September 20, 2007
Baltimore County Offers Freebies In Exchange for Freedom
Baltimore County Public Schools (BCPS) wants to give you some freebies. All you have to give them is your freedom.
The BCPS “Virtual Instruction Program,” as it is called, will offer you free books and other “freebies.” But the books present every lesson from a point of view as if God had nothing to do with the subject. These books convey the subtle message that you can learn every subject without God. This is the message already being given to children in brick and mortar public schools, and now public educators want to send this message to homeschool families.
BCPS will pull in thousands of dollars for every child who enters the program, because each child will become a public school student. For the same reason, parental control over subjects and lesson content will vanish. Parents will remain involved as an appendage, but the real control will be in the hands of the public schools.
Programs like this are popping up all across the country. They can be a financial gold mine for public schools, but they are an academic disaster for students. In Idaho and Kansas, students in public school at home programs actually scored below public school students!
One reason homeschooling works is that parents demand and receive full responsibility. Public school at home programs fail, in part, because parents neither request nor receive full responsibility. Parents should not expect their children to do as well in a public school at home program as they would in homeschool—or even in a public school.
Homeschooling gives you complete freedom to teach every subject with knowledge of God at the center. This training prepares children to keep God at the center of every aspect of their adult lives, thus strengthening their faith. Using books that erect a subtle wall between knowledge and God, however, will encourage kids to build their own wall between God and the rest of life, undermining their faith.
Protect your precious freedom. It is a powerful source of strength. Say “no” to Baltimore County’s public school at home program.
Membership in HSLDA is not available with respect to any child enrolled in a public school at home program.
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