Atlanta,
I understand your problem. While there are isolated cases of children not learning much during their home school experience, it is no more prevalent than those students who leave the public school system without learning what they need. We've all heard of those students who graduated without knowing how to read, etc. from the public schools.
The government's job was never to run the lives of the general populace, it's just what has happened as they have striven for more power and the public has willingly released it. Our founding fathers would be appalled. It is not just a question of religous freedom, but also one of personal responsibility which so few are willing to accept these days. These children in my home, getting ready to wash their goat, are not owned by or the responsibility of the government. God gave them to my husband and I... not George Busch, not the Supreme Court, but us. Even if they were in the public school system it would be up to us to ensure they were learning and retaining. Teachers with anywhere from 30 to hundreds of students at a time can not possibly know with certaintly exactly how each individual child is doing. Not to mention, that nobody knows your child like you do.
Those parents who do neglect their responsibility in either case (home or public education) will have to deal with the fallout when their children fail to thrive as adults and need them to help support them, not to mention what will happen when they stand before God and He discusses with them, "About the kids' educations...." The fact is, those parents are responsible to God to answer for their actions, not anyone else. That does not mean that we throw out a superior form of education simply because a select few fail to follow through properly.
If you look at the overall results, home schooled children won both the national geography bee and spelling bee last year, they consistently test higher on skills testing than their peers (these tests are administered by people other than the parents in a controlled setting so are pretty objective), and colleges are very actively soliciting these students because they have proven to perform better at the college level being more used to independent learning and personal responsiblity than many of their public educated peers. All of this and more point to the success of the home educators as a whole.
I would encourage your correspondent to do more research before she jumps to conclusions based on isolated experiences. I would also find out more about why she feels these children are not being educated. Many children will not thrive sitting at desks and doing workbooks, etc. so their parents educate them in different ways. Many times in these instances it may appear to outsiders that not much learning is going on, but upon talking with or testing the knowledge level of these children, the observants are greatly surprised by the results.
Whew! I may have given you more than you were looking for, but I hope there is something here that helps you. Can you tell you hit on something I've had to deal with before? I hope this all made sense as I've been writing while doing about four other things. Let me know if there's any other info. I can help you with on this. There is a lot of research and information available at HSLDA's site among others, if you want it.
In Him,
~Mrs. Wanda Whatley

Edited by: Wanda W at: 2/3/03 8:58:11 pm