From Pine View Farm

Home Alone (Updated) 6

I am not a big fan of home schooling.

But this is not right:

How do you spell extracurricular?

Answering that question probably wouldn’t be difficult for Meghan Reynolds, a 12-year-old home-schooled student from southern Chester County, a winner in last year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee contest at her local school.

But figuring out whether Meghan can compete this year – under a new state law that gives home-schooled students the right to participate in public-school extracurricular activities – isn’t so easy.

The Avon Grove district says no; in its judgment, the first round of the bee is a classroom activity, not an extracurricular one, and therefore is not covered by the law.

Addendum, 1/26/2007:

The School Board stepped in and let her compete.

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6 comments

  1. Karen

    January 26, 2007 at 8:35 am

    I’ve met only 1 person that I know of, who was home schooled. How do the kids learn to socialize, if they are kept from a social setting? I would see a kid in a church run school before I would agree to home schooling. I get the “concept” of keeping them away from the violence that’s ever present in public schools now days, but to cut them off completely?

     
  2. Frank

    January 27, 2007 at 6:51 pm

    I think that, often, home schooling has more to do with politics than with excellence of education. And with that I will say no more.

     
  3. Karen

    January 28, 2007 at 1:44 pm

    The only reasons I’ve heard of, by proponents of home schooling is violence & quality of the education the kids get. I still don’t think their education is complete, though.

     
  4. Frank

    January 28, 2007 at 6:02 pm

    Frankly, the little I’ve seen of home-schooling leads me to think that it does not take place in areas where the fear of violence is real and where quality of education is truly an issue.

    It is not something you are going to find much of in, say, North Philadelphia, where you and Opie and I would be wise not to walk the streets.

    It seems to be found more in the suburbs.

    At the risk of revealing my Southern Baptist Secular Humanist leanings, I think the home-schooling movement has more to do (please note that I did not say “all to do”) with fear of Evolution and fear of Sex Education than with fear of mayhem.

    And I tend to agree with you. Though some home-schooled kids do get a very good education, I would tend to question how well-rounded it is.

    I probably learned as much working on my HS yearbook as I did in tenth-grade English class. (I learned a lot more in eleventh-grade English, but Mrs. Shannonhouse was probably the best teacher I had. Except for my mother, of course, but I didn’t listen to her–I didn’t listen at home, why should I listen at school?)

    Hard to do a yearbook for one, now, isn’t it?

    But that’s just me.

     
  5. Opie

    January 28, 2007 at 8:28 pm

    Why would you say “fear” instead of “disagreement?”

     
  6. Karen

    January 29, 2007 at 8:22 am

    A yearbook for one is also called an autobiography. Done all the time.