I haven’t been watching this issue very closely, but if I understand correctly, the voucher program (assuming it survives the November ballot) provides vouchers for homeschoolers in low income families in the neighborhood of 2-3,000 per year per child. (And: vouchers for all of this year’s kindergarteners who are homeschooled regardless of family income. I presume that would apply to future year’s K’ers as well.) And they seem fairly liberal in their definition of low income: one chart I saw put it at an AGI of 49K for a family of 6. Given the low AGI of many Mormons, what with all those kids and that huge mortgage, I imagine that there are lots and lots of families in Utah with four school-aged kids and an AGI under 50K. What that means is that mothers looking for a way to generate income for the family can now homeschool their kids and (assuming they spend about 1K on homeschooling, which is generous for four kids) net 7-11K per year. They won’t have to pay taxes on it and may or may not pay tithing on it. Not a bad deal. No guilt feelings about “working,” more time with the family–sounds like something that many LDS women could get behind.<\/p>\n
Will this happen on a wide scale? Would it be a good thing? I don’t know. I’m all for there being more homeschoolers because that means more opportunities for all homeschoolers, but I do see some pitfalls here. <\/p>\n
First, those who homeschool for strictly pecuniary reasons (or, if homeschooling becomes very common in Utah, for reasons of social\/religious\/cultural pressure) are likely to do a crummy job and end up raining down restrictive legislation on the heads of the rest of us. <\/p>\n
Secondly, if homeschooling becomes something that “good” Utah Mormon women do–either out of devotion to their children or a desire to supplement the family budget without working outside the home–I think we’re in for a heap of trouble. The potential for homeschooling to become a Mormon cultural mandate or a barometer of righteousness is something to be avoided at all costs (You can just see it, can’t you: “Well, you wouldn’t have to work away from your home or send your children to that mediocre school if you homeschooled them!”)<\/p>\n
At the same time, while I’d never willingly move to Utah (NB: That wasn’t a jab at Utah Mormons–that was an expression of personal preference. When you get Half Price Books<\/a>, an Ethiopian restaurant<\/a>, and a theological library as good as the Austin Presby Theological Seminary<\/a>‘s, then<\/em> I’ll think about moving to Utah), I am salivating a little at the thought of what my homeschool would look like with a budget in the thousands instead of in the hundreds. Holy imported books, educational games, and weekly maid service, Batman!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I haven’t been watching this issue very closely, but if I understand correctly,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4183\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}