In the spring of 1968 the Oklahoma City Public School District was chock full of schools filled to the brim with students and teachers. It was also, with only a few exceptions, segregated, not by law, but reality. My graduating class that year had right at 500 students. Only two of that number were African-American. The city's black kids, thanks to run amok housing discrimination were pretty much restricted to two high schools, Douglass and Northeast, both located on the east side of town.
That year federal Judge Luther L. Bohanan, an appointee of John F. Kennedy, ruled that despite restrictive housing practices, OKC's school system would, by God, integrate one way, or the other. The other way turned out to be by redrawing district lines and busing students across those lines when need be starting with the fall semester.
At that moment a couple of things happened. There was a mad scramble by white parents to get their children into private schools, which there were precious few of at the time. When that didn't work for them, they began a mass migration into suburban districts.
Despite the upheaval, which was rooted solidly in racism, there was very little talk, if any, about home schooling. It probably isn't a coincidence, that despite the racial furor, the vast majority of church goers in the state of Oklahoma back then were members of main stream protestant denominations. What is now known as evangelical Christians were still on the fringe and comparatively few in number. The great rush to deliberate academic ignorance had yet to begin.
That's all in the past now. Thanks to television, aggressive recruitment and the main stream Christian Church's support of civil rights issues--racial, feminist, and sexual orientation--evangelicals have become the face of Protestantism in America.
In other words The Episcopalians, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and others--with the notable exception of Southern Baptists--like the old school systems, watched their numbers dwindle as non denominational, rock music infused, bible literalist, mega churches bloomed and have grown like weeds.
Along with the unraveling of traditional schools and main stream Protestant churches we've seen the rise of home schooling. Indeed, now that even some of the suburban schools have significant numbers of black kids and teachers still teach--you know--actual science and at times nearly accurate versions of history--many have come to believe home schooling is the only way to save their children's souls. Or at least prevent them from learning the universe is billions and billions of years old and there is such a thing as evolution.
Yes, but there is also an even darker side to the practice. Home schooling, especially in Oklahoma can hide a multitude of sins. Just ask the fifteen year old boy who was found in Meeker, OK on July 12th.
According to reports he was forced to live in the family barn, was routinely beaten, at one point had been wounded by a shotgun blast in the leg, and was so malnourished he barely weighed 80 pounds. Because his parents were home schooling him no one from any state agency had the authority to check on his welfare.
In fact right now the only Oklahoma requirement for home schooling is that parents promise to conduct, "classes," 180 days a year. There is no oversight, no text book requirements, no third party testing, and there isn't a single provision which allows a school district nurse, doctor, or official from checking on the student's progress, or well being.
The kid in Meeker isn't the only one. Yesterday's The Oklahoman reports there is a web site which lists more than a dozen cases of child abuse in the state which were perpetrated and prolonged under the guise of home schooling. At least two young people were murdered. One, Shane Coffman was pulled out of public school in the fall of 1995. Early in 1996 his bones were found in a freezer behind a trailer home. Authorities believe he was already dead when dear old Mom told school personnel not to worry about his absences because she had decided to home school him.
A representative for an Oklahoma home schooling organization, one advocating, "Christ-centered home education," was asked about some sort of system of checks on home schooled children. Dana Wilson, told reporter, Josh Wallace, "It would be unfair to subject the thousands of home schooling families in the state to burdensome, obtrusive, regulations, because of a few people who broke the law."
One can only wonder what her stance is when it comes to sobriety check points which the OKC cops periodically set up in this burg in order to make sure everyone on the road is straight enough to drive.
Yes, if we're going to randomly make sure you're not drunk behind the wheel shouldn't we also take the effort to find out whether you are actually teaching your kid as opposed to beating him, or her to death?
Back when I was driving a cab and being a wildly unsuccessful novelist I would periodically pick up a single mother in a blue collar neighborhood. She used Yellow Cab each day in order to get to and from a bus stop located six, or seven blocks away. One morning she told me she was home schooling her teen aged son because he was always getting kicked out of my old high school alma mater for fighting.
I asked her how it was working out for him. Her response was, "I don't know, he studies while I'm at work."
True story.
God only knows where that boy is today and how many more kids are being educated at home like he and Shane Coffman were. Who can tell? As this is written, Oklahoma law won't let us find out and people like Dana Wilson are determined to make sure we never do.
sic vita est
7-30-18
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