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michael
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Date Posted: 23:32:23 04/12/05 Tue
Here's an email news letter in its entirety, which I found amusing/distressing. Perhaps you'll find it entertaining as well.
April 12, 2005 Vol. 5, No. 3
===============================================
T H E S C H O O L L I B E R A T O R
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Links
1. Learn about Family Life in Government Schools
2. What's the Gates Foundation up to?
3. Akron Beacon Journal's Hatchet Job on Homeschooling
Did You Notice...
Interesting articles from the past few months
1. Greatest Mistake in American History
2. Radio ID Tags for our Children
*FEATURE* Newspaper Logic
================ HOUSEKEEPING =================
EMAIL LIST MAINTENANCE
We mentioned to you a few weeks ago that we have a new server for the School Liberator. We are still figuring out the ins and outs of maintaining the email list. If you need to cancel your subscription or change your address, please do so by responding to this email with your request. If you have tried to cancel without success, you may have joined under an email address from which you are forwarding. In that case, please try all your email addresses when attempting to cancel.
When all else fails, please email us directly at mailto:ccuthbert@fix.net
Thank you for your patience. And now on to school liberation with alacrity.
==================== LINKS =====================
--> 1. Obviously, parents in Washington State are not only incapable of teaching their own children academics, they can't teach them anything else about life, either.
"'Family Life' Classes Urged for Schools: State Bill Focuses on Teaching Students about Relationships"
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/217905_family29.html
--> From the article: "The House earlier this month passed a bill that would encourage public high schools to offer 'family-preservation' classes on building loving relationships, resolving conflicts, being responsible parents and managing money.
"The goal, supporters say, is to help students learn the value of strong, enduring relationships and reinforce the importance of families as the basic unit of society -- lessons many teens may not be learning at home.
"'It's a neglected area of our educational system,' said Rep. Dave Quall, D-Mount Vernon, the bill's chief sponsor."
--> Sigh.
--> 2. We are the proud owner and principal of an independent study program for a group of homeschoolers. In California, we must register with the state as a private school. This puts us on the state mailing list for all kinds of interesting program announcements, such as the one we recently received. "The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have [sic] awarded a technology grant to the California County Superintendents Educational Services Association. The grant allows for each county office in the state of California to provided technology training to private school administrators."
--> We would attend four all-day training sessions--to learn what is never mentioned--and would get a Zire-72 handheld computer. "Yes, it's free!" our flyer boldly and ungrammatically exclaims. And oh yes, almost forgot, we would have to complete pre- and post-assessment surveys for ourselves and 80% of our site teachers.
--> Let me get this straight. This is a grant from a private foundation to a government school agency for private school administrators? Hmmmm. why the middleman?
--> 3. Recently, the Akron Beacon Journal ran a series of seven articles exposing the dark side of homeschooling. Our feature article below is a rebuttal and includes links to the series. Home School Legal Defense Association's President Michael Smith also penned a reply.
"Let the Facts Speak"
http://www.hslda.org/courtreport/V21N1/V21N113.asp
--> The Bluedorn brothers below do an excellent job of addressing the failings of reporters Oplinger and Willard. We also wanted to call attention to an interesting point made by Smith.
"Other statements in the series demonstrate a lack of thorough, balanced research by the reporters. For instance, in the article dated November 15, 2004, the Beacon Journal claimed that only 0.17% of all college applicants are homeschoolers, despite the fact that about 2% of the U.S. student population is homeschooled. The article's authors failed to consider that homeschooling has grown at a rate of 7–15% for the past 10 years. That means most homeschoolers are between 5 and 14 years of age and not even eligible for college. Nor did the authors mention a study by Brian D. Ray, Ph.D., of over 5,000 homeschool graduates. Ray reported that 'over 74% of home-educated adults ages 18–24 have taken college-level courses, compared to 46% of the general United States population.'"
