public schools – OnlyWay

Bills target gun rights education in schools

Jon Bailey spent a Friday afternoon over Christmas break taking his 13-year-old son, Connor, to shoot pistols at Allen Arms Indoor Range in Greenville.

He showed Connor how to load, aim and fire the weapon, but he also instructed him on what to do if he ever saw friends playing with a gun or found a gun lying around.

“He knows to get the heck out of the room and talk to adults,” Bailey said.

Bailey doesn’t call himself a gun fanatic. He wanted to demystify the idea of guns for his son.

But he does think more children should have knowledge of gun safety.

Who instructs children on the gun rights and safety has traditionally been left out of the state’s school systems, but bills pre-filed in both chambers of the South Carolina Legislature would bring gun rights squarely into focus in the classroom.

Whether schools are the right place to instruct students about firearms will be up for debate.

Zero-tolerance policies regarding guns at South Carolina schools has led to a backlash against citizens’ gun rights and a lack of knowledge on how to safely use firearms, Republican state legislators said as they prepared to open a new session in the state Legislature.

State social studies standards that instruct teachers to explain how the Constitution and Bill of Rights helps protect limited government. But schools don’t go far enough to explain gun rights, they said.

One bill — pre-filed in the state House — would create a Second Amendment Awareness Day to be held on Dec. 15 each year in all state schools, complete with a poster or essay contest centered on the theme “The Right To Bear Arms: One American Right Protecting All Others.”

Students — at every grade level — would receive at least three weeks of education on their gun rights based on a curriculum chosen by the state Department of Education and approved or recommended by the National Rifle Association.

“Zero-tolerance policies have squelched any discussion of the Second Amendment in schools,” said Rep. Alan Clemmons, R-Myrtle Beach.

By avoiding second amendment speech in schools, he said, “We are giving short shrift to the one amendment that protects all others.”

By Nathaniel Cary – Greenville Online –

CHRISTMAS HEROES: Parents Fighting Anti-Christian Agendas

How ironic that as children all across the nation prepares to take part in various Christmas season events that they, in far too many cases, will not be allowed to actually celebrate Christmas. But to be honest, it is far more serious than just celebrating Christmas. Each day millions of students are sent by their parents off to build a solid academic base as well as learn about our American values in school. Those values and principles are built upon Judeo-Christian beliefs. In 2013 there were over 400 biblical principle attacks on children who wanted to read a Bible before or after school or even during lunch break and were denied.

When your child returns from the Christmas holidays will he or she still have to learn and embrace the teaching of Islam in the classroom, but have the teaching of biblical history overruled? What happens when the topics your child may be learning are ideals and values that marginalize how you have raised them and articulate an agenda that compromises your family’s religious beliefs? This is not something that can be overlooked simply because the child is heading home for a Christmas break.

Actually this serves as the best time to discuss and share what your beliefs are and reinforce the reasons why you will stand up for them when your child returns to school in the New Year. Don’t accept the erroneous church and state separation argument that liberal school officials try to jam down the throat of Christian parents. Your child has U.S. Constitutional rights and they must be protected….

So it really is upon you. As a parent what are you willing to sacrifice to stand up and protect your child from a school or a school district that is willing to take away or marginalize your child’s values and principles because it is convenient for them? Are you willing to tolerate unfair and illegal treatment of your child? Are you willing to let the politically correct values of liberal parents and secular anti-Christian organizations dominate your life, principles and support of America’s biblical heritage?

America has a culture that rises up from the deep foundational values that guided the founding fathers….parents that pray over their decisions at their kitchen table, or in the living room or perhaps during the church service. As a responsible parent they take a stand on principle rather than they should turn over their role and responsibility to the offending teacher, principal, submitting to the will of a partial anti-Christian school administrator or local school board member. They are not like others who take the easy route and conveniently swallow their principles and their values….

Take a page from Samuel Adams, who was one of America’s Revolutionary Heroes and a Founding Father. Adams’s father was a church deacon and was deeply influenced by him. Adams spoke of lukewarm supporters saying,

“If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”

Let liberty and your children and America’s future generations be your guide and your prayer as you celebrate this Christmas season. There is no tranquility in servitude to political correctness, so take off the politically correct chains of convenience that are used to shackle your children. Praise the birth of the Son of God and fight to protect your child and their future in the New Year as their Hero!

