Thursday, February 4, 2010

6 Year Old Homeschool Boy Suspended in Iowa!

A six year old boy who isn't even part of the public school system was "suspended" because he brought a shotgun shell to a weekly meeting held at a church.

The state is claiming that homeschooling does not make the child exempt from following the same rules as public school children. The parents argue that they found the shells in their home when taking down a wall and had no idea the little boy even had it with him when he went to his weekly activity at the church.

While there is a place for standards that we should all be held accountable for I think that there are some things were a little discretion should be used. This was a six year old who is NOT in the school system. Hard to say that you can suspend him. How does a homeschool parent even follow that order? And age 6? If he had pummeled a fellow student at a public school I can see the need for intervention but this was not a weapon or even a bullet. It is pretty obvious what a shell is and what isn't and without exposing children to subject matter which is too advanced for their age how do you tell him why this was a bad thing to take to school?

This is not to say that homeschool kids should be allowed to just do anything but homeschool groups should have set guidelines and clear messages and perhaps they should be made to follow such rules. The hard thing in this instance was that no one was hurt or was potentially going to be hurt. This was strictly someone picking a bone in my opinion.

2 comments:

  1. Suspended from what exactly? Suspended from "school"?

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  2. My thoughts exactly. I don't know how keeping a child from their educational time is useful if they are not harming anyone or disruptive. In this case where he is home anyway it's like they can say he is suspended but that's all. Interesting.

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