============== DID YOU NOTICE... ===============
--> 1. And you thought RFID was just for inventory control at your local box store. Ha. An article that appeared in our local newspaper in February reports on the use of radio frequency identification devices in Brittan Elementary School near Yuba City California.
"School Tracks Students with Radio ID Tags"
http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/nation/10878072.htm
--> From the article: "School officials say the badges are scanned and used for attendance. But some parents and privacy advocates are outraged that the badges were given to students without parents' knowledge or consent."
--> There are so many things about this situation that are utterly frightening. For one, according to the principal (who is decidedly not our pal) in a school of 600 students, only a dozen parents have "formally" complained. Wondering how many took their children out of school. Then there's the innuendo that parents opposing this harmless little tag designed only to help everyone and make the world a better place are nutty extremists who don't understand technology.
--> No where in this article, and we venture to say that no where in the media will we find even the hint of understanding of what government school is all about--the maintenance of a compliant citizenry. Student RFIDs are merely the next step in inuring children to arbitrary control and inquisitorial authority.
--> Have you reread 1984 lately?
--> 2. In December, author and former presidential candidate Harry Browne presented an address at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) entitled "The Greatest Mistake in American History: Letting Government Educate Our Children." The January issue of FEE's monthly publication, Notes from FEE, featured an abridged version.
http://www.fee.org/vnews.php?nid=6491
--> Mr. Browne is squarely in the Alliance camp on government education. He extols the promise of free market education, exposes the fallacy behind tax funded vouchers and even quotes Marshall Fritz when answering the question "What about the poor?"
--> The best part Mr. Browne saved for last. After all his sound logic, apt analogies and clever phrases, he briefly although obliquely admits that the current climate for separation of school and state--for liberty itself--seems less than sanguine. He ends with this note of optimism:
"We need to learn to convey to families how much better educated and more capable of facing the world their children would be if we could get the government out of the schooling business.
"It is true that people cannot jump from zero to sixty overnight. That isn't the way our minds work. But we never know whose mind we open, whom we move, encourage, and inspire. The person who takes to heart your message about the blessings of liberty may be somebody far more influential than you or I. Somebody far wealthier, somebody more articulate, somebody more powerful, or somebody who is able to do things that you or I cannot do.
"What is the future of liberty in America? E.B. White... once wrote, 'As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread, and the scene is not desolate.' You are such people. As long as you and I are dedicated to liberty, the contagion will spread and the future is never hopeless."
==================== FEATURE =====================
NEWSPAPER LOGIC: Response to the Akron Beacon Journal Attack on Homeschooling
by Nathaniel Bluedorn and Hans Bluedorn, © 2004. All rights reserved.
Have you ever read something you knew was wrong and just felt frustrated about it? It didn’t make sense, but you couldn’t explain why?
Recently an Ohio newspaper, the Akron Beacon Journal, printed a series of articles attacking homeschooling. They claim that little is known about homeschoolers and suggest the government should tightly monitor and regulate the movement. They quote school officials and focus groups who say that homeschooling can hide child abuse and failing students.
This is nothing new. We didn’t pay much attention until a friend told us that the first article mentions our logic book The Fallacy Detective. Ironically, we discovered that the two reporters who wrote these articles, Doug Oplinger and Dennis J. Willard, showcase several brazen errors in reasoning.
We’d like to give you a few tools for explaining to your friends, neighbors, and elected officials why using bad logic isn’t a good idea when attacking homeschoolers.
Our purpose isn’t to point out all the fallacies in these articles. We want to equip you to do this yourself. (Parents, finding fallacies in these articles might make a good school assignment.) Here is a crash-course in debunking bad newspaper reporting.
Fallacy 1: Appeal to the People
Claiming that something is true just because many people believe it is the fallacy of the appeal to the people. The Akron Beacon Journal articles use this fallacy frequently.
Nationally, according to the most recent polls on the topic, the country is divided on the socialization issue.