By Kevin Fobbs – Clash Daily –

Homeschooling is an act of defiance that frightens the state.

By Wendy McElroy –

To government, homeschooling resembles a weed that spreads and resists control. To homeschooling parents, it is the flowering of knowledge and values within children who have been abandoned or betrayed by public schools. A great tension exists between the two perspectives. Homeschooling’s continued growth has only heightened it.

The federal government has reacted by attempting to increase its control over homeschooling, for example, by pushing for increased regulation of homeschool curricula. But the federal government is hindered by certain factors. For one thing, education is generally the prerogative of individual states. Nevertheless, the federal government can often impose its will by threatening to withhold federal funds from states that do not comply with its measures.

But homeschooling parents cannot be threatened by a withdrawal of money they don’t receive. As it is, they are paying double. They pay taxes to support public schools from which they draw no benefit and they pay again in homeschooling money and in terms of lost opportunities such as the full-time employment of both parents. The “profit” they receive is a solid education for their children. What they want from the government is to be left alone.

The federal government is also hindered by not being able to play the “it’s for the children” card that justifies so many intrusive policies. Homeschooled children routinely display better development than public school students.

A 2012 article in Education News called the “consistently high placement of homeschooled kids on standardized assessment exams … one of the most celebrated benefits of homeschooling.” Education News compared the quality of homeschooling to that of public schooling. “Those who are independently educated typically score between the 65th and 89th percentile on such exams, while those attending traditional schools average on the 50th percentile. Furthermore, the achievement gaps, long plaguing school systems … aren’t present in the homeschooling environment. There’s no difference in achievement between sexes, income levels, or race/ethnicity.” Studies also indicate that homeschooled children are better socialized with both peers and adults.

It appears the federal government has failed to yank the “weed” of homeschooling. Why does the Obama administration continue to try?

1. Homeschooling is an acute embarrassment to public schools, which do not educate and are rife with abuse. News stories abound of students who are illiterate and who are being abused by teachers or by the police who arrest them for trivial offenses such as burping in class. (See “A List of 19 Children Recently Arrested (July 2013) For Trivial Things.”)

2. Public schools are desperate for funding. The federal government especially wants to pay the expensive union salaries, pensions, and other benefits enjoyed by teachers because unions are one of the administration’s political bases. Since tax dollars are allocated largely according to class attendance, the goal is to force as many children as possible into public schools.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the number of homeschooled children in 2007 “was about 1.5 million, an increase from 850,000 in 1999 and 1.1 million in 2003.” Homeschooling is currently growing by an estimated 7 percent a year. Each homeschooled child represents a loss of funds to public schools and a threat to teachers’ pensions.

3. The homeschooled child is also an embarrassment to the public schools in economic terms. As Education News explained, “The average expenditure for the education of a homeschooled child, per year, is $500 to $600, compared to an average expenditure of $10,000 per child, per year, for public school students.” Of course, that doesn’t take into account the wages a parent most forego to homeschool a child, but at least that opportunity cost is borne only by the parent.

4. The federal government wants to weaken political critics. Parents who homeschool usually do so because of religious reasons (38.4 percent), because they can do a better overall job (48.9 percent), or due to objections to the content (21.1 percent) or to the academic quality (25.6 percent) of public schools. They are “dissatisfied customers” who weaken the government’s legitimacy and credibility. Those who choose homeschooling for religious or ideological reasons present an even larger problem because they are likely to dislike other government programs and positions. A clamp-down on homeschooling weakens the influence of critics, preventing them from producing future opponents.

5. Access to children allows the government to inculcate its values. Public schools teach politically correct attitudes; for example, the diversity of race must be embraced but a diversity of ideas should be rejected. Public schools have become venues for social experiments such as the so-called healthy lunch programs championed by Michele Obama even though children often throw them away, preferring to be hungry. Public schools are also experimenting with using students as advocates for government policies. For example, America’s second-largest school district, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), has accepted almost $1 million for a pilot program to train students how to convince their families to enroll in Obamacare.