Nea Resolution Is Contradictory
It probably won’t surprise any of our region’s home-schooling families that the National Education Association took a hostile stance towards them in resolutions adopted at NEA’s national convention in Chicago this summer. After all, home-schooled children earned a lot of publicity by cleaning the clocks of the competition in both the national geography and spelling bees this past year.
Despite these great showings, the public school teachers’ organization stated in Resolution B-67 that: “The NEA believes that home schooling programs cannot provide the student with a comprehensive educational experience.”
B-67 goes on to recommend that states strictly regulate the curriculum and testing of home schoolers to make sure that they meet standards. What is particularly disconcerting, however, is the last sentence of the resolution: “The Association believes that home-schooled students should not participate in any extracurricular activities in the public schools.”
The NEA’s attitude should be questioned and challenged. Why should tax-paying families - after applying through the proper channels - have their children barred from using programs, facilities, and equipment that their tax dollars provide for? Indeed, home schoolers throughout our own region have been allowed to enroll in public school extracurricular activities such as music, drama, debate, sports, and driver’s education - and continue to enroll in steadily increasing numbers.
The proposed ban on allowing home schoolers in public school activities is also wrong-headed because it contradicts the NEA’s assertion that these children can’t get a “comprehensive educational experience” by staying home.
If that is true, why not give them the kind of experiences and socialization they can’t get at home? Welcoming them into extracurricular activities would certainly widen their horizons.
Who knows, opening the doors of public schools to home schoolers looking for programs to round out their education might even have the effect the NEA desires - they may get hooked and want to enroll as full-time public school students!
Public school officials in Spokane and Kootenai County have positive things to say about the reception of home schoolers into their programs.
Some even go an extra step to foster a good relationship between the public and private sectors, by volunteering counsel on what things they can offer to enhance and support home education.
This “us vs. them” mentality needs to stop. While it is true that a few home-schooling parents may have pulled their children from public schools for wrong reasons (retaliation against the system), most are doing so for well thought out reasons and for what in their judgment is the good of each child, as well as the entire family.
They should not be punished by having doors slammed in their faces by the educational establishment.