A 2001 Phi Delta Kappa poll found that the public, by just a slightly larger percentage (49 to 46), believes home schooling does not promote good citizenship. More than half – 53 percent – of the people who live in the Western United States believe home schooling promotes good citizenship, while only 37 percent in the East agree. (Nov. 16)
. . . .92 percent of [Americans] said home schoolers should take the same tests required of public school students. (Nov. 15)
We may not like to admit it, but we all become uneasy when many people disagree with us. However, public opinion is not a good gauge for what is true or false. Just because a large percentage of the population thinks homeschooling fails to produce good citizens does not make this true. Asserting this would be an appeal to the people.
Fallacy 2: Faulty Appeal to Authority
Another fallacy used in the Beacon Journal articles is faulty appeal to authority.
David Swarbrick estimates that “60 percent [of homeschoolers] are on par with the public schools, 20 percent are above and 20 percent are below.” (Nov. 15)
When we read a quote like this, we might worry that it indicates that homeschoolers don’t excel at academics the way we thought.
However, before we accept what Swarbrick says, we need to look at his credentials. Is he an authority on comparing the academic accomplishments of homeschool students to government school students? We read that Swarbrick is a math tutor for 225 homeschool students in Texas. Based on what these articles say, he only has contact with students who need tutoring in math – probably not a good cross section of homeschoolers. To appeal to his expert knowledge would be a faulty appeal to authority. (Note: David Swarbrick has said that he was dreadfully misquoted by Oplinger and Willard.)
. . . there are huge, untested segments of the home-school population that may be failing, according to many researchers. (Nov. 15)
An ambitious reporter can find someone willing to say anything he wants. It means nothing when a reporter writes, “many researchers say. . . .” We can find “many researchers” willing to say there are space aliens living among us. A reporter needs to name the researchers he is quoting and explain their credentials. Otherwise, he is using a faulty appeal to authority.
Fallacy 3: Proof by Lack of Evidence
. . . [T]he nation [collects] an unprecedented volume of statistics on public school students. . . . [But] it . . . knows almost nothing about children who are educated at home. (Nov. 15)
Lack of evidence is only evidence that there is a lack of evidence. There is no evidence of widespread cannibalism among Akron, Ohio residents; should the government fund a massive study to learn why there is no evidence? No, the government should channel its money to study problems for which we have evidence.
This line of reasoning tempts us to lose perspective. We imagine all the horrible possibilities of what homeschoolers could be doing behind closed doors, but we forget that we have absolutely no evidence for this – we only have a lack of evidence. Paranoia is an irrational fear of the unknown.
A reporter commits the fallacy of proof by lack of evidence when he suggests that something is true simply because there was no evidence to the contrary. A lack of evidence cannot be used to support or refute anything. The reporter has the burden of proof to supply positive evidence to support his claim.
School superintendents and other child professionals say an unknown number of children receive an inadequate education at home. . . . (Nov. 15)
An unknown number may be a million or zero. We don’t know. We could say an unknown number of newspaper reporters were smoking an unknown substance when they wrote this article.
Throughout these articles, Oplinger and Willard weave together the proof by lack of evidence fallacy with another manipulative technique called innuendo.
Fallacy 4: Innuendo
In Texas, a librarian told the Beacon Journal that some home-schooling parents objected to the book selection on the shelves. They lobbied the library to bring back older editions – books that depicted the United States in the 1950s, prior to the landmark 1964 civil rights legislation. . . .
That idea is espoused on a number of racist Internet sites. . . . (Nov. 16)
Notice how Oplinger and Willard never explicitly claim that these homeschoolers are racist. They would need evidence to support this accusation. They only insinuate. Innuendo is a propaganda technique that uses subtle and misleading language to manipulate our minds.
