AKA no Louisiana version of Home School Tim Tebow for us. See LHSAA decisions deal with more than just football .
The organization that governs about 99 percent of Louisiana High School Athletics had their meeting in Baton Rouge where some significant votes were taken.
This caught my eye in the article:
The plight of home-school students in Louisiana knows no geographic boundaries, but it faced a clear mountain to allow such students to remain eligible to play in LHSAA athletic events.
Using a roll-call vote, each principal in attendance stood and shouted their name and vote.
Only five schools — Christian Life, Evangel, Riverdale, Hosanna Christian and Episcopal School of Acadiana — supported the proposals to allow home-school students to compete in LHSAA events.
On the second proposal to make home-school students ineligible to participate, eight total principals voted against it.
Current LHSAA by-laws allow home school participation under strict conditions.
Henderson encouraged principals to vote their conscience on the issue prior to the meeting. After the meeting, he said he was surprised at how overwhelming the statement to the state's legislature was, but that he knew the fight to keep home-school students out was just beginning.
"That was a slam dunk," Henderson said.
Now I am too shocked at the vote. I thought there would be more for this proposal. Of course this is a issue that people have good arguments for and against.
Now most non Catholic religious schools also voted against this proposal too as we see. However it appears significant to me that there is not one Catholic school in any Louisiana Diocese that voted to allow home school kids to participate in LHSAA.
Now one expects of course coordination in a individual Diocese. I am sure for instance in New Orleans there might be an uproar if Jesuit got home school folks and Archbishop Shaw did not. However I suspect that the various Dioceses in the State got together to discuss this.
It is not beyond reason, with the importance of sports in Louisiana, that the Bishops were very interested in the topic.
In fact in schools with numerous Catholic Schools it appears they would have to be in on this because of the internal Catholic school politics in their own Diocese.
I really don't believe these individual Catholic principals were voting their own individual conscience on this issue. They were of course getting orders from above.
So it appears advocates of home school students in Louisiana athletics have a high mountain to climb. To climb that mountain they are going to have win over what appears to be a major foe. That is the Louisiana Catholic Church who I suppose will throw their weight into this discussion in the State legislature.
So better start taking out the Bishops and big Catholic Donors to various schools out to Ruth Chris's steak house or something when you lobby them :)
"As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable. Among these the following emerge clearly today ... the protection of the right of parents to educate their children."
ReplyDelete~ Pope Benedict XVI, Speech to the European People's Party on 30 March 2006
A question: If the Louisiana Bishops support excluding home-schooled children from participating in organized athletics, are their efforts likely to "protect" or "hinder" the rights of home-schooling parents to "educate their children"?
I'm thinking hinder.
As a former homeschool dad who strongly supports homeschooling let me tell you the two biggest arguments against homeschoolers participating in athletics.
ReplyDelete1) Freedom of homeschooling parents are infringed the minute they elect to participate in schools that are regulated under any form of state control. Right now there is a grades requirements to participate. That immediately infringes upon the method of some unschooling parents who doesn't keep grades. They then have to choose football or their method of education.
2) It is prone to abuse. Can't make the grades at school? Go home under the support of some booster from a major university and play football full-time as a homeschooler.
Homeschooling is about education and formation. The real problem is football being so intertwined with the schools. With basketball we have a solution. It is called AAU teams. Football needs to move more towards a community solution and less of a school solution. Then there is no need to even consider this as an issue.
Of course that is the right solution ... good luck making that happen when alumni money for academics is often tied to performance on the football field.
FWIW, I think there is money to be made by the person who has the $$$ to pull something like this off. Problem is, it would eventually destroy high school football because football, unlike basketball, requires an intense loyalty to one team. It would be too much to play for more than one like AAU players do.
ReplyDeleteJay I was thing of those same concern you mentioned
ReplyDeleteWilliam
Let me sask you. It appears in States like Florida this has been done. What were the Home School Advocates experience of this as to their fears and what happend in reality. Again I don't know in FLorida if it is Statewide or by District and Tebow was just sort of the exception
"Of course that is the right solution ..."
ReplyDeleteI'm not so sure tossing out a century-old tradition of high school football for the sake of a small minority of homeschoolers is "the right solution". It's certainly not a "conservative" one.
The better option would be to find SOME SORT of accomodation for homeschoolers that does not infringe upon the parents' rights to direct their children's education (including the grading thereof) nor has a negative impact upon the integrity of the rules for participation.
Surely some accomodation exists short of scrapping the whole system for the sake of a few.