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AKRON BEACON JOURNAL UNFAIR, BIASED AGAINST HOME SCHOOLING
by
Jim Brown and Pat Centner
(AgapePress)
…The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) is expressing concern over
reports in an Ohio newspaper that takes aim at the home school movement.
The Akron Beacon Journal recently published two reports suggesting there is a
need for more regulation because abusive parents may choose to home school their
children in an effort to conceal the harmful treatment of their kids. They cited
a serious case of child abuse committed by a woman who had filed paperwork to
home school her children. The newspaper floated the assumption that if the
children had been in a public school, and the state had tighter home school
regulations, the abuse would not have happened.
HSLDA president Mike Smith says in a free society, you have to put up with a
mistake or two. He further asserts that the paper is not being fair in its
reporting.
"What [the Beacon Journal reported on] was an isolated situation and tried
to make a mountain out of a mole hill. [The paper] failed to recognize that
freedom is the issue for everybody, and they failed to recognize the good
parents in Ohio."
Smith pointed out that the paper needs to do an article that is 'fair and
balanced' -- that they need to interview some good families. "They need to
go out and look at what is happening in Ohio," Smith says, "in
relation to how children are testing, vis-Ă -vis, the public school and how
well they are doing."
Smith says typically when there is media coverage of an abusive family situation
-- if it involves a home school family -- that fact will be reported. But if it
is not a home school family, readers are not told where the children attend
school.
"The fact is that Chief Justice Berger -- in a case back in 1971, writing
for the Supreme Court of the United States in a juvenile court case that reached
the Supreme Court -- said [because] some parents do abuse their children does
not mean that we throw away all the other history of our country. It shows that
parents act, generally, in the best interest of their children."
Smith says most people would agree that parents are competent to feed, clothe
and provide the basic necessities for their children. But when it comes to
education, somehow we do not trust them.
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