Racist and extremist home schoolers are almost invisible until an event thrusts them into the public’s consciousness. . . . In 1994, Gordon Winrod, an avowed anti-Semite and racist, kidnapped his eight grandchildren from their home in North Dakota and took them to a remote area in Missouri for six years and home-schooled them. . . . (Nov. 16)
To conclude that Winrod homeschooled these children simply because he did not send them to school clearly is a misrepresentation of homeschooling. Winrod kidnapped these children. Do all kidnappers homeschool their victims? By referring to kidnapping in an article about homeschooling, Oplinger and Willard suggest that this kind of behavior might characterize homeschoolers.
A tour of the Patrick Henry campus [a college connected with HSLDA] offers an impression of little or no racial diversity. . . .
On the college’s apparent lack of racial diversity, [a representative of the college] said that’s not important to the organization. . . .
The only African-American visible on a busy day early in the 2003-04 school year was a kitchen worker. (Nov. 17)
Oplinger and Willard never directly say that Patrick Henry College is racist, but they imply this with their strategically truncated quotes and observations.
Warning to Reporters
This attack on homeschoolers has provided us with an exhilarating supply of material to teach logic. It made our day.
Oplinger and Willard may have mentioned our book to hint that homeschoolers don’t use logic. But as we read their articles, we found that these reporters demonstrated a remarkable ignorance of logic. They should have read our book. It might have saved them the time it took to write those articles. But we’re happy for the opportunity to teach some logic.
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
Nathaniel and Hans have been homeschooled all of their lives and live near New Boston, Illinois. They are currently writing a sequel to their book The Fallacy Detective, a book on logic for children and adults. You can pester them with questions on logic at www.christianlogic.com.
This article can be found at http://www.christianlogic.com/articles/ akron_beacon_journal_attack_on_homeschooling.htm
If you haven’t read these newspaper articles, we have a complete list of articles printed in the Akron Beacon Journal from 11-14-2004 though 11-20-2004 at http://www.christianlogic.com/articles/akron_beacon_journal_attack_on_homeschooling_links.htm
(You must register to read these articles.)
We welcome republication of this article as long as the authors' names are cited along with the location of the original article. However, the cartoon artist requires a small authorization fee before printing the accompanying cartoon. Contact us for more information.
----------------------------
This article appears for information purposes only. The views expressed are those of the authors. The Alliance may or may not endorse these views.
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FINAL THOUGHT
"Stupid Idea Gets Worse in Hawaii. On two previous occasions, EIA has reported on state efforts to institute obesity report cards for students (see "Stupid Idea Gets Bipartisan Support" in the February 22, 2005 EIA Communiqué). Leave it to the Aloha State to take this idiocy to its logical extreme.
"State Rep. Rida Cabanilla (D-Oahu) introduced a resolution calling on the state Board of Education to establish an obesity database of public school teachers. The resolution also would require teachers to weigh in every six months.
"All of which for some reason reminds me of an episode of the cartoon series The Tick. The superhero answers a knock at his door with 'If you're selling insurance, we don't want any!' To which the person responds, 'Tick, we're from the government.'
"And The Tick replies, 'Ah, no thanks. We've got all the government we need.'"
--Mike Antonucci, The Education Intelligence Agency COMMUNIQUÉ – March 28, 2005, http://www.eiaonline.com
--------------------------
“If the activities and antics of teacher unions interest you, there is no better source of information than The Education Intelligence Agency COMMUNIQUÉ by Mike Antonucci. I know Mike and I trust him.” Marshall Fritz
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THE SCHOOL LIBERATOR is a FREE service of The Alliance for the Separation of School & State, 1071 N Fulton St, Fresno CA 93728 (559) 499-1776. We are a non-profit, grass roots, educational organization dedicated to informing people worldwide how education can be improved for all--not only the poor--by liberating schools from politics. For more information go to http://www.honestedu.com and http://getthekidsout.org
Publisher: Marshall Fritz
Editor: Cathy Cuthbert
Copyright 2005, The Alliance for the Separation of School & State, Inc. All rights reserved.
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