversation by an ideological curriculum would even know. That is precisely my concern.
We live in a democracy where Justin’s vote matters. The life and well-being of one of my grandchildren may depend upon the notions he brings to the voting booth. More urgently, I recently received an e-mail from a friend whose grandniece suffers a rare blood disease that might well be cured by a stem cell therapy growing out of unfettered research.
As a person of faith and a citizen of this democracy, I pray that Justin’s vote at least be informed by real research, not just religious ideology masquerading as science. For that, I hold the state accountable, not just Justin and his parents.
Homeschooling either needs to be regulated by the state with the same rigor as public education or eliminated altogether.
The Rev. Dennis Smith/Sturgis
INCH Response
Regrettably Rev. Smith’s bias against homeschooling contains a great deal of misinformation. First, homeschooling is not a haven of child abuse. Nearly all convicted child abusers of school aged children participated in public schools. Should these then be better regulated to ensure children are not abused by parents sending their children to public school? Parents are the abusers—not schools—either public or home. There are laws to punish such behavior that must be vigorously enforced. Eliminating the freedom to homeschool will not decrease the number of child abusers.
Second, the few benefits stem cell research has brought to the world have all come from adult stem cells, so far nothing of any value has come from the stem cells of the unborn. Biblical Christians have resisted this research because it has meant the legalization of the murder of the unborn. Biblical Christians believe God is the Creator and Sustainer of life, He Himself claimed to be Life, and therefore murder of the most defenseless has been resisted by the community of Biblical faith. Biblical Christians who homeschool do so in part because they do not buy into the theory that God does not exist.
Government schools exclude the Christian God from their curriculum, discussion and teaching. This is simply not acceptable to Biblical Christians who take seriously God’s command to raise children in the knowledge of His will. The Church and the School can help in this endeavor but it is God’s command to the parent to make this happen, some choose to own this responsibility by homeschooling.
Apparently Rev. Smith has a different world view than Biblical Christians. His world sees God as needing to be excluded from the school room, children allowed to be aborted for their stem cells, and the virtue of the state to produce well educated people. Biblical homeschoolers have a different perspective; must they be excluded from engaging the civic debate?
Fortunately our founding fathers rejected a democracy where a majority of Rev. Smiths could silence the few, instead they formed a Republic so that representative groups could have a voice and seek to influence their portion of the country as they deemed best. Biblical Christians thank God for their freedom, seek to honor Him with it and pray He will allow it to continue.