Harvard would ban homeschooling.
The National Education Association (NEA) would ban homeschooling.
And yet what hath the coronavirus wrought? Homeschooling.
The Editorial Board of the Tacoma News Tribune (TNT) recently opined with regards “Washington’s new sex education law (that) if parents don’t like it? Two words: Opt out.”
They might.
Altogether.
“The coronavirus pandemic has changed how millions around the globe are educated,” write Gloria Tam and Diana El-Azar, their article appearing in World Economic Forum this past month.
As of March 13, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reported “over 421 million children are affected due to school closures announced or implemented in 39 countries.
“These risk-control decisions have led millions of students into temporary ‘home-schooling’ situations,” say the authors.
What appeared initially to be temporary however, and while certainly a cause of inconvenience, home-schooling has “also prompted new examples of educational innovation.
“Although it is too early to judge how reactions to COVID-19 will affect education systems around the world, there are signs suggesting that it could have a lasting impact on the trajectory of learning innovation and digitization.”
Learning at home has taken on added pressures as well as possibilities, both the result of an unforeseen and most unfortunate world-wide crisis.
There is another threat, for many an unwanted imposition of an also sinister kind, not of a virus that can travel nearly five times farther unseen than what social distancing currently requires, but a rather upfront, in-your-face, don’t-like-it-opt-out-or-else-comply mandate your kids will have thrust upon them.
Two words: Comprehensive Sex.
In the name of education.
A totally partisan law recently passed in Washington requires all publicly schooled children (unless you opt out – at least that’s what’s said for now) in all grades, to be educated in, over time, “LGBTQ issues, contraception, pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and sexual consent” – to name a few of the instructional topics – according to proponent Chris Reykdal, Washington State Superintendent of Public Instruction.
Taking issue with the TNT’s two-choice option (in, or out) with regards Sex Ed, parents of the 1,147,573 children in Washington Public Schools might want to pursue one of three other options: private school; home school (unless Harvard or the NEA has its way); or Referendum 90.
The last is a time-honored civic and constitutional privilege of the people, that of Initiative.
Parents for Safe Schools will soon have available petitions (sign up here) by which 129,811 valid signatures will be needed by June 10 to get a referendum on the general election ballot asking voters to reject Sex Ed.
A-week-and-a-day – coronavirus notwithstanding – following the deadline facing Parents for Safe Schools, Harvard Law School will convene a summit the intent of which is, to hear the co-sponsor tell it, to dead-end homeschooling believing such instruction, undertaken by parents at home, results in children growing up “educationally deprived.”
How ironic that world affairs are now dictating where instruction is to happen, and might best in the long-run happen, bringing not children to the bricks-and-mortar school, but online educators partnering in the benefits-and-model of the home.
Well written article, as usual. Sex education can be taught at home and not by strangers who may or may not have your children’s best interest. I just wonder how Harvard became involved in Washington politics. Sounds very fishy to me…..