Letters to the editor are always inspiring. Whenever a citizen is engaged enough with an issue to write or type out an opinion and submit it before "the public," one of liberty's prime freedoms has been exercised. As a whole, the genre is good and the republic is better for it.
Even when individual letters, which are not created equal, make shockingly indefensible claims.
Such was the case last week when a letter to the editor here in the local Jonesboro paper caught my eye, and proved how positive outcomes are often produced from negative inputs.
The author's identity isn't as important as the letter's content, so he will remain unnamed to protect the uninformed. The subject of his short note was homeschooling, which he unequivocally claimed "needs to be banned."
"How in the world is any kid home-schooled?" he asked. After a couple more condemnatory sentences asserting deficiency in social skills, he added, "I wish there was a study on how well home-school kids really do out in the world."
He then closed with this clincher: "In my brain home schooling equals child abuse."
Hyperbole is a rhetorical device in which exaggerated statements are used to make a point, but are not meant to be taken literally, and I reached out to the author to give him a chance to qualify his quote. By then a barrage of rebuttals had already pounced on his expressed desire for data from studies on how homeschooled children get along "in the world."
I asked whether the flood of responses, which overflowed with both statistical and anecdotal evidence of homeschool successes, had given him a broader perspective on the matter.
He said his brain was wide open.
I was glad to hear it, and gave him an out: So he would now probably back away from equating homeschooling with child abuse?
His one-word reply came quickly. "No."
Hope survives, even when stubbornness thrives, and I suspect the fidelity to his faulty comparison is in truth an unspoken confession that the author possesses very little experience or knowledge in the realm of either child abuse or homeschooling.
The homeschool crowd is typically more than capable of speaking for itself, and did so with particular eloquence in this instance.
The very next day a teenage homeschool student responded with her own letter to the editor.
While admitting she found his comments offensive, Abby Orr, 16, of Harrisburg explained she was "still open to discuss this topic with you! It sounds like you have never actually met or spoken to a home-schooler, so let me introduce myself."
She went on to point out that during her 12 years of homeschooling, she had played three different sports; taken extracurricular classes in debate, photography and finance; participated in more than 20 shows at Jonesboro's premier theater organization, The Foundation of Arts; and traveled with a group of friends to perform at Walt Disney World.
"I am well-educated and have never lacked social interaction," she wrote. "I definitely would not compare my very blessed life to that of a child-abuse victim."
One day later, a grandfather wrote in to say how happy he was to see the author's letter proposing a home-school ban.
"It gives a chance to trumpet its virtues," Joe Pace of Jonesboro replied, and proceeded to inform readers that within his own bloodline were home-schooled students who went on to exemplary higher education distinctions. One was a Reagan scholar, another a West Point graduate, and another in her final semester at Oral Roberts University.
The next day another homeschool student joined the published letter discussion. Seventeen-year-old Betsy Johnson noted that her two older homeschooled brothers' experiences contradicted the author's assertions. One graduated at the top of his class at Arkansas State University and attends law school, and the other works in the film industry in Nashville with networks like ESPN and National Geographic.
She held up her own student resume--membership in the Jonesboro Chamber of Commerce Junior Leadership Class of 2019-2020, vice-president of the Junior Auxiliary Crown Club and other volunteer opportunities--to demonstrate that homeschooling had not hindered her or her fellow students, who are "normal teenagers leading normal lives."
"Our schooling does not create barriers," she wrote. "Instead, it presents an opportunity to learn to respect the things we may not understand." She hoped the author and others could do the same.
Other letter-writers supplied supporting empirical facts. College-bound homeschool kids on average start their freshman year with more than twice as many college credits as those from traditional schools, and have a higher graduation rate (67 percent versus 59 percent). In standardized test studies, homeschoolers score significantly higher (often a full grade ahead), a metric aided no doubt by the higher percentage of two-parent families among homeschooled households.
The key factor in homeschooling, and in all education, is the term's first syllable. A home where parents are highly involved in their child's learning elevates student achievement, period. By its very nature, homeschooling capitalizes on that critically important condition.
Good teachers make a huge, incalculable difference. Championing them, in whatever school situation, advances education.
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Dana D. Kelley is a freelance writer from Jonesboro.
Editorial on 01/31/2020