HSLDA
In a surprise decision earlier this week, the Youth Welfare Authorities in Germany, the “Jugendamt,” have allowed the remaining five Gorber children to return home until the beginning of September. The five girls have been kept in youth homes for the last eight months with minimal visitation from their family.
The family’s attorneys have been arguing that there is no valid reason for the Jugendamt to retain custody of the girls. Earlier this month, a German family court judge ordered that the Jugendamt retain custody of the school-age children because the judge feared the parents would refuse to enroll the children in school and undergo court-ordered psychiatric examinations.
Mr. and Mrs. Gorber are so pleased that their children are now home with them. A person close to the family reported that the “children have held up well under the circumstances and have not been susceptible to manipulation by the Jugendamt or other children in the homes. This is a real testimony of the strength of the family and the parents.”…
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By Mary Openshaw
The FactsPublished August 17, 2008
There are no Meet the Teacher nights and no flurry of shopping for dress code-appropriate school clothes, but the fall semester is still a time of transition for home-school families. It’s just a little more subtle.
“The big difference between public school and home schooling would be the fact that we have lots of curriculum to choose from. It’s a great freedom we have,” said Janice Borne, a Rosharon mother who is home-schooling her eight children.
“Public school children go to school, they’re given their textbooks and that’s what they use. Home-schoolers choose from all kinds of curriculum.” …Click here to read entire story
WorldNetDaily
Only a year after banning all negative messages about homosexuality in public schools throughout the state, the California Legislature now is ordering school children to celebrate “gay” lifestyle choices.
“If signed into law, AB 2567 will mean an official day commemorating homosexuality, bisexuality and transsexuality in California government schools,” said Randy Thomasson, president of the Campaign for Children and Families.
“This will harm children as young as kindergarten,” he said. “Every May 22, AB 2567 will positively portray to children homosexual experimentation, homosexual ‘marriages,’ sex-change operations, and anything else that’s ‘in the closet.’ Gov. Schwarzenegger should say no to this very inappropriate bill, which has nothing to do with academic excellence.”…
TCPalm
Sara Garman doesn’t have to worry about a school dress code or the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.
As one of the 2,000-plus students on the Treasure Coast who is home-schooled, the 14-year-old feels she has more of a say about what she studies.
“I do think we learn more because we can do more things,” Sara said. “It’s not just about learning what’s on a test.”
When the upcoming school year begins Aug. 18 for Treasure Coast public schools, there likely will be more home-schooled students than ever before and the number of home-schooled students is expected to continue to rise.
For the 2007-08 school year, the Florida Department of Education estimated 56,650 students were home schooled, compared with 31,440 students in 1997-98 — an 80 percent increase.
About 1.1 million students were being home schooled in the United States in the spring of 2003, a 29 percent increase from the 850,000 four years earlier, according to figures from the U.S. Department of Education…
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By J. Grant Swank, Jr.
It appears as if John Edwards is genuinely sorry for his infidelity. He states to media that he feels laid “bare.” He says his egocentric life was narcissistically based.
With his Methodist background, Edwards surely knows the biblical opportunity provided him at this juncture. God has promised to forgive the truly repentant soul who confesses his sins to Savior Christ. God has promised that healing can take place over time when Christ becomes Lord of life.
With divine mercy offered by a benevolent God, let us pray that Edwards bows before that kind Redeemer in order to discover a personal tie to Christ as Master over the remainder of his days…
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WorldNetDaily
An appeals court in California has ruled that state law does permit homeschooling “as a species of private school but that statutory permission for parents to teach their own children could be “overridden in order to protect the safety of a child who has been declared dependent.”
The long-awaited case resolves many of the questions that had developed in homeschooling circles across the nation when the same court earlier found that parents had no such rights – statutorily or constitutionally – in California.The ruling released this morning said the dispute came out of juvenile court proceedings in which court-appointed lawyers for two children demanded “an order that they be sent to private or public school, rather than educated at home by their mother.”
The dependency court did not agree, “primarily based on its view that parents have an absolute constitutional right to homeschool their children,” the appeals court said. The lawyers then advanced their case to the appeals level, which earlier granted the order… Click here to read entire story
WorldNetDaily
A mother and father who have been homeschooling their children have been given four weeks to submit a formal appeal of their three-month prison terms, according to a new report.
A statement released today by the Home School Legal Defense Association said Juergen and Rosemarie Dudek of Archfeldt, Germany, “have just received their formal written sentence of three months each in prison because they homeschool.”
“Although the family knew of the sentence after the hearing last month, the court took weeks to prepare its formal written opinion,” the HSLDA said. “The family now has four weeks to submit their written appeal of the judge’s decision.”
“Unfortunately, it appears that the issue for this German judge, and too many others, is less about academic preparation and respecting the rights of parents and the family and more about asserting [his] autocratic will on families who wish to educate their children at home in accordance with their conscience,” the HSLDA, the world’s premiere homeschooling advocacy body, said…
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Jeff Johnson - OneNewsNow
The battle against the legality of home schooling in California may be coming to an end as a family court decides not to pursue charges against a home-schooling family.
