6/02/00 12:45 p.m.
Can You Spell ‘Homeschooled’?
All three spelling-bee finalists had one thing in common: They were home schoolers.

By Ben Domenech, NRO Contributing Editor---------------btdome@wm.edu

fter ten rounds and over nine hundred words, the initial field of 248 contestants in the 73rd Annual Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee on Thursday had been reduced to a stubborn threesome. The finalists all had different backgrounds and interests, and hailed from different corners of the country — but all three had one thing in common: they were home schoolers.

Twelve-year-old George Thampy of St. Louis correctly spelled “demarche” to clinch the championship and the $10,000 prize, after opponents Alison Miller and Sean Conley misspelled the words “venire” and “apotropaic,” respectively. Thampy's victory comes less than a week after he earned second place in the National Geography Bee.

The fact is, impressive academic achievements on the part of home schoolers have long been a common occurrence. And with the home-schooled population growing exponentially (there are at least 1.7 million in America, according to the Home School Legal Defense Association), it's become difficult to find opponents of home education who will openly criticize the movement.

Except, that is, for the National Education Association. In section B-67 of their 1999-2000 Official Resolutions, the NEA repeated the same ignorant and specious attack against home schooling that they've been relying on for the past two decades: “National Education Association believes that home schooling programs cannot provide the student with a comprehensive education experience . . . Instruction should be by persons who are licensed by the appropriate state education licensure agency, and a curriculum approved by the state department of education should be used. The Association also believes that home-schooled students should not be allowed to participate in any extracurricular activities in the public school system.”

While home schoolers currently enjoy legal freedoms that the NEA is unable to roll back, the teachers unions continue to preach their misinformation to unknowing legislators, in the hopes of turning home schooling into an uncomfortable and highly regulated enterprise. It's time the NEA started focusing on educating, not putting roadblocks in the path of American children. Then maybe even a public schooler might even make it to the last round.