Education News: Maintaining Full Control of your Home-schooled Child?s Education

Education News: Maintaining Full Control of your Home-schooled Child?s Education

When a parent first makes the decision to home-school their child, it may seem all too tempting to rely on other professionals to help educate their child. Current teachers, former teachers and the like are more than willing to educate your home-schooler—but for a big price. Such a price is not necessarily paid in monetary terms. Instead, the very thing that home-schooling parents do not want to happen does happen: parents take away the control from the public school to educate their child, only to hand the control right back over to a teacher that has been educated to teach a public school curriculum.

Let’s face it, in public schools children become nothing more than a number: a statistic that is counted toward the yearly funding a school receives. Children in public schools are herded into the classroom to learn and many sheep get lost among the rest. With not enough herders to bring the sheep back into the flock—such sheep, or children, remain forever lost as they flail around helplessly in the school system. Home-schooling parents are struggling against the grain, to bring their children and their education back into focus where it belongs. Therefore, to put someone else in charge of a home-schooled child’s education is a major and regressive step.

The act of handing over power to another individual can be extremely detrimental to the parent that wants to incorporate faith teaching into the teachings offered to the home-schooler. The teacher that is hired to educate the home-schooler may not have the same faith system or may not incorporate faith teaching in the lessons offered to the home-schooler at all. After all, that is what they are trained to do, to separate church and state. Thus, if the parent wants to ensure that their child is educated according to biblical scripture, it is far better if they remain at the helm of their child’s education at all times. The decision to home-school is a big one and once made, parents should be more than ready to take on full responsibility for their home-schooled child’s education.

In the end, to home-school a child is indeed an incredible responsibility; one that a home-schooling parent should not willingly pass off to another. A home-schooling parent should be a powerful force in their child’s life. In remaining close to their child, the home-schooler and the parent will bond in a way never imaginable. Moreover, faith can be incorporated into the teachings and the home-schooler can then learn to live their life the way that God truly intended.

The Six Worst Presidents in US History

Every generation has their own “infamous” president. Most adults living today would cite Bill Clinton as the most infamous president of their time, but not necessarily the worst. Rather than judging presidents on their scandals, let’s look at the worst presidents based on their policies and effectiveness. Here are six of the worst. (We chose six because it was hard to come up with just five!)

1. James Buchanan – During his presidency, Buchanan refused to challenge the idea of slavery or the increasing group of states that eventually formed the Confederacy. More action on his part could have kept slavery from spreading and prevented the Civil War.  In 2006, historians voted his failure to deal with secession the worst presidential mistake ever made.
2. John Tyler – Not only was Tyler a big proponent of slavery, but he also completely abandoned his party’s agenda and his campaign promises as soon as he was elected. His party, the Whigs, expelled him. Congress considered impeaching him for vetoing a tariff bill. He was later found guilty of misusing his veto power, but the impeachment articles did not pass.
3. Warren Harding – Harding made the mistake of appointing many of his friends to high cabinet positions, and quite a few of them used their power to rob the government.  Harding, in a move later determined illegal by the Supreme Court, transferred responsibility for naval oil reserve lands to his friend and Secretary of the Department of the Interior. This friend, Albert Fall, went on to sell those rights for his own personal gain. One of these lands was the Teapot Dome Reserve in Wyoming, who he gave to Mammoth Oil Company in exchange for cash and no interest loans. Harding’s corrupt administration is responsible for turning the phrase “teapot dome” into a synonym for public corruption. Fall was the first member of a presidential cabinet to go to jail.
4. Franklin Pierce – Pierce has the distinction of being the only sitting president ever to not be nominated for re-election by his own party. His Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise and left open the possibility of slavery in the Western states. He has been named one of the most ineffective presidents in history by numerous scholars. He was easily swayed by the opinions of others, and had difficulty sticking with a position on matters of importance.
5. Andrew Johnson – Johnson has the distinction of being one of only two sitting presidents to ever be impeached (Clinton was the other). Johnson was found innocent by one vote. He was impeached by Congress for trying to remove Edward Stanton as Secretary of War, which violated the Tenure of Office Act. Johnson also vetoed the first Civil Rights Act, stating that the country was “a country for white men”. Republicans, however, overrode his veto and the Civil Rights Act became law in spite of Johnson.
6. Ulysses S. Grant – Grant’s tenure as president was rocked with scandal. He was president during the first Black Friday, one of the country’s worst financial crises. However, the Whiskey Ring scandal was also a remarkable scandal. His cabinet officials stole more than $3 million dollars of whiskey tax from the government by conspiring with distillers. Grant, however, was never accused of a crime.

We all have our choices for “worst president” and no matter who is president at the time, there are always those who say that our current one is the worst ever. But, these guys’ incompetence has stood the test of time.

Phyl Zerkle blogs about why you should consider enrolling in masters in public policy programs.

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