Saturday, September 27, 2008

Homeschoolers and Playing High School Sports


IT's Tebow (Blessings Upon Him)
Creative Minority Report has great post up that talks about a ESPN article that is out. Go Homeschooling and Sports


It has sort of has been amazing to me that you got a the Stud of Football, A HEISMAN WINNER, and someone that was homeschooled and I am seeing little action on the front of allowing Homeschool children to participate in local high school athletics.

Now what I am referring too is down here in the South. For instance one would think places like Louisiana would jump on this. But perhaps not. There are invested interests that would oppose I would suppose. It would be interesting to see the history of the Florida Legislation and how that battle went that allowed Tebow and countless others to play.
Update I- Full Circle , A Louisiana Home Schooling Dad From Baton Rouge hits on this too today. Please see Competitive sports and homeschooling .

2 comments:

William Eunice said...

The more I think about this the more I think homeschoolers need to take this lump with the choice. If your kid is that good, put him back in school.

The main reason is one of allowing the state a foot into the door. Once you have opened that can of worms you have voluntarily relinquished parental rights that are presumably some of the reason you chose to homeschool in the first place. Ultimately parental rights are more important ...

The correct solution is regional un-affliated homeschool umbrellas. Another problem with allowing homeschool students into a public school to compete is that the choice opens up a WIDE chasm for abuse. For example, your son is struggling in the 9th grade. He is 5-star recruit good. Why not homeschool him and lower your academic standards so he can focus all of his attention on athletics? I would be an easy and widespread choice. The schools have no way to police this type of abuse nor do I think the taxpayers should pay for it. Homeschool umbrellas have the same problem EXCEPT that it requires a fee (you pay for your own stuff) to get in. The parents would also have to pool to pay for a salary, obtaining access to a practice field etc. Its a system that could be required to be self policed like mandatory testing to ensure a minimum of academics is met. All of this could be required to be covered at the expense of homeschooling parents (i.e. no taxpayer dimes) ... That leaves the whole system and thus the whole choice of homeschooling untethered from the state. Ultimately that is what needs to be retained.

James H said...

William I think you make good points on the abuse. I mean we all know how epecially the The Evangels and JOhn Curtis of the World are accused of recruiting violations in High School fottball. But still I would like to see hwo the Florida Plan is working

As to the State getting its foot in the door. I understand this to a certain degree. But after seeing the discussions and fights over Home schoolers between the Ron Paul and Huckabee folks I thought some people in the Home Schooling areas took that issue to a manic obsession. There si some risk I suppose in all this but there is some possible gain