Tax home schooling parents less?

A few comments follow this very brief piece from the Los Angeles Times:

Santorum bashes public schools, says they're stuck in factory era
By Mitchell Landsberg
February 18, 2012, 12:51 p.m.

Reporting from Columbus, Ohio— Republican GOP hopeful Rick Santorum may be the most prominent homeschooler in America. So it might not have been surprising that, on Saturday, he told a conservative Christian audience that he intended to homeschool his children in the White House.

In his remarks to the Ohio Christian Alliance, however, Santorum went further, seeming to attack the very idea of public education.

In the nation’s past, he said, “Most presidents homeschooled their children in the White House.… Parents educated their children because it was their responsibility.”

“Yes, the government can help,” he continued, “but the idea that the federal government should be running schools, frankly much less that the state government should be running schools, is anachronistic.”

He said it is an artifact of the Industrial Revolution, “when people came off the farms where they did homeschool or had a little neighborhood school, and into these big factories … called public schools.”

While industry has evolved, public schools remain stuck in the factory era, he said, “back in the age of Henry Ford. You get what we give you. One color, two models. It wouldn’t work for Henry Ford today, and it won’t work for America today.“

As a U.S. senator, Santorum came under fire for charging taxpayers for homeschooling five of his children through an online charter school.

mitchell.landsberg@latimes.com

http://www.latimes.com/news/politic...latimes/news/politics+(L.A.+Times+-+Politics)

Santorum is basically correct as far as he goes. I doubt if he is correct enough to claim the title Mr. Conservative. It seems to me he is playing it safe trying to win over conservative voters without offending the public education crowd he correctly claims is obsolete. A sincere conservative would not only promise, but would include, clear-cut plans to abolish the Department of Education. Naturally, it would be best if the federal government was driven out of education altogether. That is not in cards at this time. The best thing Americans can do for the time being is to go for a few doable adjustments:

1. With the sole GI Bill exception stop giving tax dollars to higher education.

2. Return control of curricula to parents in every school district at the elementary and secondary level.

NOTE: Courts have already ruled that parental authority ends at the schoolhouse door. So the fight to stop indoctrinating children with Socialist/Communist ideology has to be fought on more than one battlefield. Anybody who says they are ready for the battles ahead better offer more than campaign rhetoric.

3. Give tax refunds or tax breaks —— equal to the cost of public school education —— to parents who homeschool, or send their kids to private schools. (Approximately $7,000 per student per year —— much, much, higher in many cities.)

NOTE: For all practical purposes collectivism means everybody pays. Socialists will never allow millions of American parents to opt out of paying for public education even if their kids don’t use it.

Finally, Americans stood still while Socialists were stealing everything worth fighting for including the lives of the unborn. That does not mean that Socialists/Communists will stand still when they are in danger of losing control of every child’s mind. More importantly, they will turn to violent revolution before they surrender one tax dollar. No law, no judicial ruling, will stop them. Bottom line: A clear-cut plan for executing the above 3 items is necessary before any “conservative” Republican is taken at his word.

 

Heterophobic slurs are tacky.

 

I have no issue with a homeschooler getting a tax refund on their home for exactly what they put in

I do not agree with $$$ vouchers worth many many times more then they put in for private school though

 

As a public school educator, I'm cool with all this. Just have such parents pay for any materials they receive from the state and for standardized testing on a yearly basis.

Funny, I didn't get the memo that I was supposed to be indoctrinating anyone. Just out of curiosity, what sort of indoctrination would be supported by reading Ayn Rand's Anthem?

 

That's not right, and you homeschoolers should be out there protesting the hell out of it. Use it as a lesson in politics.

You pay tax to for the school; you should have the right to use a much or as little of its services as you want.

 

With US public schools dumbing down the students with religion; and forcing parents who care about their kids sending them to private schools or home schooling, the State Governments should tax people without kids even less than those with home schooled kids if fair tax is the issue. I hate to pay taxes for wasted money on a failing huge unionized government system.

We in the USA should pay other countries our tax money to educate our USA kids in forigen lands. In the end the kids will be smarter and more wise than the duds the USA dropout factories are producing.

Too bad school exchange programs are micro scale. The USA would be better off importing masses of forigen studens at an early age so they can dumb them down and send them back overseas to screw up those forigen countries.