Letter to the Editor - RE: "Regulating home schoolers"

As submitted to the Los Angeles Times on March 14.

Dear Editor:

I am writing in response to the article authored by Walter P. Coombs and Ralph E. Shaffer entitled “Regulating home schoolers”.

This piece employs stereotypes which negatively characterize the home schooling community. I expect more of a scientific approach from educated professors from a respected university. There was a noticeable lack of empirical data from objective sources in the article. But the authors certainly provided a heavy dose of unsubstantiated claims—such as the notion that home school students learn social studies through “watching Fox with its strange assortment of oddballs pontificating on current events.” This observation says more about the two professors than it does about the diverse spectrum of families that home school.

Clearly the issue of education deserves serious discussion, rather than the caustic sarcasm offered by the authors.

Families who decide to home school their children span the range of the political spectrum—contrary to the stereotype that home schooling is a “cottage industry run by conservative evangelicals”. The issue is not inevitably linked to religion, especially since non-religious parents choose to home school their children too—it is the question of who has the right to make decisions for their children: the parents or the state?

I am disappointed by the condescending manner in which the authors treat parents who home school their children. I commend the Times Editorial Board’s even handed approach in their opinion piece. Surely parents who have lived with and raised their own children are in a better position to make decisions for them than a Sacramento bureaucrat—or a college professor.

Sincerely,

GEORGE C. RUNNER, JR.
Senator, 17th District