He said he wants to improve public schools, including charter schools, while also supporting parents who homeschool their children and advocating vouchers to give more parents the option of sending their children to non-public schools.Congressman holds Town Hall meeting with Burke Co. homeschoolers: Rep. Patrick McHenry met with local home educators recently at Winkler Park in Hickory, as reported by the Hickory Daily Record:
"I'm a big supporter of homeschooling and the rights of parents to homeschool their children rather than leaving that choice up to a bureaucrat," said McHenry, adding, "You shouldn't be punished for homeschooling.""Homeschooling" to play Guitar Hero: The Raleigh News & Observer reported July 27 that 16-year-old Blake Peebles had convinced his parents to allow him to leave a traditional Christian high school to focus on becoming a professional video gamer, majoring in Guitar Hero. He is now being taught at home by tutors, although the paper continued to refer to the change in schooling as "dropping out" or "homeschooling", interchangeably. Blake now spends several hours per day practicing the game and has won about $1000 in prizes so far. The story has prompted widespread interest around the country, including references in Education Week and a video gaming blog that brought the News & Observer a stunning 85,000 visits to the already three-week-old story online.
McHenry said he's in favor of providing vouchers or tax refunds for parents who educate their children at home to pay for expenses related to education because, "The cost to homeschool is significant — this is not free."
But, McHenry said, providing parents who homeschool with relief money is not a main priority for Congress.
"Unfortunately, I don't see Congress doing anything to fix this problem this year," he said.
160 football players "take a knee" to pray for accident victim: Reported in the Morganton News-Herald, when a motorcyclist's stunt resulted in a 50 mph crash next to a high school football game, players at the Pioneer Football League event held a spontaneous prayer meeting for the rider as coaches cared for the victim. PFL is made up of homeschoolers and other students whose schools may not offer a football program.
Economist notes "amateurs" outperform professionals: Thomas Sowell, writing in Townhall.com, points out that when untrained practitioners get better results than government-certified and -backed professionals, there is something seriously amiss in the profession:
If ordinary people, with no medical training, could perform surgery in their kitchens with steak knives, and get results that were better than those of surgeons in hospital operating rooms, the whole medical profession would be discredited.
Yet it is common for ordinary parents, with no training in education, to home-school their children and consistently produce better academic results than those of children educated by teachers with Master's degrees and in schools spending upwards of $10,000 a year per student-- which is to say, more than a million dollars to educate ten kids from K through 12.
Nevertheless, we continue to take seriously the pretensions of educators who fail to educate, but who put on airs of having "professional" expertise beyond the understanding of mere parents.
(Noted by George Leef at the Pope Center for Higher Education, Raleigh, NC)
UPDATE: Fixed the broken link on the Morganton football story; sorry for any inconvenience.
EDITORIAL NOTE: I'm pleased to be back in the U.S. and back on N.C. Homeschool News. Saudi Arabia was a very different kind of place, and for myself, I'm glad to be back in a country with cool breezes, green grass, and occasional thunderstorms. My pictures are posted on my personal blog, The Inundated Calvinist. -- Hal
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