Student’s home-schooling highlights debate over Va. religious exemption law
Susan Svrluga, July 29 Washington Post
Josh Powell wanted to go to school so badly that he pleaded with local officials to let him enroll. He didn’t know exactly what students were learning at Buckingham County High School, in rural central Virginia, but he had the sense that he was missing something fundamental.
By the time he was 16, he had never written an essay. He didn’t know South Africa was a country. He couldn’t solve basic algebra problems.
“There were all these things that are part of this common collective of knowledge that 99 percent of people have that I didn’t have,” Powell said.
Powell was taught at home, his parents using a religious exemption that allows families to entirely opt out of public education, a Virginia law that is unlike any other in the country. That means that not only are their children excused from attending school — as those educated under the state’s home-school statute are — but they also are exempt from all government oversight.
School officials don’t ever ask them for transcripts, test scores or proof of education of any kind: Parents have total control.
Powell’s family encapsulates the debate over the long-standing law, with his parents earnestly trying to provide an education that reflects their beliefs and their eldest son objecting that without any structure or official guidance, children are getting shortchanged. Their disagreement, at its core, is about what they think is most essential that children learn — and whether government, or families, should define that.
While some national advocates fight for the right of parents to educate their children at home, Powell thinks children — most urgently, his siblings — should have the right to go to public school, too.
For supporters, Virginia’s religious exemption law ensures an important liberty in a state where Thomas Jefferson made religious freedom one of the defining principles of U.S. democracy.
Opponents also cite Jefferson’s legacy, saying the founding fathers thought education was essential to a successful nation. They warn that the statute leaves open the possibility that some of the nearly 7,000 children whose parents claim a religious exemption aren’t getting an education at all.
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“As Josh has pointed out, and I believe he’s 100 percent accurate, a good education is not an option. It’s essential,” Clarence Powell said. “You basically get one opportunity to do it. If you come out on the other side deficient, it’s hard to make up for that. If you’re a loving parent, the last thing you want to do is create a situation where your children are limited or hindered.”
He’s proud of his son’s accomplishments. Josh Powell eventually found a way to get several years of remedial classes and other courses at a community college.
Now he’s studying at Georgetown University.
“He’s a very amazing young man,” Clarence Powell said. “But home school had a part in that.”
Josh Powell, now 21, wonders how much more he could have accomplished if he hadn’t spent so much time and effort catching up.
full: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/students-home-schooling-highlights-debate-over-va-religious-exemption-law/2013/07/28/ee2dbb1a-efbc-11e2-bed3-b9b6fe264871_singlePage.html
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