Yep, I said it. What I really should do now is go hide from the impending virtual tomatoes that are being thrown at me from homeschoolers everywhere. However, I must say, a tax credit for homeschoolers is a bad idea. It is being proposed by Romney as part of his educational platform and while I like much of what he has to say about education–he’s dead wrong on this one.
Double Jeopardy or Social Responsibility?
Many homeschoolers feel that we are double jeopardized for our choice to home school. Not only do we have to pay taxes to something to teach society’s children values that we find morally repugnant, but we have to supply our own curriculum. This is absolutely true. But we’re not the only ones paying for a system that we don’t use.
Parents who choose private school pay the same school taxes we do. Childless couples pay the same taxes we do. In essence, if you own a home, you pay taxes to support your public schools regardless of whether or not you have children who go there. If you rent, your landlord pays taxes from your rent. . .and so indirectly you still pay taxes to support public schools. No one gets out of it. If we start giving tax credits to homeschoolers we also need to give them to parents who choose to send their children to private schools. Then we need to give them to childless couples. . .in essence everyone who doesn’t send their children to public school must get a tax credit.
Why Should We Support Public Schools?
I spend a great deal of time teaching my children social responsibility. It’s important that they understand not only what it means to be a citizen but also, what it means to be part of a society. It means that we care about our neighbors and what happens to them. Not only that but what happens to our neighbor necessarily has an effect on us. It’s not, as some would have us believe, every man for himself.
Better education makes for better society. That’s one reason I home school. . .to fulfill my social responsibility by providing well educated citizens capable of leading the next generation. Not everyone has the ability, or desire and so public school is another option. But the reality is that those publicly educated kids, one day will likely sit side by side with my home schooled kids and run our society. We need for all of our kids to be well educated.
Come back tomorrow when I give another reason why tax credits for homeschoolers are a bad idea.
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