"Okay" vs. "Fundy" Homeschooling

On the blog "All Things Hold Together" today, Charity has a good post dealing with a post by another blogger critical of some homeschoolers. The criticism can be summed up in this sentence:

There is a "right" way to homeschool ... and there is the fundy way.

I am amazed that there are people - including some homeschoolers - actually agree with this! But there are more and more indications that this is the direction things are going - that some homeschoolers are deemed acceptable, while others (especially if they are conservative Christians) are not.

Charity deals with the criticism beautifully, basing her argument on the fact that when we begin discriminating between homeschoolers, someone has to determine who is acceptable and who is not.

I mean, do you really want that line drawn when you want to homeschool, but the people deciding the acceptability standard are not like you?

I cannot believe there are actual participants in our democratic process that are so exclusive in how they think rights should be appropriated.

News flash: There is this little thing called Freedom of Religion that actually prohibits the government from disallowing certain parents to homeschool because they hold religious view you oppose.

She also points out that most religious homeschoolers do the same kinds of activities and seek just as deep and solid an education as most secular homeschoolers. We go to libraries, museums, and aquariums; we use excellent literature (as opposed to condensed and abridged textbooks) and real historical documents (as opposed to boring history texts); we teach our children other points of view; we do real science experiments and talk a lot about current events. The only thing that distinguishes our homeschooling from secular homeschoolers is that we teach our children the Bible as well.

Great points, Charity! And there's much more where that came from - go take a look!