That’s the question a homeschooling fraud appears to be asking in telephone calls to parents. Here’s the warning we received via e-mail today:
We want to bring your attention to a situation that occurred recently so you can be on your alert for any suspicious calls. Yesterday, the Home School Foundation (the charitable branch of the Home School Legal Defense Association) received a call from an HSLDA member family who had received a suspicious call from a “Dr. Carey.” Dr. Carey claimed to be a homeschooling mother of 12 gathering information for research work on behalf of the Home School Foundation.
She told the family — in this case, the leader of a local home-school group — that their group had been nominated by members in their group for a compassion grant from HSF. To qualify for the grant, Dr. Carey explained she needed to ask some questions. These questions started with general queries about homeschooling and quickly led to questions concerning the family’s disciplinary techniques. The family then called HSF and confirmed that there isn’t a Dr. Carey on the payroll with either HSF or HSLDA.
While the Home School Foundation does offer compassion grants to homeschooling families in need, neither HSLDA nor the Home School Foundation would ever call their members and question them on the discipline of their children. Also, if you have caller ID, all calls from HSLDA read: (540) 338-5600 while all HSF calls read: (540) 338-8688. This caller showed up as a restricted or blocked number. HSLDA does not block our number from your phone.
If any families in your group receive any calls from someone claiming to be from HSLDA or HSF and the caller’s number is either blocked or doesn’t match either of the numbers above, please gather as much information as possible and let us know. And let’s pray that this person will not be successful in deceiving any HSLDA members or other homeschooling families.
This kind of fraud, presumably fueled by a false suspicion that home-schoolers beat their children into submission, is despicable. Add it to the list of home-school myths.
It’s true that home-schoolers demand that their children be more disciplined in their schoolwork and in life in general. That’s one reason we take our kids out of public schools, where too many teachers are afraid to speak a harsh word or even glare sternly at the misfits in their classes for fear of a lawsuit.
But disciplined children are a good thing. The problem isn’t with home-schoolers; it’s with the public schools. They should be calling home-schoolers for tips on how to teach kids self-discipline. It’s one of the most important lessons they will learn in life.
discipline?? are you kidding? maybe for the few that are home schooled by serious parents.i know too many parents that are home schooling their children for a couple hours daily then letting their kids out to play! what kind of discipline is this!!one thing that both public AND private school does at least is to get kids ready to go out and work in an 8 hour a day world.no..educating kids ofr two ours a day and then letting run free for the rest of the day isn’t something that i agree with at all!!i call it lazy..parents who don’t want the obligation of taking kids to and from school.i know too many moms in my area that don’t teach their kids at all somedays and just let their kids play outside all day..other days they go through a few subjects for annour or two and the kids are outside playing the rest of the day.while many parents are seriously home schooling their kids,there’s too many more that aren’t.and only two hours a day of educating isn’t serious in my opinion!
Comment by dennis teel — August 25, 2009 @ 6:30 pm
Somehow I doubt that you truly know any home-schooling parents, Dennis. If you did, you wouldn’t be making such outlandish and uninformed stereotypes.
How long do you think it actually takes to teach a child when you can work with them in classrooms that consist of as few as one child. You can cover a lot of ground in a couple of hours with that kind of teacher-to-student ratio. Any public- or private-school teacher would admit it, too. Just because you see home-schooled kids playing before the public school bell rings doesn’t mean the parents are lazy or the kids aren’t getting sufficient education.
The test scores tell the tale, Dennis, and home-schooled kids as a group score better than those in other settings. Try getting the facts instead of spreading misinformation.
Comment by Danny Glover — August 25, 2009 @ 9:29 pm
[...] days ago, a reader commented on one of my old blog posts about the lack of discipline in public schools and how that reality influenced our decision to [...]
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