A group of parents who homeschool their children in Texas, are suing the state because they have been asked to educate their children in subjects like math and science, rather than simply focusing on religious subjects… The parents of nine students are arguing that they do not need to waste their time educating their children because the second coming of Jesus Christ will happen soon… Right.
The McIntyre family, who lives in El Paso, home-schools their children and in the past, they have not had to follow any specific curriculum. Their children were also exempt from taking standardized tests, which have become over used in public and private schools across the nation. Since they were given no restrictions, the parents were free to teach their children whatever subjects they wished, and as a result, the children learned nothing they but the word of god – no real world skills like science, math, history, or logic. This kind of utter educational neglect has had severe negative effect on the McIntyre’s children.
Their 17-year-old daughter recently decided to run away from home after she felt her education was being jeopardized. The state found her and put her in a public school where she should have been a senior, but because of her lack of any real education, she was placed in 9th grade, where she struggled to keep up. This is reflective of the families inability to teach.
The El Paso School District started investigating the educational practices going on in the home, asking the McIntyre family to prove that they were, at the very least, attempting to educate their children. But the family instead sued the school district for violating their right to refrain from educating their children. The case ended up in the Supreme Court, and the McIntyre family is already claiming that the members of the court are anti-Christian. They also claim that the School District’s investigation of their teaching practices at home is an assertion of governmental power. But really, it sounds like the state of Texas just wants the kids to get a proper, useful education rather than one that will get them nowhere in life.
Many families have legitimate reasons for wanting to homeschool their children, but some Christians turn to homeschooling in order to shelter their children from the satanic influences of biology, chemistry, geometry, mathematics, literature, and art. These decisions have a profound negative effects on the children. Sometimes, their isolation is so severe, they have almost no presence in the outside world. Earlier this year, a young woman from Texas fought extremely hard to prove she was a real person. Her parents didn’t get her a birth certificate or a social security number, they never took her to the doctor, and they never enrolled her in school and so according to the federal government she doesn’t technically exist. Not by their record, at least. As a result, when she left home, she had no identity.
According to Rachel Coleman, the executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, part of the reason that this is occurring is because conservative lawmakers have no ability to control the way homeschool parents educate their children, and there is a stantard of education that every child should have access to. No one should have to grow up reading ONE really old story book over and over and over, while being protected from any real or applicable skills or knowledge.