In late February 2008, the California 2nd District Court of Appeals ruled that parents have no right to home school their children. Since then, pro-family attorneys have been preparing and delivering briefs in defense of a parents’ rights to control the education of their children.
But Bruce Hausknecht, judicial analyst for Focus on the Family Action, explains that the juvenile court handling the original case has recently dismissed it. “Apparently the state decided it either didn’t want to pursue the parents or the court decided that they couldn’t pursue the parents,” he adds. “And so, essentially, there is no case left, no parties left for the appellate court to actually apply their decision to.”…
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Rochester Democrat & Chronicle
Thousands of city school students got a sneak peek at dozens of questions on two exams last month — a scenario that has baffled testing experts, outraged local officials and raised concerns about the validity of the exams and the Rochester School District’s method of test preparation.
The multiple-choice questions appeared in review materials produced by the district and issued to teachers to prep seventh- and eighth-graders for their final social-studies exams, one of four required district exams.
“I can honestly say that I have never seen anything like this unless there was a leak or an error, and I’ve been doing this for 35 years,” said Joseph Pedulla, an associate professor of education and co-founder of the Center for the Study of Testing, Evaluation and Educational Policy at Boston College.
District officials could not say how many of the 4,329 students who took the exams had also participated in the review sessions or received copies of the materials. But those who did so were drilled on multiple-choice questions and answers that were identical to and presented in the same sequence as those on the tests…
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WorldNetDaily
Arguments were heard today in a federal district court case to determine whether a state university system can dictate that private Christian schools in the state teach their college prep courses from exclusively secular, Bible- and God-free textbooks.
As WND reported earlier, the University of California system adopted a policy last year that basic science, history, and literature textbooks by major Christian book publishers wouldn’t qualify for core admissions requirements because of the inclusion of Christian perspectives.
Robert Tyler, who is representing Calvary Chapel Christian School and five students in the case against the University of California, told WND that the university’s discriminatory policy creates an ultimatum for Christian schools. “If you want courses to be approved in private education, so your students are qualified to attend (UC) institutions, you must teach from a secular point of view,” he said…
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WorldNetDaily
After catching flak from homeschoolers over explicitly excluding them from its student story contest earlier this year, the Subway restaurant chain has now purchased banner advertisements on the website for Homeschooling Today magazine, touting its new “summer special” story competition.
This new contest, named “Every Sandwich Tells a Story,” carries the same name and prizes as the previous competition, but this time the contest is open to all students up to sixth grade, including homeschoolers.
A screen capture that includes the banner advertisement can be seen below:
In a general email sent by Jim Bob Howard, editor-in-chief of Homeschooling Today, Howard wrote, “For all those who clamored about Subway excluding homeschoolers, now’s the time to show them that we will indeed participate when they include us.”…
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Associated Content
You’re considering home schooling your child, but you don’t know where to start? Welcome to the club! Home schooling, at first, seems almost overwhelming. Contrary to popular belief, most home schooling parents did not pull their children out of the traditional school system on a whim. Completely taking over the reigns of your child’s education is scary stuff! We are well aware of the import of such a weighty decision. Most of us, if we are going to be honest, are scared to death until the minute we realize we are actually going to float, and it won’t be as difficult as we’d feared. I was an education major in school, and I still had all those fears.
I’m not going to tell you what you should do, or what curriculum you should use or even how to home school. I’m simply going to help you get off on the right foot. There are many things that you need to take into consideration, whether you are pulling your child out of a formal schooling situation or you are starting off by home schooling…
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by J. Michael Smith
HSLDA President
As America celebrates its 232nd year of freedom as a nation, a revolution within our nation continues to grow. The homeschool movement, which is a rebirth of the primary form of education in early America, continues to advance despite overwhelming odds.
The modern homeschool movement traces its roots to the late ’70s and early ’80s when two main ideas began to revive the method of education our forefathers practiced. First was a belief that the traditional classroom and institutional school, as a whole, was inadequate to meet the individual educational needs of children, and in some cases may actually harm a child’s development.
Two men are credited with giving energy and expression to this idea. John Holt, who was a public education reformer, generally is recognized as the first to begin arguing in writing that children are by nature curious and eager to learn, but schools tend to suppress the natural curiosity of children rather than encouraging it.
Mr. Holt’s efforts to reform public education failed, and his effort to advance his ideas through private schools was met with meager success. He finally concluded that parents who wanted to have their children learn could simply teach the child at home. Mr. Holt summed up his philosophy this way: “I think that learning is not the result of teaching, but of curiosity in the activity of the learner.”
Raymond Moore’s emphasis was on early childhood development and he concluded through his extensive research and studies that children, especially boys, should not be in a formal classroom setting until as late as age 8, and in some cases, age 10. Prior to that time, they should interact at home with their parents. Mr. Moore believed that a child’s interests should be encouraged and fostered by the parent. This led naturally to homeschooling…
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WorldNetDaily
“Shame! Shame! Shame!” chanted the crowd, as the board retreated to another room to hold a more closed, executive session.
Without their intended audience, supporters of the teachers continued the meeting, addressing their comments to one another, to television cameras and, as one student stated, to “the empty chairs.”
Undaunted, Guilderland Town Board Member Mark Grimm declared, “We’re going to have the meeting we should have had.”…
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