God hates homeschooling?

For a couple of headscratching posts on homeschooling by people who dislike homeschooling, check these two out:

The first one is a poor attempt at satire by a public school English teacher titled: The Case Against Homeschooling. I found out from this pompous diatribe by a public school teacher that homeschool kids are geeks and homeschool families are rich, selfish, intolerant and quite possibly racist . As an added bonus, the author says not once but twice that homeschoolers are arrogant . They back up the assertion that homeschoolers are arrogant to think they can teach their own kids by putting forth a laundry list of their own qualifications to teach. Sorry, but having a couple of degrees in English and education is not filling me with awe and it is always dangerous to tout your own superior abilities and then put forth a poorly written and argued diatribe.

What was most inexplicable was reason number seven:

7. God hates homeschooling. The study, done by the National Center for Education Statistics, notes that the most common reason parents gave as the most important was a desire to provide religious or moral instruction. To the homeschooling Believers out there, didn’t God say “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations”? Didn’t he command, “Ye shall be witnesses unto me”? From my side, to take your faithful children out of schools is to miss an opportunity to spread the grace, power and beauty of the Lord to the common people. (Personally I’m agnostic, but I’m just saying…)

I always appreciate an agnostic telling me stuff like this. “I don’t believe in God and I don’t respect the Bible but by the way your God, if He did exist which He doesn’t, would hate homeschooling!” Ah, thanks for clarifying that for me! What is troubling is not this person’s reasoning, I expect that from an unbeliever. What I find troubling is that similar arguments are made against homeschooling by Christians who should know better.

The other blog post is Home School Epidemic and the author Amy Platon is more reasonable but still misses the big picture. Most of us don’t homeschool our kids because we are afraid of the big, bad world out there (even though the environment in public schools should give every parent pause). We home school our kids because God has commanded it of us and it is too important to be subcontracted out to “professionals”. She completely misses that. In fact there is no mention of that aspect of home education in her post at all, which seems odd. Every, I mean every, survey of home schooled families shows the number one reason they homeschool is religious in nature. Ms. Platon is flat out missing the big picture here.

If you click on either link, take a deep breath first. My intent is not to inflame passions and send attack dogs after these individuals. I didn’t post a comment on either one because just a sampling of the mostly great comments already out there and the partial retraction on the first post shows that others have gone before me and showed how intellectually vacuous these arguments are. Just be on notice that opposition to homeschooling is growing more strident and more vocal. Those of us who homeschool need to be on guard against intrusions into our right and obligation to homeschool our kids.